The strange and wonderful pitaya, or dragonfruit, grows at the end of a primitive, spiny climbing vine. Early summer is typically the season for the dragonfruits to flower and ripen.
Pitaya, also known as dragonfruit, has one of the most strange and dramatic presentations of all the crops we can think of.
Today’s haul: Loads of tender sweet salad mix, Ethiopian kale, bunched arugula, mint, lemongrass, Italian basil, rosemary, zinnia flowers, a few pineapples, a few passionfruit, and red fleshed dragonfruit!
Dragon photo-bombing the dragonfruit. We also have pineapples and passionfruit today for your inner fruit monster! OM NOM NOM NOM
From our partners we have raw local honey from Errol and vegan ice cream from I-Sha.
That’s 10 AM to 12 noon today, folks! ARTfarm is currently open just once a week during this drought.
More pineapples today! ARTfarm pineapples are ridiculously sweet this year, maybe because of all the dry weather. June seems to be our pineapple month!
Open 10 AM – 12 noon on South Shore Rd. this morning, ARTfarm has, organically grown for you: Salad mix, microgreens, small quantities of pineapples, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We have beets, scallions, mature bunched arugula, Ethiopian kale, Italian basil, mint, zinnia flowers, local honey from Errol Chichester, and admission/raffle tickets for the Caribbean Dance show next weekend! No Wednesday stand this coming week, so come out to the farm today…
Our adopted border collies, Ginger and Spice, vigilantly patrol the pineapple gardens at this time of year to discourage rats. We’ve seen these athletic dogs leap all the way over the row of spiny plants during the hunt. This is a viable and much more entertaining alternative to poisons for controlling crop pests on an organic farm. During dry times there is increased pressure from all pests on farm crops and resources.
We are changing our schedule to reflect the weather patterns. The drought is really affecting our ability to grow crops at this point. It also seems like a natural pause to tackle some big farm projects we’ve been wanting to get to. So, we have decided to curtail our Wednesday farmstands until we get some rain or production picks up again. We will be open today and next Saturday as well, and we will play it by ear after that. Mango season is coming, but it also may be a bit delayed by the dry spell we are all in.
Young dancers preparing for the annual show in the Caribbean Dance studio in Christiansted. Support the arts on St. Croix!
The Caribbean Dance School‘s 38th annual performance is Friday, May 29 and Saturday, May 30 at Complex (the high school across from the UVI campus). We have tickets ($15 donation, includes entry into raffle for plane tickets and more) available at the farmstand or you can purchase them at the door! Show time is 7:30 PM. There are adorable tiny ballerinas in the show but also a number of accomplished student and professional dancers — the show is family-friendly and highly entertaining! The closing number in the show features rousing carnival music and traditional calypso dancers, and includes over 30% of the ARTfarm workforce! So come see your farmers in action and support all our local talent in the arts! The Caribbean Dance School and Company is an important cultural institution in the Virgin Islands, founded in 1977 to tour the world and share our island culture, and is still operated by the original artistic directors! It is also an enduring nonprofit organization engaging thousands of students over the years, promoting health, self-esteem, and self discipline. The arts are an important and vibrant part of Virgin Islands culture, help improve our communities in countless ways, and are woefully underfunded. Please come out and show the students you care.
Plus, you’ll get great inspiration for choreographing your own rain dance! 😉
Today at ARTfarm down the south shore we’ll offer a fairly small selection of items: Pineapples, a few tomatoes, sweet salad mix, microgreens, basil, chives, and a few cucumbers.
The lignum vitae is an important food source for honey bees in drought times.
Q: What do you farmers do when it is so dry? What can grow in this extreme drought condition?
A: Not too much! We do our best to conserve water when conditions are this severe.
One plant that remains green and healthy with no watering in this dry weather is the highly drought tolerant lignum vitae tree. Slow and steady is how lignum vitae grows, rain or no rain. This tree species will probably outlast all the other trees that we have planted over the years. Most of the 30+ lignum vitae trees established at ARTfarm came from Kai and Irene Lawaetz at Little Lagrange. Kai was always a champion of the lignum vitae for its beauty and ability to withstand drought times and there are many prime individuals of the species on the Lawaetz Museum grounds.
Even in drought times when most vegetation is brown, the lignum vitae tree’s evergreen leaves remain deep green and provide dense shade.
While it does not produce any edible products, the lignum vitae is a beautiful dense shade and ornamental tree and a food source for honeybees, particularly when nothing else is flowering. The wood of lignum vitae trees is so dense that it has traditionally been used to make ship pulleys.
The light purplish blue blooms and showy red and orange fruit are unique mainly because of their color. There are not too many blue colored flowers in the tropics. The tree sheds very little leaf litter and its leathery paired leaves remain a beautiful deep green year round.
Summer is the season for pineapples at ARTfarm! Sweet sweet sweet!
Sweet salad mix, microgreens, macrogreens, lots of sweet ARTfarm south shore pineapples, passionfruit, a few cucumbers, a few tomatoes, Italian basil, beets, radishes, scallions, sage, delicious serrano chili peppers, zinnia flowers, and local honey from Errol.
We have a few bunches of Ethiopian kale today. It is a tender cooking or juicing green with a pungent, sweet flavor that resembles a mild mustard green.
Ethiopian kale! This flavorful cooking green is mild enough to eat raw. It has a mustard-like flavor but will not make your eyes water like true mustard greens.
We have tickets available at the farmstand today for the annual Caribbean Dance performance that is coming up on May 29 and 30th (Friday and Saturday evenings). Each ticket is also a raffle entry to win round trip plane tickets, a Buccaneer vacation and more!
Tickets are $15 each and will also be available at the door on the nights of the performance. The show takes place in the air conditioned theater at the Educational Complex and curtain time is 7:30 PM.
The Caribbean Dance School celebrates their 39th anniversary on the stage this year. Performers range in age from preschooler to adult, and include students and members of the Company. Disciplines range widely from ballet en pointe to contemporary, jazz, hip-hop tap and Afro-Caribbean calypso this year. It is a completely family-friendly show! (Costumes and choreography are all in good taste and G-rated.) Even if you cannot attend, your purchase of a ticket enters you in the raffle and helps to support this great nonprofit cultural institution.
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 