Our Story
Poj Boi’s Hot Sauces was never really something I sat down and planned. It grew the same way the garden did — a little at a time, usually because I got curious about something and wanted to see what would happen if I tried it.
Back around 2018, it was mostly Rollo and me. I had fallen hard for growing hot peppers and started spending more and more time outside with him beside me. I loved the whole process: starting plants small, watching them take off through the summer, waiting forever for the first peppers to change color, and then finally walking back to the house with more food than I knew what to do with. Rollo was always there for it. He’d follow me through the rows, lay nearby while I worked, inspect the baskets, and make the garden feel like our place.
Before long, peppers turned into a much bigger garden. Tomatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, herbs, and whatever else sounded fun that year started finding a home out there too. The garden became one of those places where time slows down a little. You go outside to check one plant and somehow an hour disappears. The dogs are wandering around, somebody is carrying a basket, something needs watered, something finally ripened, and there is always one more thing to pick before going inside.
The sauce side of it grew out of that same curiosity. I already loved heat, but I didn’t want every bottle to taste like heat for the sake of heat. I wanted flavor first. I started playing with the smoker, fruit, roasted vegetables, garlic, herbs, sweet ingredients, savory ingredients, and peppers that brought completely different personalities to a sauce. Some ideas were great immediately. Some were absolutely not. Some turned into a kitchen full of dishes and a note to never do that again. But that experimenting became half the fun.
Eventually Jess became part of our little world too, and what had started as me and Rollo messing around in the garden became something that felt more like a family tradition. There are summer evenings spent outside together, dogs underfoot, baskets coming into the kitchen, vegetables spread across the counter, smoke rolling out of the smoker, and way too many jars and bottles cooling somewhere nearby. Those are the parts of this I love the most.
That is really what Poj Boi’s is to me. It’s homegrown. It’s our garden and our dogs and a lot of trial and error. It’s taking something we grew ourselves and finding a way to turn it into something fun, different, and worth sharing. It’s making a batch for friends and family, handing somebody a bottle, watching them try it, and getting excited when they ask what is in it.
I don’t know exactly where this little hobby will go, and I think that is part of what makes it special. It started because I loved growing things and spending time outside with my best buddy. Everything after that — the smoker, the recipes, the artwork, the bottles, the website, and this ridiculous collection of sauces — grew from there. And no matter how much it changes, I hope it always feels like that: a garden, a good day outside, the people and animals I love, and something homemade waiting at the end of it.
🌱 Garden→🧺 Harvest→🔥 Smoke→🫙 Cookhouse→🌶️ Bottle
FOR JESS
❤️ The One Who Makes the Crazy Ideas Worth Chasing
Jess came into my life a few years after this whole thing had already started, and somehow she stepped right into the middle of all of it like she had always been there.
The garden has become one of my favorite places for us to spend time together. It isn’t really about getting chores done or how much we harvest. It’s the little stuff. Walking the rows together after work. Checking what finally turned ripe. Picking tomatoes and peppers while the dogs wander around us. Pulling carrots out of the dirt and laughing at the weird ones. Carrying baskets back to the house. Standing outside longer than we meant to because we got caught talking about absolutely nothing and everything at the same time.
Those quiet nights in the garden have become some of my favorite memories with you. There is something really special about watching a place grow together year after year and realizing that, without trying to, we are building traditions in it. The first planting days. The huge harvest nights. The evenings where everything needs watered. The days the garden looks perfect and the days something goes completely wrong. Somehow you make all of it more fun just by being there.
You have also been the person standing beside me for all the ridiculous ideas that grow out of this hobby. You may not need to know every pepper variety I’m excited about or care quite as much as I do about turning one random ingredient into a new sauce, but you still listen. You taste things. You help when I get frustrated. You remind me that it is supposed to be fun when I start taking one tiny problem way too seriously. And you celebrate with me when something finally turns out exactly the way I pictured it.
Thank you for putting up with baskets of produce taking over the kitchen, bottles everywhere, smoker days that turn into all-day projects, and the very real possibility that any sentence beginning with ‘I had an idea’ is about to become a much larger project than either of us expected. More than any of that, thank you for being our biggest supporter and for helping turn all of these wild little ideas into a hobby that lets us give something away, make people happy, and make a lot of memories together in the process.
I love that the garden has become part of our life together. I love the time we spend out there. I love the little family we have built around it, dogs and all. And I love knowing that years from now, some of the memories I’ll hold onto the tightest will probably be the simplest ones — you beside me in the garden, dirt on our shoes, something fresh in the basket, and all of us heading back toward the house together.
I love the life we’re building together. And I love you even more for being the person who makes all of my crazy ideas feel like they’re worth chasing.
FOR ROLLO
🐾 The Original Poj Boi
And then there’s Rollo — Poj Boi himself. The boy who started all of this without ever knowing he did.
I adopted Rollo years before there was a website, a sauce lineup, a logo, or even the thought that any of this would become a real project. He was just my dog, and then somewhere along the way he became my best friend. My shadow. My sidekick. The one who was there through every version of my life that came after.
When I first started getting serious about the garden, it was Rollo and me out there together. He followed me through the rows, laid in the grass while I worked, sat beside baskets full of peppers and vegetables, and waited patiently while I spent way too long checking plants that looked almost exactly the same as they did the day before. If I was outside, he wanted to be outside. If I moved to another part of the garden, he moved too. He never cared what I was growing. He just cared that we were together.
Looking back, some of the memories that mean the most to me have nothing to do with a finished bottle. They are just little snapshots of him being there — his face next to a basket from the garden, him laying in the sun while I picked peppers, him following me back toward the house, or me looking over and realizing he had been quietly keeping me company the entire time.
That is why his place in Poj Boi’s will always be bigger than a mascot or a name on a bottle. This whole thing carries a piece of our life together in it. He was there before the first real recipe. Before the first label. Before anybody else knew what Poj Boi’s was supposed to be. He was there when it was simply a guy, his dog, a patch of dirt, and way too many hot peppers.
Rollo has been beside me for so many seasons of life that it is hard to separate the memories from him. He has been there for the good days, the hard days, the changes, the new ideas, the failures, and the moments where I just needed my best friend close by. He never asks for much. Just to be included, to be near me, and maybe to inspect whatever I brought in from the garden.
The garden would not feel like the garden without him. This story would not be the same without him. And Poj Boi’s simply would not exist in the way it does without the boy who gave it its heart and its name.
He’s my best friend. My garden buddy. My original partner in all of this. My Poj Boi. No matter how many recipes get made, how many bottles get filled, or how much this little hobby changes over the years, there will always be one part of it that belongs only to him and me.
One day I know I’ll look back at all these pictures — the garden, the baskets, the peppers, the ridiculous faces, the afternoons outside together — and realize those were the best parts the whole time. Not because of what we made, but because my best friend was there beside me while we made it.
Rollo, thank you for every season, every walk through the garden, every quiet afternoon, and every year you’ve spent right by my side. You’ll always be the boy who started it all. I’ll love you forever and always.
Poj Boi’s Hot Sauces
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