How about this ‘freezing cold’ weather we’ve been having? In addition to more sweet watermelon and pumpkin, we’ll have more cukes and zukes, and more young tomato plants again for Saturday! Once again, we are only accepting pre-orders of farmshares, plus extras, for our customers with preselected pickup time slots for a minimum of waiting or mingling in this pandemic season. (We know you’d like to shop for just one or two items, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience. This system is to prevent pile-ups of customers and to protect us, the farmers and our family, from long long customer lines where we’d be more exposed.)

We’d like to ask everyone to pay extra attention to your time slot and don’t come half an hour early. The parking lot was jammed up with people who came early and stood around waiting last week. Come at your appointed time slot, five minutes early at the most. Having too many customers standing around gives us stress, and makes us have to yell across the parking lot through a mask to figure out who’s who. There should be less than 10 cars in our lot at any given time if customers are following the schedule. People coming early or late slow EVERYONE down and confuse our system. Don’t jump your timeslot please.

We’re doing the same “new normal” again this season:

ARTfarm will:

• NOT be open for retail walk-in shopping
• run pre-reserved online ‘box sales’
• offer socially distanced pick up shifts of 10 people max – you make your appointment online
• avoid creating long waits, lines, crowds, traffic jams
• wear masks, sanitizing hands and surfaces even more than usual
• not handle cash or make change – you drop payment in the bucket

CUSTOMERS are required to:

• meet an order minimum of one farmshare size
• arrive ON TIME, not early!!
• consistently maintain 10-15 feet of distance between all individuals
• wear masks to keep each other safe
• sanitize hands before you exit your vehicle
• bring exact change or a check and pen
• be patient with us and each other during pickups
• bring your own boxes, bags, baskets to pack up your order
• wait to bag produce until we have completely assembled and totaled your order on the table

We require everyone picking up a box to wear a mask and please sanitize your hands before exiting your vehicle/arriving at the distribution table, and we will do the same.

We will have 20 large and 35 small ‘farmshares’ of produce available for Saturday (a few of those available as “double small” orders). You can also order and specify a neighbor, friend or family member to pick up your order. The minimum order is one farmshare. Add-ons and extras are not currently available independently of a farmshare purchase; to minimize community contact during the pandemic.

Please contact us immediately by text and 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. We will hold your produce for you at your timeslot, and we expect to hear from you. We understand life happens, but please do not leave us hanging, waiting for you, with your food! 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.

Here’s how to get ARTfarm produce during the pandemic:

1. Sign up with our online form (a link at the bottom of the weekly signup page is posted on our website and sent out to the farm email list on Fridays, usually by 10am).
2. Using the current online order form, choose one size of pre-selected, pre-priced ARTfarm produce (contents listed below, either small or large)
3. Commit to a pick-up time slot
4. Choose any add-on items (limited supplies)
5. Add a comment for special requests
6. Check your email for a confirmation!
7. Arrive promptly but NOT EARLY for your pickup appointment on Saturday in the ARTfarm parking lot on Saturday. If early, wait inside your vehicle and decide what herbs you want! Sanitize your hands when getting out of your vehicle. Please maintain plenty of space between customers, and between us and you when you approach the pickup table for your appointed pickup time. We’ll be wearing masks and ask that you do the same.
8. Bring exact change or a check to drop in the bucket – we are not handling any money.
9. There may be unadvertised extra items available to add to your box at pickup time, so you may wish to bring some extra small bills or wait to fill in your check amount. Please bring your own pen.
10. Bring your own bags or box to put your produce into. We’ll place your items on the sanitized table, some things will be pre-bagged, you’ll pack your own bags or box for the rest. Wait to bag until we do a final count of your items to make sure we don’t forget anything. We are trying to reduce the number of shopping bags we distribute, so please bring an extra bag, box or basket to your pickups this season.
11. No substitutions or price adjustments. To maintain sanitation and keep things moving, we are not swapping items, handling payments or making change. (As always we’ll be flexible where we can within reason.)

Box choices for Saturday, December 12th 2020:

Double Small farm share, $28, will include:

As listed above, but double: one for you and one for a friend. Take distribution into your own (recently washed) hands, deliver to a neighbor or loved one!

Large farm share, $40, will include:

• 2 bags of sweet salad mix
• 1 bag of teen spicy salad mix (heavy on the arugula this week)
• 2 lb. cucumbers
• 2 lb. pumpkin slice
• 2 herb bunches (you choose; please consider your choices before you arrive at the table)

Additional Limited Quantity Reservable Add-Ons*

(please add to your total)

• 1 bag fresh Mediterranean figs: $5
• 1 bag teen arugula: $10
• 2 lbs. zucchini: $6
• 2 lbs. cucumbers: $6
• 1 bunch radishes with green edible tops: $2
• 1 bag green chiles, assorted types: $2
• 1 bunch extra garlic chives: $2
• 1 bunch extra Italian basil: $2
• 1 bunch extra lemon basil: $2
• 1 bunch of nine bright assorted color zinnia flowers: $5

Heirloom tomato plants (potted): $4 each:

• Black Plum tomato
• Great Rainbow tomato
• Mystery (unmarked) tomato

Saman tree: $20
Sandbox tree: $10

*(if these are sold out – there are often additional extras available at the time of pick-up, so if you can’t reserve, bring some extra cash or wait to write your check total. Bring a pen.)

Extra Add-Ons

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

• WATERMELON!!! winter sweet!! lots of approx 2 lb. watermelon quarter: $2/lb. (around $4, as marked)
• BUTTERNUT!!! tender and sweet! Whole or cut quarter: $3/lb. (around $6, as marked)
  PUMPKIN!! so versatile!! Cut quarters: $3/lb. (around $6, as marked)
• dragonfruit – $8/lb.
• cooking greens – $3/bunch
• 2 lbs. zucchini – $6
• 2 lbs. cucumber – $6
• loose zinnias – $0.50/ea
• extra herb bunch – $2

Herb bunch choices for this week

(Large share = 2 herb selections, Small share = 2 herb selections. Choose from what’s available at pickup, or we’ll pick some for you, but these are the basic options we should have, you can start mulling it over 🙂

• Garlic chives
• Italian basil
• Lemon basil
• Thai basil
• Dill
• Mint
• Rosemary
• Lemongrass
• Kaffir lime leaves

We have designed our order form not to allow any one customer to purchase all of one extra. Sharing is caring. If we have extra, we’ll do our best to let you know. 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 if we can supply it to you we’ll do our best.

Problems with the online signup form? Workarounds our customers figured out (thank you!!) were to:

• just try again
• use a cellular device (smartphone or tablet) that isn’t using WiFi internet
• clear your cache and cookies in your browser/device
• reboot your router (unplug it for a minute and plug in again)

This pre-order signup form does NOT sign you up for an ARTfarm email subscription.

Here’s the link to Saturday December 12th’s SIGNUP FORM
(opens a new window).