The peppers are planted in May and picked red, by hand, in October.
Celestino Tovar is seventy-one and has a two-storey smokehouse in Pasarón de la Vera that his father built in 1955. Every autumn he lights the fire downstairs and the peppers smoke upstairs for two weeks. His children live in Madrid and Plasencia.
His niece Marisa is thirty-seven and teaches in Plasencia. For ten autumns she has been going over to help him through the season. She is the one who sits up at night to watch the fire.
Celestino says this will be his last autumn tending the fire. That is why we are looking at the smokehouse joining @seis, with Marisa in charge if she wants it. She has not said no yet.
