TheChileWoman

10/07/2026

Love these dogs.

10/02/2026

Hurrah! Looks like I won’t have to pick in the rain. I’ll still get wet but anything is better than picking in the rain.
Just a reminder: Market starts at 9 in October instead of 8 AM.

09/27/2026

09/26/2026

And thank you to Sarah for this spicy treat!

09/26/2026

Thank you to Back 40 Farm for this cute keychain!

09/25/2026

The next time someone rolls their eyes and complains about my prices, I’ll show them this photo.

09/24/2026

Got this pepper growing in the chile field right now.

09/19/2026

Lots of color in the chile field …
and at market at this time of year.

09/17/2026

Demand for New Mexico green chile remains huge, but supply is shrinking and wholesale prices are climbing. The shortage is affecting farms, roasting operations and a $54.8 million state industry. FULL STORY ⬇️

09/13/2026

All these reside in my own personal Svalbard at TheChileWoman.

The Chile In Chimayó Is A Different Plant Than The Chile In Hatch

Not a different grade. A different plant. The chiles grown in the old villages up north — Chimayó, Velarde, Alcalde, Escondida, and more than a dozen others, each named for the place it comes from — are landraces. New Mexico State University defines a landrace as a line of plants adapted to one geographic area through more than a hundred years of selection and seed saving. These have been at it for over four hundred.

Here is how it works, and it is not romantic. Every season somebody picks the best red pods, pulls the seed, dries it, and puts it in a can on a shelf. That is the entire breeding program. Do that long enough in one valley, at one elevation, in one kind of dirt, and you end up with a chile that does not really exist anywhere else. NMSU's genetic work found the northern landraces are distinct from the commercial New Mexico-type varieties and closer to landraces from Mexico.

They are also fragile. Cross-pollination from commercial fields can erase a landrace in a few seasons, and every farmer who quits takes a line out with him.

Whose chile do you buy, and how long have you been buying it from the same people?