Ed Curry is a 4th generation farmer, growing over 70 different varieties of chili peppers. He knows everything about chili, organic farming, and the health benefits of capsaicin. Ed is also a Life Enthusiast customer and friend for many years now. Listen to his story!

Podcast 403: Ed Curry, Organic Capsicum Farmer:

MARTIN: Hello everyone! This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Podcast! Today I have the pleasure and honor to be talking with one of our long time clients, Ed Curry, and I’m going to be asking a lot of questions. Ed is a wonderful example of what can happen when somebody meets Life Enthusiast. I also am really enthused about meeting Ed Curry, because he is an example of a wonderful human. So, Ed, welcome to my world, and welcome to our show!

ED: Thank you for all the kind words, Martin! You have helped me so much, so yeah, I am a product of Life Enthusiast and your help, absolutely!

MARTIN: Great! We should also mention what you do because that will be a big part of our conversation today. Ed is an organic chili farmer. Ed, I think you are probably the last or the only farmer who grows jalapeno for seed, right? I think that your farm produces most of the seeds for the Southwest, for the growers the United States and Mexico, right?

ED: Okay. Let me tell you what I do. I am a Mendelian type breeder. I learned genetics from Phil Villa, one of the best pepper geneticists that ever lived. We lost Phil in 2013, November 13th, to be exact, I was with him when he passed away. Phil, next to my father, had more influence on my life than  any individual. Well, I should include my mother in there, too, and my wife, I guess. But Phil was very influential in teaching me. I don’t have a doctorate, I have a high school degree, but I love to learn. And when you came into my life, I learned you are very similar, and on a quest to learn. So that is how I learned genetics, I followed Phil around from the time I was in eighth grade, around 1970, he would come back and forth to the farm several times a year. I started working with him as a young grower in 1979, and he decided to teach me and help me understand genetics.

ED: Phil hated being in the box. He always told me: I chose you, because you had an open spirit to learn, and you had not been tainted by any books. He said: I’m going to take you and shape you the way I want you. And he did! And I was willing to learn, I can’t tell you how many hours I talked to him on the phone, Martin. Hours! From way back when we first got those old bag phones, you remember those? I bought one of the first bag phones that came to this side of Arizona, to talk to Phil. And I would carry that thing in my vehicle, and I usually had enough charge that I could walk in the chili field a little bit, describe to him what I was doing, what I was seeing, and then he would describe back to me, literally, we would talk for two hours at a time, and that was my classroom! I love to tell this part: I have extreme ADHD. For the parents out there that have ADHD kids: don’t ever think they can’t learn, they just may not learn the way the average person does, by sitting at  a desk. I can’t sit still, it is hard for me to sit still right now and talk to you, but Phil could teach me via phone!

ED: The field was my classroom, the chili field. And once we had a cell phone, holy cow! I could look at the crop, I could explain to him, then he would start explaining to me what I was seeing, what I was finding. Did we pull out some genetic books from time to time? Absolutely. But this all started because of passion. If you’ve got a passion, man, you can do anything.

MARTIN: You mentioned a word “Mendelian.” I wanted to punch out the word because I doubt that many people remember from their chemistry or biology books who Gregor Mendel was. He was actually my fellow countryman, he was a Moravian,