Today, we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Ramirez.
Hi Rebecca, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
All of my life has been greatly devoted to being a musician. I am classically trained in piano and harp.
I have been a music educator for over 30 years. When my thriving music school was impacted by Covid, and I was forced to shut down, I found myself with a lot of extra time. So, I decided to focus on creating a business based on another passion of mine: food! To me, flavor and music are closely related. How I write music or improvise is sort of the same process I do when I come up with a new sauce or meal. And I wanted to capture the blend of flavors from my favorite recipes inspired by cuisines around the world. I cook with a lot of flavors, sauces, and spices and make it all from scratch.
I started exploring fermentation more and how it changed the flavors. I found that the traditional way of making hot sauce, by combining fresh peppers with vinegar and seasoning, lacked the depth that I wanted to taste. I began testing a lot of jars of vegetables and even fruit and experimented with lacto fermentation – an old preserving process using salt and water, or just salt. This was a game-changer. The layers of flavor that hit your mouth at different points while separating out the sweet, salt, tart, spice, and umami. It’s like fireworks going off in your mouth! That’s the standard I set for the product I make.
However, starting with a quality ingredient was also very important to me. I had a successful home garden from which I harvested most of my produce for home-cooked meals. I am not a fan of conventional farming practices and what they do for our land. Not to mention the pesticides and depleted nutrients in the soil. I decided that I should also use my gardening skills and start an official chili farm of my own.
That’s actually what I spent most of 2020 establishing before I even bottled my first sauce for sale. Now I have both a home garden in the city and a certified organic farm plot in the hills of Valley Center where I grow mostly chili peppers for my seasonal sauces (farm to bottle) and with other vegetables and fruit.
When I first made the decision to start Pepper Queen Farms, the first thing I did was call anyone I knew in the food or restaurant industry. Even though I knew I would be successful in creating a good product, I had never worked in the food industry before. I called my former piano student, Lucas Ryden, who owns a brand of shrub cocktail mix, Cool Hand Co, and he helped me sort out how I needed to get started.
Lucas started taking piano lessons with me when he was about five years old and continued until he became an adult. I think it was such a cool thing that after teaching and mentoring him through his childhood, he became my food industry mentor! Lucas also introduced me to the family who owns Nopalito Farms, where I grow my peppers.
I’ve been running Pepper Queen Farms for over three years, and I’ve had the opportunity to teach others how to garden, cook, and ferment food. My product sells out faster than I can make it, so I’m working on scaling up my signature flavors while still maintaining the quality and artisanship that goes into making each batch.
I am expanding the farm plot every year, and I am planning new seasonal flavors that are available locally or on my website, pepperqueen.com. I feel amazed and grateful that I am able to share my love of flavor with others and inspire their creativity in the kitchen.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
One of the biggest challenges I had was transitioning from gardening in a controlled environment at home to a farm plot. I went from container gardening to planting directly into the ground. Since most of my plants are in the nightshade family, they are prone to disease passed through pathogens in the soil from plant to plant. Normally you would want to change the placements of the plants each year.
However, in our climate, pepper plants can overwinter for as long as eight years and continue to produce year after year. There were other issues with gophers eating the roots. It became clear to me after losing two years of pepper plants that I needed to go back to growing in containers for peppers, tomatoes, or any other nightshade vegetables. I continue to grow an abundance of varieties of flowers and larger vegetable plants, like artichokes and blackberries. I still have challenges like excessive heat, Santa Ana winds, ants, snails, and other pests, but it’s manageable now by taking precautions.
The challenge of scaling my products has been finding a food manufacturer that is capable of fermenting fresh produce in larger quantities. Lastly, making enough products before they sell out is a continuous challenge for now, but one that I will overcome soon enough!
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Being an entrepreneur with a creative arts side has given me the chance to enhance the lives of others in my job. Whether it’s teaching, performing music, feeding people, or sharing what I learn in life, enhancing the lives of others and enjoying doing it has always been the basis of my business plan.
I’m proud that I now have been able to reopen my music school Succeed Music Academy -in Solana Beach, where I also have my Pepper Queen Farms office. Having two blooming businesses that I’ve nurtured from the ground up is an accomplishment I never thought was in my future. I took the loss of my music school in 2020 and turned it into an opportunity.
Do you have any advice for those just starting?
Know that you can’t force an idea or create a business from a place of insincerity. You will know in your heart and your gut that what you want to create is going to succeed.
You will feel it rushing through your veins. It’s going to be so strong that you will dream about it at night and wake up thinking about it. Understand you will have to battle some unforeseen challenges, and it will take patience. Sometimes, try again and again and again until you get it right.
Don’t give up on what you are passionate about. Don’t compare yourself to others. Stay focused and take steps every day towards your goals. Make small, medium, and giant goals. Post them where you can see them. Life will fill in the blanks. It’s ok to take as many detours as you need to find the right path. It doesn’t always go the way you have designed it.
Be flexible and love yourself through it because you are doing something bold and adventurous that most people are afraid to do – to go into business for yourself!
Contact Info:
- Website: PepperQueen.com, www.SucceedMusicAcademy.com
- Instagram: @pepperqueenfarms, @SucceedMusicAcademy
