Pepper plants inevitably attract formidable enemies like aphids and the dreaded pepper maggot which likes to burrow tiny holes into the plant triggering the fruit to rot internally and fall off before it can be harvested. We don’t like bugs, but we refuse to use pesticides of any kind on the farm, so the only suitable counter attack involves natural remedies such as laborious cleanup of dropped fruit to prevent further contamination and bringing in ladybugs to eat the aphids.
In recent years, we’ve tinkered with a variety of recipes for hot sauces, referred to affectionately on the farm as “Pepper Sauce.” The most simple of ingredients always wins in our book. Our Pepper Sauces are a delicate blend of peppers, with the perfect balance of vinegar, raw farm honey, agave nectar, and occasionally mingled with a minxy sideshow of seasonal vegetables. Truly a labor of love, it’s a process which takes nearly eight months from seed to bottle.
Starting in March, each seed is planted by hand and set to germinate in our propagation house for two months. Then in May, after any and all chance of frost has passed, the peppers are carefully hardened off and ready to be planted into neatly lined rows. Tucked snugly into compost-laden soil out in the field, within a sheath of biotella plastic for added warmth, nutrition levels are carefully monitored and amended throughout the season with natural fish emulsion.
Pepper plants, along with our pink peruvian ginger (which grows magnificently alongside the climbing tomato plants in our greenhouses) have one of the longest germination cycles of all our crops, and will only begin to yield fruit in August after basking in the summer sun for months on end. We are very picky about picking. Only when the fruit is ripest to the very tips of its shoulder, will it be plucked from its stem and sorted for processing. This ensures the peppers have the absolute best flavor possible when going to market and passed to our kitchen for pepper sauce makin’s.
Once these fire-laden gems hit the kitchen, the stems are removed and they are cooked slowly until soft. Upon cooling, they are ready to be blended into a mash, acidulated with vinegar, seasoned with salt, and sweetened with a touch of our rich farm honey or agave nectar for sweetness. The mash is then pressed through a fine sieve, taking care to reserve the pulp which is then dried and ground into our Pepper Plant Spice Rub. The result is a silky smooth pepper sauce with just enough heat, sweet, and a uniquely glorious flavor…ready for bottling, right on site.
Balance is the key to life which is why we love finding the perfect varieties that play nicely with each other in a bottle. We love mixing citrusy orange glow jalepeños with a heatless Habanero, the habanada, for our Orange Pepper Sauce. Our Green Pepper Sauce features smoked Poblanos, Serranos, and our farm-grown tomatillos, which lends an unexpected vibrancy with just a touch of warm and smoky heat. Not afraid to dial it up, our Red Pepper Sauce takes its cues from more traditional hot sauce heat by combining cayenne, fresno, aji dolce, the traditional tabasco pepper, and reaper varieties to pack a punch. For our Special Blend we zipped some of our floral amarillo carrots (yep), Brazilian lemon drop, sugar rush peach peppers and the very hard to grow, datil and sarit gat peppers for added heat!
In addition to our pepper sauces tasting so damn good, they’re also good for you! Studies show that peppers are loaded with antioxidants, have natural anti-inflammatory properties, and are high in capsaicin. So much more than a condiment, a lot of hot sauce lovers feel it’s a way of life.