Updates
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Interview with a Chilli Farm Owner (Amrit)
by Amrit Madhoo1. What has led you to become a chilli farmer? My love of growing plants, which started when I was a kid in Trinidad. I used to grow plants to sell at a market and at the side of the road for pocket money. Couple that with my love of hot sauce and you’re on to a winner! 2. What are your aspirations for SDCF for the future? To be able to offer a wider range of flavours of chilli sauces and other products with a Caribbean influence, as well as a wide range of dried and powdered chillies grown on site 3. What gives you the biggest buzz when you’re working? Seeing the first crop of plants ready to harvest each year is a feeling you can’t beat! 4. What three things have been your main focus this week? SALSA food hygiene audit, reviewing our seed crop plants and following up from a recent trade show. 5. When is your favourite time of year at the chilli farm? Early summer, when the plants are really taking off & looking lush. 6. Favourite chilli & why? Trinidad Pimento – because it has an amazing flavour yet no heat, so you can use it liberally without blowing your family’s heads off! 7. What are you doing today? Today we have been preparing for a food hygiene audit, lots of processes, paperwork and spreadsheets for me which is a doddle with my engineering background!
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Why We’re All A Bit Twitchy at the South Devon Chilli Farm!
by Amrit MadhooOur Senior Production Co-ordinator, Lucy Cassidy, explains … I don’t get to see much daylight from my usual workstation in the warehouse but during covid it was different. Those of us who stayed on to manage the upswing in online orders had to segregate and I was lucky enough to bag the shop area. If you have visited us before, you’ll know what wonderful views it has over the orchard and surrounding South Devon countryside. I soon started noticing the huge variety of wildlife that had found sanctuary at the Farm. Deer and foxes were frequent visitors, and then there were the birds. So many different species chorusing a welcome on my early morning starts. My thoughts soon turned from packing chilli seeds, to where I could put out bird seed! I wanted to draw my new feathered friends closer and help them through the leaner months. The answer came in the form of a locally advertised doll’s house which we adapted to make a bird table. What a find that was! The dolls may have moved out but the birds soon moved in and I’ve been a dedicated twitcher ever since. I’ve seen everything from commonplace house sparrows, dunnocks and blackbirds, to the more exotic-looking bullfinches (who naughtily eat the young buds on our apple trees), plus goldfinches, jays and, of course, jaunty little bluetits galore. But it’s the occasional sighting of a green woodpecker that really gets me excited. With its signature ‘yaffle’ cry, olive green body and burgundy red cap, it’s almost a dead-ringer for the colourful bird on the label for our luscious Piri Piri Sauce! I’ve yet to spot a species that comes close to the flamboyant creature on our Peruvian Chilli Sauce bottles, however, but give it time! Maybe it could pass for a territorial pheasant and we see plenty of those here, too. Even some of the newer members of our team not usually bothered by birdlife are getting twitchy! It’s quite something to see a greater spotted woodpecker dive in to drill away at the easy pickings. Once seen, never forgotten, their striking black, white and red plumage and streamlined bodies never fail to impress. Spring is a great time of year for bird-watching so call in to see us if you’re passing. After you’ve browsed our wide selection of chilli-inspired produce and gifts, why not grab yourself a coffee and a cake, and take a seat outside for a while to enjoy the sun and the view? If you’re lucky, you might spot an early swallow or house martin, coax a shy wren out of hiding or attract the attention of the nation’s favourite – a cheeky robin hopping up beside you in hope of a few crumbs. Happy twitching!
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Interview with a Chilli Farm Owner (Jen)
by Amrit Madhoo1. What has led you to become a chilli farmer? I have Amrit my husband to blame for this one entirely! Chilli Farming is a second career for both of us; with my background being in Financial Planning. We took the leap in 2022 after deciding we wanted to relocate from Scotland to the South West, and Amrit wanted to make a move into Horticulture. What are your aspirations for SDCF for the future? I would love to introduce a full range of SDCF dried chilli flakes, powders and rubs, as well as a Caribbean range (watch this space!). I’d also like SDCF to become an RHS Master Grower – we’re well on our way to achieving this with a 5 Flower Gold award for our show garden at RHS Rosemoor last year. Amrit and I are full of ideas and hopes for the future of SDCF; its already come a long way since we took the reins in 2022. What gives you the biggest buzz when you’re working? Without a doubt chatting to customers in our farm shop who love our products or are delighted to come here and discover something new. What three things have been your main focus this week? This week has been a particularly busy one for me, but my main 3 jobs have been: Getting us ready for a future SALSA audit – this is a huge milestone for the farm and we are committed to continuously raising our standards across the business so its important that we reflect this by being certified. Helping the Horticulture team in the nursery tunnel – we’ve been tweaking our seedling offering online, and I’ve bene writing hundreds of plant labels and tidying and shifting things around on the benches to make space for 1 litre plant pots. Onboarding some new team members to the farm; we have had a few new joiners recently, so I have been spending time with them to make sure they are settling in well, that they have everything they need to get up and running! When is your favourite time of year at the chilli farm? It’s a toss-up between March/April and August. March at the start of the growing season when we first start pricking out our seedlings is so exciting – the start of a brand new season and the nursery tunnels go from being bare, to having a green haze as the tiny plants start to take shape. In August, our plants are in full bloom, the crops and show tunnel are all full to the brim and looking like a lush jungle! Our nursery shop is also full and you can spend all day in the summer holidays chatting about plants with customers. Favourite chilli & why? This is a virtually impossible question to answer!!! I get excited by any new variety that we trial or introduce to our stable; this year we are offering Scotch Bonnets properly for the first time – I love the yellow variant especially. I’m also excited about Tangerine Dream which is an orange version of a Cherry Bomb and will be great in the air fryer full of cream cheese I reckon! What are you doing today? Today I am helping in the nursery tunnels, doing some bookkeeping, and writing a newsletter. We had a growing workshop this morning, so I dropped in to say hello to the group doing that. I’ve been updating our payroll software, and doing some shift management with the Operations Manager too. I’ve also had the very hard task of taste-testing some potential new chocolate flavours! Never a dull moment in the life of a chilli farmer!
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Getting Hands-On With A Duchess on the Farm!
by Amrit MadhooHi, my name is Andrew and I’ve been the Warehouse & Site Manager here at the South Devon Chilli Farm since August last year. Although it’s been a steep learning curve, I’ve still had plenty of time to get acquainted with the Duchess. ‘The Duchess?', I hear you ask... Well, the Duchess is a vital member of our warehouse team and is so-called because of her occasionally temperamental nature! You do have to keep on the right side of her, but if you give her lots of TLC, she can usually be persuaded to co-operate. The Duchess is our bottle labelling machine and when she’s purring along contentedly, the centre of attention, she can process upwards of 1,000 bottles per day. Originally intended for labelling wine bottles, she came to work for us about 15 years ago to help us out as the business expanded. She needs to be manually adjusted to accommodate the different shapes and sizes of the bottles and jars that we use, from the slim, elegant 50ml bottles that contain our wickedly potent Reaper Sauce, all the way up to the large 670g jars that play host to our ever-popular Chilli Jam. Now, with escalating online orders and a steady stream of year-round visitors to our Farm Shop, we really couldn’t do without her. The days are long gone when we used to line the bottles up on a box lid to be labelled and date-stamped by hand by whoever had time to spare! Recently, the warehouse has been off-limits to allow for the construction of a much-needed mezzanine floor for extra storage. The Duchess had started to complain about the workload lately so this gave us the perfect opportunity to book her in for a well-deserved spa day to sooth her nerves - aka a full service with the only company in Devon qualified to tinker with such specialised machinery! Since then, she has been happily back in harness running off labels for the new-style jars for our award-winning Mint Chilli Drinking Chocolate (Taste of the West Gold for 2024) without a glitch. So, next time you open a jar for a cuppa on a cold evening, please offer up a few kind words for the Duchess; I’m not superstitious but, you never know, it might just help to keep her sweet!
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A Trainee Chef’s time so far at South Devon Chilli Farm
by Amrit MadhooHello, I’m Matthew. I am South Devon Chilli Farm's trainee chef. Working under our current head chef Dave, I have been introduced to a whole new kind of cooking here at the farm. My past experiences in kitchens have been in pubs, so this was a new and unique experience for me! Starting my journey as a trainee chef at South Devon Chilli Farm has been eye opening, I never knew how many different types of chilli plants there were here - it baffled me to learn how many varieties were available! I have been here 8 months now and I have learned a lot; cooking here has been very different for me compared to my pub kitchen days. I hope to add to the Farm's delicious chilli recipes with my own creations in the future. With the thousands of kilograms of chillies we produce here at South Devon Chilli Farm, I get the honor of cooking some very tasty products. One of my favourites (which I am sure lots of people would agree on) is our Chilli Jam, one of the first recipes I learned when starting here. In fact, its so popular I usually do a batch of Jam every week, which can add up to over 600 jars in a day! Learning the process of making this Jam has been key for me, and is a reflection of the hard work carried out by all the lovely staff here. We are currently having work done in our warehouse, and this includes a brand new kitchen as we are moving closer to expanding as a company - the future looks bright! As we come close to 1 year since I started at the Farm, I can only say that I’m looking forward to seeing and being part of the journey that South Devon Chilli Farm is going on, with these bright changes going into 2024!
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