Pass the wooden hut opposite Hillside Farm at the rocky storm-lashed extremity of Bryher and you may spot farmer Ruth Eggins in full PPE, including goggles, industrial facemask and double gloves. Approach a bit closer and your nose and throat will start to tingle. You could be forgiven for imagining that the farm is the victim of a rogue Covid outbreak or freak chemical attack.
In fact, Ruth is handling the world’s hottest chilli, a strange brain-shaped fruit called Carolina Reaper. Even its crumpled form and beaked witchlike ‘nose’ look grimly sinister. This red devil was developed in Carolina, USA, by the aptly named Ed Currie, and in 2013 declared the hottest chilli pepper in the world by Guinness World Records. At Hillside, Ruth chops and boils it up to produce the farm’s newest product, a head-blowing sauce called Bryher Fire. Try it if you dare.
For Ruth, donning full PPE is an unexpected throwback to the days when she worked as a nurse on the mainland, before moving to the 40-acre Duchy-tenanted farm on Bryher with her farmer husband Graham and three children in 2015.
Over the following years Hillside flourished as a traditional small mixed farm, combining the keeping of egg-laying hens and hardy Red Devon cattle on its heather-clad coastal heathlands with the cultivation of vegetables and strawberries that were sold on an honesty stall outside the handsome white farmhouse. Guiding the Eggins on their journey was a desire to support biodiversity and minimise their carbon footprint.
Then in 2020 the pandemic hit, and their business hit the rocks.
“We were totally dependent on our holiday lets and our honesty stall. So when Covid hit, our income collapsed,” says Ruth. “We realised we had to find another source of income by coming up with a product that was sustainable, that could be posted to the mainland, and could potentially be scaled up. Resilience was key.”
Ruth and Graham experimented with a number of products. First, air-dried beef, or biltong, from the meat of their Red Devons. It was delicious, but the meat was not available all year. Next, crisps made from their abundant kale, but their bitter taste ruled them out. Then, when the farm had excess chillies at the end of the season, a farm volunteer suggested drying and selling them. Ruth borrowed a dehydrator from a neighbour, gave it a try and the dried chillies proved an instant hit both on the honesty stall and with customers on the mainland. Being light, they were easy to post. “People loved them and asked if we’d be producing them again the following year, so we knew we’d found our saviour crop,” says Ruth. “Scilly Chilli had been born.”
In 2021 the pair planted an array of joyously colourful varieties of differing strengths. There were mild Mexican Jalapenos which Ruth used in a sweet chilli jam and a dipping sauce, and mid-hot Cayennes from South America (named after the Cayenne river in French Guiana) which were the hero ingredient of her Piri Piri sauce. She dried Cayennes and Ring of Fire and ground them into a powder that gave a kick to chocolate and locally made fudge. At the super-hot end of the scale were Seven Pot Katy, the fruity but worryingly named Fatalii, and the fearsomely ferocious Carolina Reaper, all reserved for the Bryher Fire sauce, whose tiny bottle is labelled with the company’s ingenious logo (created by a neighbour in exchange for veg), a Mexican day-of-the-dead skull.
One of the Eggins’ most exciting finds was the tiny, sunshine-coloured Aji Limon, from Peru. “As its name suggests, it tastes of lemon,” says Ruth. “People who can’t normally eat citrus can get their citrus hit with this.” She turned it into Lemon Chilli Jam, which sold out almost immediately. “Last year we only planted ten plants, as an experiment, so this year we’re planting 90!”
As the couple experimented with their fiery fruits, they tried them out on any islanders who were willing. “We call them the CHOB club - chilly heads of Bryher!” laughs Graham. “The dried jalapeno proved a real hit in chilli con carne made with the mince of our home-reared beef, and people loved our sweet chilli dipping sauce with crabcakes made from Island Fish crab.”
The chillies fit in well around the other crops grown at Hillside. The farm is justly famous for its sweet teardrop-shaped strawberries, and just as those and the spring vegetables run out of steam, the chillies ripen. (The Eggins buy the chilli plants in as seedlings in April, from a specialist nursery in Truro). Unlike the strawberries, which are grown outside, the chillies are cultivated in polytunnels which reach the searing temperatures they love. Pollination is aided by companion plants such as calendula.
Chillies also tick many boxes in terms of sustainability. No artificial inputs or pesticides are used; instead, soils are fertilised with manure from the farm’s animals and Graham makes a feed from seaweed off the beach and discarded crab and lobster shells. If young seedlings are attacked by aphids, biological controls see them off. And packaging is glass, tin or brown envelopes, rather than plastic.
Another big plus is that as well as being delicious and sustainable, the chillies can be frozen then processed into sauces and jams, and sold online, during the quiet winter months when the farm has little other income. The Reaper and its companions may be grim-faced, but they’ve proved to be knights in scorching red armour.
Scilly Chilli, Hillside Farm, Bryher
Image credit: adjbrown.com
