Here in Wisconsin, there’s an entire festival dedicated to an heirloom pepper. It’s the Beaver Dam Pepper Festival.
Today we head to a Beaver Dam Pepper grower based in Watertown. Rose Fliess owns and operates Cornucopia MicroFarm with her family. This year, they have around 2,500 pepper plants at their mixed vegetable production farm. This includes the Beaver Dam Pepper that will be the star of the show at the festival on Sep. 14.
The family’s mission is to grow and sell the best-tasting field vegetables. They’ve dedicated years of research to finding the best-tasting varieties. Because of this, they don’t tell people the seed names, except for the Beaver Dam Pepper.
The origin story begins in Hungary, Fliess says. From a small village in what was then Yugoslavia, several families migrated to the U.S. to call Beaver Dam, Wisconsin their home. These families brought their beloved pepper seeds into the country tucked in their handkerchiefs or sewn into the hems of dresses and the lining of trousers.
Like many immigrants, they made do with the very little money they had. These seeds meant the world to them. They grew vegetables in a huge garden, had bountiful orchards, and prided themselves in canning and preserving their harvest to get them through the rough Wisconsin winters. The families passed the tradition of seed saving through the generations.
The Beaver Dam Pepper has a spicy, sweet, and mildly bold taste, Fliess says. Many people enjoy eating the raw peppers dipped in sour cream and salsa. Peppers can go in chili, stews, stuffed peppers, jellies, soups, and even in your morning eggs.
You will also find apple pepper pancakes, apple pepper pies, pepper beer, and the original Beaver Dam Pepper brat at every Beaver Dam Pepper Festival, held on the second Saturday of September.
This podcast series is brought to you courtesy of Specialty Crop Block Grant 23-10. Learn more about how to engage with Wisconsin’s agricultural tourism industry at https://gowiagtourism.com/.
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This podcast series is courtesy of Specialty Crop Block Grant 23-10.
