Tag: turkeys

Giving Thanks Day

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Happy turkey day from ARTfarm.
We want to give a great big thank you to all of the people who have made our lives possible and made them better. We are grateful that we have a place to farm, and the tools and supporters to make that happen.

If you are doing some holiday shopping this weekend, consider an ARTfarm gift certificate for your loved ones. We also have beautiful one-of-a-kind monoprints and original artwork available through our gofundme fundraising efforts to rebuild our seedling house and art gallery that were destroyed by Hurricane Maria. We’ve raised nearly $4,000 of the $23,000 needed, GIVE THANKS!!  Visit http://gofundme.com/artfarmllc to donate and get an original piece of ARTfarm art! 

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The farmers have been hard at work on some beautiful art. We are making some botanical and farm scene monoprints and paintings to help us raise funds for our hurricane recovery efforts on the farm.

A special thank you Bob Boyan and our other super farmer volunteers.We’re grateful that there are amazing customers and chefs who appreciate the stuff we grow and the work that goes into it, and regularly buy our produce. We are thankful for the family members and volunteers that have been helping us with removing debris, weeding gardens, rebuilding fences and demo-ing our destroyed buildings.

The farmstands have been very slow, we know that many of our loyal regular customers are off island right now. We are dividing our time between fundraising, rebuilding, and producing food and art, with the hopes that people will come back in a month or so to be here for the holidays and eat our food!

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Our pastured birds eat bugs, weeds and fresh sunflower seeds in addition to vegetarian poultry feed. We hope someday to feed them exclusively from what we can grow on the farm.
Enjoy the holiday season! We will see you soon! Love, ARTfarm

ARTfarm Saturday – We’ve Got a Licker

Almost as if by sleight-of-hand: Sweet salad mix, a few dragonfruit, garlic chives, mint, lemongrass. From our partners: Nam Doc Mai mangoes from Alex at Tropical Exotics, and vegan ice cream from I-Sha in summer flavors: passionfruit, mango, jojo and banana, papaya-ginger. Open on the South Shore Road, 10am – 12 noon.

The severe drought continues. Many of the trees we have planted on the farm are dying off. Grazed pastures are not renewing themselves. After being blessed with rain for the last few years it is hard for many farmers on St. Croix to see our long term efforts of stewardship being stressed to the breaking point by this unusually harsh weather. Even as we see visible signs of the drought, there are many more organisms suffering than meet the naked eye.

Water, water, anywhere? A tiny anole lizard licks moisture off of a dragonfruit bud in the dry pasture.
Water, water, anywhere? Look closely to see what Farmer Luca saw: A tiny anole lizard licking moisture off of an irrigated dragonfruit bud in the dry pasture.

Despite the lack of green grass, bugs and other forage, our two surviving heritage-breed turkeys managed to breed this summer. We took a set of ten eggs for the incubator when Mrs. Brownie started to lay, and she took it upon herself to lay another set after that and brooded it. Turkeys are said to have a low hatch rate. The incubator hatched four poults, but the mother turkey hatched nine out of ten! Man cannot improve on nature’s efficiencies, it seems.

A brown turkey hen looks on as nine fluffy baby poults clamber around her in a wire mesh cage.
Mrs. Brownie, who survived the dog attack this past fall, has produced nine poults this summer after 28 patient days on the nestbox. She and her babies are well protected at this bite-sized stage in a coop built to keep rats and mongoose out. Predator pressure is particularly intense during drought times as wildlife and feral animals are more desperate for food and water.
A large grey tom turkey displays his feathers walking along the edges of his pen. The farm and hills beyond are dry and brown.
Proud papa turkey, the only survivor of the stray dog attack last fall, keeps careful watch over his new family. You can see recent brushfire damage on the hills behind him.

A Green Patch of Determination

It's July 2015 and there has been no substantial rain for months. This panorama of the center of the farm shows the contrast between irrigated and non-irrigated areas.
It’s July 2015 and there has been no substantial rain for months. This panorama of the center of the farm shows the contrast between irrigated and non-irrigated areas.

The ARTfarm is brown and crunchy at the moment, (and not in the delicious granola type way) but there is a little patch of green that Farmer Luca is diligently watering and protecting from hungry, thirsty deer. In other news from the Department of Symbols Of Hope, three turkey eggs hatched in our incubator yesterday morning! And our mama turkey Ms. Brownie is brooding on a nest of eleven more hope capsules…due next week.

A morning meeting of three freshly hatched turkey poults in the incubator at ARTfarm.
A morning meeting of three freshly hatched turkey poults in the incubator at ARTfarm.

For this morning’s Saturday farmstand, from 10 AM to 12 noon, we have: Lots of sweet salad mix, passionfruit, plenty of mint, lemongrass, garlic chives, tarragon, Cuban oregano, recao, Ethiopian kale, and papayas!
From our partner growers and chefs: we have dragonfruit from Solitude Farms, Viequen Butterball mangoes from Tita, Haitian Kidney mangoes from Denis Nash, and vegan local fruit ice cream from I-Sha.

Don’t forget about the 19th annual Mango Melee on Sunday at the Botanical Garden! You won’t find the Viequen Butterball at Mango Melee, but there are a lot of other fun and delicious things on offer over there (call 340-692-2874 or www.sgvbg.org for more information). Be sure to support our long-time neighbor and loyal customer Lisa Spery as she competes in the Mango Dis, Mango Dat contest with a recipe incorporating fresh ARTfarm mint! Good luck, Lisa!