Updates

• October 6, 2023

Autumn 2023 Update - from our Horticulture Manager

Here at the Farm, as Autumn approaches, our tunnels are at full capacity with chillis ready to pick. We have already been harvesting hundreds of kilograms of chillis throughout the summer but the bulk of our crop is currently being picked. We are still waiting on some varieties to ripen, usually all the Superhot chillis, and hope there’s a bit more sunshine to help them along. Most of our chillis are processed on site by either mashing (in an industrial sized blender), dried (in an industrial sized dryer) or frozen (yep, in an industrial sized freezer). Along with the chilli picking we are extremely busy with seed collecting from selected plants. We will have collected in excess of a million seeds by the end of the season that all require careful preparation and viability tests. We keep our own seed to grow from for next year and the rest are counted into packets and made available to buy. If you have chillis growing at home you will, hopefully, be doing the same as us and harvesting the fruits of your labour. As the colder weather begins to return and the drop in daylight hours becomes more evident, chillis will gradually stop producing flowers and new growth. Fruit will continue to ripen if left on the plant and some growers who have the time and space will start the over wintering process. Check our over wintering tips if you would like to keep any plants for next year;  https://southdevonchillifarm.co.uk/pages/growing-faqs?_pos=4&_sid=23bd70d89&_ss=r In case you hadn’t heard a little earlier this year we attended the RHS Rosemoor Flower show as an an exhibitor. This was an incredible experience for the whole team at the Farm and we were very pleased to receive a five Flower award at our first RHS event! Amrit and Jenny designed a show stopping chilli garden that received a huge amount of praise over the course of the weekend. Pictured is Amrit with the award.

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• September 20, 2023

Autumn in the Kitchen at SDCF

Hi, I’m Dave the head chef here at the South Devon Chilli Farm (yet to be photographed). Although if truth be told until recently I was the only chef! I now have a trainee chef called Matt and I am busy teaching him the ropes. I am ex-military and been working here for a little over 10 years. So it’s Autumn now, and time for us to take advantage of the abundance of apples in our orchard at the Farm. The apples all come from a mixture of heritage trees, planted on site several years ago. So firstly we pick the apples, then after a wash they are cooked down in order to extract the juice which is then strained and measured into batches. These batches are then stored to be kept until required for making our Apple Chilli Jelly. This is one of our very first original recipes.  When it comes to the cooking of our Jelly, we are very proud to say we do not use any artificial setting agents whatsoever, just the apple juice, chilli, sugar and a small touch of lemon juice to help activate the pectin to set the Jelly. For our Elderflower Chilli Jelly we infuse the juice with elderflower before adding the other ingredients. The finished recipe is then loaded into our depositor and immediately measured into jars, lidded and left to cool before labelling and hitting the shelves for our customers to enjoy! Of course, along with the apples, the tonnes of chillies on all our plants are being picked and also need to be processed whether it be drying, cooking, smoking or mashing and freezing them - this time of year is a busy one for us all!

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• June 21, 2023

Making our Delicious Chilli Chocolate!

Our latest blog installment comes from our Chocolatier Elsa, who's sharing some insider info on how she concocts our to-die-for chilli choc! Read on.... Firstly, the "raw" chocolate is melted down gently, along with our homegrown chilli powder and the other flavourings and ingredients required - depending on which bar I'm making that day!  Its important to temper the chocolate properly. Tempering ensures the fat in the chocolate crystallises in a uniform way, so that once it sets, the chocolate has that satisfying SNAP and a glossy finish - rather than being crumbly and dull. This process requires careful temperature control at every stage! All our chocolates are laid out by hand, and we make batches of up to 60kg at a time - a relatively small batch size due to the handmade nature of the work.  At the Chilli Farm, we do all this in a small temperature-controlled room that we call the "Chocolate Box".  Once the chocolate is cooled, it gets lovingly packed and labelled by hand, ready to fill the shelves of our warehouse and on-site Farm Shop.

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• June 5, 2023

Musings of a Chilli Farm Fulfillment Operative!

This month is the turn of Nick, our Fulfillment Operative, to share his thoughts about working at the Chilli Farm. My Job I'm the new kid on the block here at the Chilli Farm - everyone has been very friendly and welcoming and its a great team to work with. I enjoy the day to day aspects of my role as there is always something different to do - and a long to do list! In the mornings I fulfill orders from the website and our trade customers. In the afternoons I can often be found planting chillies or mowing the grass to keep the farm looking tidy for visitors. Another aspect of my role that I really like is running market stalls and events when we do those.  Being in the South Hams The Farm is a great place to come to work - sometimes I pinch myself that I am working in the rolling hills of Devon's most beautiful countryside!  The Products My favourite at the moment has to be the salsas, especially the smoky chipotle version. I think it goes best with a bottle of beer and some Doritos! I also use it as a burger relish or as a pizza base.  The spiciest sauce I like is the Hot Orange Habanero, I prefer this in a wrap and love its fruity flavour with a good amount of chilli heat!  Chillies Its fair to say I didn't know much about chillies before starting work at the Chilli Farm (apart from that they can be really flippin' hot). I was surprised to learn that the heat you feel when you eat a chilli doesn't actually come from the seeds themselves, but the fleshy bits that hold the seeds to the inside of the fruit.  I'm learning more about chillies with every day that passes and quickly becoming an expert on the South Devon Chilli Farm product range, so that I can make recommendations to customers at markets and events. 

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• March 31, 2023

A Day in the Life of Lucy, our Production Coordinator

Morning Chilli Farmers! First thing, Ben our Operations Manager gets the coffee on and we have a quick team catch up.  How are we all? How are our pets and babies? And OOOO... What cake do we have today? Chilli farmers have cake as our default setting you know!  I co-ordinate the production of everything in the warehouse at South Devon Chilli Farm that is packed and assembled. Seeds, dried chillies, and all our gift sets. The cooking of everything is down to Dave, our head chef.  We are in the midst of our busiest time of year for seed sales so I start the day by counting  & packing 1000s and 1000s of seeds. We have approximately 60 varieties at present, with plans to add more varieties at the end of this year! I pop the packs into brightly coloured seed packets for our Fulfilment Team to send out to our eager customers.  Next to get to grips with our homegrown chillies that we dry here at the farm. Any custom requests? Bulk orders? Do we have enough to last for the rest of the season? Is there time to amend the growing plan for the crop tunnels? Have any celebrity chefs endorsed our chillies that might change our sales pattern? We have 10 main varieties that we grow for commercial use, as well as 100s of others grown for plant sales and our show tunnel. A huge task carried out by our Horticulturalists.  Lunchtime now and the team dogs need entertainment! Frida, Maggie and Bear get along brilliantly, so its a highlight of their day to get together for a session of "lose the ball in the orchard"! I check on & restock our chilli farm bird table which was erected during lockdown and has since attracted many new breeds of birds to our site.  Back inside, Ben pops by again to tell me that the Christmas production schedule is shaping up. I am still hoovering pine needles out of my carpet from Christmas 2022!! There will be in excess of 20,000 items to build, a great deal of coordination with the kitchen on cooking dates & with the warehouse team regarding space required. Space is always the final frontier here at South Devon Chilli Farm! Vast amounts of packaging to be ordered, new labels to design and gift sets to create.  Not even more cake can help me at this point! Time to go home and count chilli seeds in my sleep... Goodbye chilli farmers! Lucy x 

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