alt:food

Chillies heat up farms in Wales

by Eva Caiden

Chillies with a social conscience spice up SPAR shelves

Mike Rankin and a farm worker with their chillies

A Carmarthenshire crop of chillies will be stocked in SPAR stores across the UK following a commendation in the recent True Taste Wales awards.

The chillies are grown on Hope Acres Farm in Ammanford as part of a drug rehabilitation programme. Hope Acres began growing chillies 18 months ago with support from The Really Welsh Trading Company.

80 recovering addicts from around the UK live on the farm, looking after 10 varieties of chillies including the commended cherry bomb variety. Project Director Mike Rankin says, “Working on the farm helps people clear their heads. And it works – 82% are clean five years on.”

Harvesting willl end in December but the chillies will be back again next June and plans are underway to get them stocked in Tesco.

2nd November 2007

Really Welsh have been growing and delivering Welsh produce to stores since 2006. As well as chillies, they also grow daffodils, cauliflowers and leeks amongst other things. The company donates 5% of their profits to charity and this is how the partnership between Hope Acres and Really Welsh first began. You can buy the chillies through the website or at SPAR.

Some like it hot - The Scoville Scale measures the hotness of piquancy of a chili. Named after its creator, American chemist Wilbur Scoville, the number of Scoville heat units (SHU) shows the amount of capsaicin present. Compare your favourite chillies on a SHU scale here.

World’s hottest chilli: The bhut jolokia, grown in north-eastern India, has been crowned the World’s Spiciest Chilli. It clocks in at a scorching 1,001,304 SHU. The average jalapeno is about 10,000 SHU. A single seed of this chilli will leave you with a tingle on your tongue for up to 30 minutes. In India they are also smeared on fences to scare of wild elephants. A novel way of dealing with annoying neighbours.

Wales isn’t the only place getting in on the chilli growing act. Farms in Norwich,Hampshire and Cambridge are all cranking up the heat and growing chillies too.

A man died earlier this year after a competition to make the hottest chilli went horribly wrong. Andrew Lee, 33, from Doncaster, suffered heart failure the morning after he ate the chilli.

Type bhut jolokia into You tube and you’ll find a whole host of heroes or idiots, depending on your stance. But this is one of the funniest:

Picture of chillies courtesy of Flicr user Just a Temporary Measure