This afternoon from 3 – 4:30 PM, we will be creating a piece of performance art called “Holiday Corn Flash Mob”OPEN, due to a bumper crop of beautiful organically grown SWEET CORN, plus sweet salad mix and red and yellow watermelon. Hope you’re tuning in, Dan and Fran!
We will also have a few bunches of scallions, cilantro, green Serrano chilis (add watermelon and corn for an amazing salsa) and Italian basil.
Join us TODAY 3-4:30pm and celebrate the bounty! Early birds can help choreograph the flash mob. There will be plenty of corn for everybody!
Santa’s little helpers gave Farmer Luca a hand bringing in the giant watermelons last night! Come and get ’em!
Whatever December holidays you may be celebrating, we wish you ALL the building of wonderful, fond memories and stronger bonds with your families and community; and peace, health, creativity and prosperity in the new year to come.
Early birds today will be treated to the first of our sweet corn harvest and a limited supply of slicing and cherry tomatoes.
Here’s the list: Sweet salad mix, teen arugula, teen spicy salad mix, crispy cucumbers, loads of watermelons, a few pints of cherry tomatoes, a couple of slicing tomatoes, cooking greens, escarole, dandelion greens, radishes, carrots, onions, scallions, sweet potatoes, a few ears of sweet corn, Italian basil, holy basil, lemon basil, cilantro, dill, recao, beautiful spicy baby ginger, papaya, passionfruit, sweet Japanese mini melons, and cut flowers.
Best wishes from our family to yours! We appreciate all you wonderful, loyal supporters!
Love, Luca, Christina, Marina, Katie, Jen, Kiko, Valeria, Heather, Augustus, Matthew, James, Daryl, Ginger, Spicy, Moonlight, Mrs. Grove, Little Spotty, Whoopsie Pie, Polly, Mr. Nibbles and all the many, many other creatures great and small…
ARTfarm Saturday: 10am – 12 noon. Mangoes like crazy today! Summer solstice arrives on Sunday, hopefully dragging some rain clouds with it for Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there. From the farm this morning: Small amounts of sweet mix and microgreens, a few pineapples and papayas, lots of passionfruit, fresh mint, Italian basil, garlic chives and lemongrass. Don’t forget the lemongrass – steep in hot water to make a very cooling and slightly sweet, refreshing brew to keep in the fridge!
From our partners: vegan ice cream from I-Sha in a rainbow of flavors, honey from Errol, and lots of beautiful mangoes, including Viequan Butterballs from Tita and Nam Doc Mai and Madame Francis from Dennis Nash. Farmer Luca, a mango connoisseur, claims that the VBs have even less fiber than the buttery NDMs. Their velvety texture is a triumph of mango husbandry! Enjoy mangoes now, as the drought may possibly make this a historically short mango season.
Still pretty dry out here… We’ve heard some farmers remark that we are in a fifteen-year drought (meaning that it has not been this dry since after Hurricane Hugo – not that it will last fifteen years). Two years ago at this time of year we were able to grow a lot more summer crops. We know it has been an extended campaign, but please keep rain dancing! Your efforts have brought a few decent showers to the farm, but not enough to yet quench the thirst of the rock-hard topsoil. So keep on getting your groove on if you love local food!
Today at ARTfarm down the south shore we’ll offer a fairly small selection of items: Pineapples, a few tomatoes, sweet salad mix, microgreens, basil, chives, and a few cucumbers.
The lignum vitae is an important food source for honey bees in drought times.
Q: What do you farmers do when it is so dry? What can grow in this extreme drought condition?
A: Not too much! We do our best to conserve water when conditions are this severe.
One plant that remains green and healthy with no watering in this dry weather is the highly drought tolerant lignum vitae tree. Slow and steady is how lignum vitae grows, rain or no rain. This tree species will probably outlast all the other trees that we have planted over the years. Most of the 30+ lignum vitae trees established at ARTfarm came from Kai and Irene Lawaetz at Little Lagrange. Kai was always a champion of the lignum vitae for its beauty and ability to withstand drought times and there are many prime individuals of the species on the Lawaetz Museum grounds.
Even in drought times when most vegetation is brown, the lignum vitae tree’s evergreen leaves remain deep green and provide dense shade.
While it does not produce any edible products, the lignum vitae is a beautiful dense shade and ornamental tree and a food source for honeybees, particularly when nothing else is flowering. The wood of lignum vitae trees is so dense that it has traditionally been used to make ship pulleys.
The light purplish blue blooms and showy red and orange fruit are unique mainly because of their color. There are not too many blue colored flowers in the tropics. The tree sheds very little leaf litter and its leathery paired leaves remain a beautiful deep green year round.
This afternoon from 3 – 4:30 PM, we will be 
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 