Tag: salad greens

ARTfarm Holiday Hours: 12noon – 5pm Today

The ARTfarm roadside sign features a new addition describing today's holiday hours.
Don’t drive too fast or you’ll miss the details! Open special hours today for pre-holiday shopping!

We have so much to be thankful for, starting with our wonderful customers! So that you can stock up for your holiday gathering, Turkey Day potluck or extended weekend beach picnic, we are open 12noon to 5pm today! (We’ll be open again Saturday).

We have hand-picked for you: Sweet salad mix, baby spicy salad mix, baby arugula, microgreens, beautiful crunchy radishes, crispy cucumbers, garlic chives, rosemary, mint, recao, Italian basil, zinnia flowers, passionfruit, lemon basil, lemongrass, fresh ginger root! From our partners: Nam Doc Mai mangoes and mamey sapote from Tropical Exotics, vegan ice cream from I-Sha, raw local honey from Errol Chichester, and Kim (sans Ryan) will be here with fresh fish again!

We wish you all a safe and joyful Thanksgiving. Island life is not always easy, but we have so much to be grateful for.

A grey baby turkey poult walks through grass in a garden.
An orphaned baby turkey poult (stray dog attack survivor) has had a lot of handling and now thinks she is human – she follows us everywhere and likes to snuggle on your neck. She’s a good worker and helps with pest control in the garden at ARTfarm!

 

ARTfarm Season Finale! Last Saturday

ARTfarm sweet cornAll good things must come to an end; summer, a great meal, a super dance club extended remix, and the season at ARTfarm. There will be a few weeks’ pause before the next season begins.

Today, 10am – 12 noon: Sweet salad mix, arugula, beets, sweet corn, onions, sweet potato greens, bunched arugula, Kang Kong Asian water spinach, Italian basil, holy basil, garlic chives, recao, mint, tarragon, bananas, papayas, and soursop! From our partners, we have dragonfruit from Solitude Farms, raw local dark honey from Errol, bread from Tess, and our famous “Shades of Joy” magic color indicator avocados from Tita & Diego.

Q&A: Someone stopped us in a parking lot the other day and asked us if our arugula was organic. For anyone who might be wondering, all ARTfarm produce is grown using organic methods, to the standards of USDA Certified Organic produce. In some cases, our sustainable practices exceed what is required by the USDA NOP (National Organic Program), and our farming philosophy and practices have continuously met our strict standards since 1999 on St. Croix.

BUT… it is against US law to claim that your produce is “organic” unless you have spent the time and money to achieve organic certification through a USDA approved agency. This involves lots of paperwork, expensive fees, a percentage of the farm’s profit going to a certifying agency on an annual basis, and flying an inspector to the island at the farm’s expense at regular intervals to examine our records and practices.

There are pros and cons to having the USDA organic stamp of approval. We respect those farms who have gone through the arduous process of becoming organic certified. We are considering the process, but are not interested in raising our prices to cover the cost. The official stamp from the USDA doesn’t seem to be important to most of our customers.

But is our arugula organic? If you really want to know, get to know your farmer. Ask about our farming practices. Ask how we raise food sustainably using organic methods. Ask us if we are involved in the community. Learn more about the debate and what growing organically really means, so you know the right questions to ask! You might just find the long answer as assuring and satisfying as the shortcut of a sticker stuck to your food. 😉

Love, ARTfarm

ARTfarm Closed Today: Open Saturday with Bertha Greens!

Well, with an abrupt end to our mango season, we are going to stay true to our word and remain closed this afternoon, so that we can have fun and take care of some projects around the farm.

However, the beautiful cooling winds and rain of tropical storm Bertha have given our lettuce a new lease on life! Fresh salad greens were harvested today and will be harvested again on Friday for Saturday’s farmstand. So fear not, your salad will be available in just a few more days.

Thank you, as always, for your support.

ARTfarm Wednesday, 3–6 p.m.: Time for a Rain Dance!

20140730-120152-43312034.jpgOur last Wednesday for the summer! Open 3–6 this afternoon and then only Saturday mornings, 10 AM – 12 noon. Today’s farm treats include: sweet corn, salad mix, baby spicy salad mix, baby arugula, microgreens, baby onions, baby beets, cucumbers, holy basil, thai basil, Italian basil, papaya, passionfruit and bananas. From our partners: mangoes and mamey sapote from Tropical Exotics, raw local honey from Errol, and vegan coconut milk-based ice-cream in tropical fruit flavors from I-Sha!

For those of you who have yet to sample a mamey sapote, it is an unusual Central American fruit that is incredibly sweet, and one of our family’s favorites. It has a sandpapery outside and a reddish-orangey inside with a seed that looks like modern art. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about it:

The fruit is eaten raw or made into milkshakes, smoothies, ice cream and fruit bars. It can be used to produce marmalade and jelly.[3] Some consider the fruit to be an aphrodisiac.[citation needed] Some beauty products use oil pressed from the seed,[4] otherwise known as sapayul oil.[5]  The fruit is an excellent source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C, and is a good source of riboflavin, niacin, vitamin E, manganese, potassium and dietary fiber. Research has identified several new carotenoids from the ripe fruit.

20140730-111608-40568049.jpgGood news/bad news time, dear readers: Due perhaps to the extremely dry conditions we’ve had over this spring and summer, the Nam doc Mai, Julie and Malika mangoes are ending early. The harvest is finished, but the trees are flowering now, which means that they should have fruit again in a few months. So there will be a strange off-season of mangoes in fall/winter if all goes well and the trees hang onto their fruit through the storm season. We still have several more weeks of cucumbers in the gardens, some dragonfruits ripening on the vines, and we will do our best to continue some lettuce production despite the super dry conditions for a few more weeks. Everybody, please do a rain dance out there and let’s get some precipitation on St. Croix!