Changing of the Seasons

Fall is here!!!  The temperatures are dropping into the 30's tonight, the oil furnace is kicking on, and the baby has an electric heater in her room.  10 days ago it was 90 degrees and tomorrow it will be in the high 70s.  Fall brings about many changes, changes in the weather, the leaves change color, the winds change direction.  This year it brought about an unexpected change for us, my contract was pulled at Microsoft.  Fortunately I have found a full time position with a decent commute and will start my new job in 2 weeks.

Tonight we had a frost advisory.  Since this wasn't the best season for peppers anyway, I decided to pick all of our ripe sweet peppers and all of the super hots.  Even though the super hots are still green instead of their usual orange or red, they are still very hot.  However, they are not as hot as they should be.  With this batch of peppers, I will combine the super hots with the habaneros.  The pungency is about the same between the ripe habaneros and the immature reapers & scorpions.

Processing our peppers is a labor of love.  I start by slicing the stem off and cutting the peppers in half.  For this step I wear 2 pair of nitrile gloves to keep the capsaicin off of my hands, ESPECIALLY with the super hots (ghost, reapers, and scorpions).  Once sliced, I place them on the dehydrator trays.  For a dehydrator, we have a simple unit that takes up to 10 round trays.  It will dehydrate 10 trays of super hots in 10-12 hours.

Finished tray of hot peppers

Once they are dried, I crush them with a marble mortar and pestle.  Before I begin crushing, I will put on a pair of nitrile gloves and a respirator mask.  Once the peppers are crushed, I put them in a pint sized mason jar for long term storage.

Mortar and Pestle

Dried peppers ready to be crushed

Finished product

Long term storage

Hot Peppers Started

As part of our farming business plan we are going to sell dried, crushed super hot peppers.  The last several years I've grown, dried, and crushed habanero peppers for personal use (although I have enough to last several lifetimes).  I was buying supplies to give out some of the pepper for Christmas gifts (sidenote, we give out baskets filled with stuffed we've canned, dried, frozen from our garden for Christmas) and the woman asked if I was interested in selling it in her store.  That got me thinking about how I wanted to grow super hot peppers, grow food for other people, and eventually make a profit from the farm.  We aren't planning on making a lot of money from the peppers, but if they can at least show a profit on year 1 and we can sell all of our product, then we will expand in future years.  Our whole plan is take it slow and see how it goes.

Anyway, I bought pepper seeds from Pepper Joe's and set out to establish our farm as one of the few suppliers of crushed, dried super hot peppers.  We bought and used leftover seeds from last year of the following:

Carolina Reaper - 1.4 million SHU

Butch T Trinidad Scorpion - 1million SHU

Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chili) - 900,000 SHU

Habanero - 200,000 SHU

We also have hot, but not super hot:
Giant Jalapeno, Black jalapeno, Pablano, Sporo, Cayenne, Golden Nugget, Firecracker

Most of them have sprouted in the last week and have overgrown their dome.  As you can see by the color of the cells, the dome ends up getting more moisture to the end cells and less to the middle, which had the effect of the end cells sprouting at a much faster and higher rate.

Peppers Sprouting

Now I just need to find a better way to crush the peppers when they finally arrive.  Mortar and pestle just won't cut it for the quantity of peppers that will need to be crushed this year vs previous years.