The Call to Home-2022 to present

An introduction to the pursuit of our garden dreams: 

When we moved out to California in 2005, Mike and I were instantly drawn to the amazing farmer's markets in places like Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Gilroy, Modesto, Stockton and Salinas. At these burgeoning farmer's markets [photo: Tally shopping the Ferry Building market in 2015] we would encounter denizens of the freshest garden fare we had ever seen and we were continually blown away by the many artisan products that were created from the harvests.

Mike and I (Mike as a Golf Course Superintendent and I as a nurseryman) began to try our hands at growing different vegetables, learning the ins-and-outs of planning gardens, garden soil prep, seed propagation, and organic growing methods. We grew in pots before expanding to raised beds and eventually back to the earth. We continued to grow in community garden plots or borrowed land from friends to expand our production capabilities.

We shared our fresh bounty with local restaurants for many years before we realized that we could transform our vegetables and herbs into unique secondary products that would allow us to more widely share the fruits of our labor. In short, we learned how to properly preserve our food through canning and we were hooked!!

For over a decade, we continued to learn about heirloom vegetable, herb and flower varieties, quality seed stock companies and the organic product routines that helped facilitate crop successes, season over season.

In early 2022--the call to home became thunderous and we answered. Having enjoyed 16 years in northern California and another three years in Florida, my husband Michael and I kept finding ourselves drawn to a place that is known for its long connection to the land and the kind hospitality of its constituents. A job opportunity arose and Mike and I found ourselves recommitted to the place that I was born and raised--Laurel, MS. It was the place we were married and the place that would allow us the space to chase our dream, now more fully realized, to grow plants for production.

We started with a $99 greenhouse and a cinder block raised bed setup. As we could, we added beds and containers. That first year, we grew only for ourselves to make sure we understood what growing crops in Mississippi would require. We grew mostly herbs, tomatoes and peppers. We began canning herb rich tomato sauces, salsas and hot sauces.

The gloriously colorful, unique tasting, and interestingly shaped pepper selection began to pique our curiosity and interest more and more. We find out that we are REAL pepper people. We found our passion as heirloom pepper growers and makers of hot sauce. We began fine tuning our recipe and have found that our universal recipe allows the peppers to do all of the talking.