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!