Tag: Luca Gasperi

ARTfarm Wednesday Afternoon PopUp Farmstand: 6/3/2026, 4:30PM – 5:30PM – tons of SALAD GREENS!

Pineapples are popping in the pasture gardens! Get some of these sweeties while you can!

Fresh salad greens available for Wednesday June 3rd 2026! It’s also pineapple and mango time! Dry, hot and windy conditions persist at the farm so most veggie production is at a low point at this time of year for us on the South Shore. We do our best to keep a closed loop system by not purchasing water. So come out for salad greens NOW from previous rains. We’ll also have hot peppers, herbs and lime leaves! First come first serve.

Plenty

  • Sweet salad mix
  • Pineapples
  • Mangoes, including Carrie, Viequen Butterball, Nam doc mai, Malika, and Jakarta types

Early Birds

  • Hot peppers
  • Italian basil
  • Kafir lime leaves

We had a soil scientist checking out our composting program recently. He was excited about our mix of water hyacinth (aka water lettuce, grows in our ponds with fine and plentiful water roots that pick up sediment and algae) and chicken manure. After it’s composted, millipedes ‘finish’ it. We’ll be working to produce more of this black gold for the crops this coming season!

The 2026 summer mangoes are starting up at ARTfarm! From trees that Luca and Christina planted just after when the training pen had her first micro flock of sheep in it. The trees are producing beautifully after the 2017 hurricane set them back.

There’s a few volunteers working on a carpentry project and Farmer Luca could use more help in the gardens.

We’ll see you Wednesday 6/3/26 from 4:30PM to 5:30PM!

Five hair sheep pastured with electric netting at ARTfarm.
Christina’s first five hair sheep pastured with electric netting in the training pen at ARTfarm back in 2011. Now a mango orchard! Always growing, always changing.

See you Wednesday June 3rd 2026, starting at 4:30PM!

ARTfarm Wednesday Afternoon Farmstand: 5/27/2026, 4:30PM – 5:30PM

The 2026 summer mangoes are starting up at ARTfarm! From trees that Luca and Christina planted just after when the training pen had her first micro flock of sheep in it. The trees are producing beautifully after the 2017 hurricane set them back.

Summer’s almost here! It’s pineapple time! Dry and windy conditions persist at the farm with occasional showers. No more regular Saturdays for a bit so slide in on a WEDNESDAY to the ARTfarm farmstand. Limited quantities on salad mixes for Wednesday customers, plus papayas, a few early mangoes, hot peppers, herbs and limes!

We are continuing to grow salad and we’re trying a bed of cucumbers and watermelon with new techniques. Results are looking promising. Dragonfruit are budding again.

Pineapples are popping! Get some of these sweeties while you can!

There’s a few volunteers working on a carpentry project and Farmer Luca could use more help in the gardens.

We’ll see you Wednesday 5/27/26 from 4:30PM to 5:30PM!

First come, first served:

Sweet and spicy salad mix

Pineapples

Papaya

Hot peppers

Mangoes:

Carrie (creamy, sweet with a slight tang)

Butterball

Nam doc mai

And a few Malika

Scallions

Italian basil

Lemongrass

Kafir lime leaves

Five hair sheep pastured with electric netting at ARTfarm.
Christina’s first five hair sheep pastured with electric netting in the training pen at ARTfarm back in 2011. Now a mango orchard! Always growing, always changing.

See you Wednesday May 27th 2026, starting at 4:30PM!

ARTfarm Holiday Gratitude

A post-Thanksgiving leftovers ARTfarm update for our supporters, direct from Farmer Luca!

It’s been a long summer of learning, researching and planning and we wanted to share some of those things with you as season approaches.

Here’s the update:

The weather has brought our water storage levels nice and high!

Cover crops have been mowed and turned back into the the soil – along with the lobster compost we’ve made with big thanks to Duggan’s Restaurant.

Sorghum (an old world grain) has been interplanted with sun hemp (sorry, not CBD hemp), sword bean and cow peas — they are almost ready to be harvested for our chickens.

Lots of tomato seedlings are in the ground and are already over a foot tall! They’re starting to flower and are looking a lot stronger than the tomato seedlings did at this time last year.

Our lettuces, radishes, Italian & Thai basils are all growing nicely. We’ve planted lots of flowers that attract beneficial insects and hopefully we’ll have many bunches of carrots of different varieties and shapes this year too!

Our papaya patch is looking wonderful and putting on fruit now, and our pomegranates have started and are putting on more fruit regularly.

Our limes have nice dark leaves and are loaded both the crucian Keylime and the kafir lime.

Our longan trees are loaded with blossoms right now and they are setting their little sweet fruits.

Pineapples are looking very strong – even the ones that got burned in the fire.

Soon our cucumbers, watermelon and zucchini will get transplanted.

Our family and volunteers have been enjoying the Shangri-La mulberries which are out of this world and are still going.

We’ve been busy for the last few months researching regenerative agriculture practices and various products/ techniques to improve the farm further.  We’ve always practiced many regenerative ways, but there’s so much more to learn as new discoveries are made and as our climate changes.

Sheep! We’ve upped our sheep numbers to help with all the extra grass that is on the farm now. The Department of Agriculture came through and helped out in a huge way with mowing, bringing some ease to our pasture management and making it easier with fencing repairs post fire. Hopefully it helps with grasshopper management too.

There’s been a lot of research and purchasing of replacement materials that were lost in the fire. The beautiful thing about disasters is that they offer a chance to rebuild better and stronger. I’ve been taking the time to improve things where I can. We are all very appreciative of all the donations that people have made to help in that regard. VI Good Food Coalition, American Farmland Trust, Christina and Alyssa have all been very helpful in raising funds.

Thank you to all our volunteers since the fire – you’ve been incredible. The family and I still look back and we all feel very moved thinking of everyone that took time to help during and after the fire.

Moving forward, the farm can still use your help. If folks are interested in volunteering, please get in touch. At this stage in the season it is very important that any volunteer is a non-tobacco user and doesn’t live in a house with tobacco use. The tobacco mosaic virus can keep us up at night and can wreak havoc on the current and future fate of the tomatoes we’ve grown to love so much. Some of the current volunteer tasks are weeding, raking, pruning, setting out drip tape, topping off water bowls for mongoose so they don’t chew on our drip tape (old large metal pots or metal dog bowls are welcome for donation) We’re a farm so there’s countless other tasks as well but these are great beginner tasks.

You say you want to do more on the farm than volunteer? We have part time employment opportunities for volunteers.

Wrapping up, the farm is a beautiful example of hope right now and we are incredibly grateful for these blessings:

  • Christina and Marina
  • my parents
  • all our friends
  • our volunteers
  • our farmstand customers
  • our restaurant/chef partner a
  • a farmer’s gift of wood chips
  • our incredibly kind Post Office staff
  • Maddy at the USDA
  • our accountant
  • Louis Hewlett and Fernandez Plumbers
  • Mechanics Thomas Ledezma and Chiba
  • Mike Bruno with Hybrid Power System
  • John Stoll – compost volunteer and construction mentor
  • the DoAg for their support
  • Stewart and everyone at Quality Foods
  • A Better Copy
  • Dr. Amy Dreves and Dr. Larken Root at UVI
  • Roneal Honeyman
  • S&D feed
  • Phil at smilinggardener.com
  • Giovanni of Mil Agro
  • American Farmland Trust
  • VI Good Food farm advocates
  • new Vieques and Puerto Rico farm friends
  • Arte-suelo-ser soil advocates
  • and lastly Slinky the Cat, Ginger & Spice the collies …and all the other cool creatures and plants both domesticated and not that are with me every day here at the farm that I’m slowly understanding and growing together with.

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. We will update you soon when we have food or other farm news to share!

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!