raffy
Oct 28, 01, 12:22 pm
Autumn in New Mexico brings the celebrated pepper harvest:
Santa Fe, N.M. -- Few people here need a calendar to follow seasonal changes. Nature alerts them in a singularly New Mexican way: The green chili harvest signals the end of summer, and the red chili harvest signals the beginning of autumn.
The harvest is a harbinger of family gatherings and chili-centric rituals. It also fires New Mexico's agricultural engine, employing 15,000 laborers a day at its peak.
With an annual crop valued at $150 million, the state is the nation's largest producer of chili peppers. And now New Mexico's chilis are reaching a wider audience: Salsa recently surpassed ketchup as the nation's leading condiment.
Festivals and cooking contests commonly pay homage to the chili, especially at this time of year. Last month's state fair featured five chili-cooking contests, culminating with the much-anticipated Battle of the Salsas.
"They are the sights and aromas of fall in New Mexico -- driving down the street with red chilis hanging everywhere and the smell of roasting green chilis in the air," said SuAnne Armstrong, owner of The Chile Shop, a local institution.
Santa Fe designates the second week in September as Really Chile week to celebrate the state's favorite fruit. Among the events was a "poetry slam," during which teenagers rapped using words relating to chilis. The festival's highlight was the performance by the Santa Fe Girls Club of the play "The New Mexico Chile."
The bulk of the state's peppers are grown in the dusty Hatch Valley in the far south near the Mexican border. The town of Hatch proudly proclaims itself the "Chile Capital of the World." There, a long growing season creates a hotter chili. Plants grown during northern New Mexico's shorter season are characterized by their milder flavor.
Most of the green chilis are rushed to wholesalers and then to restaurants in the region and around the country. The rest are frozen or canned.
Red chilis are dried and the whole pods are used for seasonings or fashioned into an array of tourist objects. Ground red chili also is processed into a variety of spices and can be used as a coloring for food and cosmetics.
Chili lovers often show up on farms with burlap sacks to pick their own. Wholesale demand for the peppers is so great that most farms' entire harvest is spoken for. Some growers set aside small amounts to sell to longtime local customers or to old friends.
"It's my favorite time of the year," said Nick Carson, who runs the family- owned Kit Carson Farms in Rincon. "Right now my wife and my youngest son are over at the dehydrating plant. My oldest son is out in the field bringing chili to her, and my middle son is delivering" to buyers.
Carson said he has fond memories of his youth on the farm, when the bright peppers left on the hillsides to dry created a red blaze across the dun- colored landscape.
Most fields are still picked by hand. The harvest brings an influx of field workers streaming north from Mexico. Carson said his family has traditionally worked alongside multiple generations of Mexican pickers, laboring to get the crop in before the first frost.
That tradition is changing, however, as many of those workers now stay in Mexico, which has taken over 70 percent of New Mexico's production of jalapeno peppers. The loss was a blow, but jalapenos represent only a small portion of the state's chile crop.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement, there has been a sixfold increase in chili imports from Mexico, according to Rich Phillips, a horticulturist and coordinator of the New Mexico Chile Task Force.
The task force was formed to develop ways to maintain the health of the chile pepper industry, which is threatened not only by weather, disease and insects, but also by increasing global competition.
"Chilis are part of our culture, sure," Phillips said, "but the industry is crucial to the state's economy. To the growers, chilis are an important component in crop rotation."
In the state's less rural areas, people are fixated on obtaining the harvested chilis. So sought-after are the just-picked peppers that car dealers have been known to offer a choice of red or green chilis as an incentive with a new car purchase.
In 1998, the state Legislature adopted "Red or green?" as the official state question.
For many New Mexicans, harvest time offers families and neighbors an excuse to get together. Terry Jennings, who lives outside of Santa Fe, said he and his neighbors buy a 40-pound bag of roasted green chilis, then have a party to prepare the peppers for freezing.
"It's a neighborhood tradition," he said. "We peel them, then de-seed them, then put them into freezer (bags). It's an excuse to have a fiesta. Everyone takes a share and it just about gets us through winter."
Jerry Hawkes, an agricultural economist who travels the state, loads fresh green chilis into the back of a pickup to deliver to friends.
"For some people, there is an addictive quality to chilis. They eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner," he said.
And not just in New Mexico. Armstrong said her shop has shipped chilis to just about every spot on the map.
"People get passionate about chilis and they have to have them," she said. "We send chili products all over the world. We've sent boxes of chilis to the Antarctic. Some lucky person had a warmer night."
Source: LA Times
Santa Fe, N.M. -- Few people here need a calendar to follow seasonal changes. Nature alerts them in a singularly New Mexican way: The green chili harvest signals the end of summer, and the red chili harvest signals the beginning of autumn.
The harvest is a harbinger of family gatherings and chili-centric rituals. It also fires New Mexico's agricultural engine, employing 15,000 laborers a day at its peak.
With an annual crop valued at $150 million, the state is the nation's largest producer of chili peppers. And now New Mexico's chilis are reaching a wider audience: Salsa recently surpassed ketchup as the nation's leading condiment.
Festivals and cooking contests commonly pay homage to the chili, especially at this time of year. Last month's state fair featured five chili-cooking contests, culminating with the much-anticipated Battle of the Salsas.
"They are the sights and aromas of fall in New Mexico -- driving down the street with red chilis hanging everywhere and the smell of roasting green chilis in the air," said SuAnne Armstrong, owner of The Chile Shop, a local institution.
Santa Fe designates the second week in September as Really Chile week to celebrate the state's favorite fruit. Among the events was a "poetry slam," during which teenagers rapped using words relating to chilis. The festival's highlight was the performance by the Santa Fe Girls Club of the play "The New Mexico Chile."
The bulk of the state's peppers are grown in the dusty Hatch Valley in the far south near the Mexican border. The town of Hatch proudly proclaims itself the "Chile Capital of the World." There, a long growing season creates a hotter chili. Plants grown during northern New Mexico's shorter season are characterized by their milder flavor.
Most of the green chilis are rushed to wholesalers and then to restaurants in the region and around the country. The rest are frozen or canned.
Red chilis are dried and the whole pods are used for seasonings or fashioned into an array of tourist objects. Ground red chili also is processed into a variety of spices and can be used as a coloring for food and cosmetics.
Chili lovers often show up on farms with burlap sacks to pick their own. Wholesale demand for the peppers is so great that most farms' entire harvest is spoken for. Some growers set aside small amounts to sell to longtime local customers or to old friends.
"It's my favorite time of the year," said Nick Carson, who runs the family- owned Kit Carson Farms in Rincon. "Right now my wife and my youngest son are over at the dehydrating plant. My oldest son is out in the field bringing chili to her, and my middle son is delivering" to buyers.
Carson said he has fond memories of his youth on the farm, when the bright peppers left on the hillsides to dry created a red blaze across the dun- colored landscape.
Most fields are still picked by hand. The harvest brings an influx of field workers streaming north from Mexico. Carson said his family has traditionally worked alongside multiple generations of Mexican pickers, laboring to get the crop in before the first frost.
That tradition is changing, however, as many of those workers now stay in Mexico, which has taken over 70 percent of New Mexico's production of jalapeno peppers. The loss was a blow, but jalapenos represent only a small portion of the state's chile crop.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement, there has been a sixfold increase in chili imports from Mexico, according to Rich Phillips, a horticulturist and coordinator of the New Mexico Chile Task Force.
The task force was formed to develop ways to maintain the health of the chile pepper industry, which is threatened not only by weather, disease and insects, but also by increasing global competition.
"Chilis are part of our culture, sure," Phillips said, "but the industry is crucial to the state's economy. To the growers, chilis are an important component in crop rotation."
In the state's less rural areas, people are fixated on obtaining the harvested chilis. So sought-after are the just-picked peppers that car dealers have been known to offer a choice of red or green chilis as an incentive with a new car purchase.
In 1998, the state Legislature adopted "Red or green?" as the official state question.
For many New Mexicans, harvest time offers families and neighbors an excuse to get together. Terry Jennings, who lives outside of Santa Fe, said he and his neighbors buy a 40-pound bag of roasted green chilis, then have a party to prepare the peppers for freezing.
"It's a neighborhood tradition," he said. "We peel them, then de-seed them, then put them into freezer (bags). It's an excuse to have a fiesta. Everyone takes a share and it just about gets us through winter."
Jerry Hawkes, an agricultural economist who travels the state, loads fresh green chilis into the back of a pickup to deliver to friends.
"For some people, there is an addictive quality to chilis. They eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner," he said.
And not just in New Mexico. Armstrong said her shop has shipped chilis to just about every spot on the map.
"People get passionate about chilis and they have to have them," she said. "We send chili products all over the world. We've sent boxes of chilis to the Antarctic. Some lucky person had a warmer night."
Source: LA Times