The Sweet Briar Community Garden was inaugurated in December, 2001 by Cliff Ambers, Mark Campbell (SBC Grounds) and Rebecca Ambers (SBC Environmental Studies). Located above the old dairy complex, the 0.7 acre organic garden is surrounded by solar-electric deer fencing and is home to the vegetable gardens of about twenty community gardeners, a wine-grape vineyard, fruit trees, and perennial crops, including asparagus, horseradish and rhubarb. Our hot sauces are a blend of many different chili pepper varieties. The red sauce is made from fully ripe chilis; the green is made from mature but unripe pods. In 2008 we are also making two specialty sauces: jalapeño and habanero. |
Part 1: picking, packing, prepping, grinding. In late September, a killer frost predicted for the evening, we picked all the peppers in the patch, packed them up, washed and de-stemmed them, and finally ground them into a mash, mixing them with vinegar and salt and leaving them to ferment. As the sun went down, we celebrated a successful day with a toast to the 2003 sauces.
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2: milling, mixing, bottling, packing. Three weeks later, the
mash was ready for milling. The juice was mixed with vinegar, salt, water,
and vegetable gum, cooked and bottled, labeled and packed. The mash was
dehydrated and ground to make the chili powders. |
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2002 was the first year of community gardening at Sweet Briar since the victory Gardens of WWII. It was a banner year at the garden in spite of the drought. 2003 was very different, with more rain than we could imagine — but another bumper crop of chilis. In 2007 and 2008 we were again dealing with very dry weather, but our 2008 chili crop was astounding. Thanks for visiting this page, brought to you by some tough chili plants that don't seem to mind the weather. |
(Gardeners shown above — in order of appearance — are Lisa, John, Cliff, Lynn, Alix, Perry, Rebecca, and Claudia.) |