Smoking Peppers on the Farm
A short video about smoking peppers on the farm at Purple Sage.
Fall! It's the time of year we harvest and smoke peppers at Purple Sage Farms. Tim built our smokers from used equipment: commercial refrigerators from restaurants, a discarded wood-burning stove, and other scrap materials collected over the years.
We flavor the smoke by burning wood from local orchards—this year it's plum wood. Serranos, Jalapeños, Anaheims, Habaneros, and Sweet Italian peppers smoke for 4 to 12 hours, depending on their size. We grow all of these on the farm, Certified Organically. This value added farm product gives us winter income when plants are growing much slower and we don't have fresh produce to harvest.
While we typically grow all of these types of peppers for the smoker. The long, cold spring in Idaho delayed plants from fruiting and they have not ripened in the time they typically do so we will be augmenting the Sweet Italian supply with organic peppers grown by Fiddler's Green Farm and Rice Family Farms.
We know many of you love the flavor of our freshly smoked peppers and it would be a shame not to have a supply this winter—so it's wonderful that we can source from other amazing farmers! We're so grateful to our community of organic farmers in Idaho, who all contribute to this vibrant and diverse food system.
