Good luck on finding new containers like these for a quarter, and if you do, I bet there are bunches of people here who would like to know where to find them. If I ever do, I'll certainly let you know. Now that you got me all worked up on this again, I may write to the spice company and see if they can give me an answer on who makes theirs. You never know what might happen until you at least try. I'll be making powder out of Fataliis, yellow 7 pods, bhuts, Naga Morich, Butch Ts, Morugas, and brain strains this year. I may play with making mixes, and I'm at least going to attempt to smoke a few on the grill to see how that works.
I have been thinking about making powders available outside my local group of people, so I have been going through all the websites from USDA and talking to my extension agents about what it takes top do this kind of thing for a living, so all the facts are still fresh in my mind. The thing that shocked me a little was the regulations for the people growing the peppers to sell. For me, I have had a registered plant nursery since 1986. I have all my paperwork to do business and get inspected on a regular basis by plant inspectors. I also have to sign compliance agreements on how I will treat certain plants that go to certain states, and I have to have extra inspections to certify my plants to go to other states. People want to know what chemcials are being used and how they are applied and by who, and this is just for plants that nobody will eat. BUT, if you want to be a hot pepper farmer, you can just about do anything you want if all your selling is raw peppers. You can use any chemical you want and use it any way you want and nobody is going to check on you to see if you do what your supposed to do. They just assume you will use the right chemicals and always adhere to label instructions. This whole thing has really made me think more about the food we buy at the store, thats for sure. Now, if you want to be able to package your peppers and label them as organically grown, THEN there will be inspections, etc. As far as the powder goes, it has to do with being a cottage business and the selling of seasonings. A pepper that is not in its perfect natural form and not turning into a dried herb or seasoning has to be prepared by a business set up like a resataurant. This new rule allows people who want to bake a few cakes at home and sell them or bread, or something like that, to be able to do it. I guess they think that if you sell more than $15,000 in a year, that you are more of a professional, and not just doing it as a side line. As it is, for the powder. You can not sell it on line, or by mail order of any kind. It MUST be picked up at your business, or personally delivered in order to be able to sell it. You also have to sell it to a person and not directly to a resataurant. I know I'm expecting to have about 60 to 80,000 peppers this year, and I'm not going to be eating all of them, so I am needing to figure what I'm going to do with all that, one way or the other. Some day we should get together. I'm just off I-4 west of you a little bit.
