Virginia Grower Earning a Hot Reputation

NEW MARKET, Va. June 25, 2005 (AP) — They call him "the Chile Man'' because of the heat he generates from a small organic farm nestled on the shoulders of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Virginia.

Robert Farr raises 70 varieties of peppers -- 58 of them hot. He also markets a dozen kinds of sweet peppers, 12 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, herbs, horseradish, assorted greens, berries and flowers, among other things.

Farr converts many of his hot peppers into 20 pulse-pounding products ranging from salsas to barbecue sauces, marinades to mustards.

The family sells its potent produce at county fairs, farmers' markets, via the Internet and from the demonstration kitchen at their farmstead, called Between Two Hills.

The growth of Farr's business has been nothing short of incendiary. In July of 1998, Farr took what he calls "a radical sabbatical,'' ending an 18-year career as a marketing manager in the computer industry.

The Farrs moved from a Washington suburb to Round Hill, Va., about 50 miles to the northwest, where they began producing peppers on two and one-half acres of their 10-acre property.

"We have buyers now from throughout Virginia and the mid-Atlantic. Some of our customers are from overseas,'' Farr says. "About 20 percent of the business is done on the Internet.''

Why hot peppers?

Farr says he wasn't aiming at any particular buyer taste. Rather, he wanted to sell flavorful peppers to people like himself -- "folks who yearn to feel the burn.''

Some of his peppers earn a six-figure value on the Scoville Scale, which assigns numbers to how much water you would have to drink before neutralizing the heat.

"They range from zero for bell peppers to 5,000 (units) for jalapenos, to 300,000 for habaneros to 450,000 for red savinas,'' he says.

That means if you poured a cup of water into an empty container, you'd have to add 450,000 cups of water before the heat would disappear, Farr says.

An oily substance called capsaicin (kap-SA'-sin) is the bad boy responsible for producing that burning feeling. Capsaicin is soluble in cold water, which is why Farr suggests snuffing the flames with bread, ice cream, milk or yogurt rather than beer or ice water.

Milk contains a protein that binds with the capsaicin alkaloid, neutralizing it, he says. "You also can try peanut butter.''

And be careful where you place your hands for 15- to 20 minutes after working with hot peppers.

"Never touch your eyes after touching hot peppers,'' Farr says. "Don't touch your nose. Don't go to the bathroom. And by all means, don't touch your partner. It could ruin her entire evening.''

Most peppers require a lengthy growing period -- about 85 days for transplants. Cultivate them in well-drained, loose soil. A moderate amount of fertilizer is good -- spread alongside the plant -- but not too much. It'll make the plants grow leggy.

Farr prefers minimum tillage, raised beds and planting in triangles rather than rows.

"A benefit of triangulation is that less land is required than using row-cropping,'' he says. "Plants interweave, providing increased support, and shade the soil, suppressing weeds and increasing water retention.''

He also advises against monocultures, or sticking with a single crop.

Farr grows his peppers near dissimilar plants -- something that in an organic way helps protect his produce from insects or disease.

"The most important thing I grow is flowers, because they're good companion plants. The good bugs they attract eat the bad bugs (that might attack the pepper plants.) They also provide food for micro-organisms in the soil.''

Favored companions for peppers on the Farr farm are fennel, yarrow, Queen Anne's lace, parsley and carrots, some of which he lets go to seed.

"We have no pest problems here because of our companion plants. Everything is in balance.''

Despite all the heated talk about peppers, Farr respects the side effects from horseradish even more.

"I can process any pepper in the world without wearing protection,'' he says. "But when I process horseradish, I wear a two-compartment gas mask and some goggles.''

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On the Net:

For more about hot peppers: http://www.thechileman.com; http://www.wvu.edu/(tilde)agexten/hortcult/homegard/peppers.htm