Saturday, December 12, 2015
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
What’s New at the Abbey: CBD Laws and Business Mountains
The Fall harvest isn’t quite complete, although we’ve begun with the
annual tradition of having all the carpets cleaned, filters changed, ducts
cleaned, in the aftermath of bringing in the crops. The Sisters of the Valley was a dream, three
years ago, and today, I am happy to report that I share the view from the
mountaintop with Sister Darcy, and she shares my vision of what we shall become.
I can’t speak for the people’s whose lives intersect with mine, but I
feel like my personal view of life is that I climbed an impossible mountain and
now, uitendelijk, I am breathing fresh air, hope, progress once again. I look down on the many plateaus upon which I
got stuck, and the many times I circled hopelessly at the bottom of a
precipice, making no progress, working so hard just to stay in place. The theme song from Orange is the New Black
speaks to my heart, to the sadness that overcame me when I was stuck: “Taking
steps is easy, standing still is hard.”
After imagining Sisters of the Valley as a business, as a life-style
concept, after fomenting ideas and concepts for years, this was the year she
was born. And she was born to the world
with dignity and honor and five-star testimonials. A year ago, we were focused on supplying California
dispensaries at wholesale, high-THC
tinctures, salves and teas. Today,
we are focused on retail sales of high CBD products that we sell
nationwide and internationally. It’s
kind of like the business was born a boy, but turned girl by the time she was
one year old. THC medicine is the
masculine side of cannabis, where CBD is the feminine. (I just made that up.)
I think, sometimes, dreams are like cats. You have to ignore them, for them to come to
you. It had always been my dream to drag
the poverty out of the valley (or at least a few residents or a community), by
infusing the valley with income from the rest of the world. It was how the wine and almond and pomegranate
businesses were born here, and how they thrive. (You can’t really understand the poverty here
until you’ve lived here.) When I began
Sisters of the Valley, however, I was just focused on making a living for
myself, in the aftermath of the family calamity and my personal brush with homelessness.
As part of a market trial, halfway through the year, we put our
non-psychotropics in an on-line store and our focus and our prayers and our
energies were suddenly brought to where they belong. The dispensary bread-and-butter business
comes from the stoner population. The
CBD customers are those that are interested in the healing and physical pain
relief. The turn of direction brought us
home.
I don’t know why the folks in the industry decided to get on the CBD internet
sales band-wagon just this year, when the law changed eleven years ago. But this past year has certainly been the
year that CBD products went mainstream.
I suspect it has something to do with the special strains that have been
bred to be high CBD and that has to do with modifying Mother Nature, and that’s
a process that takes awhile.
On February 6, 2004 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a
unanimous decision in favor of the HIA (Hemp Industry Association) in which
Judge Betty Fletcher wrote, “….non-psychoactive
hemp is not included in Schedule I. The DEA has no authority to regulate drugs
that are not scheduled, and it has not followed procedures required to schedule
a substance. The DEA’s definition of “THC” contravenes the unambiguously expressed
intent of Congress in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and cannot be upheld”.
The net effect of this ruling nearly twelve years ago, is
that we had to mess with Mother Nature, not to improve her, but to satisfy laws
that are silly, anyway. Some people complain
that the CBD medicine (alone) give them headaches, but if taken with THC, they
don’t get that side effect. So local folks with chronic pain,
or with cancer, can buy the CBD tincture from us, but have to get a cannabis
card to acquire the THC tincture through a licensed dispensary, and basically,
what I see happening is that we are breaking up Mother Nature, just to discover
she was better in one piece. (Bernie
wants to take the whole plant off the Schedule I drug list, and, yes, he’s our
man and yes, we will be ‘activating’ for him.)
In the past weekend, we held an ‘all
weekend conference’ with the newly-formed Sisters of the Valley board. We made some strategy decisions. We reviewed financials. We took a tour of the farm. We narrowed our marketing focus. We decided on Equity. We decided on Incorporation State. Many things.
The City has refused us our business
license and we have to figure out a way to appeal that decision. No surprise, but the local planning office
doesn’t know CBD from catshit. The farm
mortgage people have demanded a ton of documents . . . yet we are hoping to go
out on a road trip next week to Humboldt County to acquire CBD wholesale for our
next batches. Winter crop planning is in
process. We have the college kids coming
for Thanksgiving, followed by a special visitor coming from Croatia on December
first, then farm-house interior painting and floors to lay, a college
graduation ceremony at UC Davis December 13th, and a move to the
farm just after Winter Solstice.
We have more mountains to climb for the business, of
course. The one we just climbed was the
first of four. We had to produce a
quality product. The second mountain to climb is in securing
profit. We are beginning this month to
put 15% of receipts in a ‘profit savings’ to treat profit as if it is an
expense and, thereby, protect it.
The third mountain is quality of life and
ease of operations. That means, once we
climb the next mountain, the Sisters can work on toning down the twelve hour
work days. And after we climb those, we
climb the one that’s all about legacy and making a system-built enterprise that
goes on long after we are all six feet under.
More mountains. But as the song says, taking steps is easy,
standing still is hard.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
The Gangsta Side of Growing Ganja (with a dash of Sisterhood)
There is so much I don’t know about what I call ‘the gansta
side of growing ganja’. I’m just a
simple Sister, trying to eek out a simple existence, while serving the
people. I know of no other way to do
business than with complete transparency . . . open books, open attitude, open
dialogue, democratic decision making.
Anything else is foreign to me.
In the grower’s world, however, everything is stealth. Everything is done on a handshake. Nothing is written down. It is this contrast between my modus operandi
and the growers’ that creates all the tension.
I am not saying that all Hispanic men are old-school,
sexist, bullies, who think men should make all the decisions, but all the
Hispanic men I have worked with are all that.
For many decades, cannabis growing has been their domain and for many
decades, the women pretended it wasn’t happening and stayed out of their way. Then they met the Sisters, who have their own
way of doing everything. The Sisters who
are unashamed, unapologetic, and feel like we are on a mission from God. And that
is the basis for many culture clashes in our ganja growing operations.
“This is a very, very, very special strain.” Chico told me
one day last season, as we were visiting and checking up on the Ladies. “You have to be specific, when you tell
people about this strain, because it’s not just ordinary strawberry
diesel. It is strawberry diesel coffin
cut.” When I heard the words, my brain
thought ‘cough and cut’, not ‘coffin cut’.
But I just listened as he extolled the virtues of that plant, knowing I
would be at my computer later to properly research the strain.
I listened with grave attention to him warning me to specify
to all buyers the true nature of the plant, by using the full title. “My home-boy paid five thousand dollars for a
little tiny cut of this plant, and he only let me buy some clones if I promised
him that I wouldn’t make any clones that weren’t just for me. We can’t let this strain go out the door.”
“That’s crazy.” I said.
“Five thousand dollars for a ten dollar clone?”
“No, it’s not an ordinary plant. It has been bred for maximum THC and maximum
output and it’s in high demand with the coastal dispensaries. You’ll sell the shit out of this, Sister.”
Ok, Chico, Ok. That
was in the autumn of last year. A few
months later, Brother Larry and I had produced our first line of products to
initiate a market trial. In the ingredients,
on the labels, it clearly says “Strawberry Diesel Coffin Cut”. When Chico, our grow foreman, saw the line of
products, he whistled. “Wow, Sister,
these are really nice!” I don’t know if
he read the tiny print next to ingredients.
This week, I learned that Chico got in a bit of trouble over
our labels. I didn’t learn this from Chico, but from his growers, who were
talking about it in the garden when I suddenly appeared. “What are you talking about?” I asked, having
overheard a bit of the conversation.
Sometime in the past four months, one of our bottles of
tincture made its way into the hands of the man who sold his proprietary strain
for five thousand dollars a clipping. He
saw it and then asked around until he determined who grew for the Sisters of
the Valley. Then he called Chico in and
said (basically) “WTF?”
“These guys are bad-asses,” said the man explaining, the
younger of Chico’s two crewmen. “They
cut off people’s arms for violating treaties.
But don’t worry about it, Sister, Chico handled it.”
I wasn’t worried.
Just puzzled. ‘Didn’t he tell me to be specific?’
Later that day, I saw Chico and asked him about it. “I didn’t know you were going to put it on
your labels,” he said. “I’m not sure I
even knew you were making a line of products . . ."
“That’s because you don’t listen to the women.” I said. “When women talk, you hear ‘yada yada yada’ .
. . “
This week’s confrontation happened because the Sisters’ co-opted
Chico’s work crew to help us with our harvest.
This time of year, good, experienced harvest teams can choose where they
work and we weren't really ready for an early harvest.
We had a meeting, Chico, his team, the Sisters. At the time of the meeting, we all agreed that
starting the very next day, Chico’s team would be in to work with the sisters
for the first six hours of every workday until we got caught up from what we
call the Ballico breakaway. Ballico is
where we had a rather large crop going (sixty plants). We had to harvest early – and suddenly --
because every day for four days, the thieves made a visit and on the fourth
day, there was a shoot-out. We harvested
and were out of our location by one-thirty in the afternoon on that fourth day.
One of my most favorite old movies is Lilies of the Field
with Sydney Poitier. The Mother Superior
wanted a shshshshshapel (chapel). No
money, no work crews, but she wanted that chapel and the whole movie was about
her getting it. Chico is my Sydney. He says ‘No’ much more comfortably than he
says ‘yes’, and he has tried to say ‘no’ to me many times, but I just don’t
accept it. Just like the tough old bird
in the movie.
Chico is a good guy -- old school, but big-hearted.
One of his crew members is a recovering meth addict. So, when that young man came by the abbey,
unannounced, after a successful court hearing, we welcomed him in, made him
some tea, sat to hear about what happened.
He has only been off the powder for eight weeks, and only six weeks ago,
he joined our foreman's work crew.
Later that night, Chico stopped by to scold the sisters for
being too soft on his men. “You Ladies
molly-coddle them!” he complained. “You
give them tea and cookies and act like it’s all guns and roses!” Chico
frequently mixes his metaphors, English not being his first language. We don’t laugh, though, because he’s not the
kind of man who takes teasing lightly, and especially not when he’s intent on
making a point, as he was the other night.
Well, sometimes we can't resist. As
soon as a reasonable amount of silence passed as a sort of ‘we’re listening’
from the Sisters, Sister Darcy said “Would you
like some tea or cookies?” And I
couldn’t help but add, “Or maybe today you would rather have us serve guns and
roses?” Both of us began laughing, then,
and had to live with the fact that Chico waved his hand dismissively, and stomped away.
We didn’t get through one day of the new work schedule, without
Chico blasting me for commandeering his team during his busiest season of the
year. Chico was at that meeting, Chico
agreed to the schedule and the staffing and to the whole plan. When I reminded him of that, his only
response was a good one. “I can’t say no
to you, Sister.” Awwwwww. So he’s a raging bull because he lost his
work crew, but he agreed to give them up to help us and now he’s angry about
it. “So you are really mad at yourself
because you can’t say no to me?” I
laughed. “How delightful!”
Somehow, we have to get caught up on our harvest and give
Chico back his men, at least part time.
We will work that out. Can’t have
a grumpy foreman. He’s building our
chapel.
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