damn, this was my favorite thread...it was inspiring to think that she started with nothing, found some investors and went for it...it would have been so interesting to see this post go long term and see the progress over the next couple years...I wish you luck in the future!

Sorry to hear you're going but glad we got the last update. I want to wish you all the luck i can. I hope you continue to live out your dreams and some of ours. Best of luck and farewell. You will be missed by a lot of farmers myself included.

burn4me said:

Sorry to hear you're going but glad we got the last update. I want to wish you all the luck i can. I hope you continue to live out your dreams and some of ours. Best of luck and farewell. You will be missed by a lot of farmers myself included.

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Couldn't have said it better myself…. I too wish you the very best, and thank you sincerely for opening up to us and sharing all your inspiring hard work.

It shows that it has truly paid off …….

Oh, and fwiw, me & the misses are currently looking for property up there in the PNW.
Hopefully one day, we'll cross paths and possibly share each others prized flowers :)

Until then, take care & stay safe,
Pisces

Hello everybody! I really wanted to thank all of you that have reached out privately through our facebook or by regular email. It has really been cool to see so many people so interested in our little goings on and all of your support has been greatly appreciated:-)

I have been learning so much that I just had to share some of it because it seems so valuable to me at least.

First...the Washington "legal" recreational marijuana experience has not been exactly as I would have expected. Surprises and hurdles at every turn but we have prevailed for the most part, are at least somewhat successful and have had an amazing time at it so far. As it turns out at least at this point in time, the WA rec market is not the black market or medical weed...it has created its own new market at least for the time being of older people with disposable income that perhaps never tried weed before or maybe tried it when they were in college and they they left it behind because they did not really want to be doing something illegal. I know .....sounds weird......to me too, but nonetheless that is the people buying "legal" weed at shops for the most part and of course tourists from states where weed is expensive and highly illegal. They are just happy to be able to buy it in the open and the prices are not excruciatingly high if you are paying high prices where you live. So...that is kind of crazy because of course I thought everyone would eventually be buying legal weed and certainly they still hopefully will when pricing goes down with bigger supply but still....crazy how it morphed into something totally other than what I expected.

Second....growing outside is just so absolutely wonderful I wish I never ever had to grow indoors ever again:-) What fun growing outside has been. Great yields, great quality, no huge electric bills and I cannot even explain how incredible it has been to just be around all these lovely plants in all their glory outside. Not that we have not had challenges...the wind has beat us up upon occasion and we have had to adapt and brainstorm and come up with wind barricades and a myriad of other minor issues but we have been managing really well all in all. On top of it all our lab results for our outdoor have surpassed our indoor on THC across the board and we still have about 30 or more strains to have tested.

Third......failed laboratory testing seems to come from damage and contamination after harvest, not before. The labs are seeing about a 30% failure rate on recreational weed and they have noticed some commonalities in the failures. Wet trimming and even more specifically wet trimming and machine trimmers are apparently a big vector for damage to freshly cut plants and they do so much damage to the plant tissue that contamination occurs by basic exposure, even from contaminants that are just in the air that would normally not affect a healthy well dried plant that is then trimmed and stored correctly. The lab can take a bud sample of a freshly cut plant and take it to their lab and properly dry it and no contamination. The same plant can be dried in the grow/processing facility and fail the lab test due to contamination during the drying/processing process and for the most part this is THE place that microbial contamination occurs so drying properly is really crucial for clean safe weed.

Fourth.....if I can do this anyone that really wants to can:-) Seriously....you want to grow weed for a living without looking over your shoulder? Oregon is going to legalize....get in position if you want to grow legal there. Alaska is most likely going to legalize....get in position if you want to grow legal there. Arizona is looking at legalization and so are many states so if you really want to do it.....make it happen. I would be happy to help anyone that is wanting to do this. I can help with paperwork, business plans, site plans and I would never ever charge a single penny. Unless you are a complete flake money starts being offered right and left by friends or family that you never would have thought would want to invest in something like this but nearly everyone that even thinks of this sees money signs whether they are realistic or not. I think there is a clear pathway to being ready for the process in Oregon, having all your ducks in a row so you are ready at the starting line because the early players are the ones making the biggest money in the deal but even past that....getting in quickly is a big deal with new moratoriums popping up every week and being smart and working towards the goal is key. But the real joy in it all is you get to grow weed, you get to tell people you grow weed, you get to be around it all the time, you get to be openly proud of it and if you do it well you might even make a whole lot of money. I am being very cautious but I think we probably will gross right about $1,200,000 on our outdoor crop.....WTF???? Right about 1/2 of that goes to taxation and about $150,000 to pay off debts and keep the business going for the next 6 months but even then, even between the 3 of us that are partners we will each take about $150,000 each just on this crop. W.O.W. indeed:-)

Fifth.....Jacks fertilizers rock:-) W.O.W. Weed is powered by Jacks and we have so far 2 strains testing at 25% THC and our lowest level for our outside crop has been just under 14% which of course was our Chocolope, one of our favorite plants that we thought would be our highest of all:-) I am pretty sure we have not even tested our highest potency strains yet though!

So....W.O.W. Weed is alive and well. I am doing pretty good...still working all the time but only about 10 hour shifts. We hired a night watchman and hit the proverbial jackpot there. He is 74, a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. His wife died a couple of years ago...no kids.....kind of lonesome and bored. He agreed to come in for 6 hours a night so I could at least count on not having to be here during those hours and now he comes in from 7PM - 6AM, won't allow us to pay him for more than 40 hours a week, won't take a day off, spends half of his paycheck every 2 weeks on stuff for our building and us and has just really adopted us all:-) I am going to have to give him a big bonus or buy him a car or something.... but seriously....I am just so blessed in so many ways! We have a great trimming crew of older ladies who are so much fun to be around and they are just having a blast! I know it all sounds like I am painting a picture but really it has been very wonderful.

I will post a few photos when I am on my other laptop but I just wanted to check in and say......we are doing it, we really really are:-)

Super stoked for you @inthegorge !!!

Welcome back, its good to have you back on your post. Perhaps the best part of your post was your night watchman. Seems that great people come when you need them, almost like it was already written somewhere. :)
Oh and jacks does me great as well. Jacks classic in veg and flower booster w Epson salt in flower. One man show w a small facility, but its cool to see their faces when you give a sample!
God bless and look forward to pictures! No, not those kind! The grow! Lol.

@inthegorge
It has been a tremendous pleasure to have seen your 1st post
to see this one and all the ones in between. . . . .to see you here and to hear about you in the news. a Terrific journey..
You share what is possible and DO-ABLE In Our new Gold Rush,
Peace be with you
FlyJ

DITTO ON JACKS

The outdoor pics are beautiful! Congrats on the successful season!

Ya.....cheers to another fruitfull harvest!

Really happy for you. All of your hard work is paying off.

Been thinking about u. Great rewards come with hard. Hard work. Can u put up your email. I don't do Facebook and interested in yaking if u don't mind. Yep pretty sure we're going legal in Oregon In a few weeks. Great news about WOW. And interesting on the new income level of and buyers of the new legal weed. M

Sure....inthegorge@gmail.com
We are planning on opening a dispensary ASAP in Oregon just in case they build on their medical model which seems likely. I am dead serious on helping anyone that needs it. The more people that are successful the better for us all. Make it mainstream and it won't ever go back to being illegal!

Medusa said:

Been thinking about u. Great rewards come with hard. Hard work. Can u put up your email. I don't do Facebook and interested in yaking if u don't mind. Yep pretty sure we're going legal in Oregon In a few weeks. Great news about WOW. And interesting on the new income level of and buyers of the new legal weed. M[/quotSure

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Nice job! W.O.W For the win!!!:D

Plus hiring your vet security. Priceless. !

Thank you so much for coming back and updating us @inthegorge

Your updates are exciting, for a few reasons. What really caught my attention is what you have to say about contamination pre vs post harvest, and you've helped confirm for me that I'm doing things 'right.' (Right for me, at least.)

This whole thing is exciting, really, thanks again. :)

That was the main reason I made another post Seamaiden. I knew this sort of information needs to be shared. We have been dry hand trimming and everyone says we are crazy with the yields we have but I just knew it was the best way to do it but this information about the damage to the plant when it is still wet was pretty eye opening. I think we will see many other new facts as we move through this process with openness and transparency and that is crucial in creating the best farming practices for growing on a bigger level like some of us are able to here and even on the micro level as most medical growers do. There is probably so much I have forgotten that will be pertinent to many growers and I will try to get them all together and post all at once so all the information we have learned is in one place and easily accessible:-)

Hope all is well with you and yours Seamaiden!

In the gorge are u saying not only trimming wet the damage ..but also doing it in the same enviroment as growing plants was contaminating ? Thanks M

Medusa said:

In the gorge are u saying not only trimming wet the damage ..but also doing it in the same enviroment as growing plants was contaminating ? Thanks M

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No....what the labs are saying is that wet trimming damages the plants so much that they are easily contaminated by just basic contaminants in the air, not necessarily from a growing environment, but really just any environment at all. Just a cough or mold in the air will take hold on a plant damaged by wet trimming and especially by wet trimming by machine. They said think of it like a living organism...which of course a plant is. You cut it down creating a wound that ultimately kills the plant but even after it is cut the tissues are slowly dying and still have chemical transactions taking place. Then if you wet trim you essentially put 1000's of wounds on the plant and each wound if you will is a vector for contamination by pretty much anything and that is what they are seeing....mold, e coli, salmonella....you name it. It took multiple failed labs on the parts of some of the bigger rec grows here for them to start saying hey...what is going on here??? So...a person could still wet trim but it should be in a very controlled clean uncontaminated environment which lets face it...is hard to manage unless you have a sterile lab. Kind of important data for us all to know and who would have without mandatory testing like is required with recreational growing here?

inthegorge said:

No....what the labs are saying is that wet trimming damages the plants so much that they are easily contaminated by just basic contaminants in the air, not necessarily from a growing environment, but really just any environment at all. Just a cough or mold in the air will take hold on a plant damaged by wet trimming and especially by wet trimming by machine. They said think of it like a living organism...which of course a plant is. You cut it down creating a wound that ultimately kills the plant but even after it is cut the tissues are slowly dying and still have chemical transactions taking place. Then if you wet trim you essentially put 1000's of wounds on the plant and each wound if you will is a vector for contamination by pretty much anything and that is what they are seeing....mold, e coli, salmonella....you name it. It took multiple failed labs on the parts of some of the bigger rec grows here for them to start saying hey...what is going on here??? So...a person could still wet trim but it should be in a very controlled clean uncontaminated environment which lets face it...is hard to manage unless you have a sterile lab. Kind of important data for us all to know and who would have without mandatory testing like is required with recreational growing here?

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Thank you.....be interesting to know if sublimination curing would help stop that... (meaning freezer curing) but u still have to dry the weed ...though it keeps trichs in tact better ...Unfortunately u would need a hell of alot of freezers.. awesome as always love hearing from u .. M

Thats pretty groundbreaking news,it makes sense if you think about it though with the cuts being vectors for contamination.I have a whole room of wet trimmed hanging right now,ill have to rethink the way ive been doing it for a LONG time.The thing i find weird is most production facilities machine trim wet and not one person/lab has ever come up with this conclusion before,definitely think this needs more research,i dont trust MJ labs at all myself,seems like they try to make themselves relevant and results are all over the place,id be interested to hear @texaskid's thoughts and experience on this and colorado lab results.Thanks for posting up ITG,we missed you.