COVID-19 Update: Farming is an essential business, now more than ever, and we are fully committed to growing these peppers for you all—the pepper seedlings are happily growing in the greenhouse, and we can’t wait to get this new crop of peppers to you all. Thanks for supporting our small family farm—your support means the world to us—stay healthy and safe everyone! xoxo Robyn
At Homesweet Homegrown, we are addicted to all things spicy—and we are thrilled to share our Certified Naturally Grown peppers with you all for our 2020 Chili Pepper Subscription Box.
At our 3+ acre farm in Kutztown, PA, we grow more than 40 types of rare peppers of all heat ranges and flavor profiles, and ship them across the country so chili heads just like you can experience the amazing flavor and pepper-high you can only get from eating fresh chili peppers.
Each box comes with recipes to smoke, pickle or freeze your peppers so you can enjoy them anytime of year. Stock up now and you can be enjoying a Ghost Pepper chili at your next Superbowl party, or add smoked aji limon pepper oil to your next pizza night. Peppers freeze beautifully, with all of their original flavor, health-benefits, and heat intact, so you can slice up peppers right out of the freezer and enjoy them on everything (like we do!), anytime you want.
We have also added Stretch Goals and Add-ons, see below for details.
Each variety comes with a profile card so you can learn about the history, flavor profile, food pairing, and Scoville rating of each pepper. We also include recipes and instructions for storing your peppers.
You won’t find these peppers at the grocery store—we only grow rare super hots and heirloom chilis, all grown organically without pesticides or fertilizers, and shipped fresh from the farm.
The Story of Peppers
Each pepper has its own unique history and story–like the Brazilian Starfish, which a psychic buys from me every year to help with his (third) eyesight–and the aji limon, which has brought one customer at my farmstand to tears because it reminded him growing up in Peru. All of these amazingly unusual peppers will be part of this year’s crop, and we can’t wait to share their amazing flavor, stories, (and possible psychic powers;) with you all!
At our farm, we are really rooted in the community (we even started the community garden in our town!). We only hire community members (many are artists, musicians, veterans, parents, and families) who want to make a few extra dollars with a fun side hustle. We pay a fair per bushel wage (fast pickers can earn $20-$30 an hour!) and we have a no-stress approach to picking. We post flyers in our college town, and a lot of community folks come out to help—it’s always a fun time with the most interesting conversations taking place in the field!
This year, we are upping the ante, and featuring 18 never-before-offered pepper varieties for our 2020 Harvest boxes, including Orange Copenhagen Ghost Pepper, Chocolate Reaper peppers, the MA Wartyx, (a Superhot with a Scotch Bonnet Flavor), Sugar Rush Peach, and so many more.
Every year, I love searching for super rare varieties and have seeds shipped from all over the globe to grow some of the rarest and most flavorful chili peppers on the planet.
We also are offering Kickstarter-Exclusive Boxes, including our chef box, featuring the favorite peppers of some of our chefs from Momofuko, Blue Hill Stone Barn, Dean & Deluca, Gramercy Tavern, and more, the extreme Superhot KS edition, featuring the hottest of the hot, with each pepper topping 1 million Scovilles and up!
We will also have flat rate boxes of single peppers varieties so you can stock up and hit the sauce!
For the past 7 years, we have grown some of the hottest and rarest peppers in the world for our line of hot sauces and hot pepper extracts (and, we got our start here on Kickstarter!).
We’ve also sold peppers to some amazing chefs, hot sauce makers, customers (and the occasional celebrity;) at our farm stand in Union Square in New York City and Brooklyn. And, we love watching people experience the flavor of biting into a fresh chili pepper (there is nothing quite like it!)
Now, you can experience these amazing peppers and receive a monthly harvest box of peppers shipped anywhere in the US! All grown organically without pesticides or fertilizers, and shipped fresh from our farm, sun-ripened and hand-picked by us.
We have several reward tiers, from just 3 peppers, to receiving a monthly share of our harvest.
Each Chili Pepper Harvest Box backer receives:
Each Harvest Box includes:
A few folks have asked me about add-ons and stretch goals, and I’m excited to share what we can up with!
If we reach 30K, we are sending a set of Pepper Tasting Note Cards with all orders to chart your peppers and record what you made with them, recipes, and flavor profiles. Here’s what they will look like:
If we hit 40K, we are offering a free full size bottle of DOSE pepper extract, made with scorpion peppers from our farm.
Several people wanted to add-on to their pledges and we are happy to offer a discount for additional pepper add-ons to your pledge, here’s a guide:
Healthy Soil= Healthier (and Tastier) Peppers!
Time to geek out on farming a bit—At Homesweet Homegrown, we use only biodynamic growing methods to encourage robust soil microbes, for the healthiest soil and pepper plants possible. We choose cover crops over chemicals to keep our plants healthy and happy.
In 2013, we became the highest funded hot sauce on Kickstarter because of our farm-to-bottle mission. Since then, we’ve grown more than 50,000 pepper plants on our 3 acre field, shipping peppers to chefs, customers and hot sauce makers all over the country, and our farm-to-bottle hot sauce line is sold at more than 350 shelves across the country.
We are dedicated to sustainable farming, and never apply pesticides, fertilizers or chemicals to our peppers.
Over the past 7 years we have launched several Kickstarters and this will be our fifth year growing our Chili Pepper Subscription Shares All previous Chili Pepper CSA Kickstarters have been fulfilled with no issues or delays. Farming is always dependent on nature, but we have had no problems in the past and are dedicating a set amount of peppers to be grown specifically for this project. We also live in a fantastic climate for growing peppers–weather catastrophes can happen, and if the unthinkable did happen, we would honor your pepper box for next year. But let’s be positive, shall we? We can’t wait to grow peppers for you guys, and backers are welcome to come to the field to see this year’s crop. We will also send updates throughout the growing season to keep you in the loop.