Section 1 of 5
Chile
One crop, two colours, two valleys and a century of somebody at a college trying to make the pod behave. Everything else on this site is downstream of it.
Start here. How New Mexico's State Question was made official in 1996 by the legislature, and what 'Christmas' means as an answer.
Photo: Amar Preciado / Pexels
Red or Green — and What the Legislature Did About It
How New Mexico's State Question was made official in 1996 by the legislature, and what 'Christmas' means as an answer. An explainer on the question's real bureaucratic history and its older cultural roots.
6 pages in Chile. The complete roster of the site is on the archive.
Everything in Chile
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons Read →Hatch Valley: Why the Ground Changes the Pod
What the Hatch Valley's altitude, soil alkalinity and dry heat actually do to capsaicin development, with reference to NMSU research. A piece about place as ingredient.
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Photo: HRIDYAKSH GEJWAL / Pexels Read →The Chimayó Chile Stayed When Everything Else Was Bred Away
The heirloom strain that Chimayó growers have saved for generations — what makes it genetically distinct from Hatch commercial varieties, and what the acequia system has to do with its survival. A piece of agricultural argument.
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Photo: Thomas Chauke. / Pexels Read →The Whole Town Smells Like It for a Month
What happens at a propane roasting drum — the technique, the timing, the Maillard chemistry, the chest-freezer economics — and why September is the only window. A walk-through of a single recurring event.
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons Read →New Mexico No. 9, 1913
Fabián García's breeding work at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, and how a single released cultivar in 1913 set the template that all subsequent commercial breeding worked from. A short historical piece anchored to a named year and a named person.
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Photo: Elizabeth Celestino / Pexels Read →NuMex Big Jim, 1974: The Largest Pod on Record
Roy Nakayama's release of NuMex Big Jim at NMSU and its entry into the Guinness records for pod length — what he was solving for, and what the breeding trade-off cost in heat. A comparison between Big Jim and the No. 9 lineage.