The Fresh Chile Company Podcast

What role do we Chile users have? We are the end users of the Agricultural Researchers and Commercial Farmers. We must arm the growers with what we liked the best out of the 2023 Hatch Valley Chile Crop. I know that the Chile Farmers are planning what to do for 2024. Researchers and Farmers have been planning the next crop at this time of the year for a hundred years. For me, out of the various 20...

Let me introduce you to Elfego Baca who on October 29, 1884, was a participant on one side of what is called the Frisco Shootout involving about 81 men. It was him against 80 mad cowboys since he arrested one cowboy who was firing a pistol in a bar and making holes in the ceiling and roof so that the bar owner was going to have to patch the holes because it was raining.  Let me locate Frisco for y...

A comparison of New Mexico Ranchers, and here I am speaking of Cattle Ranchers and New Mexico Farmers, and here I am talking about commercial crops such as Chile, cotton, alfalfa, and the like that is shipped to market each year. The number one commonality is a tie between that both work seven days a week and do not work off a clock and both much have faith in the process ... Love this Podcast? Ch...

This is the last 2023 Enchanting People of New Mexico Podcast. We will start the 2024 Enchanting People of New Mexico next week. We started doing these Podcasts in June, three 15-minute Podcasts a week with Monday and Friday being History and Culture of New Mexico which mentioned people, of course, and each Wednesday focused on one person, or a couple people. Most of the Enchanting People of New M...

Today I’m talking about a 2015 member of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. He is one of 89 coaches in the Hall of Fame. If you attend a basketball game at New Mexico State University’s Pan American Center, you will see the court is the Lou Henson court. Know this: there is another Lou Henson floor, and it is at the University of Illinois. For us who were there, when the Pan American...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that in the late 1970s a television series, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams was shot one season in Lincoln County New Mexico, due to it having snow and the principle site for the show in Utah not having snow. It all started as a 1974 independent film of the same name and same title character played by Dan Haggerty with Sunn Classic Pictures which led to the NBC tel...

I’m talking about several people directly and half a million people, many in New Mexico, indirectly. I’m talking about Apollo 17 which 51 years ago was on the Moon with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt. That’s Jack Schmitt who was born in Santa Rita, New Mexico and graduated from Western High School in Silver City.  Apollo 17 was the culmination of forty hard years of work from the early rocket resear...

You might ask why in the middle of December 1972 did so many New Mexicans look up at the Moon? And, they were not the only ones, people all over the world looked up at the Moon. But especially people in New Mexico because someone born and raised in New Mexico spent 75 hours on the surface of the Moon. While he later became a U. S. Senator, that was small potatoes to being on the Moon for more than...

New Mexico has had quite a few interesting people over the years, and I want to talk about one who was more than interesting, he was very effective. On the East side of New Mexico is Curry County. Clovis is the County Seat. It was named for the 17th Territorial Governor of New Mexico, George Curry. Territorial since New Mexico wasn’t a state, yet. He was also a member of Congress in the House of R...

New Mexico has some unusual names such as Albuquerque, the County seat of Bernalillo County. Think of the spelling that young elementary students must learn both Albuquerque and Bernalillo. Bernalillo County was one of the Territory of New Mexico’s original nine counties. Let's do a little New Mexico history.  You know that famous picture of Billy the Kid standing with a rifle and wearing a h...

Let’s take a tour of New Mexico, the 47th state in the union. Here are some data points. New Mexico is the 5th largest state in the Union. There is the special four-corners area where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet for a photo opportunity. People go there to put a foot in one state, the other foot in another state, a hand in another state and their other hand in the fourth state and...

James Dolan in 1848 was born in Ireland and brought to the United States as a young child. At age 14 in 1862, he enlisted in the Union Army. Afterwards he was stationed at Fort Stanton, a few miles from Lincoln, New Mexico.  While serving at Fort Stanton Dolan met a fellow Irishman, Lawrence Murphy, who owned a store supplying goods to the fort and to the Mescalero Apache Tribe. James Dolan worked...

I’m talking today about the New Mexico racing family, the Unsers who have been racing in one way or another for more than 100 years. Most prominently, five Unsers account for 73 total starts at the Indianapolis 500 and three of those five account for nine wins. That kind of racing success doesn’t happen by accident.  Love this Podcast? Check out our website at The Fresh Chile Company . Also, check...

Tomorrow is the real Veteran’s Day and I want to connect the national holiday today, with the men and women of New Mexico. We should not confuse Veteran’s Day with Memorial Day which honors American service members who died in the service of their country. The remembrance we have November 11th is for everyone who have served their country. And, I want to add a group to Veteran’s Day, that of the f...

Let us do a little New Mexico history in the form of tall tales told to people at a campfire. Storytellers love a gathering of people around a campfire after a day riding in the great outdoors of New Mexico. There are two parts to any of what might be true. First, a description of gold or silver worth untold millions just waiting patiently in New Mexico to be discovered. Second, the problem of fin...

Colonel Frank Borman died last week at the age of 95. His lifetime effect was worldwide and certainly it was here in New Mexico. He had many homes over the years, Gary, Indiana, Tucson, West Point, many Air Force homes, NASA, Eastern Airline, Las Cruces and finally Montana. But the most important home he had, which is the same home we all have, was reflected when he and fellow astronauts, James Lo...

Many people, myself included, enjoyed Young Guns, the 1988 western that covered the Lincoln County War of 1878. The movie was great and showed a view of the outlaws that seemed real enough for me, but it wasn’t factual in several area. There is so much about the Old West Outlaw Billy the Kid that people think they know and to me it just isn’t so. Example: the popular story is that Henry McCarty, o...

It is Thanksgiving Week which is an American-centric holiday that has spread over the world. The emotion of thankfulness is a human emotion which is part of all cultures though not all cultures have a cut-and-dried holiday which focuses on our personal thankfulness. While it is not everyone and at all times, it is a holiday that I, myself, find compelling considering all of the good fortune that I...

On the main campus of New Mexico State University, in the center of the campus, is Milton Hall. For most of the 20 thousand students who walk past Milton Hall, some notice the very nice bronze statue next to Milton Hall. Yep, that is a statue of Hugh Milton the second. Or you could call him General Hugh Milton or even former NMSU president Hugh Milton. He was also a General in WWII in the MacArthu...

The one thing I know for sure is that most people have a story as to why and how they ended up in New Mexico from taking a job here to one guy when I was doing talk radio three hours a day, five days a week who I was interviewing about something, and I asked him how he came to New Mexico. He smiled and said, “Well, I was living in Michigan, and it snowed one hundred days in a row and I snapped. So...

Every day is someone’s birthday, and today is the birthday of a special person for Southern New Mexico and especially for New Mexico State University. Born on this day in 1954 was Duriel LaDon Harris, Jr. He was born in Port Arthur, Texas. If you have been to the NMSU Football Stadium, like the great game last Saturday where the NMSU Aggie won their 10th victory in football this year, you have see...

The Old West, and the modern West is front and center in the Code of the West. For some, the legendary Code of the West sounds like something written by Hollywood movie writers. Nope, it was the real deal back then and it is now, today. And, this is important, it is not written down, rather, it is taught generation by generation from older generations to the younger generation. Love this Podcast?...

There are miles and miles of dark skies in New Mexico. I have heard people surprised by how many stars they can see on a dark night out in the wilds of New Mexico.  I am going to talk about places in New Mexico where the stars are bright, deep in the night, deep in the heart… wait, not Texas, deep in the heart of New Mexico. There are a couple of towns south of Lordsburg, New Mexico. Animas with a...

One hundred and sixty years ago there was an entrepreneur named John Butterfield. You may have seen historical markers talking about the Butterfield Overland Trail which went through Las Cruces, New Mexico. The Butterfield name is still here even though the venture only lasted about three years. But what a glorious three years it was. Love this Podcast? Check out our website at The Fresh Chile Com...

Let’s talk about some New Mexico scams in history. One of the most famous was the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. It was a swindle of epic proportions involving New Mexico and many other states. To really understand what happened, we have to introduce you to the notion of salting. No, not salt on your fries, or salt on your popcorn. No, salting of something valuable to make it seem like the spot of gr...