by Sophia Chiparus
Hey hey CSA A, (rhyme)
We’re coming to you hot for week 14!
Why hot? You wonder, and that’s a fair question- the weather’s been welcomingly and wonderfully cool this week.
I’m talking about a different kind of heat though. For me, this is the kind that makes my eyes water, my nose run, and my saliva production kick into overdrive. For others, this heat is pleasant, triggering some strange brain function that releases endorphins.
Yes, starting this week, we have hot HOT PEPPERS
When I was younger, I would stir my coffee or tea, and drink from a mug while the spoon was in. My mom would make jokes about an old anecdote, where a man visits the doctor.
“Doctor Doctor”, he cried, “Every time I drink tea, my eye hurts!”
Doctor: “Have you tried taking the spoon out?”
Honestly, I never found this to be that funny. But I tell this because I really resonate with the man when it comes to hot peppers. Last year at every CSA pickup we had hot hot peppers for, I would challenge myself to eat one. Every single time it induced the same reaction in me: a spitting, gasping, retching, wretched howling. But I still did it week after week.
My mother also likes to tell me that life is too short to learn every lesson myself. I still have not learned from the same pepper lesson. Maybe I’m a cat, dying by my curiosity around hot peppers in each of my nine lives. Either way, I’m looking forward to continuing my silly and painful tradition this week, when we share these hot peppers with y’all.
So, where did they come from….well, I’ll let my interview with Alex Snabs, our pepper provider answer your *burning* questions.
Q: Who are you and what is your relation to the farm?
Alex: My name is Alex Snabs, and I am a graduate student in the Hort department. One of my advisors is Petrus Langenhoven. He works closely with the student farm and so I help him with any needs he has at the student farm, along with helping Chris when needed.
Alex in the scotch bonnet field
Q: What is your research focus, and how does it connect to the CSA?
Alex: My main research is on scotch bonnet peppers, which are a hot pepper mainly grown in the Caribbean. I use peppers grown and harvested out at Meigs. We end up donating them to the CSA, as I don’t need them all for my research
Q: What is special about these peppers, and what are you looking for?
Alex: We’re mostly looking for if they can be grown out in the Midwest, as they are more used to the Caribbean climate. We work with 22 varieties of scotch bonnet peppers and look at their agronomic traits such as yields, and the ease of removal from the plant. This helps us identify what varieties could be best used for mechanical harvesting in the future.
Bins of different harvested scotch bonnet varieties.
Q: Are there any other roles of research you take on?
Alex: Yeah, so I’m working on the sweet pepper variety trials with Petrus, and so I assist with that. I’m also assisting with our project that looks at the potential of high tunnel plastic that scatters the UV in a way that filters out the non-necessary light(where all the yellow bells come from). Out at Meigs I also help Petrus with his eggplant and napa cabbage variety trials.
A photo of a tunnel where the plastic is being tested.
Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?
Alex: I enjoy the free produce that I get to grow and harvest myself. It’s nice to know where my produce comes from and reap the benefits of my hard work.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge?
Alex: Time management and prioritizing different tasks. I do feel like I’m involved in a lot of projects of varying sizes and balancing that can be a challenge.
Q: Do you like hot peppers, and how do you use them?
Alex: Well, I’m not the biggest fan of spicy food in general. Scotch bonnet spice levels are around a habanero and that is too hot for me. I do enjoy more of the sweet peppers. In general, you can use the bonnets for spices or hot sauce. Especially hot sauce is where most bonnets go due to their distinct and tropical flavors. I know Petrus has made a paste out of these peppers, where he dilutes the scotch bonnets with a sweet pepper, and makes almost a jam-like thing that can be used on toast.
Q: Words of wisdom, or a life motto?
Alex: Don’t forget to prioritize your life when it comes to all the crazy work and research you may be involved in. Just don’t forget you.