If you haven’t seen your farmer’s latest watercolors and mixed media paintings at the Men Of Industry exhibition at Walsh Metal Works, it’s open for a few more weeks so be sure to check it out! (340) 332-2504
“Dolphin”, 7.9″ x 7.9″ watercolor (c)2015 Luca Gasperi
Today’s harvest: Sweet salad mix, arugula, lots of microgreens, a few cucumbers and tomatoes, radishes and beets with leafy green tops, a few Serrano peppers, bananas, sweet potatoes, basil, carrots, onions, and zinnia flowers.
From our partner I-Sha we have vegan dairy-free ice cream – bahn’ya – made from local coconuts in completely local fruit flavors.
“Rain from the North”, 12 x 16″ watercolor (c)2015 Luca Gasperi
It is really Taste week on St. Croix! We had a brief visit from visiting celebrity Chef Sam Choy early this week when he came out to ARTfarm to pick up some ingredients for a charity dinner. We enjoyed talking to him about growing techniques in Kona, Hawaii, where he is a leader in the farm-to-table movement.
Celebrity “Iron Chef” Sam Choy is actually a big ol’ softie. Here, he visits us at the ARTfarm to pick up some ingredients for a St. Croix Food & Wine Experience charity event. We talked breadfruit and ate limes! Whatta nice guy!
For today’s midweek farmstand we have on offer: Sweet salad mix, baby arugula, baby spicy salad mix, a few bags of microgreens; scallions and Italian basil; onions, beets, carrots and radishes with beautiful green tops for cooking or juicing; cucumbers, and diminishing numbers of end-of-season cherry tomatoes, small heirloom and slicer tomatoes.
Yummy beets for you and for Chef Joe! Looking forward to the Taste of St. Croix event on Thursday, April 16th 2015!
If you need some fresh ideas of what you can do with your ARTfarm produce, we will be hosting a table at the Taste tomorrow night! Chef/restauranteur Joe Smith and his partner and lovely wife, Jen Valiulis are owners of Garden Table Market in Salem, Indiana, and both have been longtime residents of St. Croix and employee farmers at ARTfarm. Joe and Jen will be our chefs tomorrow night, representing us with several delectable dishes using a lot of ingredients straight from ARTfarm and a few other local farms and producers, including Dr. Bethany Bradford’s Fiddlewood Farm local goat cheese! Come see us at booth #4 on the west end pier of the event if you are fortunate enough to have tickets to this great charity event.
This Friday, 5–8 p.m., please come to the Walsh Metal Works Gallery in Peters Rest for an exhibition of Farmer Luca and Metalworker Mike’s interior lives, expressed in watercolor and steel. The art exhibition will run through May 9, but the fun and festivity is to be had on the opening night!
Today’s haul for the farmstand, 3–6 p.m.: Sweet salad mix with a touch of colorful radicchio, teen arugula, teen spicy salad mix, kale, onions, carrots, long beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Italian basil, cilantro, dill, beets, zinnia flowers, dandelion greens, a few dozen eggs from ARTfarm pastured hens, and from our partner I-Sha amazing handmade vegan ice cream in a varied selection of local fruit flavors.
Luca and Mike are both local artists and Men Of Industry on St. Croix. Please come to their exhibition of new works on Friday, April 10th, 2015, 5-8pm!Original watercolor (c)2015 by Luca Gasperi.
Original watercolor (c)2015 by Luca Gasperi. Exhibition opens Friday, April 10th 2015 5-8pm at Walsh Metal Works Gallery in Peters Rest, St. Croix USVI!
Basil, dill, cilantro with coriander seeds, radicchio, radishes, escarole, long beans…
Beautiful heads of radicchio to enliven any dish with color and panache!
We’re open today, 10am – 12 noon with salad and lots of tomatoes! Here’s this morning’s list of fresh: Sweet salad mix, teen spicy salad mix, teen arugula, heirloom/slicer/cherry tomatoes, beets, red and white bulb onions with green tops, purple Bodhi beans, a few cucumbers, radishes with delicious green tops, dandelion greens for cooking or juicing, fresh ginger root, scallions, Italian basil, Thai basil, dill, parsley, cilantro, and zinnia flowers. We also have a fresh batch of vegan ice cream from I-Sha in a rainbow of flavors including jojo, mango, papaya/ginger, passionfruit, beet ginger, banana…
Big beautiful beets at ARTfarm. The tops are great in your green juice, as a cooked green, wilted over eggs… chopped into your salad… don’t neglect the beet greens!
Our thanks go out again to the VI Fire Service shifts C and D out of Richmond/Christiansted, with trucks from Grove and East End, and VIPD for coming back to Longford a third time this week. Tuesday evening’s fire flared up again on Wednesday afternoon, sending out a new fire crew headed by Captain Henry Joseph; it continued on its previous trajectory toward the beach and burned over a hundred acres of pasture and fencing belonging to our neighbors and killed another cow on Wednesday. A second blaze was set in ARTfarm pastures about 3/4 of a mile away from the initial fires just before 8pm Wednesday night at a curve in the road where the streetlight is out. We had a number of people offer help again and had a crew of employees, customers and fellow farmers on hand to move sheep, manage gates and direct the fire trucks. It was dark and smoky, and we were too busy to take pictures, but it was an incredible scene. After the Captain Joseph and his VIFS team departed for a second time with the trucks, Luca and a neighbor we’ll call “Water Mike” were out containing and extinguishing smaller fires until 2am Thursday morning.
Our neighbor who took these pictures acted as our fire tower during the fires and helped us locate problem areas from a higher vantage point. Wednesday afternoon.This image captures Wednesday night’s situation; the rekindled original fire headed south to the beach, and in the foreground the second fire started a mile away up on South Shore Road on ARTfarm pasture.By Wednesday afternoon, the original fire had rekindled and burned south throughout the day across the pastures toward the beach, killing one cow. It burned eastward along the beach through Thursday morning, when the Fire Service came back and extinguished the spread.VIFS pumper trucks from Richmond C shift, East End and Grove Fire Stations helped us out Wednesday afternoon, and came back Wednesday night to assist with the new roadside fire.
We’d appreciate brushfire awareness from all of our customers. Please never throw cigarettes or other burning material from a vehicle; do not allow chains on trailers to drag on the ground; and keep a neighborhood watch. If you see someone stopped on the side of the road, slow down and offer assistance; if suspicious, snap a picture of the vehicle and license plate. And share this information with others in the dry season. We thank you!
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 