• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

2018 - The Farm

Well, I've been gone a few years from the board, and away from growing peppers, but looks like life is pushing me back that way again. 
 
I recently (last month) closed on a 25 acre farm in Central Illinois with some primo soil, and I'm going to give a commercial grow a test run. 
 
NzpDT8g.jpg

 
TrugNBb.jpg

 
From up on the roof, when I was doing some roof repairs on the outbuildings. Not much as far as the eye can see, but cornfields...
 
BZXHqMp.jpg

 
 
Has a 4 stall garage and a horse stable on the property
 
dHjylEo.jpg

 
GCjcX18.jpg

 
2N9v0Yf.jpg

 
Probably do my grow room upstairs here after I insulate it
 
HYVOyF0.jpg

 
Built some doors for the horse barn and patched the roof last month
 
NNO9Tcg.jpg

 
zfOwha1.jpg

 
 
Anyway just dropped a cold grand on seeds from pepperlover and buckeye, going to hit a greenhouse supplier up for other materials next week.
 
Have plans to build a 30x72' greenhouse in the spring, and a ~1200 sq foot dedicated grow room. Too late really to help with this year's grow, but next year it'll save me a lot of hassle on hardening off. 
 
The greenhouse, I am going to do a piped infloor heat slab, with a horizontal loop geothermal system (I own a mini excavator) that is solar powered. So heating should be nice, uniform, not create heat / cold bubbles, and not dry out plants like forced air would. I build circuit boards in my day job, so I will also build a microcontroller to handle the automated watering system with soil moisture monitors and actuated plumbing valves on the water supply.
 
Also plan on building a "deep winter" greenhouse for year round production. Got blueprints I made from a couple of years back, those are walled on three sides with heavy duty insulation, with the glass wall side angled to face winter solstice, so you can grow in the deep freeze months of the north. In the summer, those get hot enough to use as a natural dehydrator, replace the tables with racks for bulk drying.
 
Only doing a half acre or so of peppers to start with this year, the balance will be put in corn. I can't manage more than that with the labor I have available. (When you start talking thousands of plants, simple tasks like up-potting grow in to hundreds or thousands of man hours...)
 
Going to hire some local kids to help, school has a good ag co-op program for high schoolers, they can get school credit working on local farms. Since the plant out and harvest doesn't conflict too badly with corn, shouldn't have a problem finding labor around here.
 
Anyway, that's the plans.
 
We'll see how it goes.. er.. grows.
 
 
Local guy wanted $200 in peppers. Heh. Ok.
 
BxaZrea.png

 
I wasn't there when he picked them up but the girls tossed in freezer bags for him. He sent me a message on Facebook.
 
"Dude. Unreal."
 
Yeah, pretty much. 
 
Wife sorting out bad reapers.
 
p4y6Uxb.jpg

 
Me taking a rest break while the girls went off to lunch.
 
WfGbYNw.jpg

 
Moruga / Reaper (left two pods) Carolina Reaper (right two pods)
 
Visually indistinguishable, overall. Taste the same. look the same. If anything the Moruga / Reaper hybrids are a little more warty and (seat of the pants testing) definitely on the thermonuclear side. I nibbled off a half a dime sized piece yesterday in the field, chewed it for a few seconds, spit it out. The saliva I swallowed gave me severe throat burns and gut cramps for 20 minutes.
 
jvOcU2R.jpg

 
Bringing in orders
 
3Ed4n2l.jpg

 
Reapers & Moruga Reapers
 
pX6W5DL.jpg

 
NRLmmPm.jpg

 
De-seeding some brown bhut jolokia. 
 
9bldOFV.jpg

 
Leftovers from the orders. There was a particularly large order going out to a friend of mine in Alabama, the girls used these in place of packing peanuts! I was going to bring them home to put in the deep freeze since we overpicked.. nope, they had other plans.
 
YBYSaXN.jpg

 
GkV3pH5.jpg

 
Neat little cayenne.
 
NobHfhl.jpg

 
 
 
Yeah I waited too long after I ate to eat one of those Moruga x Reaper peppers and there wasn't any milk in the house.
 
The cramps were intense. The heat mostly stays on the tongue, though.
 
Ruid said:
Yeah I waited too long after I ate to eat one of those Moruga x Reaper peppers and there wasn't any milk in the house.
 
The cramps were intense. The heat mostly stays on the tongue, though.
 
Yeah they put a world of hurt on. When I was cutting 'bad pods' (mainly caterpillar worm holes) we'd culled open to get some open pollinated seeds, oil literally DRIPS out of them. 
 
Mere skin contact with them will cause burning. Jerika knelt down next to a plant and crushed a pod with her knee; a half hour later she went home for lunch and a change of clothes; the oils had soaked through her pants and were burning the skin on her knee.
 
Stirring *seeds* around on a paper towel, on our drying racks, we had to evac the wash / dry room. Just stirring a small pile of the damn seeds around aerosoled enough of the stuff to cause intense burning of the eyes and nose, and lungs. 
 
Those damn things are HOT.
 
Eat one, do not pass go, do not collect hiccups, go straight to the depths of hell :)
 
 
FYI most of the ultra hots are marked out of stock on the website, hoping the green pods left on the plants ripen before first frost.
 
We got temps dipping down in to the low 40's Wednesday night as a cold front moves in. Plants *should* make it but there will be some serious leaf drop. With most of the green pods in the upper canopy, depending on how weather goes, we may end up with some sun scald issues on the next big pick, *if* there is a next pick. 
 
If you want ultras, best to PM me so I can put you on a list. I'll collect some back orders and fill them on an "as they become ready" basis.
 
 
Thats horrible news. Sorry about the theft.
As Karoo says, I hope Karma comes back to bite them in the ass.

If it is a disgruntled ex-employee, could you put a reward out with other employees in the hope that someone rats them out?

I have a suspicion that the perpetrator is after seeds. Why steal only them and not other varieties if they want to sell / make sauces or eat other hot varieties?
 
I hope you add a lot of other bonnets and the bahamian goat for next year. All of what I've read lurking here has me really wanting bahamian goats.
 
Wow, that really sucks about the theft. Did you call the police? That seems like a felony, for stealing $1500 worth of goods.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
TrentL said:
Zombie tomato lives. I didn't get a pick but while picking seed peppers yesterday, I noticed SCRAWNY LIVES. 
 
I've never seen a determinate tomato come back from the grave and put on new growth after it had browned up and died, but.. it did. Not only put on new growth, but it's putting on gnarly tiny flowers again. Going to try (probably futile) to self-pollinate the dang thing.
 
 
 
YIPEE!!!!!  Scrawny lives!!!!!  Woo hoo!!!!
 
tenor.gif
 
TrentL said:
 
Someone cleaned us out over the weekend.
 
Picked every last damn plant, including a row of them I had hidden back behind the weeds where the old sweet corn was. They picked every damn last ripe pod we had. 
 
I had a few plants in the back of the tomato field they missed, fortunately (untagged private reserve I'd planted back between tomato plants, "just in case", mainly for my own private reserve for deep freeze) but we were only able to come up with a few pounds of reapers, and there was like 15 pounds of Reaper orders to fill. So we had to substitute in Moruga / Reaper hybrids.
 
Whoever did it was VERY f**king selective. They picked Reaper plants clean and left Butch T and Moruga Reapers on either side of them completely intact. Those plants were still loaded down. Reapers were cleared of every ripe pod AND whoever did it even picked up all of the damn loose pods that had dropped (the first pods which hadn't been picked yet; some of the F1 / F2 nodes had dropped to the ground). 
 
 
 
 
Wow.  That totally blows.  I have felt that pain, but not on the scale of yours.  And, with you being fairly certain of who the potential culprit(s) is/are, that makes it hurt even more.
 
I'd file a report with the local police any way.  How many markets can there be for that many reapers?
 
And let the rest of my market vendors know.  Let them know you know.  Jusssssst in case "someone" tries to pass them on to one of them.
 
Sorry to hear about the theft Trent. That really sucks, hopefully Karma catches up with them!
On a happier note, my order arrived yesterday. Everything was perfect and I loved the "packing
peanuts" Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • peppers.jpg
    peppers.jpg
    143.6 KB · Views: 72
m1hagen said:
Sorry to hear about the theft Trent. That really sucks, hopefully Karma catches up with them!
On a happier note, my order arrived yesterday. Everything was perfect and I loved the "packing
peanuts" Thanks!
Wow!! What are those yellow peppers on the bottom right? They’re beautiful!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Oh those Aji Limo are FAN-FUGGING-TASTIC peppers. Man I love those things. I've been using them on EVERYTHING.
 
Guess what time of the year it is?
 
SrwyK28.jpg

 
Our last farmer's market is Saturday so we're starting seed harvest between now and end of year. All open pollinated this year (isolation is a 2019 project). But, with the cucumbers planted between peppers drawing all of the winged pollinators away, these should be mostly pure. So many enormous pods with the classic "not so many seeds" that is typical of self-pollination. 
 
But those who sent me seeds earlier this year to get the ball rolling on the farm... Karma will be good to y'all soon. :)
 
We'll be selling seeds on the online store, USDA certified organic seed stock (open pollinated) once I get the seed harvest done and do our test germinations in November (to make sure everything sprouts well). So early December-ish for seed sales. Varieties will be limited to what we grew this year. I've got to TRY to make a dent in expenses, we did OK with pepper sales, but still took one hell of a beating this year. So I'll market the seed inventory in Dec / Jan via facebook advertising.
 
Justin will get some too, to push through his website, if he still wants them (whitehotpepper). We all win if we work together!
 
 
 
nmlarson said:
 
 
Wow.  That totally blows.  I have felt that pain, but not on the scale of yours.  And, with you being fairly certain of who the potential culprit(s) is/are, that makes it hurt even more.
 
I'd file a report with the local police any way.  How many markets can there be for that many reapers?
 
And let the rest of my market vendors know.  Let them know you know.  Jusssssst in case "someone" tries to pass them on to one of them.
 
It's not the reapers they were after, it was likely the SEEDS they were after. Why else clear out all of the rotten ones that we'd tossed aside on previous picks? They picked up every last pod along the row, ON the plant or OFF, and only the ripe ones.
 
m1hagen said:
Sorry to hear about the theft Trent. That really sucks, hopefully Karma catches up with them!
On a happier note, my order arrived yesterday. Everything was perfect and I loved the "packing
peanuts" Thanks!
 
"Are you SURE you want us to throw those in there? They didn't order anything close to that heat"
 
"Yeah."
 
I told 'em to toss a Moruga x Reaper in there too but the girls drew the line at throwing random ultras in to the mix of milder ones (that, and we were already hard-pressed to fill some 15lbs of ultrahot orders we got over the weekend). :)
 
That big ass box above where the girls dumped the rest of the TFM scotch bonnets and moruga x reapers in as packing peanuts, that went to a connoisseur down in Alabama. He is a retired special forces officer with 4 tours in Afghanistan under his belt, who makes hot pepper goodies for his friends. "Training aids" he calls them. Like vodka infused with ultrahots, is somehow a training aid? :)
 
The last time I shipped peppers to him was in 2014 and it went to the base in Quantico (he was still active duty). I have no idea what sort of hazing rituals they were used in but one can only imagine... :)
 
So anyway, when I started the farm, one of the "main goals" I'd set this year was "hook a brotha up." And that box is the result of that pledge. 15.5 pounds of the worst hell I could send his way.
 
 
 
 
 
Trent, please start growing Rocotos. I'm lousy at it, though I'll never stop trying...
 
I would like some Aji Oros, please, and to that some Rocoto Amarillo, Turbo Pube and a Giant variant.
 
...for starters....
 
You are good, absolutely good at it...
 
 
 
Back
Top