We use no chemical fertilisers or pesticides on our farm. Our fertiliser is a mix of cow manure, bat guana, neem tree mulch and fish meal. Our pepper is dried in the sun for several days prior to being sterilised and vacuum packed so that it reaches you as fresh as it left us.

The pepper plant is a creeping vine, which in its wild form grows around the trunks of trees. Cultivation today substitutes wooden standards for live tree trunks. At Starling Farm we use a combination of wooden standards and towers made of brick. No matter what technique is used, each pole or tower will have a small shallow dug around its base to concentrate the water and natural fertiliser used, and will have from three to eight plants planted around, which take three years to grow to maturity and start producing high quality pepper.