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The Secrets of the Country’s Largest Cannabis Operations with Nick Morin

The Secrets of the Country’s Largest Cannabis Operations with Nick Morin

commercial cannabis grow

Remember that show Cribs?

You know, that show where we got to take tours through the mansions of the rich and famous and feel bad about ourselves. While it’s been a long time since we watched Master P show off his gold ceiling, there’s a new, better, completely unrelated Cribs that is all about cannabis.

CannaCribs was started by Nick Morin through his company the Grower’s Network to show us all what it’s really like inside some of the largest and technologically advanced cannabis cultivation operations across the country. But it isn’t all green ganja and piles of cash in these operations.

What you don’t see on CannaCribs is the behind the scenes details that Nick gets from the head growers and owners of these operations. From the shady investment dealings that growers fall into like overfunding and inexperienced fund managers to the stressful work that goes into maintaining a large scale cannabis operation, Chip and Nick dive into it all in this episode of The Real Dirt Podcast.

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Transcript:

Chip: Once again you have reached “The Real Dirt.” And on today’s dirt, it’s a very special episode. Today, I’ve got Nick Morin from Canna Cribs. Now, if you haven’t seen Canna Cribs, you’ve got to check it out, great YouTube channel. It’s absolutely one of my favorites, it’s one of the best production in our whole industry. And if you haven’t seen Canna Cribs yet, you’re missing out. Thank you so much Nick for joining me.

Nick: Chip, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time.

Chip: Nick called me up a couple, a month or two ago, and said he was going to start a podcast. And we’ve exchanged a bunch of information and talked back and forth and you know, I’m really excited to hear about your podcast. You’ve just launched a new podcast and you know, we just immediately got along on the phone. ‘Cause like, we do the same thing. You know in some manner, is we get to go talk to ganja people all over the country and world and find out, you know, what they’re all about. And get to go into gardens that we may, people just dream about. What’s it like having this dream job, Nick?

Nick: I just would say I’m extremely grateful to be working with my team, you know, my bestfriends and going out and filming these stories, telling these stories now on the podcast. It’s a dream job and it’s something that you know, as a little kid I never would have imagined I’d be here today, but it’s pretty special at this point in time in this industry, as we’re evolving rapidly.

Chip: I know we have a lot talk about. But like, let’s talk about Canna Cribs. How did it start, when did it start, like tell me about it.

Nick: I’ll take you to the exact point in time. CannaCon Seattle, I was talking with my friends that own uh, Glass House Farms in uh, Carpinteria, California. You know, it was dinner, it’s after the trade show. As many people do after a trade show, you go out for dinner and drinks and we’re just brainstorming. And when you get those energies, you know, across the table going and some good ideas, Canna Cribs was born. You know, I wanted to create a Youtube series. And I was really inspired by Marijuana Mania by Berner, and Strain Hunters and their team, and I wanted to come up with uh, kind of my own version of garden tours. I think Growing Exposed was coming up around the same time as well. So you know, I was chatting with, you know, Graham and their whole team over there. And we came up that – it sounds like you got the intro going, so yeah, that’s, that’s it right there, man. So we flew out there shortly after, actually flew to Tucson and picked this up which was a surreal experience in itself right there. I put together my team from University of Arizona, you know, some friends from college, some friends that I’ve worked with, and then some acquaintances kind of one degree away in Tucson. And we flew out there, filmed our pilot and as they say, the rest is history.

Chip: I’ve actually got it on right now, “Glass House Greenhouse Commercial Cannabis Growing Operation in California,” Canna Cribs. I really love this episode, I love everything about it. Like it’s so like, highly produced. I’m a TV junkie, I love format. And like, just the way that you guys have produced this whole series, it like, mimics you know, several other of my favorite type of genres. The like, you know, fix and flip style genre, where they’re either it’s an old junk car they find, the barn find, and turn it into —

Nick: Right.

Chip: You know, something. Something great. Or like, you know, a house, where like they buy it, and they like, fix it and flip it. You’ve got a lot of the like, elements in the editing with that. It really like, draws people in. Man, I also love all of the, the product placement that occurs in this episode and other episodes. It shows the products that people are using, but it’s not like an over the top infomercial advertisement. ‘Cause we all know it’s like, advertising helps pay for it all. It’s very discreetly done, it’s done well.

Nick: Yeah. You’re exactly right. The product placement and advertising, it allows for us to go out there and film. And you know, a lot of people don’t know this, but it’s not like we’re charging farms tens and thousands or you know, a hundred thousand dollars to go out to film. It’s actually no cost, vast majority of the time. So the farm doesn’t pay anything, and we of course have to pay our crew and get out there. And you know, you know this very well, Chip. Youtube gives us zero dollars in advertising. I can’t even spend money on Youtube to promote our show so, it creates an environment where you have to be very scrappy. You have to be wise and extend your dollars through organic content. And the thought leadership behind the brands, the products, the services that these growers are using, it’s a pretty straightforward model where these are the products that their success is built on. Those companies you know like, let’s say soil companies. You know, your background and growing media, and every episode there’s a different growing media. And these growers rely on that product for their success so it’s a really natural fit where we get to educate fans all around the world. We get to help promote the grower through the episode. And then the vendor has an opportunity to promote their products naturally, because we don’t place products that aren’t naturally used at the farm.

Chip: And you can tell the authenticity of it due to that. What was your background in cannabis previous to this?

Nick: So I just say, a lover of the plant. I’m relatively —

Chip: You’re an enthusiast. You’re a cannabis enthusiast. Excellent.

Nick: That’s exactly right. So I started consuming young and you know, I have two older brothers and that probably helped a little bit. Yeah, I actually started Growers Network and Canna Cribs shortly after, during my senior year in college. So, this is my first foray into the, into any professional industry, really. I started a couple communities while I was at the University of Arizona. So I guess I do have a background in kind of grassroots community building from the ground up. And then you know, I have a passion for both cannabis and also technology, and the marriage of the two of those things, as well as marketing and community building, it’s kind of where I live today. And what I’m super passionate about you know, when it comes to sharing very special stories that will impact the history and our future, everyone in this industry with the rest of the world. And just kind of showing and proving that there is a way to have you know, legal, compliant, and really good cannabis at the end of the day that saves lives and builds businesses.

Chip: You came to this as just an enthusiast. You had a surface knowledge of how cannabis operated, how it grew, the production of it all. Did you have some misconceptions that were immediately proven inaccurate when you started doing Canna Cribs?

Nick: I would say that like, everyone on our crew including myself, we didn’t really know, we didn’t really know what went into a commercial sized grow operation. You know, we might have had friends growing here and there, more you know, underground and maybe at the hobbyist or kind of that caregiver scale. But, to walk into a commercial grow operation and see that scale, it was incredible. So I’d say, maybe less misconceptions but more just, you know, kind of what’s behind the curtain. Having the opportunity to share that with the world is really special.

Chip: You talked about the stories, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times. Do you have a favorite cannabis story, or favorite episode that you made?

Nick: Oh my gosh, that’s a tough one. Choosing between your babies —

Chip: Oh I just keep pressing the memo, hey I just started man, I just started.

Nick: I love it. I love it. Yeah, no, I love the question, Chip. So I’d say you know, one of the stories that I probably enjoyed the most telling and also was the most moved by, was Scott Reach of Rare Dankness. He’s gone through a lot of personal turmoil and you can listen to his story with his health, and how cannabis really healed him and gave him an opportunity to you know, run a business and support his family. So, a lot of that comes up in you know, throughout the episode and you know, it’s not every single episode that that story is going to be exactly the same. You know, each episode kind of has a unique, I guess unique story to tell. But with Scott and Rare Dankness, before we went out there you know, we did some research. We always like to do some pre-production research to come up with some story points and kind of build out what the episode’s going to look like before we set foot on set to film. You know, his personal fight with cancer and how cannabis really helped him personally with his fight with cancer, but also his background with breeding and as a geneticist. And through his other companies, he’s building, in my words, he’s building a cannabis empire. It doesn’t stop with just House of Dankness, it doesn’t stop with just Rare Dankness, he has a seed company around the world, he has a new nutrient line. So, one thing that I really resonate with and connect with is the entrepreneurial spirit of these cannabis grow operation owners. And there’s a lot of different types of commercial grow operations, but that episode with Scott, it really shined through, all the different things he had going on, and I loved it.

Chip: He’s really built an incredible room. If anybody’s out there who wants to see great, great, great cultivation grow room, look up that episode. Which episode is it? I’m looking for it now.

Nick: Episode six, it was right after Honeydew Farms in Humboldt.

Chip: Episode six, man, totally. Episode six, Honeydew Farm. The first Canna Cribs was the Honeydew Farms one.

Nick: Oh really?

Chip: And I’ve spent most of my life in Humboldt. I moved there ’97, and still have a property, and farm, and business there today. I heard that there was some, you know, because it’s a small community, so I’d heard that there was some like, thing being filmed, Honeydew Farms. And it was out, so yeah I went and checked it out. That was my first exposure to you. And then of course, I watched all the rest of the episodes.

Nick: Yeah. Yeah, it’s bingeful content. You know, it takes you about a weekend to watch all the Canna Cribs and Deep Roots, and we have a couple you know, new projects on the horizon. But, you know, if you ask me the favorite episode to film as far as where I was, it’s hands down, Alex Moore’s Honeydew Farms in Humboldt. It was my first time travelling there. And I mean, honestly Chip, I felt like the time froze. You know, our cellphones weren’t working. You know, we just had our cameras and we were kind of like, paused in this beautiful forest and his property is pretty amazing as well, you know, on a river basin. It was, it was magical. And we stayed in Arcadia?

Chip: Arcata.

Nick: Arcata, Arcata. So we stayed in Arcata and you know – or no sorry, I apologize. We stayed in Eureka.

Chip: Eureka.

Nick: Yeah, we drove up about an hour and a half up the hill and then an hour and a half back down to our hotel each day. So, we had to wake up super early and we went to bed pretty late each night, because we were battling sunlight. You know, most the farm’s outdoors so we had to film very efficiently with the daylight there. So, part of that was probably some lack of sleep that added to the effect. But, it was amazing. We went out to the waterside as well at the end of the episode. We went to the Redwoods. Everywhere we go, Chip, we try to characterize the region. We try to give the audience a glimpse into what it’s really like. Not just in the farm, but the surrounding area. Because we have around 150 countries around the world watching our Youtube channel, right? So, if someone’s in let’s say, Russia, and they’ve never been to Humboldt, I kind of put it on our shoulders like as a responsibility, to tell them what it’s really like, and to show them that glimpse of the world. And Humboldt is such a beautiful place, and I, I’m actually going to be, right after this interview, I’m actually interviewing two brothers that cofounded Lit House Farms in Humboldt, Big Al and Chris. And then last week, I interviewed Nat at Humboldt Seed Company for the Canna Cribs podcast. So, I love Humboldt —

Chip: Yeah, I know Nat. I’m actually like, growing his seeds right now, Auto OGs.

Nick: Oh nice. Okay.

Chip: Totally, totally. Yeah we got like ten thousand Auto OGs we’ve planted in the past like, two weeks.

Nick: Wow.

Chip: They’ll come out some time in October.

Nick: Well, I’m always finding a reason you know, trying to find a reason to go back so if you still have property, if you have friends up in Humboldt, I’d love to film them some time.

Chip: Ah man. I love it out there. We’ve got so much stuff going on up there, you know. It’s an incredible, geographical environment, you know. It’s a really rough political environment, you know. There’s just a lot of people that do not support legal cannabis and try to stand in your way at every point. It’s really unfortunate because there’s so many small farmers over there that can really bring and grow the best cannabis in the world. They’ve got like, the experience and the time, and the understanding, and the desire, and the heart to do it. But you know the, so many you know, at so many levels, the county and the bureaucracy, and the county is against what they’re doing. How many people in the county, they totally accept it. Right, many of the board of supervisors totally accept it. But, it’s just a fight you know, for anybody trying to get a legal cannabis operation there. And absolutely anybody who has gone through the worst to get one because, it’s not at all, easy there. It’s not at all easy there. So yeah, let’s hope that the industry survives. But yeah, I’ve got tons of connections up there. I’d totally hook you up with anybody you want to, if you can’t figure out who to talk to. You know, I started a potting soil company up there years ago, Royal Gold Soils. I sold soil to everybody up there for years. And currently, my new soil company, Grower Soil, I’m not in California yet. I’m mostly just focusing on you know, the midwest and the east coast. Yeah, I’ve got tons of connections all over man. If you ever want to go see anybody, just ask. I might know them.

Nick: Thank you. And that’s what I love about this industry when I first started out you know, I was working with my bestfriend and roommate at the time, and current business partner, Nate Lipton of Growers House. And he had a spreadsheet of growers, right, that are commercial growers that buy from Growers House. And I was originally, and I still run Growers Network today, all the work you know, a lot of the conversations around Canna Cribs up to this point. But the first company, and it is the production company of Canna Cribs, it’s called Growers Network. And it’s an online forum. We have about 11,000 members all over the world. And just people where they can go, and connect, and learn from each other. And I was just originally handed a spreadsheet of the top contacts from Growers House, and I just interviewed for ten months. You know, I picked up the phone, and the Lean Canvas methodology in the startup world, it’s called Customer Segment Testing.

Chip: Sure.

Nick: So, I just picked up the phone and called the you know, a hundred growers and listened to their paying points and you know, how they learned how to grow cannabis, where they were at in their career you know, super seasoned or new, what hurdles they were jumping over to become a legal professional grow operation. And at no point did I say, “Oh, join Growers Network,” or, “Oh,” like, Canna Cribs didn’t start at that point. So in the very beginning, my first ten months in this industry was just network building and acceptance amongst growers that were complete strangers. And what you just shared with me right now has been my experience up to this point, just generosity and open arms and

welcoming into the industry. So thank you, and thank everyone out there that helps to you know, nurture this industry.

Chip: You know, it’s interesting you say that. ‘Cause there’s really two sides to the cannabis coin. And well, you know, it depends on which coin you’re talking about. But the knowledge coin that we’re talking about, there’s two sides of it. There are the guarded people that won’t let you in, and are closed off, they don’t really want to talk about it so much. A lot of it’s leftover from prohibitionary you know, thinking. Some of it is you know, the propriety knowledge, they think what they have is like, the best. There’s often ego associated with all of that, but that’s one portion of the community. And then the whole other portion of the community, like 75% open. Talks about it, invites you over, wants to know what you’re doing, ‘cause they want to know if they’re doing it right or wrong, right? Are absolutely like, enthusiastic about what they’re growing and want to make it better. So it’s real interesting, it’s not an even coin flip that most people in the cannabis industry that I come across, and I’m a, you know, both us are kind of a unique pawn in the pyramid, but you know, but they openly want to tell us what we’re doing. And tell other people, and talk to other people openly.

Nick: Yeah.

Chip: It’s just a great place to learn, that’s for sure.

Nick: Yeah and right now, you know, I like that you said it’s a great place to learn. Right now, trade shows up to this point were kind of like, the in-person exchange of like, information, and knowledge, and contacts and products, and services. And now that they’re all shut down, what I’ve seen is a huge influx of traffic to our Youtube channel. And to our, you know, Growers Network Grower Forum because people can’t meet in person anymore. So I mean obviously, no one planned for this. But for the content creators out there such as yourself and you know, my team, we’re really in a pivotal point right now where, and that’s why I started this podcast is, we need to kind of ramp up, you know. We need to, you know, create more content and share more stories because there’s not a whole lot of in-person outlets right now. We’re kind of leading that charge and I kind of take it upon us to provide, and kind of have that responsibility to provide that knowledge and information exchange.

Chip: You know, cannabis, the way you learn about it and the way people learn about it now is through this open source. It’s through Youtube, it’s through Google, it’s through this open network of people like, bragging, or people just completely enthusiastic about cannabis. You know, it’s so much different than say, let’s take a trade like, photography. Or marketing, right? With marketing, if you’re interested in marketing , you can go online, and you can buy like, you know, two dozen Frank Curran courses, you can buy like, you know any type of how-to Youtube advertisement, or how-to Facebook advertise or how-to content. But the cannabis industry isn’t like that. Can you shed some light on why you think that is?

Nick: Well, I think you said it a little bit earlier Chip. You know, a lot of people, I’ve heard it on your show as well, there’s a lot of growers out there that in their mindset, and in their belief, they’re growing the best way, right? There are so many processes that go into

growing cannabis. I’m not a grower myself, you know, but in filming these large scale grow operations and then telling these stories, I’ve learned a whole lot about you know, growing cannabis organically. Growing cannabis you know, kind of boutique indoor. Growing cannabis outdoors, you know. 36,000 plants at Los Sueños Farms. So, what I have found is it’s extremely fragmenting on how to grow cannabis. There are so many unique ways and the beautiful part to me, is there’s not one right way, you know? Like, you can grow soil, you can grow soilless. You can grow you know, indoor with LEDs, or indoor with HPS. And there’s all these, right path, left path that you can take throughout the entire grow cycle. And I want to educate the world on all those different options. And in each scene in Canna Cribs, if someone’s listening to this and have not seen a Canna Cribs episode, we always start with genetics. We go through propagation, and we follow lifecycle of the plant all the way through kind of seed to sale, if you will. So throughout each scene, you know, I have not filmed an episode that has completely replicated a previous episode. You know, everyone’s doing propagation a little bit differently. You know, they’re doing veg a little bit differently. So to your question, I think it’s fragmented. You know, email marketing is email marketing, right? There’s some tricks to the trade, but it’s an email at the end of the day. But you know, growing a plant, there are so many different unique ways to do that, and furthermore, there’s always new ideas, right? There’s always someone with an innovative idea and when they share, it’s the rising tide for every grower in the world. And then, kind of you know, fuel to the fire here, new products, right? You are a product inventor. You are a product genius and innovator, and when you, Chip, bring a new product to the market, it opens up a Pandora box of all these new types of cultivation methodologies. So, I think it’s fragmented because there are so many different ways to grow the plant.

Chip: Man, you really hit the nail on the head there. There’s absolutely no one way and that’s just the beauty of ganja, of cannabis, THC or hemp, right? It can grow in a million different spots.

Nick: That’s the resiliency to the plant itself, right? I mean, it’s pure for a reason. I love your saying, plants grow us. You know, we don’t grow plants. And I got to pinch myself right now, ’cause it’s so surreal to actually be on your show, talking to you about that. But, I completely agree. This plant’s here for a reason, it’s extremely resilient. And the fact that it can be grown in all these different, you know, unique ways to the region, to the grower, you know, to the product. It’s here for a reason.

Chip: You started Growers Network 2017, 2018, something like that?

Nick: Yeah, so the end of 2016 going into 2017, I’m a senior at University of Arizona, I did about ten months of research, just trying out what business model to start. You know, I had my hypothesis that I wanted to do something in the community space, get my background, and I thought there was a model there to build a new breed of online growing forums, which is Growers Network today. A little bit more of you know, I pay all my respects of course to the forums that got us here today, like the Grass City and Overgrow and all those amazing forums. But I wanted to do it a little bit differently and provide a safe place for the professional growers that were trying to transcend out of let’s say, a house grow into a you know, 300,000 square foot greenhouse. Like, how do you do that, you know? Who do you talk to, you know, where do you go to learn? Those are the kind of questions that

I was trying to ask these growers and that was what Growers Network was born out of, was that research.

Chip: Man, it has changed since 2016. I mean compared to 2020, right now as we record this episode, it’s August 2020 here in Arizona. I’m in Oklahoma, we have seen cannabis become legal all over the country in the past four years. We have seen, like you know, trends in cannabis happen. We’ve seen governments legalize it, we’ve seen Ponzi schemes associated with it. When you started this, at some point you started to get like, a vision of what was happening. Your perceptions of it in 2016, how did they change from your perceptions of it today, knowing all that change has happened?

Nick: Let’s just start with vendors, for example. Equipment suppliers, manufacturers. So in the beginning days, let’s say 2016. You know I went to my first trade show was a maximum yield show with Nate and his father, my mentor, Pauly. And they’re with you know, Growers House, and we went there to talk to vendors and walk the shows in San Francisco. And, it was all new to me. This professional side of the industry that I just didn’t know existed, you know. You know, as a connoisseur, or a consumer, or advocate in high school and college, I just didn’t know that this whole professional industry existed. You know, I was kind of naive to that. So, since then, I have seen a lot of new products hit the market. I’ve seen consolidation of different companies. Like, take Fluence for example, with you know, OSRAM coming in, and take Hawthorne, for example, and Scotts Group coming in and acquiring Davita. And you know, I listened to that episode on your show, and I loved that one, by the way. And I’ve seen that consolidation happen in a short amount of time you know, past five years on the equipment side alone. On the grower side, you know I’m always trying to pick the next market to go out and film. And I definitely will reach out with you about Oklahoma you know, once it’s a little bit safer to start flying. I definitely want to bring the Canna Cribs crew over to Oklahoma and film some farms out there. But what I’ve seen is, you know, a lot of expansion, you know. It expands into a new region, new state, and then, it kind of restricts down. You know, it’s a period of time where it grows, grows, grows, hits that apex and then, consolidation starts to happen. And kind of that market equilibrium starts to happen, right? The supply and demand starts to balance out. So I’ve seen that happen over the past five years which is pretty incredible. I’ve seen you know, Canada come online and some other parts around the world, Colombia for one, that’s really you know, kind of blowing up and they’re part of the world. So, it’s exciting, and at the same time I’m honored to be able to help document that history.

Chip: Who could have predicted cannabis at Canada would have just skyrocketed and plummeted so quickly?

Nick: Right.

Chip: You know, who could have predicted that Oklahoma, once one of the most conservative places about cannabis in the country would become the best and most premier place you know, to cultivate cannabis in the country? Nobody thought that was going to happen.

Nick: Right. So let me —

Chip: It’s incredible where it’s turning.

Nick: Yeah. Let me ask you this, Chip. So what can we learn, as a country, what can we learn from Canada’s missteps so we don’t follow in the same footsteps?

Chip: Well you know I think we’re already doing the exact same thing. We just weren’t able to have publicly traded companies that could directly trade cannabis on the NASDAQ, right? And any like, insulary type businesses that were allowed to be publicly traded, those were all you know, over the counter, OTC trading stocks. So I think that is really what kept the US investment schema from exploding. But essentially, we still have the same exact elements that were going on in Canada, that are going on here, going on here today. Which are just like, some incredibly savvy people that know how to manipulate the market. That know how to manipulate venture capital groups or family offices. And you know, for instance, the typical cannabis “investment.” There’s two types. There’s one, it’s just like, me, you, and my brother all get together and we decide we want to do a cannabis operation so we throw in our money and make it.

Nick: Kind of the friends thing —

Chip: Friends and family thing. The bootstrap. And man, sometimes like, you come up with millions of dollars that way to start your operation, people call you corporate cannabis. But it’s not, it’s just you, me, and your brother putting it together. And then there’s the venture capital model or the investor model, we’ll call it. And it stems on you know, somebody like you who wants to put in a cannabis operation. Or somebody like me, who wants to put in a cannabis operation. And we develop a business plan, we develop a proforma that’s you know, fictional that we decide, “Yeah we think it should be this way. And we’re going to make this much money over this period of time.” We develop an operational cost, and schedule you know, points of time where we make profit, and investors can get paid back. And people can paint incredibly accurate pictures like that, but then they also create these you know, inaccurate portrayal of what’s happened. And that’s what went on in Canada. Right, it was an inaccurate portrayal of how big the market was.

Nick: Right.

Chip: And so many people went into the marketplace and estimated it to be like, ten times bigger than it actually was and just drove that whole investment strategy. Right, so like that happens here in the US, but it usually happens in two different ways. It happens from the person that’s actually trying to like, get financed or get investors. And they over-exaggerate but you know, knowingly over promise, you know, they don’t either know they can do it or they’re being promised by other people who don’t fulfill their promises. Or you know, however that pans out. And so then, it collapses, right? And then the other way it collapses is when a venture capital group comes in and they you know, the way that venture capital groups work or many of them work, is their funds and they’re someone who like, who’s running the fund and they’re getting paid a percent of the fund that’s spent annually. And they’re constantly going out, like, searching for more capital. And they’ll do stuff like this, so like go` to you Nick like, “Hey Nick, are you interested in cannabis?” Just say yes, just, you know, say yes.

Nick: Yes.

Chip: “Okay, yes you’re interested in cannabis! And you’ve got ten million dollars that you want to invest in cannabis this year?” Just say yes.

Nick: Yes.

Chip: “Well, I’m not going to get you to sign any [inaudible] right now. But, we’ve got all these cannabis operations that come to us. We’ve built a hundred million dollar fund, and if you want to contribute to it then you know, then you can contribute to it. Just deal by deal, you know, basis. You interested in that, Nick?”

Nick: Sounds good to me.

Chip: “Sounds great.” Okay so now, they go to the next guy and they say the same thing and they’re like, “Oh hey man, we’ve already got ten million dollars,” right? You know, “don’t be left behind.” And they hustle all of these people for the investment. Which you shouldn’t say hustle, because everybody’s willing to participate, ‘cause you love cannabis, you’ve got a lot of money and you want to invest in it, right? Like, nothing wrong with that at all. But, the person managing the fund is where it comes into play. ‘Cause now, they’re pressured to spend your money, because that’s how they get paid, right? They only get paid from your investment, is if they find an investment for you and you’ll go through ten before you say yes on one.

Nick: They’re pressured to –

Chip: And then they invest your money, yup.

Nick: And that kind of, it hurts the companies that might be overfunded because then that ties to unrealistic expectations that they have to deliver upon. And that could lead to the demise of their company, and also, the fund. But at the end of the day, the managing partner of said funds has already you know, received their —

Chip: They’ve already been paid.

Nick: Yeah.

Chip: They’ve already been paid. And you know –

Nick: Seems like a flawed model.

Chip: It’s a totally flawed model, but the reality is that you’re so rich, Nick, that you’ve got these ten million dollars that you need to like invest annually. So like, it’s you know, the Canna Cribs is a multi-billion dollar operation now, and you have to lose these ten million dollars every year, right? It’s an oversimplification of how it’s going down. But like, you spend the money and then you move on to the next project, right? And you are, you’re DC manager moves on to the next project, ’cause they got another bunch of people like yourself that got ten million dollars that they want to invest, or have an annual amount every year that they need to invest. So they keep up their legion, and man, that just pumps a bunch of like, a bunch of crap out there, you know. Projects that should be a million dollars turn out to be twelve million dollars. Greenhouses that should be three, four million dollars turn out to be ten million dollars. Indoor rooms that are two million are ten million. And they overspent and I know several of these people that have gotten caught up in this, and they’re my friends. And like, they thought they were doing the right thing ’cause it’s, you know what sounds great? It’s when you say something like this, “We’re building the most highly technical, advanced environmental control system in the whole cannabis industry. I’m going to be able to control my environment and the microcosm. I can control every square inch and I’ve got the data that’s going to be able to back it up.” And you know, that sounds great, right? Well, you know, it’s also like, cost you like millions and millions of dollars to do it. And you may end up you know, growing slightly better or more weed over it but the ROI, I’m spending twelve million dollars on a greenhouse that should cost a million dollars. It’s just you know, it’s not there. It’s not going to be there. And that’s how these things collapse. They’re not built on business, they’re built on investment. And now they’ve got all this operational cost, because it takes two people a hundred thousand dollars a year to run the software that gets all this great data, that they have to pay another whole accounting firm to read it, right?

Nick: Right.

Chip: Right, well.

Nick: You have, having gone through all these examples with your friends and people you know, what you know, cautionary advice could you give?

Chip: Man, the big pang is don’t really believe this investment business plan. I’ve got an investor like, you know, I’m an investor. Like, don’t think that the old way of doing it, the way that you probably thought that was the best way, the way that’s mostly used is the best way. And now, things have changed. And I believe that the investors want to be involved in cannabis right now, it is an essential business. And the opportunity, the advantage is on our side. And it is, an investment where it’s a good, reasonable return, you know, based on profit margin and standard accounting practices. Like that’s a, you know, that’s a good investment.

Nick: Right.

Chip: Right? Like some of the investments I hear about, like the return rates are just so high. The expectations are just so high, you know. It’s just, they fall apart, you know? And the best advice is to say, “Look if you’re going to have an investor, they should be an investor and you should think about it like you’re borrowing money.”

Nick: Right.

Chip: And otherwise, you have a partner. And if you’re going to get a partner, you need to bring in someone who has something other than just money. If they’re just a capital partner, and then don’t have operational stake in the business, man, there’s just so many details there over who gets paid, who does away, and there’s operational agreements that can

define all that stuff. But as soon as you have a silent partner that has invested all of the capital, like, things often go south, right? The paperwork’s not done appropriately, the investor becomes like, upset that you know, the cannabis isn’t performing appropriately. And you know, they’re hearing all these other ideas and they see Canna Cribs, and got all these ideas on how they should improve their scene. And it just often falls apart, right? So like, beware of your investor, is absolutely the best, the best advice. And man, form some solid partnerships. If you’re interested in growing world class weed, well you know what you’re going to need, is you need a world class extractor team. Because all of the weed that you grow, you’re not going to be able to produce into world class weed. So, go find an extractor that you can partner with. You know, hey, if you’re an extractor and you want to make world class weed, go find a grower and go partner with those people. And instead of bringing like this outside investment, like so much of it can be done with inside the community, and probably with like people that you know. But you know, it just takes, you got to get rid of the ego and solely think about the business. And think about the business that you can build together, as opposed to this get rich quick scheme that often comes through with this investor type platform. And I hope I’m not insulting any investors out there, and I mean, I’m one myself and I have other friends that are investors and I think they’d understand what I’m saying here, is you have to be savvy. You have to be savvy on the investment, and you have to be savvy on —

Nick: On both sides.

Chip: And hey, let’s take that on the other side. Just last week, a friend of mine called me up and he’s like, “Hey man. I’m thinking about putting money into this cannabis operation.” He threw out some rate of return, it seemed like a normal rate of return, you know, like a little bit better than bank money. But I looked it all up for them, and I look at their PLs, their BLs, I look at at the proforma, I looked at the location, you know. I checked them out with their state, and these guys were totally full of shit. And they just built this proforma to fool the unsavvy investor. And hey man, my friend he’s a savvy investor in the tech industry. But he doesn’t know anything about cannabis, right? And you know, we just went and looked at the guy’s like, proposed cost for growing a certain amount you know, a large amount of weed, and realized like, “Oh, he’s only spending 40,000 dollars a year growing weed. Like there’s no way he can grow 4,000 pounds,” you know. So like, also —

Nick: It goes on both sides, right?

Chip: It goes on both sides. Like —

Nick: It’s a booming industry right now, and I think with any booming industry it attracts so many apples. And some of them will be bad apples, right? So being cautious, savvy, and as you said, building a world-class community and network of people that can, you can rely now. Like, your buddy calling you whether it’s an investor investing into a cannabis grow operation or a grower calling you and saying like, “Hey, like, should I, should I take this money?” Um, I think that’s so vital to have people that you trust, you know, not part of the deal. It does not have [inaudible] that can you know, help mentor you.

Chip: Yeah, that’s true. And you know, I actually started a consulting group this year, kind of based on that exact principle. Is that you know, I have so many resources in the cannabis

industry and can easily like know or figure out a problem, someone’s already had it in just a matter of moments.

Nick: Yeah.

Chip: And, and we developed this, this, it’s called Greener Group, Greener Consulting Group. We developed this consulting group and you know, with the thought of like, “Oh we’re going to be able to like, help growers, retractors or owners like you know, solve some of their cultivation problems.” And for we immediately started getting calls for was from investors, from state and local governments. Because they need this information. From banks, they don’t know how to bank with cannabis people but want to, you know.

Nick: Interesting.

Chip: And you know, I actually have the connections to one of the guys. He works for us in one of our lead consultants at Greener Group and that’s exactly what he does. He helps banks integrate into accepting cannabis clients as clients, cannabis growers as clients. So there’s this interaction that can happen now that hasn’t happened in the past where you can ask experts. Where you can you know, talk to people that actually know the cannabis industry. And not just your great accountant who’s going to be leery, ‘cause he doesn’t know the cannabis industry or thinks it’s just a widget, you know. ‘Cause it’s not. It’s completely not a widget. So yeah, here’s my little rant, man. You got me talking today. It was supposed to be an interview for you, man.

Nick: Haha, well here’s the cool thing. I want to invite you onto the Canna Cribs podcast.

Chip: I want to come dude, yeah absolutely. Let’s schedule it up anytime, man. And absolutely, I’m going to promote your podcast. I’m stoked that we can be working within the same field and not have to feel that there’s a competitive nature going on.

Nick: Yeah. I’ve built Growers Network and Canna Cribs on collaboration over competition, right? When it comes to content, whether it’s you know, the Grow and Expose Youtube channel, or you know, your podcast. You know, fans around the world, they can listen to our podcast back to back. They can watch our Youtube videos back to back. So, it’s all about collaboration. And I want to say thank you again for you know, opening up your show for me today to join and share a little bit about what we’re doing. And being part of that, I believe you said 75% of the industry of being welcoming and accepting of newcomers like myself.

Chip: You’re no newcomer now, man. That’s for sure. Hey, Nick, I really want to thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate talking to you about all the stuff you’ve done and it’s been a great conversation. We’ll have to have you back on again.

Nick: Definitely, yeah. Thank you and for everyone on your team, keep working hard. I know it’s a really funky time right now, and it kind of sucks that we can’t go to trade shows and see each other and break bread over dinner afterwards. But, I’m looking forward to those days again and in the meantime, let’s podcast it up and you know, YouTube it up.

Chip: Sounds good man. And if you listened to this episode, enjoyed it, and would like to hear others, please download The Real Dirt at The Real Dirt podcast on iTunes. And absolutely subscribe, subscribe, that’s the only way we get to grow. You know, if you’re paranoid, or if you just want to listen to it on website, you can do that too. You can go to therealdirt.com and just stream it right there. But, uh, love you guys, thanks for listening, I appreciate each and every one of you. I always appreciate your comments on Facebook and Instagram. I feel like my growing network of friends just manages to expand every day. Just know, I’m a real person and you can always reach me. And this has been, The Real Dirt.

The Highs and Lows of the Hemp and CBD Industry with Dan Ramsay

The Highs and Lows of the Hemp and CBD Industry with Dan Ramsay

colorado hemp and cbd supplier

Without the supply chain, there is no supply. That’s what Dan Ramsay specializes in setting up for hemp farmers across Colorado.

Dan Ramsay is a Hemp Supply Chain Specialist. He talks hemp all day every day (almost) and is a leader on the Western Slope of Colorado, helping hemp farmers accomplish their goals in various facets. Specializing in product fulfillment, education, and end product sales since 2015, Dan has had a pulse on the hemp industry in the heart of Colorado’s hemp country.

Currently, he’s the General Manager at the Natural Order Supply rooted in Grand Junction, Colorado. Natural Order Supply has been at the forefront of the hemp industry since 2015 and founded by a group of cannabis professionals and growers. Natural Order Supply advocates for and provides sustainable farming products that help farmers grow with confidence.

In this exciting episode, Dan shares his success story with their hemp business, how to cope with these hard times, and their advocacy to expand the awareness of cannabis and hemp benefits.

“As a company, as a person, my ethos has always been real education based in this industry.” – Dan Ramsay

Some Topics We Discussed Include (Timestamp)

18:53 – Getting involved with hemp

26:01 – Pandemic and hemp overproduction situation

36:56 – Fluctuation rate of some CBD products

40:11 – Hemp market’s downfalls

55:29 – Cultivation throughout the country

1:06:07 – Price per point of CBD

1:11:54 – Natural Order Supply’s future in the hemp industry

1:16:13 – Connect with Dan

People Mentioned / Resources

 

Connect with  Natural Order Supply

Dan Ramsay

 

Connect with  Chip Baker

TRANSCRIPT

Chip Baker: Hey, welcome to another episode of The Real dirt with chip Baker today I have Dan Ramsay from Natural Order Supply. Hey, thanks for coming, Dan, how are you doing today?

Dan Ramsay: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Chip.

Chip Baker: Oh man, I tell you in these COVID episodes, I’m able to talk to so many more people because, man we’re all just hanging out at home on zoom calls anyway, huh?

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, you know, there’s a lot more those talks just, one to one but but not in face. Or a bunch of screens at once.

Chip Baker: Pretty much had to turn off all my video. Audio seems to work for here at The Real Dirt studios but the zoom videos haven’t gone so well. Apologize for any fans out there any listeners who also have felt the poor quality of production and we’re going to try to pick up that and hey, we’re kind of starting today here with Dan. And Dan is a leader in the hemp and cannabis supply industry. He operates a supply store in Grand Junction, Colorado, the Natural Order Supply. And even though Dan sells stuff for all things growing, he have been focusing on hemp for the past several years.

Dan Ramsay: That is correct. It’s definitely been our niche and kind of the specialty where we feel like we’ve been able to, to fall in with a little bit of luck of you know, time and location. With just being out here located in Grand Junction, Colorado, there’s been a lot of hemp since we we 2015 out here.

Chip Baker: Yeah, and Grand Junction is one that has one of the best climates for growing outdoor cannabis in Colorado.

Dan Ramsay: It’s really a nice location just right up from us here in Mesa County. We’ve got you know, Palisade which is Colorado’s wine country and, you know, Grand Junction, always at the top for the most registered farms in the state or in the country. Especially when you look at the county surrounding us out here between delta and Garfield County, there’s just there, it’s been a good place to find hemp farmers in a country that hasn’t had them for so long.

Getting Involved with Hemp

Chip Baker: Yeah, so So Dan, how’d you get involved with hemp?

Dan Ramsay: So yeah, we’ve launched a Natural Order Supply. I come from a company called 3C Consulting and then working with some candidates and business investors who called Green Lion Partners we launched Natural Order Supply which I took over you know operations of in 2015. And you know, the first employee I got in Natural Order Supply was the first registered hemp farm out here in the area. So we started talking hemp when there wasn’t, no one had closed a sale yet with just the idea of the excitement. And as the years went on, it seemed like, given that like Grand Junction being in Colorado, there’s a moratorium on high THC so we don’t have any medical or adult use cannabis stores in Grand Junction. 

So I think it might have been a hotspot given the good climate, the land available. And kind of the lack of other cannabis entrepreneurial opportunities that might have just kind of made it a little hotspot. So pretty quickly, my goal was focusing on wanting to sell to businesses into farms that there was a rumor in 2015 that some of those marijuana entities were coming kind of towards our side of the slope, but we kind of shut down at that time. And every year as it grew, I found this niche in this new community, and I love the agricultural part of it. And that combination of what we’ve learned from growing in closets and how it translates to growing outdoors.

Chip Baker: Yeah, you know, that sort of the state is really responsible for a lot of the hemp genetics that are around the country right now. I mean, I believe the Wife came from the area and–

Dan Ramsay: Like Cherry Blossom–

Chip Baker: Yeah, Cherry Blossom. All of that stuff came from over there, right?

Dan Ramsay: Yep, we see a lot of that. And it’s like advocacy has been around here for a long time. And it’s always interesting, though, to see some of those genetics and other parts of the state back in the country and moreover, but then it’s, you know, back in expo days, as we travel a little more, it seems like there’s so many varieties that, it’s amazing how each state can find their own little set of new names or different varieties so quickly in this industry, but it is fun to see that some of these original base genetics have really made it throughout the country and being grown in different, you know, geographic regions and seeing how they’re doing.

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah, absolutely, man. I see the Cherry and the Wife all over. I see it. You know, Maine I see it in Vermont. I see it in Oregon. I see it Tennessee Kentucky. They were really the first to hit the market is high CBD hemp products. And over the years people have been able to do add on and interbreed with them and develop stuff for their local geography. I’ve never really liked the way that the Colorado Cherry or the Wife grows. I like vigorous plants. Those are they’re a little delicate, but they’re grow really well for Colorado. They grow really well for Oklahoma and windy areas. They’re they’re smaller plants. And you know, when people look at an individual plant, they’re like, oh, man, what’s that plant, but like you look at a field of it. It’s a totally different story.

Dan Ramsay: Looking at those genetic And they get whether they get bigger kind of stayed kind of short and stocky on some of those, you know, we’re really just harvesting became becomes such a thing too like some of those yeah, and I love that huge plants I love it when they set the hammock between plants. But boy sometimes harvesting takes a little while and when you’re looking at 50 acres, 100 acres all of a sudden and trying to get something that can be standardized and mechanized, it’s always easier said than done with genetic choice at this stage of the game, which is how reliable we see those genetics in the field and how, especially since kind of seeds came to town it was 2016, 2017 to 2018 it was really the clone wars. 

And we made a lot of discussion and sales around bulk clones, and how to be in more of a nursery than just to grow in a lot of sense. Because when all of a sudden you’re starting 10,000, 100,000 million-plus plants, which we’ve worked with clients, and then all those numbers in, there’s just a lot more to consider as he started scaling up from, from everything about, like, operational approach to costs, but then you get them out into the field. And it’s those clones seem to be pretty consistent. So some of those first fields, I thought we saw more of that predictable growth out there, versus in the last year or so, where, you know, really, after the Farm Bill passed in 2018, last year was like, seeds were king. You know, there’s a handful of people doing at least where we are, just because I think the labor and operational costs the uniformity of timing and everything seeds make sense. But the stability of them is still a–

Chip Baker: Still in the process still in development? 

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, exactly. 

Chip Baker: Totally. Yeah, you know, another part I have many projects, many business projects, and other projects. I just to launch this year, but due to COVID and the hemp industry, we haven’t quite launched it yet, which is Certified Seed Bank. And it’s a seed bank that we’ve done the prep work ahead of time and certified that all of our vendors have a quality product. Because this was a story we heard from people over and over and over and over and over again like they got hermaphrodite seeds they often bought feminized seeds, but half of them were male, or a chunk of them was male, or the phenotypes were all over the place or they did perform, or they had high THC in them or no THC or no CBD or whatever the problem was. And we saw a need and marketplace. 

Pandemic and Hemp Overproduction Situation

But man that federal hemp the last year really kind of flooded the market. And then COVID hit here, and we just haven’t really launched that business yet. I’m going to put it off till next year, but uh yeah man how has [crosstalk] COVID and the overproduction in our marketplace, how’s that affected, you guys?

Dan Ramsay: You know, I wish I could be more like optimistic instead of realistic about what happened between–

Chip Baker: Oh, this is The Real Dirt. You got to give them real.

Dan Ramsay: Yeah. I tell you what, last fall we got flooded market. You know it started flooding into came came pretty hard. You know that all of a sudden these clients you know most of the clients in 2019, 2018, 2017 a lot of that product was sold before January. And, you know, we were planning and I was working with clients about their new plans for the next year almost pre January, you know, just a little bit in December and then we get hit the ground running up the new year. 

But last year, yeah, it got flooded. You know, and I think there’s multiple, you know, reasons that that might be we just grew so much, you know, so much was grown, like so many acres. And so when I went to the Texas hemp convention this spring I couldn’t walk to another booth and not just be like, you know, like the amount of flower that was for sale and the amount of biomass that like everybody was, whereas a lot of those industries trade shows and just a year or two back you’d walk in and finding people who had the raw product for sale in one form or another was a, I stepped into the industry. 

And now, it was just like, you know, you could walk ten booths in a row and have ten comparisons, and everybody’s kind of like racing to the bottom, we’re telling you why they’re the best. So, just not a whole lot of sales. And then once that, you know, I think a lot of people being that it’s a young industry, and it’s AG, we just kind of sat there and we’re like, hold off, it’ll recover, and that moment of like, just watch the market, which is probably a good idea for your company at the moment for 2020 is just watching and seeing and learning. 

So February seemed like it was pretty; it was hard to make sales. I didn’t know a whole lot of clients who were making sales and a lot of times we were already planning commercial farms at that point with people, and they wanted to plan, and so we saw a pretty big industry, shipped I think of farmers who stepped out this spring and did replant. And then on that same aspect, all of our propagators or, you know, who do seed production or new clone sales, they just got to that point where they were like, don’t worry sales are going to catch us because there’s some prevention pretty good money made in propagation in the last few years. And hemp for sure just selling clones and selling them back east and selling them in state and it’s pretty lucrative part of the industry too if you can get that niche. 

But then this year, just the amount of new farms, they were only a few new farms. Last year, Colorado went from having just under 1000 farms at the turn of the year to having 2700 registered farmers, so 17 new farmers that came if not more considering the few that had dropped out the year before. But this year, I think everybody who went COVID hit everybody who was on the fence to replant or to start a new farm. Kind of just got conservatives on hold my money. I’m just going to sit back and not do this. So I think a lot of my farmers that I’m working with right now had genetics going into this year there wasn’t as much of genetic sourcing as there would be in an average spring of people stepping into the industry.

Chip Baker: Well, so many people just lost their ass to last year. So on the fence man because I mean literally we saw the prices go from the high point of 2019 at $50 a pound for biomass, all the way down to like I had someone say they take $1 a pound and January of this year. You know, and I mean that they had a million pounds. 

Dan Ramsay: And those million pounders though, the issue was they went to the larger extractors and extractors were like, sure, we’ll take a million pounds. And then all these smaller farmers that have you ever to some of these larger ones all of a sudden, didn’t have that outlet were like, Hey, we please, we can go to them. They don’t always give us the best price. But we could you know, that [inaudible] has been there for the last couple years for at least the bigger extractors out here on on the western slope have been able to buy local for the years previous. I’ve been having these all of a sudden someone’s like I produced a million pounds, we produced a million pounds in 2018. 

Or if they did, you know, they were there on the fly. But the idea that that that just kind of been, you know, turns the market so when somebody’s saying hey, I’m not only going to sell this for $1 pound, I’m going to take over the sales that would often have reached 50 smaller farmers even you know I’m saying or something [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah, I mean, and it was the federal legalization of it the Farm Bill that brought like some really professional farmers. And at the same time, a lot of hemp farmers just hit their stride, kind of all at the same time. It was really a perfect storm.

Dan Ramsay: It was and you know, when you look at agriculture in Colorado, we are definitely like cannabinoid terpene farmers like, we just don’t have that, that infrastructure for grain or fiber, just like when you look at going to California or you know, heavy agricultural state where they’re like, oh, we’re just gonna do a couple minutes, 700 acres and like well, 700 acres, or 250 acres again, and unestablished market is that’s a lot to produce. Even if you have a lot of it not work out perfectly new and lessons you’re still gonna end up with a lot of product to move in a young industry. 

And it’s an interesting industry because hence unlike high THC, cannabis it’s like an open market you can sell it anywhere. You can sell it in gas stations, grocery stores you can find those outlets you can sell it anywhere. Whereas like marijuana that the fact that what you produce has to be sold in the state in the stores, it keeps a kind of a kind of sexy you know kind of elusive and suddenly you have to go there to get it and when you get it, hopefully, your budtender, tells you the right thing and helps push you in the right area so that you get what’s going to be the effect you’re looking for. 

As soon as all of a sudden CBD was in every gas station, I was making the joke like he saw CBD here now, I guess next to the Mountain Dew like all of a sudden, like even the retail outlets and advertently kind of sell down the value of it. Not meaning to, but just by the lack of education and presentation for a new market that’s trying to establish itself, I think as far as CBD goes.

Chip Baker: Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, listen, Dan is a perfect place for us to take a break. When we come back. I want to talk about we talked about the farmers and the supply side. I want to talk about what’s going on within the consumable sides of CBD, and hemp. 

Hey, we’re going to take a quick break. This is Chip and Dan The Real Dirt. We’ll be right back. 

Hey, this is Chip from The Real Dirt. You know, I’m always starting new businesses. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’m a little addicted to it. And I want to tell you about a new project of God, Greener Consulting Group. We see so many consultants throughout the industry. And some of them know what they’re doing. And some of them don’t, but almost no matter what it is, they have one specialty. And they might not have the specialty you need a Greener Consultant Group. We’re conglomerate of many different consultants all over the country. We have specialties from extraction, to municipal advisement, to venture capital. We kind of have somebody who is an expert in the industry, they can talk to you about whatever your problem is. And mostly we can solve that problem in just a day or two. 

So hey, if you got some time, check us out greenerconsultinggroup.com. Look us up on LinkedIn and Facebook. And yeah, hey while you’re out there, you might sign up for The Real Dirt on iTunes. Please subscribe. That’s how we get bigger is when you subscribe. So hey, man, thanks. And we’re going to get right back into this interview with Dan Ramsey.

Fluctuation Rate of some CBD Products

Hey, Dan, all of this overproduction on the biomass side on the flower side of it. How is it from your perspective, have you seen it affect the end-use products the thatchers, the edibles, the tinctures, the soaps, the shampoos, is that market increased any?

Dan Ramsay: I think that market it’s likely that it doesn’t seem to fluctuate as much from the price fluctuation we’ve seen, you know, as this year is continued, we’ve seen quite a few of those tinctures and topicals and things, at least go down a little bit in price to the end consumer. But you know, there isn’t always [crosstalk] Not much, it’s a good place to be. And I think that’s where there’s like a little bit of longevity for the smaller the larger companies that are vertically integrated so that they can actually be getting revenue on the accounts they grow once it’s like turned into a product

Chip Baker: You mean for farmers to make an added value product. 

Dan Ramsay: I’m saying for farmers and just the whole company as a general right like because once you farm it and you like extract it in house and you have a branded product you can get on the shelf, then all of a sudden, there’s a little embodied margin there for both the farmer the extractor and the retailer. You know, it all kind of because it works together. So I do think it’s getting going to be separated a little bit more just because so much of the industry has been weeded out right now for a better word to say

But I also think that like people are starting to tone down a little bit of the silliness with the in consumer products. Maybe I’m wrong, but some of the silliness is just seemed like you know, we like I’ve got a package of it. CBD macaroni and cheese, and you’re like Who are these people? You know, like, I don’t know where that was, and it seemed like in 2017 if you could think it up and put it into it, CBD had a little bit of an image on your face now–

Chip Baker: I have friends with CBD toothpaste and CBD shampoo. [crosstalk] they’re good at it. You know, they previously made shampoo and toothpaste but like you know–

Dan Ramsay: And that helps because they already know this niche market. I think that knowing a real niche in CBD is the key to be like resell tinctures that help people who don’t feel good, is rough to be like, Hey, we work with athletes. We work with toothpaste and people who have now been like, Where does CBD fit in the dental industry. It’s a niche community and you find the right people there and you can thrive there. But I think a lot of the companies that came out trying to define their voice and being general have just had a hard time being in like a CBD shop just another tincture on the wall right.

Hemp Market’s Downfall

Chip Baker: You know use a square bottle. That’s one of the downfalls to the whole industry too is that in high THC cannabis and medical marijuana, medical cannabis, adult use cannabis, a lot of it’s vertically integrated. And if it’s not vertically integrated, it’s in this tight community because you have to have a license of difficulty, a difficult license in most states other than Oklahoma. And where hemp is harder to grow here than high THC cannabis. But it’s allowed a bunch of co-packers and white label people to come into the marketplace. And that in itself is just like homogenized the marketplace that the you know the same guy is making The tinctures is the same guys making all the edibles, the same guys making all the gummies. And how are you going to differentiate yourself when you’re making the same gummy as the guy across the street? Right? You got the same blockchain as a guy across the street.

And I think that’s been one of the like downfalls of the industry, even though it’s helped so many people start and progress. I think a lot of those people are gonna fall out right now because they were co-packers of other products, and they hopped on the CBD make a billion bandwagon. And I think we’re going to see a resurgence. I think we’re going to see more on farm products, more specifically made products, like you said, more engineered niche products. And that’s going to, that’s the industry maturing.

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, I think so. I think there was a minute where a couple of these companies saw that accelerated growth and pretty quickly we’re like, Hey, we can crank out they want so much once they build a brand and they’re an established company that the ability to white label just seemed like the next– 

Chip Baker: No brainer 

Dan Ramsay: All of a sudden we went from being like just a couple white labelers or its is till, it’s like you know MJBizCon last year it’s like every, you can white label anything and can have a business it’s like the 133 booths down right and and i think that like you said, that’s gonna you know, the markets going to mature quite a bit this this year over having some hardships and we’ll see people who are in the industry for real and when we look at some of those, like cottage industries, more like craft beer or something and farm raid, like I’ve got a company here I work with Colorado Biodynamic that has a coffee shop and palisade where they have a consumption lounge and they sell the CBD, they’ve got their couple products but you know, smokeable flower and their topicals and they do all these things that are related there. So it really has a niche in the feeling that it’s all interconnected real nicely. And you see that kind of craft feel and mentality that you get back in the day from craft beer, you know?

Chip Baker: Sure, sure. Something that we haven’t been able to get with craft cannabis or craft high THC cannabis. It’s interesting. How like, well one it’s always interesting to me how there’s so much division over hemp versus high THC. I see it as all one plant and I know it’s hard but wow man hemp has really led the way for high THC in so many ways and you know, the products that consumption lounges man the commercial agriculture, the use of plastic culture, the use of aerial spraying with drones like all that’s happened with hemp first instead of high THC.

Dan Ramsay: You know hemp is gonna really look at that economies of scale. And as things get bigger, it’s like how do you really turn this in and the fact that hemp has all these uses when that will eventually come to the from the plant. And THC, a lot of those are their niche, right, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re in these and they’re in these niche stores that still have a pretty nice. 

So I think when we see federal legalization, we’ll see a lot more of these practices being in, from hemp added to marijuana, but a lot of that has to do with regulations. Like, I think a lot of people in marijuana would like to do some types of cultivation that we see with hemp, but based on the square footage, they can have the plants, they can have, and state by state. It’s just enough that there’s no standard. And so once we see that, you know, kind of almost race to the bottom of cultivation of what people can do with the smokeable flower. You know, I project that we’ll see a lot of those same strategies just being implemented right into to the high THC platform as well.

Chip Baker: Yeah, we spoke about Oklahoma. You know, Oklahoma’s one of the only places in the country that you can scale and grow high THC cannabis in the same way that we’re seeing people grow hemp. One license, one easy set of regulations, and you can literally grow as much as you want. It’s been a testament to how much we’ve been restricted over research and development, because a man like in Colorado you can only plant so many plants, you can only have so many plants.

Dan Ramsay: And metric nose

Chip Baker: Yeah and metric nose. I mean we literally just planted 9500 seeds of 12 different high THC cannabis varieties the other day. And we’re of course are fino tracking and keeping track of all of this stuff but like there’s no regulations that say we can’t do it and a portion of the seeds I know they’re not gonna make it I’m just growing them to for R&D purposes and in other states that would be so difficult to do because tracking, keeping you know, destroying them. People think that you were trying to sell them on the private market. But here just the way that they’ve approached it, it’s just really good for high THC cannabis. We’re able to do all this R&D. And we got to culture stuff down here, I want to get this pivot stuff down here, tons and tons of hoop houses like field grown like acres, like you can do all of that here. And you can’t do it with hemp here.

Dan Ramsay: As soon as you step out and you start really getting those acres that we get that whole new like, controlled, uncontrolled environment. You know, things that have come out here from like pests we haven’t seen because hemp hasn’t been planted in a while to out in palisade last year there was you just if you did the little wine tour bike loop, if you were to like ride your bike around, you’d see 20 different fields of hemp and how much got seated out. 

Like a lot of people have lost even when we talk about more factors that kind of made 2019 painful for the hemp industry combat harvest was how many harvests I know that were seated out even before like the early frost. But yeah, stepping outside and all sudden getting into the hoop houses. But once you start planting like, you know, acres on pivots, there’s a whole little new set of approaches that need to come into each one of those stages where we’ve been able to give the plant time and energy that it will take all your time and energy if you don’t plant it, right.

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve got about an acre under plastic culture. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, you may have seen it. We call it plastic culture, and it’s an implement that you run on a tractor, and it creates a bed out of the natural soil. And then it lay down some fertilizer your irrigation line and then wrap it in this really thin layer of plastic that acts as a mulch. And it’s incredibly effective for planting vegetables and weed abatement. It’s how like tons of organic foods and vegetables are grown. It really helps with water conservation. 

But I was just in this field this morning, and we were just doing some, like, it’s only an acre. So we were lightly steaking it up, right? In a trellising wine vineyard type of style, something that you couldn’t do in 20 acres, right. But in an acre, I can do it. But as I’m walking through it, I’m thinking about like, Oh, it’s time for all of these leaves to be picked off. And it’s like, dude, there’s no way that can’t happen in this. There’s not there’s no way that I’m going to send people out here to de-leaf, you know, the way up to center people out the bottom anything, you know.

Dan Ramsay: And then weeding has been a big thing because people love growing these monster plants and you know, put them on huge centers, but then on suddenly while you’re waiting for that plant to like cover that area, [inaudible] see weeds take over with your beds, you know, you might have more isolated watering, which is great for lots of reasons, but still just that meeting. And then also I’ve actually been talking with people who are trying to figure out some of the answers to like trellising some of these larger fields in some with a different way of trout just because of like out here. It’s like the wind, you know, because as soon as you’re at the mercy of the weather, is you’re like, oh man, it just needs a steak like you’re saying like it needs a little help because you can do so much work. But then it gets to the end where it’s got all that weight you want on it but you know those that fall weather’s for real most places. 

Chip Baker: Yeah, here in Oklahoma it’s a diverse weather system. The wind is no joke, that’s for sure. And you either have to like plant your canopy density has to be like an incredibly thick in order to guard against the wind because the wind will self prune the plants and keep them smaller here for sure. But if you don’t a wire them up, string them up, steak them up in some way. Like last year, we had a half acre field those literally all growing sideways. It’s just always this breeze. So it’s always just growing sideways.

Dan Ramsay: I was at a farm, a client just the other day where there were a couple bigger plants that had migrated Don’t just like the side of the roots, you know, and you’re like carrying Oh, and you’re like, Oh, isn’t that good? But it’s like, you know, once you start seeing that you’re like, how does it recovers the time we wanted stress but like, yeah, it’s like pulling them off. So, that’s kind of the next like, as we step out door and starting to say, like, wait, maybe a little bit smaller plant, maybe an auto flower, maybe more densely populated, and what’s going to get that being no raw plant matter per, cubic foot type thing or square foot, and as we kind of try to start realizing some of the these areas, that it’s got take some trial and error. 

So it’s good to hear like in Oklahoma, that they’ve created an area that’s with less regulation and has more ability for that R&D to get out there, at least just from a knowledge standpoint of we know what’s going to be effective here because, you know, I don’t can’t tell you how many people last year also had a like a, you know, early beat by curly beat top virus came through and we worked with the extension office here at like CSU and with so many clients just trying to identify some of these new diseases that we hadn’t seen or what we thought it was, you know, I thought it was tobacco mosaic virus thought it was, you know, you walk down through these and then to the end, and you’re like, Well, you know, and I’ve seen some, you know, it’s like, it’s now pet mosaic virus. Yeah, so it’s similar, but you know, they’re just things you haven’t seen, and it’s just such a different approach from growing in a controlled environment. 

Chip Baker: Now, yeah, it’s kind of the kind of the beauty of it all though, man is that hemp and cannabis is a new frontier for farming right now. Here ability to be able to do research in the area or develop technology or, it’s right now is the time for all of that.

Dan Ramsay: I always like to say that the learning for agriculture started in like 10,000 BC. So we’ve been learning for a long time all but like, education and, and transformation of knowledge was so slow, right? Every year, it slowly got faster until all of a sudden we got to like, and as we continued in the 19th century, early on to just like, keep pushing hemp aside and marijuana aside, it was like, we pushed cannabis out right when technology was really coming in. So now being able to take all this technology we’ve learned in the last like five decades and start saying, Wait, how do we apply this to what we know? We don’t have to jump all the way back. You know, we can jump right forward with a lot of the but I think one of the things I I really enjoy about this industry is that classic, what we can learn from other industries. Yeah, where there’s just so much,

Chip Baker: So many aha moments still to be had. You know, so many aha moments. It’s a great place, man. Certainly not boring, that’s for sure. Hey, Dan, let’s go. Go ahead, Dan. 

Dan Ramsay: No, you can go ahead.

Cultivation throughout the Country

Chip Baker: Man, I was gonna ask you, not boring man. What do you predict is going to happen here this year with the hemp industry. I mean, so many people haven’t planted that had in the previous some big people planted this year, some small people did but like how do you see what’s going on with current cultivation throughout the country? And how do you think it’s gonna affect the market?

Dan Ramsay: So I know in Colorado, there was, as you said, quite a few people who lost their ass man. It was just And got out of the game. So I yeah, I would predict that we have, you know, a good half of the market that grew last year in Colorado isn’t growing this year and those who were like, thought they were gonna blow it up. And do you know, hundreds of acres are doing 50 acres and people who were doing like, you know, everybody told me way back, instead of and was like, we’re going to focus on quality instead of quantity. 

My big question, as far as that is, how much our reserves do we have as far as like, biomass oil, flower that’s like stored in a way that it still has it’s all viable, so that the market once harvest gets here in a couple of months, most of that biomass I think, is kind of depending how it was stored, but I think there’s going to be a bad taste in the mouth for 2019 hemp season. It’s like the feel of it. And sometimes, people make decisions bound with feelings more than they do. But given that I’m in here I like to project that 2021 we’ll see a completely different situation because we will have like move through a lot of that inventory and the people who are around are people who aren’t here by accident and —

Chip Baker: Absolutely, it’s gonna mature the market for sure it has already like pushed out to get rich quickers.

Dan Ramsay: Completely. And the people who are like willing to put in the hustle work and and find a way when you can’t, it’s kind of one of those if you can sell in this market. If the water goes up a little bit, you’ll know how to swim. So I think there’s a lot of potential here the markets there, those in products are still selling. I just think that like we literally overproduced by whether it was one year or like a year and a half or where– 

Chip Baker: Most people can’t store the product, like you were saying, like, most people think that they were like, Oh, just hold on to it, uh, hold on to it, I’ll hold on to it, but like the product degrades, and they, some of them are out there still think they’re gonna sell their product from last year.

Dan Ramsay: And we used to be able to you used to be able to do in the good old days, you do more splits, right. So like the farmer [crosstalk] 

Chip Baker: Nobody wants to do split [crosstalk]. 

Dan Ramsay: Nobody is so like, now you have to pay more money to get it into oil and more storable form. But, you know–

Chip Baker: But hey, for our audience here, splits are a term we use for co-processors or toll processors, where you’ll split a percentage of the end product. And you provide the biomass. So, it may be a 50-50 split, it may be a 60-40 split, it may be a 70-30 split, you may be making crude oil or you may be making distillate or isolate or whatever on this split. But basically, I would give my product to an extractor and they just give me back a portion of it and extracted material.

Dan Ramsay: Exactly, well said, a split. And but that was a common move, right, like in the industry here was that people would get their product in the back, oh, we’re gonna do the split. Because, when you get, especially as a farmer, if you get one paycheck a year. It’s pretty rundown by the time you get back to October again. And so like shelling out capital to be able to process your material is not something who can’t sell it, the idea that they’re gonna invest more money into this business that they’ve already found on successful ah so i think a lot of that material is gonna go by the wayside and I know lots of people who are like I’m a storage shed you know with 20,000 pounds a hand and you’re like oh. 

Okay and then like in 2000, but at that point, and then I think the come it’s going to mature. And the cannabis industry is always one that loves your due diligence from a business standpoint. So as we have more established growers who have more established supply chains that can show that and a more established story that fits them in products. A desire for whatever it is they’re aiming for those niches will be defined, and I don’t think people are going to walk back in time as much as to buy that old inventory. They’re looking for you know that to make some, but I could be wrong there’s a couple of products you know companies out there that are happy to make shit products and just sell them. And [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: The technology can afford it because that is a thing but like the more the more the biomass degrades the less material you get out of in the long run less extractable material. So the harder it is for people to make money on it, or make the extraction [inaudible]. And now it’s August, I mean, all the early stuff, all the autoflower stuff, it’s starting to come out right now, like in the US and all over the country in the next two months. Like harvest is here.

Dan Ramsay: Yep, I’ve got clients harvest in this week for autos. And they’re sitting on product from last year too. And so but only a few of them. A lot of them and as I say that the last month has been been good for a lot of the clients I’ve talked to who have been able to move products that have stayed in here, you know, who are probably not as much biomass but people move in like smokeable flower and move in oil, or Delta 8 so hot right now. That’s so hot right now, Delta 8.

Chip Baker: That’s a sticky wicked, but it is.

Dan Ramsay: Mastered it is. Yeah. But it’s just like it kind of and the cannabis industry, I sometimes say is a bunch of early adopters. You know, like, the whole industry is like, we’re all early adopters of the industry, even our users. So as soon as we come up with a new technology, or a cannabinoid, CBG like, I’m interested to see how much CBG is harvested this fall, because I know a lot of people that went that– 

Chip Baker: Think they planned it out.

Dan Ramsay: For sure.

Chip Baker: Right. You know, interestingly we just plant out a bunch of autos for extraction this year. And we just got our first extraction results. And this is a butane extraction method, it’s for the medical market. But we’ve got 7% CBG in our extracted product. Something we’re like totally surprised that the seed producer that gave it to us they’ll don’t think they knew. Or they did mention it to me. Right, yeah. But we saw 19% in the flower that came out of the field and then that turned into an extracted 69%. But yeah, then the CBG was, up at 7.68%. Pretty, pretty surprised and impressed.

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, no, that’s, and that’s it. There’s a niche market for that, you know, and then the high kid side, that’s great. On the hemp side, the CBG is attractive because of a lot of those CBG strains don’t spike the THC as much. And while we’re waiting for– And then there’s some regulation coming in this, supposedly from the government in November, about the way that THC is going to be kind of measured on a national level. 

So, when we’re back in good old expo days, I feel, which seems like years ago, but it was January December. It seems like there’s real big talk about, like, do you really want to grow, these strains that could be higher with that risk for getting there and avoid content and just how it’s going to be enforced and interpreted.

Chip Baker: Oh, it’s all just started, man. The the terpenes the different cannabinoids. I mean, we’re talking about Delta 8 THC right now that’s extracted from hemp. And most people are familiar with Delta 9,and you know, there’s just so much research to be had in the coming years. It’s just really exciting. And, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And part of the necessity is farmers trying to figure out like, how they can have that special niche and be able to be successful in the marketplace.

Dan Ramsay: Completely. And both the farmers and the market-defining itself and consumers defining what they want. But like I said, I think a lot of its just early adopters. Everybody’s like, Oh, [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: So, can you make a price prediction on price per pound this year?

Dan Ramsay: I you know, I think I’ll shy away from that one, just because–

Chip Baker: Can you tell me what you thought the low price per pound last year was?

Dan Ramsay: I thought people selling for like, I didn’t hear that dollar, but $10 a pound was pretty common and I heard people sell it for like seven stuff, you know the price per point of CBD, right?

Chip Baker: Sure. Hey, explain that. Explain that. Let’s talk about that. Explain what that means.

Dan Ramsay: So if you grow a pound of hemp, and we test it and has 10% CBD content, we pay $1 per point because when we extracted the CBD is what we’re after. So that would be $10 per pound. So if you grew for the molecule, plant, you have heard the molecule and you can get a little bit more technical, but that’s for the most part. The best way to realize that like not all hemp grown equally and that sometimes I feel like I have a 15% or 18% and and so much of what you know out here in Colorado I’ve seen just a lot more people who are doing you know biomass and extraction also really trying to leverage their greenhouses for flower. And that believing in that smokeable flower market which is I’ve seen 100 hundred dollars a pound up to like [crosstalk] probably seven you have seven or I mean they go all the way up there. And I the people I know who have been able to sell seven in those larger ones have established relationships and had a little bit more–

Chip Baker: And they’ve got a Primo smokeable flower– that’s the thing [crosstalk]

Dan Ramsay: It is and that Primo like hemp is like becoming a real thing like getting that next quality. Like cannabis, the cannabis industry has got a lot of pots knives in it like that quality is like really important. And so it’s It surprises me to have people being like, I want to evaluate putting you know, LEDs in my hoop house to for this hemp and you’re like, we just want to get every little, just trying to find every explore the different capital costs to get every little inch closer they can to being on the top shelf. So that’s–

Chip Baker: That’s cannabis in a nutshell man people. You know people, ganja, farmers, cannabis farmers throughout the known universe, all have incredible pride in what they do. And sometimes their egos get in the way. Our egos get in the way I’ll say and sometimes you’ll find those like really hidden gems that are just incredible and word to the wise when you see those people with really great, great, great great cannabis skills just shut up and listen man, take some advice in and really listen and see what they’re doing and check the ego a little bit at the door, you’ll learn line and you’ll grow better.

Dan Ramsay: For sure. That’s one of the things I get quite a few clients that will come to me because we do a lot of like product evaluations and just like little cost benefit analysis stuff to first your clients and when they come in– We all want to find that quick fix like you know, will the LEDs like increase my yield and make it that much better? I’m like, well not if you mess up the other parts. Like a whenever you’re growing and you meet somebody who’s done it well you better take pride in it because like a controlled environments. 

Like biomimicry, you’re mimicking the earth, like it’s a pretty there’s a lot going on here between the temperature the, the way your air and all of its changing and dynamic as the plants grow into the humidity at every part of it. And so to be able to move with a plant through that phase and control those variables and the way you want to you probably should shut up and listen to that person.

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah, man, it’s so simple. There’s only four pieces of magic that make cannabis grow and that are genetics, water, soil, and sun. Pretty much like you can manipulate those in many, many ways. But those are the four things you have to have. 

Dan Ramsay: [crosstalk] You need some [crosstalk] that photosynthesis just by [crosstalk] time, augmented I’m just saying like, in the like, have to happen, though. 

Chip Baker: You have to have Oh plants gotta go synthesize. 

Dan Ramsay: [crosstalk] You guys got it. But and whether you are already to CO2 or not, but no, I like you’re saying there’s only these couple. These only five kind of like variables or constraints of sorts. And, but what’s fun about growing is like the plant grows every day, the bigger the roots, the bigger it grows next day and it grows exponentially. And like, how does that change what you did last week? And so, asking those and we’ve got a digital solution we’re working on, that we’ll be bringing out here soon with like an app that we’re building to try to answer a lot of these questions. But that’ll be next year. We’ll have to just hop on and chat again, you know about that. But I love those questions. I think that’s a really fun part of the growing is the fact that you’re like, it’s really simple. You’re like, yeah, until it changes every day.

Natural Order Supply’s Future in the Hemp Industry

Chip Baker: Yeah, Dan, one of the things that you guys are doing a lot of is education, and you just brought up this app. But what we haven’t talked about is like your education outreach, and you know what your plans are in the future for that. So tell me about that man.

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, so, as a company, as a person, my ethos has always been real education based in this industry. Tons of it’s needed. We, last year as a company started a monthly event we call on Here for Hemp, that was just real hemp centric events that we did monthly, where we brought everybody from, like the Department of Agriculture to talk about their handle, what they do when they do a walk through, it’s like talking about pest control. Or we also brought in like just parts of the industry of people from like, the banking, the insurance side, all those business components that are needed, because just because you started a farm, that’s, you need the whole business behind it as well. And there’s so much that can be gleaned and learned and needs to be done there. 

So we did that all the way up until this last February when COVID decided like no more events. And but those were in-person events where we had the last one we did in February was a champ event. That’s like Colorado’s hemp advancement management plan. But that one you can actually see a recording of that one on the, our YouTube page at Natural Order Supply or at the I believe it’s posted on the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s like notes sites for when they came in and kind of talked a lot about just the process of transport, how do you register that was a big question, actually. This last year was when they pull you over, how do you be like, here’s my form that says this is what it is and people believe you and how does that work when you drive around Colorado to leave Colorado. 

So we like as much as we love the cultivation and the plant. We see the bigger industry. We’re aiming to really make our impact. And so, you know, starting in September, we’re going to start doing our Here 4 Hemp events, again, with a webinar series, but we’re going to offer, we’re going to have ten different cannabis professionals or city professionals from Grand Junction because we work a lot with it. We work as the economic department there and different like sometimes it’s good to get somebody from the fire department to come in or depending on what the conversation is we really like to talk about to those city officials and regulators.

But we’ll be doing alike probably a 10-minute local webinar held in our store with a ten person event that’s about as big as you can blow up events right now. And then having a webinar, we’ll be inviting people such as, like I said, regulators and educators. Where people will be able to hop on in and join and see both those webinars which will be posted to our YouTube site but also if they wanted to be able to hop in and enjoy the conversation or apply to come and hang out is one of the ten people in the store and get some swag, and enjoy–

Chip Baker: Man, that sounds like a great idea. We’d love to help you out with that real dirt has really tried to push many of our interviewees, webinars and educational programs and the only way that we’re really gonna do better at this cannabis thing, this cannabis life is to educate ourselves and others about it. Yeah, okay, definitely. Let’s work together help you get that information out.

Dan Ramsay: Yeah, that would be great chip. We appreciate anything we can. It’s amazing what you can learn with the worldwide web too. When you jump into from a different place and you know, I’ve been hopping on webinars left and right and forgetting about them too. Yeah, the nature of the COVID world, it’s like I sign up on my calendar but it’s just so different than the expo world that I think we were used to in the networking for a company like ours used to go have booths and do quite a few shows. But all changing. Yep, exactly. 

Where to Find Them

Chip Baker: Well, Dan, it’s been awesome speaking to you today about hemp, the future hemp and what’s going on with you guys. Over at a Natural Order Supply in Grand Junction. Hey, if our listeners want to get in touch with you or research you more, how do they do that?

Dan Ramsay: You know, it’s pretty straightforward. We’re at naturalordersupply.com. That’s the same book for our our online. Our social platforms as well as Natural Order Supply or and if you go to our website there, you’ll see it’s all hemp centric, there’s an area in the top right button to click to join our next event on our website. So, yeah, that’s just the best way to, to reach us online and hit us on the website or search for us on social and we’re on all those platforms sharing what we’re learning and we’re real excited to step into pushing as much of our education that we have and keep in local, digital this towards the end of this year and all of next year. Really watching that.

Chip Baker: Awesome, man. Well, hey, that’s great. Dan. I hope we hear more from you. We want to definitely help you out with some of your webinars and education in the future. So listeners, look for more natural order solutions, Natural Order Supply, hemp webinar with Dan Ramsey. Dan, thanks for joining me today, man. I really appreciate it.

Dan Ramsay: Oh, thank you Chip it’s been great.

Chip Baker: All right, this is The Real Dirt. Thanks, guys! All right, Dan. Thanks. Thanks, man. That was a great, great conversation we just had.

All right, that was Dan Ramsay with Natural Order Supply out in Grand Junction, Colorado. Man I’ve always loved hemp since I read Jack Harrows book, The Emperor wears no clothes I was just fascinated turned on with this. This history international history they’ve been going on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years of hemp as a textile, cannabis as a medicine and the the interaction in a relationship that that humans have with it. And let us not forget the hemp has only been a legal cannabis has only been criminalized for just a small portion of the time that we as humans have been using it as a product and man now is really the time for hemp to come back to the world for cannabis to come back to the world. 

And I truly believe, and I have seen that cannabis can save the world. And the best way for cannabis to save the world is for us all the planet and consume it. So no matter if you’re consuming CBD gummies or if you’re smoking a large high THC joint or maybe a dab, man while you’re doing this, just think a little bit about the other people on the planet and how maybe hemp and cannabis can help them and help your relationship with them and unless try to pursue that. 

This has been The Real Dirt. If you liked this episode, please subscribe on iTunes, man I need more subscribers. It really would make this thing go is the subscribers on it. Hey man, check me out at cultivatecolorado.com, Cultivate OKC supply. If you need any equipment in the country in the world, give us a call, check out our website, sign up for a commercial account. And we offer awesome pricing to people all over the globe, awesome shipping from people all over the globe. And we’re really, really, really there to help you.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve started a new project Greener Consulting Group. Check us out greenerconsultinggroup.com. We’re a full-service cannabis advisory company, and we have dozens of different cannabis consultants and advisors all over the country in the globe that could help you out with your problem. It’s easier than you think. So look us up. And hop on for the free advisory call.

Hey, thanks again. It’s been a great Real Dirt; this is Chip Baker. I enjoyed this episode so much. Look for a bunch of new episodes coming out here saying. Thanks again, Real Dirt!

The Innovations of Solar Power in Cannabis Cultivation with Brendan Delaney

The Innovations of Solar Power in Cannabis Cultivation with Brendan Delaney

massachusetts cannabis laws

Talk about taking sun-grown to the next level.

Brendan Delaney is the cultivation director for Solar Therapeutics in Somerset, Massachusetts. They were the first cultivation facility in the US to use solar power to grow their cannabis.

A singular mission drives the company’s experienced management team, dedicated board, and passionate investors: to provide industry-leading wellness and alternative therapy products with a smaller energy footprint. By owning their micro-grid assets consisting of solar arrays, battery storage, and co-generation units, they will offset at least 60% of our carbon emissions.

In today’s episode, find out how Brendan uses solar power to grow cannabis and sustain quality alternative therapy products while using a self-generation of energy.

“Having a wide variety really drives sales here, and I think having unique strains is really appealing to some people where legal weed is a pretty new thing.” 

– Brendan Delaney

Some Topics We Discussed Include (Timestamp)

2:40 – Be an efficient grower and environmentally conscious

6:32 – Starting cultivating commercially under Prop 215 rules

10:07 – 25b Pesticide Regulations

22:31 – Keeping the Menu Fresh

25:23 – Selecting Phenos

31:42 – Trimming Weeds

38:09 – Different strains for wholesale and retailing cannabis

43:39 – Cannabis in the pandemic crisis

46:06 – Where to find them

56:34 – Grow tips

 

People Mentioned / Resources

Connect with  Chip Baker

TRANSCRIPT

Chip Baker: Hey, this is Chip with The Real Dirt podcast, you have reached yet another episode of The Real Dirt. While things have been a little erratic, since we’re an international pandemic, and whether you think it’s a plan demic, or a pandemic or the plague, it’s definitely a reality for people throughout the globe. And I just want to man, give a heartfelt shout out to all of those who are having problems these days due to our international pandemic. The COVID has definitely, man, and it’s changed the world. It’s changed us. It changed how we do business. And you know, it’s kind of changed how I’ve done podcasts. We don’t have podcasts in person anymore. It’s been actually kind of hard to get people to do podcasts. I’ve got an internet connection that’s a little slow. So we’ve been changing our technology constantly trying to get really good, good information with you guys. 

But today I’ve got, man, Brendan Delaney. Brendan, he’s the cultivation director for Solar Therapeutics in Somerset, Massachusetts. And they’re one of the only countries using so I mean only companies using solar power to grow their cannabis. Now, many people like myself do have supplemental solar power. You know what our operation in California, we have 60,000 watts of solar, I believe in it. It supplements, it ties back into the grid, they call it. So we’ve got a bunch of panels sitting on the roof of a barn and it’s generating power every single day. Instead of us actually using that power, we’re generating it back into the grid. 

So we’re responsible for helping people obtain their energy needs through our solar connection. And as soon as we get our license there in Trinidad, California will be growing cannabis by the sun. Ironically, they’re in greenhouses, light depth, greenhouses, but we’re going to be powering them partially through solar power with 180,000 watts over there and 60,000 watts of solar. Wow, it really does feel good to be sustainable. And I really look forward to speaking to Brandon here in a moment. 

Be an Efficient Grower and Environmentally Conscious

You know, it’s all the little things that you get to do in your grow that makes yourself an efficient grower, as well as environmentally conscious, and there are many things that you can do to help yourself, reduce your costs as well as being great stewards of the steward land. Several years ago, one of the manufacturing plants, I decided to take it upon myself to reduce my waste significantly. 

So I called up all of my manufacturers, all of my shippers and I asked them all if there was any way that we could reduce our shipping and packaging and not surprisingly, several of them said, Yeah, that’s great, you know, the packaging costs so much, how can I reduce the packaging and they reduced their packaging cost I kept paying the same price to those guys. I didn’t ask him for a discount. But I tell you where I made my money was on disposable off all that plastic and all that cardboard and all those materials that were coming in. We were going, and we were dumping significantly less into the landfills. And over time that really has paid off and it’s made us feel good, and you know, you can do all kinds of things to help any cannabis operation be sustainable. 

But look at your waste stream, look and see everything that you’re throwing away in the trash, look at all your recyclables, look at your water, and just try to clean all those up just one little piece at a time. You know where we need to be the most responsible business owners in any industry because we are so heavily looked at. And I encourage each and every one of you to do just that. Decide how you can make an impact in the change and really strive to do it as a company, and you’ll see an economic advantage to that. So without me babbling on here, we’re gonna get right into it the next episode of The Real Dirt if you like this episode and other, man, you can download them on iTunes, subscribe, go to Spotify. We’ve even got a YouTube channel now. So love you guys and sit back, roll up with a fat one, and here’s The Real Dirt.

All right, here we are with The Real Dirt on today’s dirt. I have Brendan Delaney of Solar Therapeutics in Somerset, Massachusetts, say hey, Brendan.

Brendan Delaney: Hey guys, how are we doing?

Chip Baker: Oh, man, thanks for joining me today. You guys reached out to us on our channel and expressed interest in talking to us. I’m so glad you did. You know we get many many responses from people over the channel, and I’m always happy to talk to fellow growers. Thanks for calling us, man.

Brendan Delaney: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

Chip Baker: So man, we’re kind of actually from the same hood. Huh, Brendan, you’re in Massachusetts now. I’m in Oklahoma now, but you kind of cut your teeth in California.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, that’s correct. Started cultivating commercially actually up in Shasta County in 2010 ended up making my way over to Trinity County. And we’re doing some largest scale permanent farms over there before I took the job here, about a year and a half ago.

Chip Baker: All right, you move over to Trinity Pines.

Brendan Delaney:  I’ve definitely been through the pines, but we [inaudible] Douglas City, and I have a spot in Junction City as well.

Starting Cultivating Commercially Under Prop 215 Rules

Chip Baker: Sure. Yeah. A great little inside joke for us, huh? Oh my God, what a crazy place. Listeners, you can look that all up for yourself. So yeah, check it out on Google or if you think you got to grow. Yeah, took a look at that. Look at that. Right. It’s amazing. So You started in 2010. Right, when it was still on the cusp of 2.0 legal cannabis in California. You started operating under the old medical cannabis rules, right?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, yeah, we were operating under Prop 215 for a couple of years out there and finally made the switch to getting actual permits. But you know, a little dicey there for a little while. But as long as you’re smaller than your neighbor, you’re good, right?

Chip Baker: Yeah. Well, you know, I tell you that was the beauty of the 215 laws. Now, many people for 20 years said, Oh, it’s bad. It’s an awful law but man because it was vague. It really allowed the medical cannabis market to really really grow throughout California. It allowed so many like cities and states and municipalities to copy the law. And also like, you know, people trying to sue over the law realize, Wow, it’s so vague. It’s well written for [crosstalk].

Brendan Delaney: There were a lot of gray areas to say the least. 

Chip Baker: Yeah. For those of you don’t know, in California 1997, medical marijuana was passed with this bill called 215. And that’s what Brendan and I are referring to as 215 rules. And back then, all you kind of had to do was have like, a book of patients. And you’d have like a handful of different recommendations and some letters that said that you were growing on behalf of them. And then there were some great counties where all you do, you just had to have your own prescription, your own recommendation, and you could have unlimited kinds of growth checks or balances.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, and then you just spray-painted green cross on some plywood for the helicopter. 

Chip Baker: Exactly. And Hope for the best. It was definitely free for all. It definitely, man, it kind of tainted a little bit what was to come with legal cannabis and regulated cannabis. Man, what was it? What was the major difference? You saw from going from that environment of 215 to a regulated environment like, I mean, you had a little baby step first you went to Trinity County. And then you went over to Massachusetts, which is more heavily regulated.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I mean, Massachusetts is definitely the most heavily regulated state in the country in terms of cultivating cannabis. Which I think is a good thing. It holds you accountable for doing things in a different way. 

Chip Baker: Absolutely man there needs to be some roles

Brendan Delaney:  It kind of keeps the, the BS artists out of it.

25b Pesticide Regulations

Chip Baker: That is true. But I mean, just the pesticide usage alone has really leveled the playing field and, you know, you could just spray and pray with whatever you wanted and make like the worst grower be successful.

Brendan Delaney: For sure, yeah, they, the 25b Regulations, are pretty intense. And it really anything other than like citric acid is a form of pests is not really allowed here, and the testing process is extremely rigorous here. We’re on the go for sure here. 

Chip Baker: Wow, that makes it complicated.

Brendan Delaney: Oh, yeah, it does.

Chip Baker: Right. So you can’t use any pesticides just know– you can change the pH of the surface of the leaf, basically.

Brendan Delaney: Pretty much Yeah, yep.

Chip Baker: You can wash the plant off. Maybe?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I mean–

Chip Baker: You’re shaking your head. Wait a second. I don’t know if the water is legal or not.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah. Well, it depends on what’s in the water.

Chip Baker: So no, soap?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, no, soap. Yeah. And they’re constantly changing the regulations. But, you know, I guess that is a good thing when, some of the stuff that is used is pretty [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: Oh, absolutely. And it makes you like, you know, have to be really at the top of your game. I mean, I’m really impressed. I mean, here in Oklahoma, that they’ve actually the way the laws are written is nothing is legal. There are no pesticides that can be used. But they have a really low tolerance of pesticide levels here. So the reality is you can use anything as long as you know no one catches you using it on the spot and then it doesn’t test below these really minimum regulations where like in Colorado, they give you a list. They’re always updating your list, Oregon–

Brendan Delaney: They’re actually they’re introducing fifth– I believe in the next three months they’re actually fifteen pesticides or fifteen substances to the banned list here in Mass and from what I understand is other states are going to start to accept the levels that Massachusetts is using which is having for heavy metals, we’re looking at 200 parts per billion. Which is, you know, there’s heavy metals in pretty much every–

Chip Baker: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So do you think they’re being over-restrictive on some of that?

Brendan Delaney: Yes and no. So the pesticide stuff. I mean, there are some things that I feel that benefit the farmer and should be allowed, and then there’s some that definitely shouldn’t be allowed. Like, there’s some stuff that’s so widely used. And you don’t even really know what it’s doing to you, or what it could do to you. And then, you know, it gets in, it’s in the groundwater and you’re not just affecting your customers, and you’re affecting your neighbors and all that type of stuff.

Chip Baker: Sure. Yeah. We use some strict protocols, and we don’t have to spray pesticides. We are fortunate enough that we can, and we use stuff biological controls [crosstalk] and some other stuff but with the right application rate knowing how to apply at the right time like really being able to grow your culture is beneficial biology, and that’s how we have dealt with it, but man I’ll tell you some people they have problems with that with fungus and mold residue.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, yeah, I am. It really makes you step up your game and really has your standard operating procedures to where you’re running a really clean facility. You know, you have to hold your employees, hold your employees to those standards. So you’re not ending up as sure. A lot of people have their own home grows and may have mold or may have mines and not stuff trash–

Chip Baker: Okay, can right, what’s the– Is there a common pass for Massachusetts? Is there something difficult for people to control? 

Brendan Delaney: Fungus gnats pop up here pretty regularly. I’ve heard of broad mites but I mean the main thing is pm here.

Chip Baker: Yeah, pm everywhere almost. Right? It’s not as rampant in Colorado, but you know, the drier environment there. They were really really for thought sealed brooms, and you know, there’s also a wide list of fungicides.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah. We just use prosthetic tubes to construct citric acid And neuron a pretty strict regimen on that up until like week two a flower, and then we release biologicals for the end of the plant’s life.

Chip Baker: Released biological so benefits the best–

Brendan Delaney: Not for mold but– for anything else that would pop up for mites or anything like that.

Chip Baker: Right. Wow, you guys have a thousand lights. I mean, that’s roughly 25,000 for canopy, huh?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, so this is phase one. We have three grow rooms right now, and a mom room. We have two more grow rooms with about 245 lights in each room, but by the end of the build-out there will be about 5500 grow lights here, 150 in our mom room.

Chip Baker: Oh, wow. That’s massive. So, uh, you guys, you guys use solar supplementation for all of this?

Brendan Delaney: We do we have here, so part of our microgrid is a large solar field.

Chip Baker: So you’re feeding back into the grid, it’s a [inaudible] system? Yeah, that’s exactly what we have in California too. You know the batteries are cool and great and on off-grid they’re awesome, but the batteries in themselves are really toxic too, and you really got to spend a hefty amount of money on the table to be completely solar efficient. Just to be able to enter ties back into this into the grid that really makes it applicable for everybody. Everybody should be doing this.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, we have full solar on our roof here. The rivets are 70,000 square foot buildings and then a few acres Outback solar field, but the rest of our microgrid is made up of natural gas generators.

Chip Baker: All right. On the site?

Brendan Delaney: Yep. We create all our own power here. Ed can speak a little bit more than me. He’s a little bit more well versed in that stuff but– 

Chip Baker: Sure, yeah, we’ve worked with several self-sustainable people with wind generations with solar in Colorado and an Oklahoma. Natural gas is, you know, it’s huge in both of those states, and so many people have unlimited natural gas usages. We’ve put in really huge hundred thousand watt generators. It’s amazing when you get the power for free, the fuel for free, what you can really do with everything else.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, where our units are pumping out. A few megawatts here.

Chip Baker: Oh, wow, man, that’s great. So was this– Do you know if the solar aspect was used in order to get your license? Was that something you guys like really push for at the very beginning?

Brendan Delaney: It’s something that we’re proud of for sure.

Chip Baker: Yeah, I’d be proud of it too, man.

Brendan Delaney: It’s definitely something that sets us aside from the other facilities in the area, for sure.

Chip Baker: So we were just in Massachusetts. Oh, man, it wasn’t 19; it was like the very end 18, December 18. Drove around, checked it out. It was just starting to come online back then. Tell me what the laws are like and what’s going on in Massachusetts. 

Brendan Delaney: Well, let’s see. So we started off actually as a recreational facility. We just got our medical license last week.

Chip Baker: Oh, awesome. Congratulations.

Brendan Delaney: Thanks. Appreciate it.

Chip Baker: Yeah, we’re all medical, even in California where there’s rec. We’ve got a medical license there, and we got medical here in Oklahoma. We just decided to stay on that side for now.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. The rec market here in Mass is pretty, pretty crazy. 

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah. I’ve seen some lines–

Brendan Delaney: There’s definitely days where we got lines for sure. But as far as the laws go for rec is, I would say it’s similar to a liquor store. You show your ID. You got to be 21. And there’s a certain amount of product that each person can buy. That’s pretty much it. The permanent process here in Mass is lengthy to say the least. A lot of–

Chip Baker: Has limited licenses?

Brendan Delaney: There are. We’re not Massachusetts isn’t, hasn’t reached capacity yet.

Chip Baker:  Okay. Right.

Brendan Delaney: It’s a few year process to get your [inaudible] on your site and your facility permitted and licensed to actually go through. 

Chip Baker:  Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of how it is, most of the states other than, you know, the good ones. 

Brendan Delaney: I mean the price per pound here in Massachusetts is by far the highest country wholesale. Oh, yeah. And so it’s–

Chip Baker: Are your wholesale prices or the state average sale prices published. Can you say it?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Wholesale price–

Chip Baker: How much is a pound to wholesale weed?

Brendan Delaney: 4500 bucks

Chip Baker: That’s pretty high. I was going to say 5500 bucks.

Brendan Delaney: I mean some of it gets up there, some of it does get up there there’s not very many people cultivating license large scale facilities in the state. More coming online you know that not not every day but you know every month there’s a new one and there’s definitely some bigger ones being built out. But we’re setting ourselves up to be definitely one of the largest.

Keeping the Menu Fresh

Chip Baker: Well, [inaudible] with going into 5500 lights you’re definitely gonna be one of the largest, one of the largest in the country. So with the, man with going that much weed? How many different strains you guys got? How do you manage all those different strains?

Brendan Delaney: Um, so that’s a, I ended up bringing brands some pretty unique genetics from the west coast out here. Just some stuff that I had been working on in the years passed. I also work with a few different genetics companies, Humboldt Seeds. I work with Symbiotic Genetics and Compound Genetics. Have some good ties there. So anytime there’s some new, new hot stuff coming out, I usually get a pretty good plug from those guys and we’re working on, right now we’ve got about 26 strains here. Not all of them are on the shelves. We haven’t even flowered all of them out yet. But you know, this last harvest, which we finished about a week ago, was 12 strains, all from the west coast.

Chip Baker: Right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got some of the Humboldt Seed genetics and their Auto OG. Got a bunch of that going in? Next month I guess.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, they got some good stuff for sure we just harvested a, we did a bunch of their Asphalt Plant, which is I guess they renamed it as All Gas OG. And then also their truffle tree which both came out really good, super gassy, pretty high on the THC, but some legit stuff.

Chip Baker: So you guys are still looking for stuff you still plant seeds? 

Brendan Delaney: We do. Yeah. Our clone room is where we just, our clone rooms, we’re constantly germinating you know looking for different finos and just to keep our menu fresh. Having a wide variety is something that really drives sales here and I think having unique strains will be appealing to some people where legal weed is a pretty new thing.

Chip Baker: So how do you bring those new strains in on a facility like yours? How do you get R&DM to decide that you want you’ve selected this fino and you want to bring it in, how does it start?

Selecting Phenos

Brendan Delaney: So we germinate seeds, we sex them, we try not to stress them out too much. Once they’re sexed, they get tagged and numbered. And then we’ll flower out. You know, we’ll do maybe two lights. So two to four by four lights is one tray. So we’ll do one tray for each fino, and we’ll take it to flower and see where it ends up. And if it’s something that we like we keep it and keep the mom and then keep those genetics fresh. 

Chip Baker: Do you guys have a separate R&D room or is it just go into your main room? 

Brendan Delaney: Well, right now it’s just going into main rooms, like this. Typically, I wouldn’t do 12 strains in a room but we were really trying to find our stable genetics here. We’ve only, this has only been our second harvest. So we’re still kind of fino hunting to find, find those gems, you know.

Chip Baker: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s, it’s so funny you say you wouldn’t put more than 12 strains in the room there. It’s very West Coast. I only have a handful of strains. In Colorado, everybody’s got 77-80 strains. It’s just so many men it’s just hard. It’s just hard. As a grower, I just would rather have a few.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I actually have some seeds going right now. They’re starting to show their sex from compound compound genetics, what they’re sending out looks pretty amazing. They’re working with some of the larger breeders out there. Now they also know labs, which does tissue culture cloning. So they [inaudible]

Chip Baker: Yeah, I know those guys. Yeah, I’ve been trying to get them on the podcast for a minute. Dan.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, my buddy Tez has been working there for a little while longer. Tissue culture cloning is something that’s pretty new to Mass. We would be one of the first that are doing it on a large scale. 

Chip Baker: Can’t even get some of that stuff. 

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, there’s some products that are used that aren’t allowed in Massachusetts yet. So–

Chip Baker: Right. So that’d be IBA, IAA–

Brendan Delaney: Sure. Yeah. So I mean, hopefully, if we start working with Node labs full time, maybe we’ll be able to educate a State [inaudible] first doing it out here.

Chip Baker: Well, you know, micropropagation has so many, you know, possibilities, you can just do so much with it. That, you know, one of the problems that you always have bringing plants into new environment is how to make it into scale and how to bring it to scale how to like say, Okay, I planted out a tray, you know, which could be 10 or 20 seeds, and you chose one and like, how do you bring that one grade genetic to scale? 

Brendan Delaney: Ah, yeah, I mean, we have a very large farmer here. Our mom room is three tiers, about 150 lights. The footprint of the room is 3000 square feet. So when we go up three, we’re looking at close to the 9000 square foot canopy for the mom room. And I just have multiple moms instead of having a few of each strain we have 30.

Chip Baker: Yeah, totally I will do the same way– [inaudible] hundred moms.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, exactly. We’re always filtering them out every three months to really keep them fresh. That’s pretty much it. I mean, we are– the propagation team is pretty badass. We did 3000 cuts and them, which are routing right now. That will fill up our fourth room.

Chip Baker: You guys use arrow routers or cubes or what do you bring in?

Brendan Delaney: We’re using cubes right now. 

Chip Baker: Which, Rockwool or Oasis? or rock wall? Yeah, rock

Brendan Delaney: Rockwool, two inch cubes–

Chip Baker: The best thing to do man is the best hands down product on the market two inch Rockwool cubes, right? 

Brendan Delaney: Yeah. Easy peasy.

Chip Baker: It is for commercial operations for large scale operations? It’s just really hard to beat how easy and inexpensive it is.

Brendan Delaney: Sure, yeah. I like the two inch cubes. I like a little better they get, but the roots get a little bigger, well, fatter than usual–

Chip Baker: Yes, when we moved to Oklahoma, we set up a clone nursery, and this was just last year, 16 months ago, or something. And, you know, people weren’t used to buying clones. They were used to bond plants and forage pods. So it took us about six or eight months to like, convince people like no, you need two inch I don’t want two inch, I want four inch. No, you don’t want four inch because here’s 50 plants–

Brendan Delaney: Wait, where’s the pot? Yeah,

Chip Baker: Exactly. And I even did that to people. I was like, Oh, well here look. I’m going to give you these two inches for cheaper and I’m going to give you the pots, I’m going to give you the dirt you go home and do it. But you know, they just move so much better. In two inches than four inches you can put 50 cubes in a box and uh, you know, you only get 18 four inch pots in a box and they last longer you can automate the watering, you know, you’re just, there’s just so many great things about two inch Rockwool and clones, that’s for sure.

Brendan Delaney: For sure. You know, then, eventually if we are doing tissue culture, it’ll be just to keep our mom fresh.

Chip Baker: So with 1000 lights, how do you guys trim, how do you trim all that weed?

Trimming Weeds

Brendan Delaney: So right now we’re, we’re using Green Bros.

Chip Baker: Oh yeah, great.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, we got a crew that right now they’re de stemming and then they’re just running everything through the Green Broz, and the small stuff goes our labs not set up completely yet but the small littles will go right to the lab to make hash and then into rosin, but yeah the Green Broz Model M is pretty badass, super gentle and user friendly.

Chip Baker: Yeah as simple as can be, take it apart, put it back together like, you know there’s hardly– easy to clean easy to clean like i mean you know, if you if you lose something on it, you can easily replace it and man like those guys just really have built a great great great product and products. They’ve got some great products out there.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, they’re de-stemmers are pretty badass too.

Chip Baker: Alright, I haven’t seen that in action. I’ve seen it, but I haven’t seen it in action.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, it works great. I mean, you can throw a live material through there to make freshly frozen or, you know, you can buck your dry bugs off and throw them right in the Model M. It’s a pretty streamlined easy process and that Model M does about 14 pounds an hour once they’re bought.

Chip Baker: Oh, wow, that’s great.

Brendan Delaney: That’s one person really and then the trim that comes out the other side of the trim in kief is like ready for pre rolls. But it’s pretty much ready for the pre-roll machine.

Chip Baker: So you guys are drying and processing all types of ways, you dry it, you trim it green, you fresh frozen it and you kind of have to do it all on a scale operation, the scale yours.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, we do fresh frozen. We will be doing fresh frozen for the littles. We don’t trim anything green here. I like the dried trim method a little bit more. I think it really is the terpene profile keeps [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: It’s way better to dry weed with leaves on it.

Brendan Delaney: Hell yeah. I feel that. But you know what, that scale it’s tough when you’re drying a few thousand pounds every two weeks. It’s just a 24 seven gig and you know you don’t obviously don’t want to speed the process up too much because then you lose your quality. And you know there’s people that are drying their product in a day with heat dehumidifiers and all that stuff, but you really lose–

Chip Baker: So much, man and you just kill it–

Brendan Delaney: You lose so much. Yeah, exactly. I end up with a bag full of hay.

Chip Baker: Yeah, well, usually it’s me saying that. So Brendan, I’m glad you’re saying it today too. Because if you’re just rushing to market to sell weed quickly to make cash, that’s fine. But don’t claim you got the best weed right?

Brendan Delaney: Hell no, it’s not all about that THC number, you know, we need the whole entourage effect there.

Chip Baker: Yeah, it is. so in Massachusetts, you have to list the terpene as well as THC on the label?

Brendan Delaney: No, we don’t. But Solar Therapeutics will be. We’re doing full boards on all of our flowers. And we’ll definitely be including a full terpene profile. But I think it’s a little bit about educating the customers here. About terpenes the Massachusetts market right now is literally the product, the flower that has the highest THC number, is the flower that sells it doesn’t even matter what it looks like–

Chip Baker: [inaudible] is Colorado too. Oklahoma, is not so much like that yet. It hasn’t really hit like people do so weed, you know, on the wholesale level as like, Oh, it’s 27% Oh, it’s 32% or whatever. But the customer isn’t really buying it that way. It’s still so new and it’s not really enforced so much. The THC percentages, so, you know.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah. I think in Massachusetts as the market matures a little bit like things like terpene profile and bag appeal and flower having a legit nose is gonna be something that more people look for.

Chip Baker: Well, we definitely need more education on all that and you know, that’s one of the reasons that California and the West Coast have such great weed is because there’s so many discriminating customers that call bullshit on poor weed and that I know what it looks like, you know, but mostly–

Brendan Delaney: All right, if you don’t smoke [crosstalk]

Chip Baker: Get out it’s like, if it’s not the best up there then it’s really hard to sell it and the rest of the country is not quite like that. You can still sell almost everything you produce.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I mean, I think that’ll change with a little bit more education but also like, you know, new strains, like large variety, once people start to see some of those really, really exotic strains or gassy strains then–

Chip Baker: That’s what they’ll like. So do you guys, is all wholesale, do you have a dispensary?

Brendan Delaney: Do we have a dispensary on site here. We actually have another one that will be opening next few months. The whole COVID pandemic and kind of put a halt on a lot of stuff out here.

Chip Baker: Everywhere. I can’t find four inch bolts for a month. Ridiculous. I have a project I need like 404 inch bolts and I couldn’t find them for a month.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I moved my cot into my office and I just posted up here for a few months but yeah. Our second location is in the process of we’re in the permanent process. And hopefully be open within the next few months. 

Different Strains for Wholesale and Retailing Cannabis

Chip Baker: So here’s something I’ve been interested in, is you guys are wholesales, you guys got a really big grow, you wholesale and you retail it. What are the different types of preferred weed? What do you guys like to grow? What do people like about wholesale and what are the retail people like?

Brendan Delaney: I mean like I was saying before I think the retail part side of this is all about variety. If we have 10 strains on our menu our sales go up, if we have too big we go down. So keeping the menu fresh is a big thing. You know we have relationships with others. dispensary, other people that cultivate and we have some good working relationships with some of these other people and they’ve helped us out with wholesale so you know, we will help them out in the future when we’re really cranking here. And also, having some of their strains in house here at our dispensaries is a huge plus for marketing and again keeping the menu fresh with what they’re growing they can, you know, keep their menu fresh with what’s coming out of Solar Therapeutics.

In terms of growing it I mean, as long as it’s not finicky and is resistant to mold and throws down. It doesn’t matter to me as long as it finishes in under ten weeks.

Chip Baker: Alright. So the wholesale market, it’s still the variety still, pushes that you can still sell variety. It’s not like you know, it’s either gas or fruit on the West Coast. But–

Brendan Delaney: It’s the same here. 

Chip Baker: It’s the same there. Okay. 

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I mean there’s some strains that I’ve chosen to grow here which will do more like a majority of that with the intention of wholesaling larger amounts but also keeping some in house but wholesaling you know, some big chunks.

Chip Baker: Right. So you don’t have a favorite? Come on, you got a favorite.

Brendan Delaney: I mean, I’m digging the Asphalt plant that we just cut down. We’re also doing this across that I brought out which is Critical Mass and Pink Champagne. A little bit lower on the THC but I definitely got some CBD in it. Some high CBD in it. Which is cool for a, it’s pretty mellow but it’s nice.

Chip Baker: Yeah, we love smoking CBD, but only when they blend it with the THC. 

Brendan Delaney: It’s not worker weed right?

Chip Baker: Man, I smoke a lot of weed. Sometimes maybe I don’t need to be that high, so like you blend a little CBD in it and mix it yeah. I still get the flavor right but it’s still good to smoke a large joint. And the CBD is medicinal. So you get the great medicinal cannabinoid without just you know, getting obliterated.

Brendan Delaney: Right. Yeah, I’m actually a partner in a CBD processing company out of Sacramento called the Blue Bus Collective. We’re doing all different CBD products, as well as processing for some of the farmers out there.

Chip Baker: Yeah, I man, CBD has got a great great place in the cannabis market in some ways it’s really helped out THC. Pardon that bong it was way too big. But yeah I’m definitely I believe in the blending of the cannabinoids, I believe in the full spectrum application of it I believe in all the terpenes, the separation the isolation of individual molecules is too Western for me, man. You know–

Brendan Delaney: I hear you.

Chip Baker: Right, but I mean, I support it wholeheartedly, and we’re involved with hemp seeds and hemp seeds consulting, and you know, I’ve got hemp clothes and hemp stuff throughout our lives, and you know, we love it. But yeah, man, I’m a ganja guy for sure.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, we’ll get your information. We’ll send you out some samples after we’re done here.

Chip Baker: Oh yeah awesome, man. Yeah, I’d love it man. We take anyone listening out there and we take samples of all products, The Real Dirt that can be sent to 666 Buchtel Boulevard, Denver, Colorado 80210. We got a great rolling tray recently.

Brendan Delaney: Nice Nice. Yeah, we’ll send you some swag. 

Chip Baker: Yeah my guy Travis would love to see everything there. Right Travis? He’s nine right now.

Brendan Delaney: Perfect, perfect.

Cannabis in the Pandemic Crisis

Chip Baker: So, man, what do you see for the future here in Massachusetts and in the country? Do you see an increase in cannabis use because of current stay at home guidelines. And how do you think federal legalization might affect you?

Brendan Delaney: I mean, I definitely see an increase in use. And I feel like as legalization moves forward state by state, like the taboo of cannabis kind of being worn off. And it’s also more accessible. Like we have a lot of customers here that are a little bit older. And for them like being able to walk into a recreational dispensary and buy a product without having to worry about maybe where it came from or getting in trouble. I think it’s really open cannabis to a lot of people that may have been on the fence about using it before.

Chip Baker: Yeah, you’re right, man.

Brendan Delaney: As far as federal legalization goes, I’m not, I don’t really know where that’s going. It seems like it will happen soon. But who knows? That’s it. That’s the tough one.

Chip Baker: Yeah, well it’s coming all around in the East Coast now. I mean, you got Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia. I mean, so many states on the East Coast are now like talking about legal cannabis. You know, it’s exciting to see it.

Brendan Delaney: I mean, a bunch of our neighbors are probably hopping on board here in the next couple years. So we’ll see. We’ll see about that.

Chip Baker: Yeah. Well, you guys are pioneers, man. I’ll tell you. I’ll give you a salute for being one of the first there and being on the forefront of sustainable production and self generation of energy. You man, it’s just one of the brightest things you can do. And yet they, man really thank you guys for putting all that together.

Brendan Delaney: Oh, man, I appreciate it.

Chip Baker: Yeah, I’m sure you’re an unsung hero on that, but it’s something you got to want to do. You know, nobody’s forcing you guys to do it.

Brendan Delaney: Put the labor of love.

Where to Find Them

Chip Baker: Labor of love. Oh well hey, I love cannabis and I hope everyone who listens to the show loves this show Brendan thanks for joining me you got any way that our listeners can follow you guys or catch up with you if ever they’re in Massachusetts?

Brendan Delaney: Yeah @SolarThera on Social Media

Chip Baker: Say that again.

Brendan Delaney: It’s just @SolarThera on social media, Instagram, all that type of stuff, and that’s pretty much it.

Chip Baker: Oh well, there is it man. Awesome. Check him out @SolarThera

Brendan Delaney: @SolarThera or solarthera.com

Chip Baker: There we go. Yeah. Check out Brendan and everything cool they’re doing up there in Massachusetts if you’re ever around Somerset stop by their dispensary. And hey, man, buy a joint and give it away to somebody when you show up. Thanks a lot for joining us The Real Dirt. Thanks, Brendan. Hey, appreciate it. Have a good day, man.

Brendan Delaney: Thank you.

Chip Baker: Have you thought about a weed story, Brendan?

Brendan Delaney: I’ve been thinking about it a little bit.

Chip Baker: No Holds Barred. I mean, you know, Hey, let me ask you this question first. This will determine, hey, do I have your permission to reproduce this in any way I see fit?

Brendan Delaney: That might change the story. I mean, I was just thinking about, like, the times when I first started doing this and it really was the Wild West, you know, like, hiding from helicopters. And, you know, this is when camp was still around out there and like getting busted or going to jail. I mean–

Chip Baker: Yeah, run it from the man–

Brendan Delaney: I got the bulletproof vest here. Yeah, it’s from living near the pines.

Chip Baker: Stray bullets

Brendan Delaney: It was a wild time out there and you know, you meet some amazing people, and like, it was great for, to have the, you know, the more conscious grower community out there come together and meet some amazing people out there and, but I just times like driving truck beds full of flower down the highway and hoping you didn’t get caught, but the wildfires too. Last year it was just like I stayed during the evacuation and I couldn’t leave my house for 21 days the firing got right up right up to the next property over and that was the car fire ended up burning like 365,000 acres and it’s just you know, you don’t really sleep much and then you get it get out the other side and everybody’s okay and that’s what it’s all about but–

Chip Baker: Yeah, totally. Alright, so here’s, give me like one of the craziest grower stories you remember like to tell from Trinity and now you got one I’ll give you one of mine too.

Brendan Delaney: I’ll think about that you go first buddy.

Chip Baker: All right. So guys, when I first, when we first got there 1997 we were trimming for some other people and we went to trim with these people and they had these other women there, and they were telling us about Humboldt. They were like, Oh, yeah, man, you gotta be careful who you go to work for because there’s some crazy people up here. And she told this story about how her and another girlfriend went to work on a guy’s trim farm. They went through like seven gates and each gate to take the guy like an hour, you know, to get out and so they get down to the bottom and you know, he’s like, it’s kind of starting to get weird. And he keeps mentioning the gates and I will never get out. Turns out all the gates were unlocked when they went to leaf. And the guy had just been fake locking them and telling them all these crazy stories. So there’s some crazy people out there. That’s a pretty G-rated one. But you know, there’s–

Brendan Delaney: I mean, especially up there, you’ll meet all types. I mean, I had, not to mention any names, land owner that I ended up rebuilding his farm that was being saved and didn’t really know too much about him. When I took the position and it turned out he was batshit crazy. [crosstalk]

Yeah, the batshit craziness is fucking rapid in Trinity. But he used to show up in the middle of the night with an AR and like headlamp on, and he would just be pretty hell-bent on taking half of the product with an [inaudible] in the middle of the night. This was like a pretty common occurrence. So by the end of it, I learned just to kind of be sarcastic when she didn’t really take too well. But I mean just, you know, stuff like that. And we, I mean, we had neighbors that were like definitely on the math taken apart a carburetor, taken apart engines, all hours of the night and like huge Tent City camps up there. And it’s I mean, it’s the Wild West for sure, certain parts of Trinity are still–

Chip Baker: There’s no law enforcement. I mean in Humboldt, they would say stuff like and in Trinity too, Oh after 6pm you got to take care of your own problems. You know–

Brendan Delaney: That’s pretty much what it is. I mean, there’s certain parts especially out you know, near the reservations that they don’t even go.

Chip Baker: Oh, yeah. I mean, in Humboldt they don’t go to the reservations. They don’t go to areas with you know, the organized Eastern European crime gangs. They don’t go with the Mexican crime games like, they’re, they just you know, the previously in the past law enforcement would concentrate on the easy pickings usually like hippies with long hair, you know, smoking out trying to be Rasta.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, I mean, the problem now is their law enforcement’s under they’re not really funded for cannabis. They’re out there outgunned and outmanned up there, you know, they don’t know if they’re walking into like 50 people with automatic weapons or fucking RPGs or whatever, there’s some wild motherfuckers out there.

Chip Baker: Well, hey, I’ll tell you also, that the police are pissed there because they can’t rob us like they used to. And they would go in. Yeah, they would go in, you know how it works. They go in, they would literally rob you of all your pocket, knives and tools and all that stuff. And you might never get charged. You know, they take all your shit dude, and they are pissed that they can’t go Christmas shopping anymore every day. Because that’s how it was like I got a new set of snap arms, I’ll trade you for that motorcycle or whatever.

Brendan Delaney: That’s a nice new dirt bike. It must be stolen. We need to fucking take it into evidence. 

Chip Baker: And most of that stuff never showed up in evidence. They just stayed in their pocket. That’s for sure. Yeah, man, I tell you, I was on the 36 at the gas station. And I’m listening to this guy talk about spinning, putting cash in his lawn. And the guy behind the gas stage is like, Oh, yeah, man, you got the nice lawn. He’s like, Oh, yeah, all the cash I get. That’s all I’m not gonna report it. And I’m like, thinking this guy’s a weed grower. He walks out and the guy’s like, yeah, that’s the fucking local deputy sheriff. Right? bragging about the money he’s stealing from people and how he’s putting it into his lawn?

Brendan Delaney: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have friends that got rated in the, you know, the question that they’re asked most is like, where’s the stash?

Chip Baker: Where’s the money? Where’s the money? Yep, totally.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, they don’t care about anything else. They’re trying to fucking buy their kids nice Christmas presents with other people’s money. 

Chip Baker: Absolutely. Well, man, unfortunately with legal cannabis, a lot of that stuff is gonna disappear. And the crooked cops come up there just to shake down people and like, you know, the crooked mentality that’s, you know, at the drug enforcement, you know, groups and individual sheriff’s offices and police departments, it’s gonna fade, right?

Brendan Delaney: I mean, it’s a legitimate industry now with legit money in it’s a taxable crop at this point. 

Chip Baker: Well, in California, Northern California is the only place in the country where legal cannabis hasn’t really, really benefited people yet. It’s benefited individuals. But everyplace else, it wasn’t really a cash crop already. And in Northern California, that was already the history; it was already cash crops. And it’s actually pissed a lot of people off because they used to grow weed, eat, quasi illegally in their backyard and rake in like 50,000 hundred thousand dollars a year on the side by not doing much. And now that’s all gone. So they’re pissed and the cops are pissed because they can’t rob you for your pocket change. And then like the prohibition is they’re pissed because they lost and then there’s the non-back yarders who are all good for freedom and everything as long as they don’t have to look at it or smell it. You know?

Brendan Delaney: Exactly. Out of sight, out of mind. 

Grow Tips

Chip Baker: Out of mind. Alright, so you gotta grow tips for me. I need a grow tip.

Brendan Delaney: I got you. The best nutrient for a plant is the Gardener Shadow.

Chip Baker: Okay, I’m not familiar. Tell me about the Gardener Shadow and how it’s the best nutrient for the plant?

Brendan Delaney: It just means the more time you spend in your garden, the better your plants again.

Chip Baker: That’s right. You actually have to hang out with them and touch them.

Brendan Delaney: Oh, yeah. 

Chip Baker: That’s great, man. You know, we’ve been building a ton of stuff here in Oklahoma and with the COVID hit, we really hadn’t had employees so we just been building stuff. So, I like to build everything from scratch. For the past several months, we’ve built a 40,000 square feet worth of hoop house. You know, irrigation, we’ve got a couple acres it’s actually in the ground and fences. And today, I actually got to grow weed.

Brendan Delaney: Nice, man. Congratulations–

Chip Baker: Yeah, plants are in the ground like that stuffs happening but like today actually trellis some weed and it wasn’t just like mechanics. It wasn’t drip irrigation or posture, tarps or shade or irrigation or pump or tractor or whatever it was–

Brendan Delaney: This past week we’ve been we’ve been commissioning Argus fertigation system, so– 

Chip Baker: Oh, nice. Nice. 

Brendan Delaney: So it’s a big one. So we’ve been finishing the build out on the fertigation room and really diving deep into our guests which is a badass company. I can’t say enough good things about Argus Controls and, and their fertigation equipment is definitely upper echelon.

Chip Baker: Totally, Argus, [inaudible] those are, they’re all the leaders right now in cannabis.

Brendan Delaney: Yeah, we’ve vetted out all three but settled on Argus–

Chip Baker: Yeah, that [inaudible] too expensive for me, man.

Brendan Delaney: I guess, I don’t really– we were gonna work with them. But Argus seems a little more user friendly.

Chip Baker: Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna have problems with any of it but the Argus and the Netafim are absolutely the most user friendly.

Brendan Delaney: I mean, the support staff at Argus is fucking unreal. 

Chip Baker: Do you like them better? That’s what it boils down for me to do business with people often as I go, like, this guy’s got me. 

Brendan Delaney: You want to do business with good people that live up to what they’re they’re pitching so– 

Chip Baker: Yeah, it’s important. Well, hey, Brendan, thanks for the gardener shadow. I think that was a great one. I like the slightly different one. Thank you. And hey, man, I’d love to do a part two with your development guy on all the other sustainable stuff you guys are doing. And if COVID ever lets us get a rest. You know, I’m gonna get on the road again. I’d love to come and see you guys.

Brendan Delaney: Oh yeah man. We’d love to have you.

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Hemp Laws Explained with Vicente Sederberg LLC

Hemp Laws Explained with Vicente Sederberg LLC

The times, they are a changin’. So are the hemp laws.

The hemp economy is growing at a rapid rate. The Farm Bill, passed in 2018, has opened the floodgates for states to establish their own legal hemp programs. But it isn’t an easy transition.

Some states aren’t on board yet, and some still have laws on the books that criminalize hemp. People are trying to get into the CBD industry, but there is still very little regulation, and a lot of the hype around could be dangerous.

What Are The Hemp Laws?

Every state has different hemp laws for the most part. But now the federal government has legalized “industrial hemp” for commercial production, processing and interstate commerce, conflicting with a lot of states’ current laws.

Industrial hemp, as defined in the Farm Bill, is any part of the cannabis sativa plant with a THC percentage lower or equal to .3%. A lot of states already had a similar law at the state level, and similar to legal cannabis on the state level, federal government entities for the most part left them alone.

Other states had even more strict hemp laws. The states with stricter hemp laws compared to new federal law do not have to conform to the new federal law, because they are technically still within that law.

Colorado, which had a Constitutional amendment added that granted the right to grow hemp that was .3% THC, removed that amendment prior to the passing of the Farm Bill with a vote. This way, Colorado completely takes on the new federal definition of industrial hemp, with no chance of state-constitutional conflict should the regulations change on the federal level in the future.

The Hemp CBD Dilemma

In most major cities, there are more and more natural health stores popping up with CBD products. Other major chains like Whole Foods, CVS and Walgreens are adding CBD to their shelves. But what’s the actual regulation around CBD?

The FDA currently has no standing regulation surrounding CBD. While the Farm Bill changed the regulation surrounding industrial hemp, there were no changes made to food products, supplements and the like made from hemp. This has a big impact on CBD products.

Most states match the food and drug laws to the FDA’s regulations, but some states have made local changes to allow products like CBD, Kratom and others. A major conflict that has arose since the CBD market has begun to take off is the question of whether or not CBD is a medicine, or a supplement.

According to the FDA, a product that is regulated and labelled as a drug, cannot also be sold a food supplement. There have already been drugs made from CBD for epilepsy, and this is causing a stand still. This makes branding CBD products a challenge, with people coming up with new names for what really is just CBD oil.

Hemp oil, hemp seed oil, hemp extract, etc., are all product names you’ll see on the shelves at your local health store. The chances of seeing a product labelled with CBD in the name are slim right now.

This Week’s Episode

There is so much more to dive into with hemp and CBD laws in the new market of 2019, that writing it all here would be thousands and thousands of words. So why not hear it from people who have been studying hemp law for years?

Shaun Hauser and Andrew Livingston head the Hemp Division of Vicente Sederberg LLC. Vicente Sederberg is one of the most well-known and renowned cannabis law firms in the country, and they have an entire wing devoted to hemp laws.

In this week’s episode Andrew, Chip, Justin and Shaun talk about the new hemp laws, how it affects the states, the complications of the new CBD industry and more surrounding the legal hemp industry and the new laws surrounding it. Most lawyers would charge hundreds of dollars just for one hour of consultation on hemp laws.

In this week’s episode of The Real Dirt, we get it all. FOR FREE. Listen to the full episode now, and join the Real Dirt Facebook Group to share your thoughts on the episode!

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Inside Maryland’s Medical Marijuana Industry

Inside Maryland’s Medical Marijuana Industry

Maryland has always been relatively progressive compared to its neighbors when it comes to cannabis. The state decriminalized small amounts in 2010, and enacted a full medical marijuana program in 2012. Now we’re in 2019, but where does the Maryland medical marijuana industry stand?

Inside Culta’s Cultivation

Culta opened in Baltimore, Maryland in 2018 with the goal of bringing exclusive, high quality genetics from successful seed banks and breeders to the Maryland medical marijuana industry.

They built their cultivation facility from scratch inside an old factory right in the inner harbor of Baltimore’s downtown. They also designed one of only four vertically integrated cannabis businesses in the state. This means from seed, to processing, to sale, Culta handles it all in-house.

With over 400 lights in the facility, separate rooms for genetics testing, vegetation and flowering, Culta is by far one of the most technologically sophisticated cultivation facilities in the state. Plus, they sourced some of the most experienced cultivators in the country to build their genetics.

Maryland Medical Marijuana

In this episode of The Real Dirt Podcast, Chip talks with Jay and David, Head Grower and Cultivation Manager of Culta.

Together the three of them dive into the design behind Culta’s facility, the benefits of being vertically integrated, the issues new businesses are dealing with in an industry that is still finding its footing and more.

Roll one up, relax and enjoy the first episode of Season 3 of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker!

This episode is brought to you by Cultivate Colorado, the top grow store in Denver with two locations in the metro area. Cultivate supplies Real Dirt listeners and guests with the grow gear they need to succeed in the garden. Check them out on Instagram @cultivatecolorado for the latest updates and deals.

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Smokin’ on Sativa: Tony Don’t Smoke OG Ep. 105

Smokin’ on Sativa: Tony Don’t Smoke OG Ep. 105

If you asked Tony why people always give sativa strains a bad rap, he would tell you it’s because they never smoked a good, well-grown sativa.

If you asked a bunch of growers why there isn’t a lot of good sativa out there, they would tell you that it’s because most growers don’t want to put the time and effort — but mainly time — into growing a good sativa strain. They would be right.

Sativas are hard to grow, they take longer than indica dominant strains, and a lot of the time due to how its grown commercially, is lower quality than their hybrid counterparts. But those who do put in the effort reap the rewards. A well-grown and cared for sativa will taste great and provide an uplifting, euphoric effect that anybody who knows a good sativa will crave. Luckily, Tony and the gang know a good sativa.

Sativa or indica, it’s about knowledge

It all comes back to knowledge and educating people about what they are are consuming. Much like beer, liquor or wine, cannabis has a variety of different strains, characteristics, flavors and effects. It can also be grown with the utmost care, or none at all.

Some people will always go for the cheap domestic beer or the convenience store wine because they don’t mind sacrificing quality to save money. Others will always want the best, and only drink craft beer and fancy wine to fill their appetite. It’s all preference.

Suffice to say as the industry spreads, a lot of people will prefer cheap cannabis. Those coming from a black market especially, where prices are often steep, the option to get a $10 eighth or $70 ounce will always be enticing. Sure, they could splurge and go for the quality cannabis for $200 an ounce, but with such a vast difference in price for the same amount, many will at least try the cheaper option.

This will change. Everybody has their honeymoon phase with legal cannabis. There are so many options at such affordable prices, its almost impossible not to buy a bunch of different cheap strains to see how they smoke. But over time, people will start to try the more expensive stuff, and the difference will be instant. Once someone tries well-grown, quality cannabis, it’s hard to go back.

In this week’s episode of Tony Don’t Smoke OG, Chip and Tony are joined by Colin from The Werc Shop, a research group that focuses on the science of cannabis and all its chemicals, especially terpenes. If you’ve ever enjoyed a flavored cannabis vape pen, you have Colin to thank!

Join the gang as they smoke on some Big Sur Holy Weed and talk changing tastes in the cannabis consumer, why sativas get such a bad rap, and more. Tune in and enjoy!

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…and if you haven’t already, please SUBSCRIBE on whatever platform you use to tune into The Real Dirt with Chip Baker!