Tag: beets

Salad Days at ARTfarm 3-6 pm OPEN Today

It’s a tower of power here at ARTfarm this morning. Luca harvested over 150 heads of lettuce early this morning (In addition to vast piles of fresh herbs, greens and root vegetables) and they are rapidly being converted into delicious salad mix for you! In addition to our sweet salad mix, baby and teen spicy salad mixes, baby and teen arugula, microgreens, and heads of Romaine lettuce, we have early bird CHERRY TOMATOES!! We also have fresh cucumbers, sweet potato greens, beets, radishes, the three basils, mint, dill, recao, garlic chives, bananas, and fresh picked zinnia flowers. From our partners we have I-Sha’s vegan coconut-and-fruit ice creams, and avocadoes and sugar apples from Aberra Bulbulla.

We are open 3–6 p.m. this afternoon, so head down to the South Shore and power up with healthy veggies!!
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Succulent ARTfarm Summer Saturday – 10am – 12 noon!

image(3) Magic Change-O AvocadoSummer continues to roll on with more treats coming ripe from various fruit trees across the island. Last Saturday we enjoyed some avocados from Diego (grandson) and Tita (abuela). What we DIDN’T KNOW about those avocados is that they turn a brilliant (and, if unexpected, slightly alarming) shade of purplish red at the moment they are ripe and ready to eat. Ours was ready on Thursday. We have more of those avocados this week, and some of them are at the ripe stage. They are a local seedling variety, so we welcome your creative ideas on what to name them. How about “mood ring avocados”?

ARTfarm fields produced this week: Sweet salad mix, microgreens, baby arugula, teen arugula, teen spicy salad mix, freshly harvested beets with green tops, sweet crispy cucumbers, freshly harvested onions, sweet potato greens, cooking greens, radishes, Italian basil, Thai basil, holy basil, lemon basil, lemongrass, thyme, recao, mint, big sweet soursop fruits. From our partner farmers and friends: mamey sapote from Tropical Exotics, more magic-color-change avocados and big ‘threadless’ mangoes from Diego & Tita, Haitian kidney mangoes from Dennis Nash, a few dragonfruit from Solitude Farm, coconut based vegan local fruit ice cream from I-Sha, and fresh baked breads from Tess!

Saturday ARTfarm : Plenty of TS Bertha Salad Greens, Sweet Corn & More!

Our farm is open 10am – 12 noon Saturday morning: Sweet salad mix, microgreens, baby spicy salad mix, baby arugula, onions, sweet corn, cucumbers, radishes, beets, holy basil, Italian basil, Thai basil, lemon basil, thyme, recao, mint, lemongrass, passionfruit, and papaya. From our partners we have honey from Errol, bread from Tess, and coconut-based vegan ice cream from I-Sha! This morning we are waiting on deliveries of mamey sapote and avocadoes, too.

Please forgive Farmer Luca if he’s terribly sleepy at the farmstand. He’s been up at night pollinating the dragonfruit blooms!

How many of you are old enough to remember the R.E.M. song "Gardening At Night"? Dragonfruit blooms only open after 8pm, and often need to be hand pollinated in order to bear fruit. So forgive us if we're a little sleepy!
How many of you are old enough to remember the R.E.M. song “Gardening At Night”? Dragonfruit blooms only open after 8pm, and often need to be hand pollinated in order to bear fruit. So forgive us if we’re a little sleepy!

ARTfarm Wednesday, 3–6 p.m.: Time for a Rain Dance!

20140730-120152-43312034.jpgOur last Wednesday for the summer! Open 3–6 this afternoon and then only Saturday mornings, 10 AM – 12 noon. Today’s farm treats include: sweet corn, salad mix, baby spicy salad mix, baby arugula, microgreens, baby onions, baby beets, cucumbers, holy basil, thai basil, Italian basil, papaya, passionfruit and bananas. From our partners: mangoes and mamey sapote from Tropical Exotics, raw local honey from Errol, and vegan coconut milk-based ice-cream in tropical fruit flavors from I-Sha!

For those of you who have yet to sample a mamey sapote, it is an unusual Central American fruit that is incredibly sweet, and one of our family’s favorites. It has a sandpapery outside and a reddish-orangey inside with a seed that looks like modern art. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about it:

The fruit is eaten raw or made into milkshakes, smoothies, ice cream and fruit bars. It can be used to produce marmalade and jelly.[3] Some consider the fruit to be an aphrodisiac.[citation needed] Some beauty products use oil pressed from the seed,[4] otherwise known as sapayul oil.[5]  The fruit is an excellent source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C, and is a good source of riboflavin, niacin, vitamin E, manganese, potassium and dietary fiber. Research has identified several new carotenoids from the ripe fruit.

20140730-111608-40568049.jpgGood news/bad news time, dear readers: Due perhaps to the extremely dry conditions we’ve had over this spring and summer, the Nam doc Mai, Julie and Malika mangoes are ending early. The harvest is finished, but the trees are flowering now, which means that they should have fruit again in a few months. So there will be a strange off-season of mangoes in fall/winter if all goes well and the trees hang onto their fruit through the storm season. We still have several more weeks of cucumbers in the gardens, some dragonfruits ripening on the vines, and we will do our best to continue some lettuce production despite the super dry conditions for a few more weeks. Everybody, please do a rain dance out there and let’s get some precipitation on St. Croix!