Follow Your Arrow

Settling the Farm

If it weren't for my activism, and the wonderful people it blows into my path, I would have probably hung myself by now over the farm construction delays.

It never rains in California. IT NEVER RAINS in California, seriously.

I moved here (to the central valley of California) shortly after spending eight years in Amsterdam and after my fourth month, I asked someone, 'it hasn't rained, does it ever rain here?'

I know it really does rain here, but not like Amsterdam rain. Not like Seattle rain. It rains here politely, in the middle of the night or the early morning hour, and vanishes before it can spoil one's day. In Amsterdam, it would rain for weeks on end, morning 'til night, sometimes never seeing daylight, the darkness of the night blending seamlessly into the darkness of the morning. And the rainy season lasted months.

Then came the central valley drought.  And I became one of those people who prays for rain.  Never thought that would happen . . .

And then my prayers were answered, right when I moved to a farm with construction going on, with no heat in either homes, lights intermittent, plumbing intermittent, and laundry facilities non-existent, both kitchens under renovation . . . and then, only then, do we get rain.  No rugs . . . mud everywhere.

 

One of my growers texted me the other day and said “Did you pray for this shit?”  It made me giggle.  Not recently, I told him.

 

I have a space heater in my room and I wear a miner's lamp on my head to cross the property from my office to my bedroom at the end of each day.

I never anticipated how hard it is to concentrate and get work done, with pounding, sawing, buzzing, and banging going on. I have cabinet doors on the closets in my office now, but by the time the carpenter was gone, I also had a severe migraine.

And all the surprise expenses that go along with a renovation require that I keep constantly updating the books and watching the accounts. The bathrooms that were supposed to cost $7K in total (two totally gutted and re-built bathrooms in the blue house) ended up costing $1,600 more because we had to re-do plumbing and then re-do tiling because the problems with the plumbing weren't discovered until after the tiling guy was done and out.

The RV that is being renovated to be a bungalow for Brother Zane, well that ended up very poorly with the first contractor, so we paid $400 the first time and got nothing, and then paid over a thousand to get the job done. They have a saying in Holland that goes "I'm not rich enough to afford cheap goods." It rings in my ears as every day, the cost of the less costly options eats away at our funds.

The homeowners insurance company, in just the last few days, handed me a list of things that need repair and none of those things were on the lists of the three construction teams on site. They are mostly trees-brushing-buildings, eaves not painted (?), tree limbs touching roof-tops sort of things that we were going to get to anyway, we just now have to get to them sooner.

The wonderful, beautiful custom kitchen for the abbey that allows six women to work comfortably together around a dual level center counter, turned out to be an additional $2,200 for the countertops than planned, then budgeted, and we aren't getting marble or anything upscale . . .

There was one plumbing company out here a few weeks ago that fixed some $600 worth of plumbing issues, but left $500 in damage for the water they left where the tile work was still in process and they won't answer my calls.

 

After two full days of spending time with the run-away expenses, realizing that over $5K is unaccounted for, and that all the contractors have not been turning in all their receipts, and after making my own staff crazy in hunting down the mystery expenses, the corker of it all was learning yesterday that five bottles of 151 proof alcohol, alcohol we use to make tinctures, ‘went missing’ during the reconstruction. 

 

We discovered this in front of visiting media, here to film us setting the batch. If we had any drunks working on the re-construction, I would know it.  I doubt that it was any of our workers, or maybe I am naïve.  We did hire mostly people who were very hard up for work and we have had volunteers on site.  I don’t think it got into the hands of minors, because we haven’t had any here.  I think it’s more likely someone took it to sell it on the black market to get some grocery money.  That’s my preferred scenario, I guess (as if getting robbed can have an upside!).  It screwed up our plans for a big alcohol tincture batch (we’ve been sold out for awhile), but we will recover. 

 

I am resigned to spending the next forty to sixty hours trying to straighten out overcharges, bank issues, potential fraud . . . argghghghghgh. I just want to hang pictures and unpack. 

 

On the brighter side, in the last twenty-four hours we got lights on and heat on in the abbey.  Brother John in New York rescued us on our countertop overage for the new abbey kitchen, and those will be installed the 29^th of March.  God willing, that will be the end of this little adventure.

*****

Visit our ETSY store to see our products:  www.etsy.com/shop/sistersofcbd

or go to our website:  www.sistersofthevalley.org

 

 

Abbess Office . . . coming together.

Prioress Office

The View on the ride to Merced.

Love visiting college kids!  This old table is being transformed using recycled glass.

 

Brother Zane spotted this lovely mushroom patch outside my office window.

We went to explore and found many more!

The Brothers having some down time.

One of the Brothers' is settled in the blue house (or getting there)

Our carpenter at work.

 

The cat hasn't agreed to the terms of the Harmony Agreement (no pets in the homes, we have three barns!).  She had her first menstrual cycle and was miserable and because of the rain, the brothers let her in.  Here she is camped out in my office.  Her name is Oscar.  Yes, we didn't know how to sex her as a kitten . . . her counterpart, Molly, is a male (as it turns out).  We got that all wrong.

 

Word Soup

Yesterday, I spoke with an inspector at America’s largest weed-delivery service (the United States Postal Service), and he advised me to get a label lawyer.  I only call it ‘weed-delivery’ to be provocative.  They are also, coincidentally, the largest deliverer of pharmaceuticals.  Just saying.

The medicine in the cannabis known as CBD actually does come from a weed plant whose proper name is cannabis.  The CBD in the plant is known for pain relief and healing.  It’s science.  Ask the American Cancer Society.

Two years ago, if one googled ‘buy cbd oil’, there were twelve entries.  One year ago, same search phrase, and the results are twelve thousand entries.  Do it now and you get over three million results.  That’s how many options people now have in purchasing CBD.

So why do the Sisters need a label lawyer? 

“Because you use the word ‘medicine’ on your web-site,” explained the inspector.   

We make no claims, we are as transparent and reach-able as possible, we refer everyone to www.projectcbd.org, and tell them to do homework on dosages and what doctors and experts are saying.  We are a resource center, in a way, teaching people to take ownership of their illnesses and learn, and research, and be their own doctors.  I explained all this to the inspector, but he said we use the word 'medicine' on our website.

"It's what we do!  We make medicines by ancient wisdom custom and ritual, or best we can guess at what that might have been, so, yes, probably, somewhere, but we make no claims.  We present it all as a grand human experiment after seventy-five years of mother earth's finest medicine being maligned and misrepresented!"

"I understand." said the inspector.

"And the right to grow is granted us under ‘medical marijuana’ laws," I continued.  "So how can I not use the word ‘medicine’, when it comes from a plant that the government regulates as ‘medical’?"

“Your products are not FDA approved,” I was told.

“We say that, right in our product ads, on ETSY, the world’s largest platform for selling home-made and hand-made goods, by the way.” 

“That’s not protection,” he said.  “That’s not enough.”

“So you are advising me to get FDA approval of my products?  We were planning to get that started this year anyway, and I don’t know this for sure, but I have to guess that the FDA might be an agency that played a significant role in keeping this medicine out of the hands of the people for the past three quarters of a century.  And so you are advising me to ask an anti-cannabis organization to bless my cannabis products?”

The Sisters could use another courier service, he said, because its only illegal to use the post office, it only violates federal post office rules.  In other words, we can call ourselves medicine and our work medicine-work, but just not call ourselves that and use the post office to ship our goods.  Hmmmmm.  

I then explained to the inspector that It is in the core of the beliefs of the sisterhood that women heal women with words.  Can I say that, you know, and still use your postal service?,  I asked.  And won a chuckle.

I explained that it is not an option for the Sisters to use an alternate courier service, because the cost of using another service is double or more, and then, suffering people would have to suffer additional cost, which is silly.  The Sisters have always been advocates of the United States Post Office.  I lived in Holland where the Post Office is the banking system of the people, a non-profit, self-sustaining, bank of the people.  It works.  I think we should just give the banking function to the post office,  raise the cost of a piece of post to one dollar, give all postal employees raises, and make the valley town offices stay open on Saturdays, just like they do on the coast. 

And now, I need the post office to have my back.  I want them to have my back – which was, after all, the purpose of that call to that inspector, yesterday. 

In summary, we the sisters are making and selling home-made goods on the worlds’ largest home-made, hand-made sales portal.  And we consider ourselves to be a sisterhood that honors both Mother Earth and Creator God.  We follow ancient wisdom, where the women make the medicines, and our sustainability comes from medicinal cannabis.  But we can’t use the word medicine, without the FDA, the agency that has rejected the health benefits of cannabis for three quarters of a century.

“That’s my advice, ma’am.”

“Then how do you explain the vast amount of CBD traveling around America, how do you explain the three million ways one can access CBD over the internet and the fact that the vast majority of deliveries pass through the post office?”

“Federal law is sometimes slow to catch up with the will of the people,” he said succinctly.

So I compared this to the laws on the books that remain to this day, the silly ones, like it still being illegal to tie your horse up on main street.  It’s an irrelevant law that no one cares about, but it’s a thing.   And this thing – this calling a spade a spade, it makes the Sisters potentially unable to avail ourselves of post office services.  It makes the cost of that, a new cost to the patients of CBD.

A Weekend With the Sisters

Making Salves During the Cold Moon / Winter Solstice Moon

Central Valley Citizens for Cannabis Research and Commerce

Yule Tijd Season

December has been such a whirl-wind of activity and I am overdue for posting a blog on abbey happenings.  This Sunday before the Winter Solstice (Dec 22nd) and this moon cycle's full moon (December 25th), I decided to write our December in lyrics to the twelve days of Christmas. 

It should be noted that the Sisters, tired of the fake war on Christmas touted by Faux News, decided to give them their badly wanted and needed war on Christmas (else they wouldn't talk about it so much) and this year, we are celebrating Yule Tijd -- Yule Season.  We still have a Yule Tree and wreaths, pre-cursors to the Christian-created holiday.  We still have gifts and candles and we still sing songs and over-indulge in all our favorite things.

We still gather round the candle-lit table, hold hands, bow our heads and give thanks.  It was a good year for the Sisters.  We have worked hard and deserve a holiday rest.

My picture blog.  The twelve days of Christmas at the abbey.

On the first day of Yule Tijd, my true love gave to me,

One Zrina smiling carefree.

On the second day of Yule Tijd, my true love gave to me,

Two travel mates,

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

 On the third day of Yule Tijd, my true love gave to me,

Three bags of CBD,

Two travel mates,

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

On the fourth day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

Four activist events,

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

On the fifth day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me:

Five college kids back home!

Four activist events,

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

On the sixth day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home,

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

On the seventh day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

My first college graduate,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home,

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And my Zrina smiling carefree.

On the eight day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

An eight hour workshop,

(It was social media)

Seven smiles for college grad,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home!

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And mijn Zrina smiling carefree.

On the ninth day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

Nine gathered for a feast

Eight hour workshop,

Seven smiles for college grad,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home,

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And mijn Zrina smiling carefree.

On the tenth day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

Ten kinds of cookies,

Nine gathered for a feast.

Eight hour workshop,

Seven smiles for college grad,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home,

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And mijn Zrina smiling carefree.

On the eleventh day of Yule Tijd my true love gave to me,

Eleven vegan dishes

(Blessed be Sister Darcy)

Ten kinds of cookies,

Nine gathered for a feast.

Eight hour workshop,

(It was social media)

Seven smiles for college grad,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home!

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And mijn Zrina smiling carefree.

On the twelfth day of Yule Tijd, my true love gave to me,

Twelve candles burning,

Eleven vegan dishes

Ten kinds of cookies,

Nine gathered for a feast.

Eight hour workshop,

Seven smiles for college grad,

Six structures on a farm,

Five college kids back home!

Four activist events

Three bags of CBD

Two travel mates

And mijn Zrina smiling carefree.