A Chartered Financial Planner has swapped careers - moving from Scotland to Devon to become a full-time chilli farmer.

Jenny Madhoo, 36, spent seven years at Acumen Financial Planning in Aberdeen before moving to the South Devon Chilli Farm near Kingsbridge in South Devon.

She spent five years before that as a Paraplanner with firms based in London and Aberdeen before moving to Acumen, where she gained her Chartered status and started a digital financial advice and planning firm called SpringGen Advice.

Now she’s focused full-time on building the chilli business her and husband Amrit took over two years ago.

Jenny said she had never planned to become a chilli farmer.

She told Financial Planning Today: “We had always hoped to move back to the South West to be near my family. During the discussions on the move my mum told me that the owners of the local South Devon Chilli Farm had decided to retire after 20 years running the business.

“We took a good look at it and even though neither of us had any experience in the field, Amrit had been a geologist and engineer in the gas industry and we thought it could work really well for us.”

The business had been set up in 2003 and had a staff of 10 people growing chillis, turning them into products such as chilli jam and chilli chocolate, as well as running a chilli plant nursery alongside that.

Jenny said: “Having the experienced workers to help us through the early months was brilliant, especially as I continued working part time as a Financial Planner as well as having our first baby.” That was Lily, who is now 2 years old.

She finally gave up her Financial Planning career this year and says she has no regrets.

She said: “It’s a completely different kind of hard work than that I was used to as a Financial Planner but I’m using lots of the financial skills I picked up. I’ve had to do a lot of marketing, of which I had no real experience, but I’m really enjoying it.”

The farm has been a successful business for 20 years, but Jenny hopes the couple can take things to another level.

“We recently got stocked in Selfridges which was a really big deal and we’re working with Co-op stores in Devon that like to stock local produce.”

While she is busy growing and running the business, Jenny hasn’t ruled out a return to Financial Planning in the future.

She said: “Running a chilli farm may not be our forever jobs, so switching back to Financial Planning could be on the cards in the future.”

The South Devon Chilli harvests more than five tonnes of chilli every year and the team makes tens of thousands of bottles of sauce, jars of jam, and bars of chocolate to sell direct to customers and to trade. They also operate a self-sufficient chilli plant nursery and collect seed to grow crops and sell to retail customers.

• Find out more about the South Devon Chilli Farm here