Tag: holiday

Five romantic inches of rain! ARTfarm Wednesday Pickups February 14th ❤️! 4:30pm – 6pm

J’Had Ferris as Amos Hart: Mister Cellophane! Come see this amazing locally grown cast of CHICAGO: a Musical Comedy at CCT this weekend and next!!

Cherished rain last week makes delicious food! Say ‘I love you’ with a flavorful and healthy meal of gratitude for your loved ones! Once again tomatoes ripened on the vine, lots of options for spicy and sweet salad mixes, zucchini, herbs, cooking greens, and root veggies! Extras to add on at your pickup time will include: tomato seconds, extra heirlooms and greens, watermelon, butternut squash, green beans, chinese cabbage, radishes and turnips with edible green tops, assorted fresh herbs including scallions! The rain has slowed the plants down some as they adjust to the weather shifts, and a few heirlooms split from all the rain and will cross the salsa bridge…

Also – Musical comedy CHICAGO performances at CCT this weekend and next – it’s selling out – get tickets HERE! Come see ARTfarmers on stage and in the live orchestra! Members of the Chicago cast and crew – order and select delivery to CCT rehearsal.

Stacey Stone is both a fantastic longtime farm volunteer and an amazing trainer of body alignment, breath and mindfulness! Check her videos out or book a class at stonebodyworks.com

Join our scheduled shop-n-pickup on Wednesday afternoon (we’re calming the crowds with pickup times: Click to sign up below for one of 51 pickup timeslots, which will reserve your basic order and give you early dibs on the extra items we have with short wait times, for Wednesday starting at 4:30pm!) If you missed this signup, feel free to JUST SHOW UP AT 5:30pm and we’ll fit you in for tomatoes and extras – PLUS there will be another signup Saturday. Detailed instructions, and questions answered HERE if you’re new. Welcome!

Click here for info on ARTfarm volunteering! Weed, schlepp, spin salad, split seedlings meditatively at a shady table, hoe and rake yourself a sweaty six-pack! Or deliver our produce to local restaurants!

ARTfarm NEEDS:

• a Linoleum Flooring Person! ARTfarm’s new processing center, funded in part by a grant from World Central Kitchen, is a 40 foot (retired) insulated shipping container getting a retrofit as walk-ins and indoor/outdoor workspace. We’re looking for help with installing vinyl sheet flooring, if you know someone with experience installing this waterproof material please send them our way! We are SO CLOSE to being done.

A woman farmer brings in a harvest trug full of vegetables from the field at ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI

• ON-FARM VOLUNTEERS. Brisk farm workouts or zen seated handwork in peaceful breezy nature available: We’re looking for volunteers (non smoke/vapers). Luca could use a hand even if it’s only for two hours at a time. We have a range of activities for all abilities/fitness levels, including full-body cardio activities, and zen mellow seated-in-the-shade options. You’ll learn about regenerative organic farming practices, market gardening, construction and/or food prep. Could convert to part-time employment depending on skills, uptake and efficiency. Read HERE about the experience of volunteering at ARTfarm!

Support agriculture and scenic farmland in the US Virgin Islands: buy produce directly from farmers. Hop down to the South Shore and see Farmer Luca!

Farmshare choices for Wednesday, February 14th, 2024:

A rainbow of greens on rich topsoil. Get your healthy on with lettuce, Chinese cabbages, radishes, turnips, arugula and more!

We will have 51 timeslots/farmshares available for scheduled pickup Saturday. 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 require a minimum farmshare purchase because we are chronically understaffed and need to keep farmstand hours brief; but we’ll do our best to make substitutions as needed; we want you to be happy!

LARGE grand gesture farmshare, $33, will include:
  • 1 bag of SWEET salad mix
  • 1 bag of teen SPICY salad mix -or- teen ARUgula
  • 2 lbs. TOMATOES (slicer/heirloom mix)
  • 1 pint CHERRY tomatoes
  • 2 lb. CUCUMBERS
MEDIUM zukey farmshare, $17, will include:
  • 1 bag of SWEET salad mix
  • 2 lbs. TOMATOES (slicer/heirloom mix)
  • 1 lb. ZUCCHINI
SMALL chinese new year farmshare, $10, will include:
  • 1 bag SPICY/SWEET (blend!) salad mix
  • 1 B. Chinese cabbage
2NDS TOMATO madness farmshare, $7, will include:
  • 2 lbs. seconds TOMATOES (slicer/heirloom, scratch and dent)
Extra Add-Ons (non-reservable)

(No reservations on these items, they are all first come first served during your pickup slot):

early birds:
  • TOMATO seconds (dent and scratch for soup and salsa, discounted 2 lb. bag)
  • HEIRLOOM and SLICER tomatoes
  • CHERRY TOMATOES
  • ROMAINE lettuce heads
    RED LEAF lettuce heads
  • ONIONS with green onion tops!
  • SWEET PEPPERS
  • pink French breakfast RADISHES with green tops, $3/bunch
  • baby BEETS with beautiful luscious green tops
  • GREEN BEANS
  • baby BOK CHOY
  • baby GINGER and baby TURMERIC
  • JALAPEÑO and GREEN CAYENNE peppers
plenty:
  • RED and YELLOW WATERMELON
  • CUCUMBERS
  • Chinese CABBAGE – purple and green
  • tender baby salad TURNIPS with green tops, $3/bunch
  • assorted COOKING GREENS
  • BUTTERNUT squash
  • assorted HERBS bunches: $2 each
Herbs for this distribution

(Available as EXTRAS)

  • Italian (Genovese) basil
  • Thai basil
  • Lemon basil
  • Cilantro
  • Dill
  • Kaffir lime leaves
  • Lemongrass
  • small leaf OREGANO
  • Scallions

Please contact us immediately by text and/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
Wednesday PICKUP
❤️ February 14th, 2024!

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, inbox tabs, and ‘All Mail’ folders for the confirmation email, as this has been a common problem for several customers and with a little searching they typically find it. (And then, add us to your address book!) 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
    • and the ‘all mail’ 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!

June-ity Community🌻

Love is love. (c)2021 by M. Gasperi. Do not copy, print or reproduce without permission.

We neglected to acknowledge two important community milestones; Juneteenth happening tomorrow — a day too often overlooked in our schools and society — and in the middle of Pride Month, which intersects in many ways and culminates on Pride Day, June 28th. We encourage everyone to learn more about the history of both.

“Our Nature” (C)2006 by Luca Gasperi. Do not copy, print or reproduce without permission.

Thanks to all in our community who are continuing to do the difficult, exhausting work of exposing social justice issues, and pushing us all to look inside and understand our ONE humanity. It is a necessary step toward solving many of our other species-threatening challenges on our one planet. Big shoutout to the angels at Theater Of the Oppressed VI, Come To The Table, VI Good Food Coalition, the St. Croix Environmental Association, the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix, and others who help us hold respectful space for justice, communication and finding solutions. We support and celebrate you!

Reap What You Sow. Seeds of Change…

A quick update in early June, 2020, to confirm the end of our “regular farmstand” season, and more importantly, addressing a few important events here.We deeply appreciate the sacrifices of soldiers who fought for our freedoms, particularly to protect our Constitution, the right to express and attempt to live our ideals as one nation.

We stand with Black Lives Matter protesters now on the front lines of our nation, fighting for all our freedoms. If some of us are not free, none of us are free. Enough is enough.

We celebrate Pride Month and acknowledge that it is primarily a form of protest because you shouldn’t need a month if it’s who you are. Be who you are. Love is love.

And our advice to graduates, and to everyone fighting a war at the moment: Eat healthy, read books, and get your rest. We need you. We are in, hopefully, and together, a difficult and heavy luteal phase prior to explosive growth of something new.

Reap what you sow. What are you sowing, in your family, in your community?


If you’ve been down to the South Shore recently you know that everything is going into a drought state. We have officially ended our pre-reserved social distancing distributions of the last two months, and are on summer hours: that means we’ll only be open on a pop-up basis if and when we have enough produce to distribute.Personally and for any farm business we will continue to practice social distancing, in order to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community.

We are working on some gardening articles to help you all with your DIY farming projects at home!

We love our customers, we miss chatting with you, and we’re proud of everyone in the Virgin Islands working together to flatten the COVID-19 curve. Special thanks to our healthcare and essential workers who are STILL on the job to keep everyone healthy and safe and fed.

It’s not over yet. Stay the course. Soldier on. Protect the most vulnerable. Be the change. We got this!

Love, ARTfarm

Gratitude Season – OPEN Wednesday Nov 21st, 3pm

The epic rains of early November 2018 brought epic rainbows. In this case, leading to the arresting sculpture of Niarus Walker.

Halloween flew by like a tropical bat, Diwali brought us its hopeful message of good defeating evil, and the elongated election season is nearly over; it is time to turn our thoughts back to family, gratitude, the simple things.

We are thankful for the many dedicated customers who are eager for ARTfarm to reopen! And for eleven inches of rain that fell over the first two weeks of November, decisively ending our water shortage – but also destroying the first lettuce crop of the season and creating some other setbacks. (We’re seeing major damage to melon vines and papaya trees and possible crop failures on ginger and some of our tomatoes.) But staying grateful that some of our gardens are recovering from all of the drenching!

We will be open for a special holiday farmstand on Wednesday, November 21st, 3pm – 5:30pm with a bumper crop of beautiful cucumbers and smaller quantities of a few other things including a limited supply of salad greens. Here’s the full list:

  • Lemongrass, garlic chives, Italian basil, rosemary, spicy radishes, two types of cucumbers, some teen spicy greens, baby arugula, a few bags of sweet mix, green papaya, wild cucumbers, some small bulb onions with large green tops (use like scallions), a few marigold and zinnia flowers. And ARTfarm turkey and chicken eggs! Super fresh!
  • Need a thoughtful gift for the holiday? This is a great time of year to get plants in the ground. We’ve got pineapple slips, fig trees, and native drought resistant shade tree saplings available for sale!
  • Tomatoes will come in around December 15th.

    • Grandma’s Fabulous Cucumber Salad that Luca loves (as told to Christina)

    There is no recipe for this.

    First of all don’t measure anything.

    Mandolin a cucumber into thin slices and thinner than anything you’ve ever experienced in your life. Paper thin. Then cover them in water and add an unspecified amount of too much salt. Then go away and do other stuff. Come back in a couple of hours.

    Rinse the heck out of them when you come back from your other activities and make sure they’re not too salty.

    Rinse them again and again and squeeze them to get the salty water out.

    Let them drain in a colander for even longer. Do other things.

    Chop up a couple of scallions.

    Add a big spoonful of mayo per cuke. Dress with vinegar and basil. Toss.

    So just make sure you have:

    • Maybe about half a cucumber per person
    • A bunch of scallions (green onion tops or garlic chives work too)
    • A generous handful of salt
    • A few spoonfuls of mayo
    • A little basil (could be dried if you don’t have fresh)
    • A little vinegar
    • Fun people to share it with!

    We finally got one of our chicken tractors rebuilt after the hurricane. The hens are thrilled with their more comfortable quarters.

    Bok. Bok.