The squash vines are kickin’ out lots of zukes at ARTfarm!
Ask and you shall receive! Last season Shepherdess Christina told Farmer Luca that, since our family was trying to go gluten-free but loves pasta, that we wanted some beautiful organically grown zucchini to make into gluten-free noodles (“zoodles”) with our spiralizer vegetable cutter.
Shazam! We have lots of zucchini, thanks to our water-preserving new gardening techniques. The squash vines are going crazy.
Tomorrow we will have loads of Ethiopian kale, 2 types regular kale, Italian basil, Thai basil, holy basil, lemon basil, garlic chives, Recao, lemongrass, small and large yellow round squash, green zucchini squash, Green Oak leaf lettuce heads, baby spicy, baby arugula, sweet salad mix, wild cucumbers (gherkins) and a few fresh sweet Mediterranean figs. Maybe 1-2 pints of yellow cherry tomatoes for the early birds, and fresh, lovingly produced eggs from Yellow Door Farm. See you in the morning!
Thanks to the many customers and supporters who have called and checked in with us on our website and Facebook page, wondering when we would reopen the farmstand. We will see you all at 10 AM till noon on Saturday, December 12! We love that you love our food! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and are looking forward to this month’s festivities!
Yellow summer squash and zucchini have been growing beautifully!
It has been quite a tumultuous year for farm planning. The severe drought that started last winter was the driest season Estate Longford has seen in nine years. (Amazingly enough, other places on St. Croix, including the East end, apparently got more rain than usual during that period.) The pastures and surrounding hills near us dried out and turned gray, and we experienced severe and intense brushfires across the east end of the ARTfarm and neighboring pastures in May, 2015, well attended by the VI Fire Service (thank you!!!).
At this time last year, all of our catchment ponds were topped off with rain. Currently, we are at less than one third of our rainwater catchment capacity.
All of this major rearrangement of weather patterns has meant that we have delayed planting in order to reserve our irrigation water, and hesitated to invest in the season.
But, we finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago and began planting for 2015-2016. We have designed a smaller amount of growing space this year, so we will have perhaps a little less on offer in terms of quantity. We are experimenting with a few new crops, and even some new growing techniques that are going to conserve even more water. We have created a few new areas of permaculture techniques, including some giant Hugel beds, and so far the productivity seems high, although insect activity is higher than we’ve ever seen it all over the farm — we and many other farmers on the island are struggling with record numbers of aphids, caterpillars and other garden pests. We are also not alone in experiencing overwhelming growth rates of noxious weeds, which survived even when more desirable grasses and forbs perished in the drought.
Kiko has been painstakingly handweeding the toxic physic nut in the pastures for weeks to try to prevent further spread. There are literally thousands of these growing, and they are poisonous to livestock.
We gratefully welcome our new employee, Katie, who is fitting right in with the crew and learning quickly!
We are waiting another week and a half before opening so that we can have salad greens for your holidays. We’ll reopen Saturday, December 12, 10 AM – 12 noon, (Christmas Boat Parade Day). We’ll have herbs, veggies, salad greens and fruit! See you in ten days!
Apologies for the short notice: As we usually do, we are going to take a few weeks at this slowed-down time of the year to do some maintenance work, some reflecting, catching up on projects, and taking a little time for ourselves. So at the risk of seeming a bit abrupt, we are letting you know that we will not be open this morning, Saturday, August 22nd. We will probably reopen in mid to late October, depending on whether or not it rains and for enough duration to help our soil recover from this extensive drought.
Making lemonade from lemons. Here’s something fun to do with dead coconut trees: build a shady little fort to hang out in!
Speaking of the drought, we may be on the road to recovery after this weekend with a visit from tropical storm/depression/hurricane Danny, and hopefully with a few more precipative events in his wake. Keep in mind that for us and many other livestock and crops farmers, it will take time after rains arrive for our farms to recover. It is not going to be an instantaneous recovery once water hits the soil. Many pastures taxed by lack of rainfall and extended grazing periods will have to be reseeded. The balance of beneficial organisms in the soil has been altered by months of dry, punishing heat and wind. There is going to be a long road back to good soil, sward and plant health, after not having any substantial rain since February.
Big shout out and thanks to Sejah Farm, who collected donations from the public for drought relief and used the money to purchase hay, grain and milk replacer and distributed it among their production partners. We received two pickup truckloads of baled hay for our sheep. Thanks to everyone who donated. JCC, you should be sleeping well at night! Special thanks for your support for our island farmers.
A bit of fresh sweet salad mix, kangkong (Asian water spinach – a cooking green), garlic chives, and fresh mint. From our partners: Solitude Farms dragonfruit, Haitian kidney mangoes from Tropical Exotics orchard, and vegan coconut ice cream from I-Sha.
Zamorano (Hylocereus polyrhizus) has one of the flashiest dragonfruit flowers. Luca pollinated two of these flowers tonight. If all goes well each flower will produce a ripe fruit in approximately 3-4 weeks.
We will not have salad mix next week, nor for the next several weeks. We will still have some dragonfruit and mangoes, if you would like to purchase those over the next couple of weeks feel free to call the farm and we’ll do our best to accommodate you off-hours.
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 