BROOKINGS, S.D. — Shannon Mutschelknaus grows a wide variety of peppers on his farm, Wayward Springs, northeast of Brookings. These peppers are sold to hot sauce makers around South Dakota and Minnesota.

“We grow a lot of super hot peppers. So these are the really hot ones, like maybe you’ve heard of the Carolina Reapers, the Ghost Peppers, Scorpion Peppers, all the ones that you don’t want to eat straight up but you can make them into a hot sauce and they go a long ways for a small amount,” Mutschelknaus said.

Each year, he grows between 700 and 800 pepper plants. But, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. He started to notice some disease issues in his peppers, but they weren’t able to figure out what exactly it was.

When Mutschelknaus first started to grow peppers, he would harvest them

See Full Page