Sometimes you don’t realize who your biggest influencers and loudest cheerleaders are until those voices are no longer audible.

Our newest pepper powder blend is named after a friend and mentor who we never had the opportunity to meet face to face, but was one of our mentors when starting Grown at Home in WV.  Rich LaCuesta talked gardening tips and tricks, helped Dave create pepper blends, read flavor profiles and determine how to tell what peppers will taste like once they are dried.

Mail flew back and forth during prime harvest time between Missouri and West Virginia sharing pods and doing videos of taste testing those pods and other products.

Rich was even ready to drive the 9 hours to surprise Dave for his birthday, but circumstances prohibited it at the last minute.

He was a man who loved his family.  He always spoke highly of his wife and children and bragged on them and their accomplishments.  It was obvious they were a source of great pride in his life.

On January 24, Rich posted a Crimson Chip Challenge video eating 5 of our Crimson Chips.

Unfortunately, it will also be the last.

Rich was killed in a motorcycle accident 3 days later.

We will always regret never meeting, in person, this man who will not know just how much a part of Grown at Home in WV he really was.

Our hearts ache for the family he left behind.

So to honor the memory of Rich LaCuesta, we are resurrecting our original pepper powder.  It’s the blend that Dave experimented with and learned to hone his pepper blending skills with.

The LaCuesta blend contains 5 pepper varieties with a habanero and ghost pepper base.  It also has one hot and two other super hots.

LaCuesta will be available April 2018.  The actual release date will be announced on our Facebook page.

If you want to see Rich’s videos, his You Tube channel is Gardening in Missouri.  Some of you may remember him as Banana Man (we actually have a banana tree growing in our house that he sent our son years ago!) His wife has told us, she plans on keeping his YouTube channel so subscribe, like and share his videos.

Together we can keep his memory alive and show his family just how much he was loved and the impact he made on others.

Thanks for being someone we never want to forget, Rich.