How This All Started

This series didn’t begin as a grand plan. It started with a problem.

Since day one, Craic Sauce has sourced 100% of its peppers locally. Being that close to farming, one thing becomes clear pretty quickly: farming isn’t linear. Every season is different. 

There are peaks and valleys, droughts, early frosts, and short windows where everything needs to align.

And when it doesn’t, you can get surplus.

This really came to life with Clark Farm. They had a few hundred pounds of beautiful organic peppers with no home and frost coming in. In many cases, that produce would stay on the vine or go to compost simply because there wasn’t a viable path to market.

Instead, we tried something different.

We took the produce—peppers, beets, carrots, kohlrabi, garlic—and turned it into a hot sauce. We valued the ingredients, valued the labor, and returned finished product back to the farm for their CSA, with some set aside to share more broadly.

That was the beginning of the single source surplus series.

The Model

At its core, this is a partnership between farms and a value-added producer.

Farms and food producers operate on opposite cash cycles. Farms invest heavily in the spring—soil, labor, planting—with little revenue early on. For us, most revenue comes later in the year, after harvest and through the holidays.

That mismatch creates an opportunity.

Through a barter-style model, surplus produce is transformed into a finished product that returns value back to the farm at a time when they need it most. It reduces waste, supports farm cash flow, and allows us to work with peak-season, hyper-local ingredients.

It’s not a traditional model. But it works because it’s built around relationships and timing.

What Makes These Sauces Different

All of these sauces share a common foundation: fermentation.

They are built through long lacto ferments and layered with handcrafted vinegars, often developing a “triply fermented” profile through a progression from lacto fermentation to natural sugars becoming alcohol, and then alcohol into vinegar. That creates a tangy, complex, slightly funky depth that evolves over time.

From there, each sauce becomes its own expression of a farm and a season.

• Ingredients are 100% sourced from a single farm (with occasional supporting partners)

• Ferments run long, often around six months, building real umami

• Vinegars bring brightness, sweetness, and structure

• No attempt to replicate—each batch is one and done

These aren’t designed to be consistent year to year. They’re designed to capture the terroir and opportunity from each farm.

The Farms Behind the Sauces

Each sauce is shaped by what the farm grows, what the season brings, and how those ingredients come together.

Strawberry Dog Farm (Beverly, MA)

A half-acre farm in Beverly, part of the New Entry Farm program, brought an early season bounty of jalapeños, poblanos, Sungold tomatoes, and husk cherries.
 The result is a bright, verde-style sauce—tangy, slightly sweet, and layered with fermented depth.

Skinny Dip Farm (Westport, MA)

A four-acre farm on the South Coast working with a wide range of pepper varieties. This batch leaned into citrusy aji peppers, built out with ginger squash husk cherry vinegar and black garlic into a bold, base-building sauce with floral and citrus notes.

Hutchins Farm (Concord, MA)

One of our longest-standing partners, known for incredibly vibrant peppers. This sauce pushes volume and variety—floral, layered, and supported by radishes, squash, and a clean apple cider vinegar base.

Farmer Dave’s (Dracut, MA)

A 90-acre farm producing a wide range of crops and a core sourcing partner. Cherry bomb and aji dulce peppers meet a pear, husk cherry, and apple vinegar blend in a balanced sauce that sits between finishing and base-building.

Clark Farm (Carlisle, MA)

The original partner in this series, farming 64 acres and deeply rooted in the community. This year’s batch leaned into a surplus of tomatoes, jalapeños, and hot wax peppers, built around a spicy jalapeño-tomato vinegar and balanced with shiraz beets—resulting in a deeply layered, evolving heat.

Why It Matters: Community and Local Agriculture

At first glance, this project is about reducing food waste.

But it quickly becomes something bigger.

For farms, it creates pride. These sauces are a direct extension of their work—something tangible that carries their name, their land, and their season.

For us, it pushes creativity. Every batch is different, and every collaboration forces us to adapt, experiment, and grow as makers.

For the community, it builds connection.

CSA members recognize the ingredients. Market customers hear the story. People begin to understand how food moves, where it comes from, and what it means to support it.

And then it expands even further—chefs, dining programs, and partners begin to use these sauces, turning them into dishes, menus, and experiences.

What starts as surplus becomes a network:
 farms, producers, chefs, and community connecting to local grown produce.

 

What’s Next

Not long ago, we didn’t have the capacity to do this at scale.

Now, with better equipment and a more nimble process, the door is open.

This series has grown from one farm to five, and it will continue to evolve. There’s also new partnerships forming, like with Boston University Dining, where surplus-based sauces are being developed with a built-in community to serve.

The opportunity here is big.

Not just for hot sauce—but for how farms and food producers work together.

Stronger connections. Better use of what’s grown. More value staying local.

And a whole lot of good craic along the way.