Tag: brushfire

ARTfarm Wednesday: OPEN Farmstand 4/16/2025, 5 – 6 PM, Volunteers Welcome on Sat-Sun, no Saturday farmstand

The farmstand will be first come first served Wednesday, 5-6pm. Tomatoes, salad greens, veggies, herbs. Full list below. No reservations. We recommend coming about halfway or later through the hour if you would like a shorter line. We really appreciate your support. We’re gonna stop doing Saturdays for a bit here. Thank you.

Links and information on the fire recovery are available HERE.

Huge thanks to the ARTfarm volunteers, fellow farmers, former employees, customers, neighbors and friends who helped fight the brushfire on March 30th that burned 80% of the farm. Kind people dropped off meals, picked up our grocery tab, and performed other kindnesses in the following days.

Superhero ARTfarm volunteers heading out at sunset after an afternoon helping

The fire destroyed a lot of pasture fencing, irrigation pipe and plastic water tanks, some crops and fruit trees, a few livestock, and a storage shed. Volunteers who want to come out and continue to assist can help: assess damage, repair and clear fence lines this weekend again on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. No tobacco users please, and bring your own water, mask, sturdy shoes and gloves, loppers and hand saws, chainsaws, pole saws if you have them. The air quality is good now. You can text us if you think you’re going to attend. It has been a small and steady group of helpers.

Plenty for All

  • Sweet salad mix
  • Tomatoes – slicers, heirlooms and cherries
  • Yams

Early Birds

  • Cucumbers
  • Pumpkin
  • Bunched arugula
  • French breakfast radishes with green tops
  • Chinese cabbage
  • Kale
  • Baby bok choy
  • Baby turmeric
  • Carrots with green tops (for juicing if you like)
  • Green and red hot peppers
  • Sweet frying peppers
  • Italian basil
  • Thai basil
  • Cilantro
  • Dill
  • Parsley
  • Scallions
  • Kaffir lime leaves

We appreciate you all! See ya Wednesday 5 – 6pm!

Getting to the end of the season, but these beauties are still sweet and delicious. Come and get ‘em!

ARTfarm Wednesday PM: Debris cleanups, OPEN Farmstand 4/9/2025, 5 – 6 PM

Awesome ARTfarm volunteers and neighbors came out this past weekend to help assess damage and clear debris.

We had a bad brushfire on March 30th that destroyed a lot of pasture fencing, irrigation pipe and tanks, some crops and fruit trees, a few livestock, and a storage shed. Volunteers who want to come out and continue to assist can help: assess damage, collect burn debris into a waste bin, and clear fence lines this weekend again on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. No tobacco users please, and bring your own water, mask, sturdy shoes and gloves, loppers and hand saws, chainsaws, pole saws, wheelbarrows and shovels if you have them. The air quality is improving. We have N95 masks available.

Links and information are available HERE and at the farmstand, for anyone who wishes to donate to our recovery directly OR in a fully tax deductible manner through the VI Good Food Coalition, a local non-profit farm advocacy organization who will redirect 100% of donated FARM FIRE campaign funds back to our recovery.

Incredibly, the guinea grass is resprouting after a few days of showers. The trees are showing fewer if any signs of recovery so far.

Huge thanks to the ARTfarm volunteers, fellow farmers, former employees, customers, neighbors and friends who dropped everything to join our family and members of the VI Fire Service during the initial aftermath of the blaze and dropping off meals and other kindnesses in the following days.

Wildlife and ecosystems were heavily affected by the fire, including beneficial insects that help eliminate pests.

In case you missed the information: This was a more devastating fire than the one set five years ago. We lost a lot of wild and planted trees, our equipment storage shed where ALL of our backup fencing supplies were stored, large water tanks and fittings, irrigation equipment, electric sheep and deer netting and equipment, and (we are still assessing how many) gates, wooden posts, steel posts and hundreds of linear feet of barbed and page wire fencing destroyed.

Farmer Lindsey Simmonds was one of many volunteers who arrived with family, firefighting equipment, and muscle to help us extinguish smoldering fencing posts and plant material.

The fire took about seven hours for the VIFS to extinguish and another several days of spot-treating flareups and embers, and smoldering gate posts. Two of our teen’s beloved turkeys died from bee stings and smoke inhalation the day after the fire. Countless bird nests, wild animals, beneficial insects and topsoil fauna and flora were destroyed. Deer were trapped in broken fencing as they tried to flee.

The farmstand will be first come first served Wednesday. No reservations. We recommend coming about halfway or later through the hour if you would like a shorter line. We really appreciate your support.

Plenty for All

  • Sweet salad mix
  • Sweet and spicy salad mix

Early Birds

  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Slicer tomatoes
  • Heirloom tomatoes
  • Teen arugula
  • Yams
  • Tomato seconds
  • Chinese cabbage
  • Baby bok choy
  • Baby turmeric
  • Carrots with green tops (for juicing if you like)
  • Green and red hot peppers
  • Sweet frying peppers
  • Italian basil
  • Thai basil
  • Cilantro
  • Dill
  • Parsley
  • Scallions
  • Kaffir lime leaves

We appreciate you all! See ya Wednesday 5 – 6pm!

Our beautiful heirloom and slicer tomatoes are still available! Season is coming to an end… Come and get ‘em!

ARTfarm Fire Recovery Info, Saturday 30 min. Ministand… 4/5/2025, 11am – 11:30am

Farmer Lindsey Simmonds was one of many volunteers who arrived with family, firefighting equipment, and muscle to help us extinguish smoldering fencing posts and plant material.

Saturday mid-morning quick mini farmstand 11am – 11:30am, first come first served.

Huge thanks to all the volunteers and farm family who came out to help us on Sunday afternoon during the brush fire and into the dark hours, to extinguish most of the smoldering fence posts, tree stumps and embers. No words to express our deep thanks.

See the top post on our site for ways to donate to support our recovery from this massive fire that burned more than half the farm and destroyed a lot of infrastructure.

Rain showers have been helpful but crops still need to be watered. A number of our mainline water transport lines got melted in the fire. Farmer Luca is working to replace those lines to resume watering crops on the outer edges of production area.

Volunteering details

We will be meeting at the farm entrance at 4pm on Saturday and Sunday to clear fence lines of burnt treated lumber.  Please be on time. Non-smokers/non-tobacco users only please.

Response has been big for this weekend. There will be more volunteering efforts after this weekend, and if turnout is overwhelming for this weekend’s cleanup we may ask a few folks to sit this one out. We may put an online volunteer signup system in place.

We want to impress upon those thinking about helping, that the fire was only recently fully extinguished, and air quality is still poor in these pasture areas. Windy conditions continue to lift ash and blow it around. Masks are absolutely suggested. Folks with respiratory issues should not come. Also know that there will be lots of walking. If you have mobility issues, consider not coming to this session. We will have other volunteer days coming up as well.

Our main focus this weekend is going to be clearing fence lines of burned treated lumber (telephone poles), and collecting burnt plastic and other waste materials. Possibly some documentation and assessment tasks as well. Protect your skin.

Lastly, if you are a tobacco smoker or user, we really would prefer if you would not help. It is still tomato season and there’s still a chance that our crops will get tobacco mosaic virus from having you out here handling tools, supplies and gates. 

Volunteers, please bring:

  • Gloves, long sleeves
  • Dust mask or fabric mask
  • Good sturdy work shoes
  • Drinking water and snacks
  • Loppers for pruning dead branches and vines off fencing
  • Wire cutters for cutting burnt areas off electric netting
  • A wheelbarrow if you have one

MiniARTfarmstand for Saturday:

  • Sweet salad mix
  • Heirloom tomatoes 
  • Slicer tomatoes 
  • Cherry tomatoes 
  • Tomato seconds
  • Baby bok Choy 
  • Bunched arugula 
  • Scallions 
  • Baby turmeric 
  • Hot green and red peppers 
  • Basil
  • Cilantro
  • Parsley
  • Dill
  • Kaffir leaves

First come first served. Grateful for your support of our family farm. See you Saturday 11am – 11:30am

❤️‍🩹 How to Help: Brushfire Recovery

We are still assessing the damage and our comprehensive fundraising needs, and will share progress and goals as we go, but for now we have some info on donating in several ways plus some volunteering opportunities.

Our east pond water catchment shed held all our fencing replacement supplies and had two water tanks for livestock watering and irrigating nearby fruit trees established about five years ago.

1️⃣ You can make a donation directly to ARTfarm. It is not tax deductible. Do this at the farmstand with the usual payment methods.

2️⃣ You can donate through the federally recognized non-profit 501(c)3 organization VIGFC (Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition)’s Emergency Response Fund tagged “Fire” and your donation will be tax deductible.

• You can make a donation online with a credit card through VI Good Food’s PayPal @goodfoodvi specifying “Emergency Support – Drought/Fire” in the pulldown menu. You’ll get a tax receipt. Please ALWAYS double check that the link is legitimate before making payments online!! Scams are out there to take advantage of disasters.

• You can also write a tax-deductible check to “Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition” with “Emergency Fund – Fire” in the memo, and snail mail to: Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition,‬‭ Inc.‬, PO Box 2902, Kingshill, VI 00851‬

VI Good Food is a non-profit farm advocacy organization helping us and other local farmers with disaster relief and other programs.

3️⃣ For volunteering info, check out our most recent farmstand post below for details. We’ll mostly plan these events (cleanups, assessments, rebuilding efforts) on weekends when people have more available time to help. We may post some online signups in the future.

~ Farmer Christina