Calling all experts!

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inthegorge

inthegorge

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I can assure you EO that we are very much keyed in to what this years outdoor harvest will mean to the industry as a whole and to us particularly....more so than any person not actually involved since it is our livelihood that is at stake. The whole game will change come next November for legal weed in the WA state and that is a certainty. How we can possibly manage after that is anyone's guess and the main reason we are looking towards moving our operations to Oregon as soon as the rules there become more concrete.
 
FlyinJStable

FlyinJStable

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Its always a pleasure to see you stop by
Wishing you great Person Vibes
and Much green luck
Study Oregon hard ...... IMHO know you will do it if given a chance
your just that type of Lady . . . . . . . rock that state Grow Lady
FlyJ
 
E

EvilOtto

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I can assure you EO that we are very much keyed in to what this years outdoor harvest will mean to the industry as a whole and to us particularly....more so than any person not actually involved since it is our livelihood that is at stake. The whole game will change come next November for legal weed in the WA state and that is a certainty. How we can possibly manage after that is anyone's guess and the main reason we are looking towards moving our operations to Oregon as soon as the rules there become more concrete.

No, the game has already changed with the multiple ton production from the larger multiple tier 3 outdoor growers from last year. 20,000 extra pounds available or so, last time I checked. There is no way this weight will be gone by summer and
we expect an extreme fire sale, real soon.

I know Oregon quite well and I don't think it will be any better than Wa,
even if they allow vertical integration, especially if they allow cities to add their own
taxes.
 
inthegorge

inthegorge

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Well.....today is the "official" one year birthday of W.O.W. Weed:- ) One year ago today we got our "official" license to legally cultivate and process cannabis in WA state. What a roller coaster it has been!

We are doing fairly well...still working 7 days a week for the most part. Taking 5 days off for Sasquatch Music Fest over Memorial Day come hell or high water though. We are averaging sales of $30,000-$50,000 per month. Sounds like a lot but most of it is still going to taxation. The legislature just threw medical cannabis under the bus though and it will now be trying to funnel the whole medical realm through I502. Not happy about that but we do grow a good number of what are considered to be good medical strains with about 6 tested high CBD strains. We sell for $5.50 a gram but by the time it hits the retail shelves and their 300-400% mark up it runs from $15-25 per gram in a shop. That is just a tragedy in my mind. Taxation is being addressed along with the medical side of things though and we expect the prices to come down at the retail end of things but I really do not know by how much because even though I have looked at this sideways and upside down I cannot understand the justification for the incredible mark up that is being put onto every bud sold. We currently have about 100 strains that we cultivate....some just as a novelty and some because they are our best sellers like Acapulco Gold, Pineapple Express, Northern Lights, etc. I can say that some of our strains are some of my favorite that I have ever smoked including our Jack Frost, White Lavender, some of our Kushes and I still love our Eve and White Rhino too. We have had some concentrates ran for us by our friends at Kush Valley in Odessa, WA and our Frisian Dew hydrocarbon shatter is some of the very best we have tried and we are proud of that. We currently have kief in a few strains that run 49% THC and some that are 24% CBD as well. Our CBD Blue Dream is an amazing pain killer and our Frisian Dew is popular in different circles....some truck drivers and loggers in the western coastal area are fond of it because it "relaxes them and helps with pain relief at night" while the wine drinking ladies of Orcas Island love it in the evenings and in Battleground they are calling it Frisky Dew and saying it helps with "getting it on" and we think it is all so funny and just great all that anyone loves the stuff:-) We have learned so much...been so disillusioned by the stupid system......worked and still work harder than we knew we possibly could and yet we still love growing the weed....just can't help ourselves on that one! Now things will be in more upheaval and fluctuation because of integrating medical into I502 and who knows how that will all work out. Again....I am pretty bummed out about the passage of HB5052 here and lobbied against it. Maybe we will have to have another public ballot measure to really define medical cannabis here to the advantage of the patient and not to the advantage of the authorizing government agency that will be dealing with it.....we will hope for that.

We have NEVER failed a microbial lab of any kind whatsoever and we are proud of that. Good clean handling procedures have made that a non issue for us. We don't use pesticides of any kind anymore since we started with predatory mites and we love that. Getting ready to put about 150-200 plants into the ground and are already flowering outside in our sunny location by bringing plants out for 11 hours each day and bringing them back inside for forced 13 hours of darkness and it seems to be going well except that it is back breaking work especially with as big as we let some of our plants get but we are almost done with our 4th flowering cycle and will see how the labs compare.

So....we are leaving work early (early for us) to go home and celebrate our first year of struggles and just thought I would share that we are still doing it....still keeping on:-)
 
FlyinJStable

FlyinJStable

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Its wicked wonderful
As a relocated Washingtonian I couldn't be prouder.
peace and Great grow Vibes
FlyJ
 
thunderfudge

thunderfudge

Breeder
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Happy birthday @inthegorge,you've always seemed like a humble thumber,best of luck in your endeavors!
 
Stalks

Stalks

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Happy to hear this and to see that you still come back to update us at the farm fam is awesome!
 
inthegorge

inthegorge

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The black market is alive and well in WA state just as it always has been. Interestingly enough pricing has gone down nearly 50% in retail stores but that is at the expense of the growers....certainly not the retailers. The main customer for retail shops still is the baby boomer group...older folks with more disposable income. Younger people go in to try a gram or two of something "special" usually meaning something high in THC. I personally find that the higher the THC in general the less taste and flavor for the bud but that is not set in stone and some high THC bud tastes great....but not most of the time. One grower here has had a couple lots of his weed test at %41.7 THC...the highest ever recorded....but it does not really taste that good and did not get me higher than some of the 18% weed we have tried so I am not really sold on the highest THC levels. I think our highest THC bud has been %29.6 and I don't like the flavor of it at all....almost did not even have it tested because we thought maybe we would just turn it into concentrates but with that THC level people buy it because many people equate high THC with higher quality. For me...the strains that are around 15-19% are usually my favorites because again...I am going for taste...smoothness of smoke and a great high and for me that is what I have found I prefer. Of course I never knew that before because I never knew what the THC level of anything I ever smoked previously was. We are learning with every crop and strain we produce however and that can't help but be a good thing:-)

We put out a few 4/20 specials to our retailers where we sold our "One Hit Wonders" which is a 1/2 gram of premium bud...we use only tip tops of buds for these because we want the full flavor to be available to the consumer as a sample of our products. Normally we sell them for $2.5o each but for 4/20 we offered 200 of them to each of our retailers for $1 each....pretty much a loss for us because packaging costs are about $1 per package but we thought it would be a good promotional thing. One of our retailers sold them for $2.50...which was a reasonable mark up considering the taxation....one sold them for $3.50...another sold them for $4.00 and one even sold them for $5.00 which is a ridiculous mark up and just an example of how retailers here work. It is so frustrating to work so hard to produce a product that we are proud of......sell it at a reasonable price by anyone's reckoning and then see it so damned expensive when offered to the public that we would not even be able to afford it ourselves if we were to want to purchase it. Baby steps for this industry I guess and we really hope that Oregon does not make all the same mistakes that WA state has. We are looking for a location to open a medical dispensary in Hood River, OR right now in hopes that we can transition that into a recreational operation when Oregon does get their rules and regs into place. Just a crap shoot now but we still want to be as poised as possible for that and to be able to connect with the people that actually smoke the weed we grow would be a big reward in itself.

We have not seen our 3rd partner for 3 months now....not hide nor hair. No phone call, no text message, no email....nothing at all. If there is someone out there that has about $50,000 to buy him out, which is about how much he has invested in cash and personal work, I think he would sell his 1/3rd of our company. We would prefer a partner that works with us....that has an interest in our success and would help us to that end. That is actually a pretty good buy in for an established business with a good sales record and a good name in this industry. Because of the help I give other growers and processors I think my name is one of the more well known by growers and retailers as well and that might turn out to be invaluable in the coming months but again...I am no expert....just doing the best we can. We want someone that is not afraid to work hard....that shares our vision for growing a great product above anything else and that can deal with our little family dynamic that we have at the work place. We have a lot of fun even though we work our butts off:-)

Our focus for the coming months is to build our brand....make W.O.W. Weed a synonym of good quality weed....and we hope that will fortify us for the influx of all the low priced high quality outdoor bud that will be streaming into the system from the large outdoor growers on the east side of the state come next November. I personally would buy sun grown over indoor grown any day of the week after growing both ourselves, seeing the test results, tasting personally the results and that would be even without the incredible differences in yield between the two. I know there are still naysayers about indoor being better than outdoor but when you have one bud in one hand that is grown outdoors and one that is grown indoors where the clones originated from the same mother...when you have the lab reports that show consistently higher cannibinoid profile in the bud grown outdoors...when you can taste the difference yourself even in a blind test.....when you have yield that is up to 500% higher per plant.......you either believe the facts or cling to your prior untested beliefs. I am a realist and I believe what I see and experience and for us....outdoor is superior in every way. We feel very fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to grow outside in the full light of the sun and know how lucky we are, especially in WA state to have the location where it does so well.

We hope to get into some canna-tourism in the next month or two...offering tours of our growing operation....then take them to a retailer where they can purchase our products....then to either a lodging establishment or a glamping (glamorous camping set up) where the customer can party and enjoy their weed.....coupled with wine tasting and maybe outdoor activities like wind surfing or wind surfing lessons or wild flower hikes or trips to the local observatory or to our world class museum...local concerts.......or any of the other wonderful things to do in the Gorge. That might be how we make money since we still are not getting rich growing weed for the state...who knows? I do know though that there is sooooo much opportunity that will be associated with legal cannabis here and I am not afraid to be a part of as much of it as we can be.

Our growing techniques have not changed a lot since we started really. We learned last year that we needed larger plant sites with a bigger area of enriched soil for our outdoor plants in order to get the really huge plants that we should get in our location. We learned about predatory mites indoors and that was a major break through for us. We have tried 4 different plant food options and so far Jacks does just as good or better in yield, potency and taste especially when you factor in cost since Jacks is downright cheap. We learned that wet trimming is a major vector for contamination of the final product and that is the single most crucial factor in having a safe end product for most growers. We learned that there is no such thing as too much air movement indoors and the more the better and it is especially effective when air movement originates from below the plants. I am sure there is much more I could add to this list as well but I have to get on my way to work to take care of all our lovely ladies that are about 1 week from harvest and hope you all have as great of a day as I most likely will:-)


I will try to post some recent photos later today!
 
KiLoEleMeNt

KiLoEleMeNt

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Indeed it is true I am very curious too mostly about your daughters situation with the overall outcome with her as well as verumy curious about the project you were embarking on when you last spoke of its beautiful awesomeness I have been anticipating an update from you sometime soon as it is common for us growers of a regular scale to fall off for a bit can't imagine how much you put your love into and gruff to deal with in the mix of all the red tape. Hope all is well and good Jah Blessed ☆
 
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inthegorge

inthegorge

329
143
hadn't seen you post in a long time. Whatever came of things?

Am looking to expand and wondering if you might have time for a few questions..?

God bless,

Miko~
Hello Miko,
We are still alive and kicking at W.O.W. Weed. Just had our second large outdoor harvest and I believe it was our 6th harvest so far. Family still all working together...my daughter is doing fine although we lost our 14 year old little dog this last week which was devastating for us all.

W.O.W. Weed is thriving...all our debt paid off and hoping to begin to see some financial reward but not holding my breath. The state of affairs in regulated weed in WA is a bit murky and depends on what section of it you are dealing with. Growers are not making money for the most part. We now have over 120 strains in cultivation and sell to retailers for $3.95 per gram. That same gram will cost you anywhere from $15-$25 because of the retailers 250-500% markup and the 37% tax the state takes at the register...along with whatever sales tax applies for that location. It is really screwed up and we are trying to find even one retailer that will work on a volume sales model instead of them all thinking they should make more from a container of bud than the people that grow, dry, trim, package, market and deliver it. We are fortunate to be able to sell everything we grow but the majority of growers do not find that to be the case. We are pretty popular for a few strains....our Acapulco Gold, White Lavender, Jack Frost, Afgooey and all our CBD strains as well as our kief/shatter infused cones which literally fly off the shelf.

I am however more than happy to talk about it anytime to anyone so just give me a call or email me directly and I will be happy to help in anyway I can:-)
I think my contact info is here somewhere but just private message me and I will get back with you right away!
Susy
W.O.W. Weed
 
inthegorge

inthegorge

329
143
Indeed it is true I am very curious too mostly about your daughters situation with the overall outcome with her as well as verumy curious about the project you were embarking on when you last spoke of its beautiful awesomeness I have been anticipating an update from you sometime soon as it is common for us growers of a regular scale to fall off for a bit can't imagine how much you put your love into and gruff to deal with in the mix of all the red tape. Hope all is well and good Jah Blessed ☆

Just not enough time to post here really. I still work about 90 hours a week...no days off. Love the plant as much as ever but not the process so much. I seem to be the person growers call here in WA when they have issues with regulations, rules, traceability etc. mainly because I answer my phone where the LCB does not. We have organized an online growers group meeting every Wed night for a couple of hours too and my effort there is for us all to be a support and resource for each other, to share best growing practices and to provide assistance for each other where we can. There are lots of cannabis related associations out there but they all want money before they even tell you what their specific focus is. Our group charges not one penny though and we work to inform and educate the consumers as to what is up with this industry in our state instead of lining the pockets of lobbyists to line the pockets of politicians. I am still very very active and no end in sight:-)

Thanks for asking and your kind words......we are doing OK all things considered.....my daughter is doing well. I just spent the night in my vehicle after doing 12 hours of driving on deliveries because the serpentine belt went out in my rig and I did not want to wake up any of my family at night since none of us ever gets enough rest. I am going to take a cat nap and get back to it:-)
W.O.W. Weed survives another day!
Susy
 
KiLoEleMeNt

KiLoEleMeNt

1,900
263
Wow much pride you have in your life and the art of growing plants, my goodness you have such dedication. I too wish to have a growers circle but it is such a small place I live in and limited friends/resources I don't feel it would be much success or grab the attention of the wrong people. However I am sure open to ideas for the next steps in creating one lmao. WOW now I'm doing it lol I have the same issue with bombardments of to many people who want advice or help with the legals and art b itself I tend to ignore those who clearly just don't want to do the research themselves but then I still have three websites other than this one skype is out of control most of the time and email pshhh I dont even wanna look anymore (but i do) and I have no idea how so many got my email but wow its like 30+ people asking me random questions and sending cool stuff they found or updates to their growth. oh boy oh boy- chimney Christaly buds I have no Flippin clue what I would do if I was working 90hrs a week ok top of it all I forget how many you said but thank the Lord you have all the people helping you that you do be it family friend or employee I am very glad to hear you are doing well and that your daughter as well I left off middle of the conversation at that point as I had gotten very busy with my work in the fields but the fact is a good thing it is to hear your well and good. So Jah Blessed be and good day to you hope you get a better nites sleep tonight would love to hear from you again when you have more time on your hands
 
purpleberry

purpleberry

633
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This is the reason co-ops need to be set up. Don't let the retailer tell you what to charge. You tell them what to pay and what msrp should be. Start a non profit co-op for growers, poll your resources. Let everything go threw the co-op and get graded and priced and make the retailer go threw the co-op for everything. Its not going to be hard when all the growers are getting pushed around. In the long run both sides will come to appreciate this way of doing business. Growers will get fair market price and retailers can go to one wholesaler and see whats available from all the growers.
 
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