ARTfarm Tomato Pickups Sat. April 1st! Reservations 11 am – 1 pm LAST ONE for a while – No Foolin’!

Gorgeous freshly harvested ginger and turmeric can be used for so many healthy treats!

Wow. It got so dry so fast. First South Shore wildfire of this season happened on Tuesday, and our water reserves are dangerously low, so we have to take a break over the next few weeks to reboot, and do a rain dance. So sign up now to get your last delicious juicy tomatoes in tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) pickup! It will be our last distribution for at least a few weeks. Learn more about how climate change is affecting our region from NOAA’s Climate Hub. Looking forward to summer mangoes, pineapple and more!

Sign up below for one of 51 reserved pickup timeslots, for Saturday starting at 11 am! If you missed this signup, stay tuned… we are on a short hiatus due to lack of rainfall and staffing shortages. Volunteers still welcome to help us with farming tasks – see below.

Instructions below if you’re new. Can’t find the confirmation email? Click HERE. If you need to contact us, text or call the farm phone, (340) 514-4873. Welcome!

Check out our different size preorder ‘farmshare’ selections listed below
See details and a list of extra add-on items available first-come-first-served during your pickup time
Click the link and fill in our quick reservation form. (Reserve an earlier pickup time to catch these first-come-first-serve items)
More details for newbies below!

Brisk farm workouts in peaceful breezy nature available: We’re looking for volunteers (non smokers). Luca could use a hand even if it’s only for two hours at a time, to do all kinds of farm tasks including garden bed preparation, building Hugel beds, and end-of-season garden maintenance. You can get a great ab and full body workout, mostly standing using rakes and hoes. There is also sifting of compost, hand weeding, late day transplanting and more. Delivery drivers too!

We are looking for handy folks to help us complete our walk-in cooler storage facility project. Learn about retrofitting shipping containers into eco-friendly food storage and more! We can promise you it is RIVETING work.

Learn about market gardening, construction, food prep. Fast walkers encouraged. Could convert to part-time employment depending on skills and efficiency.

Farmshare choices for Saturday, April 1st, 2023:

We will have 51 timeslots/farmshares available for scheduled pickup Saturday morning. You can also order and specify a neighbor, friend or family member to pick up your order and theirs. The minimum order is one farmshare, and you CAN order more than one farmshare. At the farmstand, you can choose from remaining add-on extras and we’ll total your order. We are chronically understaffed and need to keep farmstand hours brief; add-ons and extras are not currently available independently of a farmshare minimum purchase.

SWEET ‘n’ MATERS farmshare, $19, will include:

1 bag sweet salad mix
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 lb. heirloom tomatoes

SLICERS ‘n’ HEIRLOOMS farmshare, $10, will include:

1 lb. slicer tomatoes
1 lb. heirloom tomatoes

MIXED TOMATOES 2LB farmshare, $8, will include:

2 lb. 2nds and smaller mixed tomatoes (discount per lb.)

2LB GINGER ROOT farmshare, $12, will include:

2 lb. fresh ginger root

Extra Add-Ons (non-reservable)

(Must accompany farmshare purchase, these items cannot be purchased individually. No reservations on these items, they are all first come first served during your pickup slot):

early birds:

CHERRY tomato pints
SLICER tomatoes
YELLOW WATERMELON
CARROTS with juicable tops
ONIONS with green scallionish tops
assorted COOKING GREENS
baby FENNEL
seasoning PEPPERS (smoky, not hot)
SWEET PEPPERS
various Winter SQUASH/PUMPKINS including Delicata!

plenty:

RADISHES in white and pink, with green edible tops
assorted HERBS bunches: $2 each
fresh GINGER: $3.50/bag ($7 half pound)
fresh TURMERIC: $3.50/bag ($7 half pound)
PINEAPPLE slips to grow-ur-own: $2-3 each as sized

Herb bunch choices for this distribution

(Available as EXTRAS or included in farmshare)

Kafir lime leaves
Lemongrass
Parsley

Please contact us immediately by TEXT or PHONE at (340) 514-4873 if you have reserved a farmshare and cannot pick it up. Supply is limited, demand is extremely high and someone else will gladly purchase your share, if given enough time to respond. We have limited time for distributions and they are scheduled. Our produce is harvested fresh and needs to go home with you same day. This is an honor system since we are not collecting payment until pickup. We do not have cold storage for uncollected shares.

Signup form for
SaturDAY PICKUP
APRIL 1st, 2023!

New to ARTfarm? HOW TO ‘ORDER’:

During the COVID era we switched to a pre-order system instead of open farmstands, and customers preferred the predictability and drastically shorter wait times. So we’ve stuck with it, for now.

1. Order/reserve at least one of our different sized farmshare selections (minimum purchase) and choose your timeslot ahead on our website form (the link above)

2. The signup form will show you a “Thank You” page and send you a confirmation email if submitted successfully. If you don’t find it, please check your spam/junk, trash, inbox tabs, and ‘all mail’ folders for the confirmation email, and search for noreply@jotform.com (JOTFORM IS SINGULAR, no ‘S’)– this has been a common problem for several customers and with a little searching they typically find it. For more tips, visit our Help page.check for your confirmation email so you know your name will be on the list!

2. Please arrive in our parking lot on time but not more than 10 minutes early to prevent traffic jams and longer wait times. We appreciate your cooperation!

3. At the stand, if you’re at all not feeling well, please bring a mask and wear it while upwind of the farm staff. We’ll call your name during your timeslot in order of signup. Let the farmer handle the produce for you; Choose extras from first-come-first-served availability; Wait to bag until we’ve totaled up your items; Bring change, cash or check and pen; drop payment in the blue bucket, we try not to handle cash.

Please note: With Farmer Luca caring for his elderly folks who are immune compromised, we’d appreciate if all customers would help us stay healthy and working, and PLEASE wear a mask if your’e not feeling well, and maintain social distancing when interacting with us at the ARTfarm stand this 2022-23 season. Please help us healthy at work, and protect our family and friends! We shall do the same! We are all one! Grateful for life!!

ARTfarm is a tiny mom and pop family farm who have been growing food with sustainable organic and permaculture methods on St. Croix since 1999. See our FAQs for more info!
Thank you!

The signup form will show you a “Thank You” page and send you a confirmation email if submitted successfully. If you don’t find it, please check your spam/junk, trash, inbox tabs, and ‘all mail’ folders for the confirmation email, and search for noreply@jotform.com – check the spelling, jotform has no ‘s’… this has been a common problem for several customers and with a little searching they typically find it. For more tips, visit our Help page.

Need help with the pre-order signup form? (Click here):

Q: I can’t seem to order more than one item.

A: We have designed our order form limit any one customer from cleaning us out. Sharing is caring. If you’d like extra of something (beyond what you could reserve through our order system), put it in the comments with your order, and remind us at your pickup time: if we can supply it to you we’ll do our best. If you are in the food service industry and looking for bulk availability, please contact us; our order form is for individuals and families to place a single order for a scheduled pickup.

Q: My order isn’t going through.

if the automated confirmation email is not immediately found, check your spam folder
make sure all required fields are filled/selected
just try again
use a cellular device (smartphone or tablet) that isn’t using WiFi internet
restart your browser/device
clear your cache and cookies in your browser/device
reboot your router (unplug it for a minute and plug in again)
visit our “help” page for additional tips

Q: The form says I didn’t enter my email, but I did.

Our pre-order form requires everyone to type their email in twice, and makes sure the two match exactly. We had a lot of customers in such a rush to get their order in that they’d spell their own email incorrectly and then complain that they could not find the confirmation email. Our ‘type it in twice’ system ensures that you’ll find any email mistakes before you submit the pre-order form.

Q: I ordered before, but I’m not getting your emails.

Our pre-order form does NOT automatically sign you up for an ARTfarm email subscription. Do that HERE!

ARTfarm Farmshare Popup Preorders for Pickup Wednesday 5/11/2022, 4:30–6 PM!

It is officially the off season for us, and the pineapples are almost ready. For now, ARTfarm is not on a regular weekly schedule, but we have enough salad greens for a smaller group of customers to pick up Wednesday, and you can reserve more than one share for Wednesday’s pickup. At 4:30pm we’ll start distributions for 25 farmshares with our fresh sweet salad greens, with extras available like eggs from Mongoose & Zinnia, two kinds of radishes (sliced thin for quick pickling is great) with their included lovely green tops (chop into a salad or de-pepper them by gently sauteing); our sweet onions, winter squash, sweet peppers and more listed below… We’ll be serving you one at a time inside our old farmstand building, so arrive on time for your group and listen for your name to be called in the parking lot; and play the ladybug game: one customer per ladybug inside the gate (and masks up with farm staff please)! Please arrive on time but not more than 10 minutes early to prevent traffic jams and longer wait times. We appreciate your cooperation!

Have you ever been in a musical theater production? You work for weeks on your audition, then months and months blocking, choreographing, rehearsing, building sets and getting everything ready, and after an excruciatingly long time your hard work pays off and there’s opening night? Well, we finally got our World Central Kitchen trailer delivered to the farm last week (wild applause!!!). We will be retrofitting this former refrigerated container to house our cold storage and processing facilities. We are super excited! This summer we will complete the retrofit and put it into service for the upcoming season.

Masking rules are changing, and eventually we may go back to a more traditional first-come-first-served farmstand experience, but at ARTfarm we’d still like to remain cautious for the moment. For your safety and ours we are continuing to crowd control with preorders – scheduled customer pickup timeslots served in order of your order submission, and super spaced lines. We’d appreciate for now, customers continuing to mask when passing by others in line or interacting with our farming family/in the farmstand, to help protect our loved ones and customers with compromised immune systems and/or health complications. We are all one! Grateful for life!!

Still not open for regular retail. If you’re new to ARTfarm or haven’t been to see us since the COVID-19 pandemic began, please read THIS PAGE to familiarize yourself with our new socially distanced pre-order arrangements. We are not holding regular retail farmstands at this time. In a nutshell:

Order at least one farmshare (minimum purchase) ahead on our website; check for your confirmation email so you know your name will be on the list! Please practice all the protective measures possible: Sanitize hands in your car before joining us, Maintain social distance between yourself, farm staff and other customers; Masks up when talking to farm staff or other customers; Let the farmer handle the produce for you; Choose extras from first-come-first-served availability; Wait to bag until we’ve totaled up your items; Bring change, cash or check and pen; drop payment in the bucket, we will not handle cash. During this adjustment period, masks are still mandatory at ARTfarm when less than 10 feet from another customer or farm staff. We’re cautiously optimistic we may be able to loosen restrictions soon, but for now please help us protect our at-risk family members and customers!

Three generations of Gasperi farmers on St. Croix! On Monday, April 4, 2022 Luca’s dad Kiko was honored by the 33rd legislature of the US Virgin Islands with a Perma-Plaque for his lifetime contributions to the development of the Senepol cattle breed, a beef breed that originated on Saint Croix USVI in the early 1900s. Senepol cattle are known for their excellent performance when pastured under brittle, droughtlike conditions and scrub forage, and the breed is now a significant addition to sustainable beef production across the US Sun Belt and South America. Kiko Gasperi came to St. Croix from Italy in the late 1960s to work at Castle Nugent with his brother Dr. Mario Gasperi, and served as the ranch manager for Castle Nugent Farms under his sister-in-law Caroline and her son Mauro after Mario’s passing in 1989. Kiko spent many years building and mending fencing, tagging calves, dipping herds, and managing pasture. In the hotter part of the day for thirty years he’d be found in his office poring over breeding records and selecting the best animals based on performance to improve the Senepol breed. Our thanks to Senator Myron Jackson who pushed for this resolution to honor the elders who were involved in this work.

Farmshare choices for Wednesday, May 11th, 2022:

We will have 25 timeslots/farmshares available for scheduled pickup Wednesday. You can also order and specify a neighbor, friend or family member to pick up your order and theirs. The minimum order is one farmshare, and you can order more than one farmshare. Add-ons and extras are not currently available independently of a farmshare purchase; to minimize community contact during the pandemic.

THREE GREENS farmshare, $21, will include:

3 bags of sweet salad mix

ONE GREENS farmshare, $7, will include:

1 bag of sweet salad mix