MendoAdome
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I did not intend to insult. I apologize.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not work yourself into a situation where you are absolutely depending on a crop. Those kind of people are all over in Colorado, and they are selling "medical" cannabis that has been sprayed with petro-chemicals as pest/pathogen deterrent. You will have issues, as you already know. I am experienced in this industry, from caregiving to commercial grows, grow stores, city council meetings, etc... To be honest, I am soooooooo much happier doing this as a hobby and not relying on it as my main source of income. Farming for a living can be stressful, no matter what you're farming! (and by the way, I ran a mite ranch for the better part of a year once; there's absolutely NO money in farming spider mites, haha!)
Seriously, best of luck to you, just don't poison anyone, intentionally or not.
Commercial growers often make compromises to save a crop. Don't be one of them.
Oh goodness....it has been a long time since I posted here. I would have done so much sooner but my days are eternally filled with more work than I can even contemplate most of the time but I am taking a mental breather for a couple of moments to coalesce some thoughts and figured I might try to do a "brief" posting here:)
W.O.W. Weed is doing pretty well I guess all things considered. Certainly not getting rich but we are maintaining and actually have about 20,000 in the bank which is sort of weird and strangely scary for some reason that I just cannot put my finger on:-/ Still not pulling a paycheck myself though so I guess this is just going to have to figure out as a labor of love....even if I don't always love it at all. My partner (my youngest daughters boyfriend if you remember) gets some remuneration....money to cover his car insurance and soon will be taking enough to pay for their own housing because they are going to move down the road into another house but that is quite minimal with our living situation so we can cover that. He and Rach (the daughter) also got to go on a cruise in the Bahamas and a few days in Florida so that was cool for them. My oldest daughter Sophy that we were worried about her health for a while is now pregnant with my first grandchild and that is just the most wonderful and amazing news for us all:) She is due and August and none of us could be more overjoyed!
We need more labor but after hiring a few different people that came from medical growing backgrounds who did not work out we are hesitant to hire anyone else even though we need a couple of people seriously bad to step up our production. Our sales are about $500,000 for the last 12 months. Not stupendous by any means but we are staying in the game. If we can up our production we would be seeing an actual profit building but unfortunately I spend most of my time trying to help growers in general here and it is turning into much more than a full time job on top of what I have to accomplish for our company.
Nearly to a farm the recreational growers in WA state are overworked and not paid. Not one grower has time to accomplish everything that needs to be done on our farms every day and that is not just the plant care....it is all the regulatory reporting, compliance issues, harvesting, product storage, processing, packaging, marketing, deliveries and every other aspect of this crazy industry that the average pot grower would never even consider if they did not work in this heavily regulated system. We are spread across this very large state and isolated by our workload primarily and lack of funds. We are the largest segment of stakeholders in this recreational system and yet we have no combined voice because we have no time to come together. I have made it my mission to bring us together. Any penny I can take without stressing our company I put towards contacting, educating, networking and getting growers together. We have been putting on meetings across the state....going to the different regions.....inviting growers and feeding them so we can meet up.....talk with each other.....and most importantly spread the word that if we do not act now there may not be a tomorrow for most of the farms now established here.
The state still charges a 37% "marijuana sin tax" at the register along with their 9.5% sales tax so a whatever the price of the pot is the consumer pays nearly 1/2 again as much for tax. The retailers mark up the growers product anywhere from 250-600% and they literally put the product on their shelf and collect money from the sale when it goes out the door. How any shop can think this is OK just boggles my mind. The consumer is the ones that are screwed and even though growers sell for a very reasonable price....such a reasonable price that there is very little profit if any......but because of the state tax and the retailer mark up the cost at the shops is still incredibly high considering what the unregulated growers still sell at. More than 100 growers here have already failed......lost their life savings generally and all the time, energy and heart they put into their businesses. I hear all the time....oh......new businesses are hard....many are doomed to fail. My response is this is really not a new industry but since it is regulated and taxed nearly to death it has unrealistic expectations.
Our goal is to bring at least 500 growers to a consensus and bring our combined voices to the Liquor Control Board. Their rules keep coming and are always at the expense of the growers, never the retailers. We are also going before the legislature and after that we will start a media campaign to inform the consumers of what is actually going on with legal pot in our state. We meet with the LCB next week. With the legislature the week after. Then the public which will take time and who knows how many people we can reach. All I know is that if we do not act now it will be too late for most of the farmers already working in this system and that is not OK with me. Never in my wildest dreams when I thought about growing weed legally did I see such a future in store:-/ It is not where I want to be but no one else was doing it and I just cannot sit idly while so many of the other businesses fail. They all work just as hard as we do....aren't doing anything incorrectly other than working in such a screwed up system. Now they are going to allow outside money to come into the system....many growers are hoping they will be able to sell their businesses. I don't know if that will help or not. Some of the largest players are doing great but they had huge pockets and put a shitload of money into their operations. They buy product from farmers that cannot find an outlet for their products for $1 a gram and think they are playing fair. Farmers end up selling because they can't keep food on the table or their light bills paid. It is just horrible really. Our little company sells all the product we grow. We have a good name even if not many people actually use our products because we are so small but we do try hard to put out great weed in each package and stand by anything we sell. For some reason many of the growers that are going out of business want us to take their plants when they close to keep the strains going. We now have 167 strains which is sort of crippling I have to say to keep them all going and we definitely need to purge probably about 80 -100 of them but how do I decide which to get rid of? It is a responsibility I take quite seriously:-/ Because of labeling requirements THC drives sales here. Labs are just crazy however. You can get a 10% variation in THC from one lab to another using the exact same bud for the sample. It makes no sense at all and we see most stores only wanting product that tests out at above 24-25% THC. Up until a couple of years ago no one ever saw THC levels like this so WTF? Most of us think the labs just are gaming the system themselves because growers go with the labs that give the highest test results because without that the shops won't even look at your products. Again...it is horrible and most of us just think it is a travesty and again the consumer is the end loser.
I have been involved in a committee to create a Washington Cannabis Commission that is registered with the Dept of Agriculture and it will improve the situation for growers in general but it is a lengthy process and after all the growers in the state vote on it next month it will still take about 9 months to a year to come into being but it is a huge deal and absolutely worth all the work it has taken.
So.........I am an expert on growing and processing cannabis in such a ridiculously regulated system. I cannot say my growing skills have increased tremendously although we do understand lots more than we did originally. We can say we love, love, love to be able to grow outside.....it is so damned easy. Indoors when you approach it like farming is not terribly complicated either and we do not have all the expensive climate controls that so many great grows have and still we do a very good job with our indoor. We now recognize what does best inside and what does best outside for us and there definitely is a difference. We use no pesticides whatsoever and our predatory mite regimen is just a huge game changer for indoor growing.
So.....not much changing here except my huge involvement with organizing growers which I never intended to do but felt if someone didn't do it all is lost for the average pot farmer here in the regulated system. Medical is gutted here.....it is a travesty and we are working to try to change that before it affects too many patients negatively but it is going to be a huge battle as well. Nothing in this has been easy.
What I can say and for this I am proud.....I have one of the most respected voices in the WA state cannabis industry. That is not bragging...it is just a result of always speaking my mind as I see things....always advocating for the consumer first and the industry second. This translates into a great reputation for our little company as well but that is just a side effect of being active for legalization in general. I know that was not my expectation when I started getting into all this. I for sure know it was not the expectation of all the naysayers I first encountered here. What a crazy surprise:)
So where are you located? We really could use an exceptional person really devoted to this plant and could afford another salary I think if the skill set is good. We are about as laid back as work can get but we work extremely hard and have a wonderfully dedicated team.
Our area is pretty gorgeous:)
Susy
I know a great gardener in search of a head gardening position. His name is @thunderfudge . He lives in Washington and is a Great breeder with awesome seed stock.What you need is a head gardener, and pay them well for this knowledge. YOu don't need some internet help, you need bonafide in person on call experts. Look locally, pay well and you'll be thankful.
I know a great gardener in search of a head gardening position. His name is @thunderfudge . He lives in Washington and is a Great breeder with awesome seed stock.
If you're lucky he may bring some of those seeds to share.
Here is his main thread.
https://www.thcfarmer.com/community...he-jungle-it-gets-worse-here-every-day.48821/
Highly recommended you get in touch with him. He has Ties to exotic genetix a multiple cup winning brand.
"the main reason we are looking towards moving our operations to Oregon as soon as the rules there become more concrete."
No that how you Rep a guy. Nice lookn out for family @rmoltisI know a great gardener in search of a head gardening position. His name is @thunderfudge . He lives in Washington and is a Great breeder with awesome seed stock.
If you're lucky he may bring some of those seeds to share.
Here is his main thread.
https://www.thcfarmer.com/community...he-jungle-it-gets-worse-here-every-day.48821/
Highly recommended you get in touch with him. He has Ties to exotic genetix a multiple cup winning brand.
Damn I didnt realize the dates either. :( I blame cannabis LOLI can't believe this thread is so old lol. For some reason I thought it was new lol. Disregard my post lmao.
Any tips how I can make this happen in the UK ? being able to do this legitimate has been a dream of mine for a very long timeView attachment 650559 I finally took 5 days off and am vacationing at the Oregon Coast and am relaxing so thought I would give a little update on W.O.W. Weed and our progress.
The legalized system here is still a mixed bag. We are doing reasonably well, selling between $50,000 - $80,000 per month of bud, mostly in grams still. We charge retailers $3.95 a gram for our hand trimmed slow cured bud and sell everything we grow. We work with about 15 different retailers and could not take on many if any more just because we are a small company with only a few employees and that is about the limit of what we can manage in the way of growing, trimming and packaging per month with the help we do have. This outdoor harvest we brought in about 600 lbs and finished with about 48 strains that we brought to market. We still use no pesticides whatsoever and did some random pesticide, heavy metal and mycotoxin testing of our outdoor crop just to make sure we had no surprises in the soil that we buy or from any neighboring industry and we were told by the lab "that we were one of 2 farms in the state that tested so clean" so that was great validation for what we do. Our indoor is just as clean but we do use predatory mites in our indoor grow and still they work very well for us allowing us to grow with no sprays of any kind. We sold about 50,000 clones last spring to other growers so the genetics we are running have been distributed all across the state.
We have tried to bring skilled growers into our operation and each time it has been a very very negative experience:-/ We have tried 4 different medical growers that were just clueless when it came to growing on this scale and to a person they were disrespectful and convinced that theirs was the ONLY way to grow weed. I don't think we ever want to hire another person that has even ever grown a plant before and that is quite unfortunate in my mind. I really thought we could find someone that has growing skills that would be an asset and help us do even better but each one that we have tried has just been a huge problem for us and we could not part ways soon enough:-(
The growers organization, the Cannabis Farmers Council, that I founded is getting more and more organized and we have submitted a marketing order for a Cannabis Commission with the Dept. of Agriculture. They are reviewing it now and when it meets with their approval it goes to the growers in WA state for a vote. It will give cannabis farming a foundation as agriculture with the rights to farm, the full weight and support of the Dept. of Ag and the Attorney Generals Office and nearly every cent that is raised by the commission from farmers will go to research for best practices for growing on the commercial scale and education and outreach to the public about cannabis cultivation.
Our layout of our indoor operation has been upgraded as has our lighting and we are working on improved HVAC for our flowering rooms but we are doing pretty good with our indoor as well seeing a return of right at 1.75 lbs per light of trimmed bud and some trim that we utilize for kief production.
I am just about ready to sell the company or at a minimum my share of the company mainly because I am 60 years old and tired of working 7 days a week to keep this place running at least somewhat smoothly. I still love the plant.....nothing will be changing that in my lifetime.....but I am tired and someone else with more energy than I can keep working with this to make W.O.W. Weed even better no doubt. I also want to spend more time with my new and only grandchild and since no one under the age of 21 can be on the premises I need to be off the premises to visit with him and I am just ready to move on past this and get my life back. That is not to say that this has not been quite the adventure. That it certainly has, but I think it is time to leave the "heavy lifting" to the next generation of growers because I am ready to pass off the baton and move on.
It will be intriguing to see what the incoming administration does with legalization. Hopefully they will leave it to the states to decide for themselves what to do and we will not loose the momentum and gains we have seen in legalization to date. It remains to be seen however and I know I am not the only one watching closely to see how this goes.
Here are a couple of photos of our outdoor garden this year:
View attachment 650557 View attachment 650557
View attachment 650560
View attachment 650559
Our packaging of a few of our strains
View attachment 650557
View attachment 650558
If anyone is going to go the legal route and I can help with anything from planning to licensing just reach out and I will help in any way I can!
I live in wonderful WA state where I have just applied for my legal license to grow, have secured a 4400 sq ft warehouse and am looking for any reasonable advice I can find. I have been reading the threads here as much as possible but have not found too much info on using so much space. I have a 41'x34' veg space and a 58'x26' flowering space with 3 other closed off rooms of varying sizes for cloning etc and a 34'x12' space for drying and processing. I am a 57 year old lady that used to grow indoors 20 years ago and things have changed greatly since then:-/ If any of you experts could see it in your hearts or have time to give me some specific pointers I would be seriously grateful. This is all out in the open...don't have to worry about anyone "catching" me because it is LEGAL....never thought I would see that in my lifetime:) I am so open to knowledge and have a short window to get everything set up with a budget of about 20,000-25,000 to put into it. We will be the ground breakers for the rest of the nation and I can use all the help I can find! Do I grow hydroponically or with soil? Do I use the SOG method or go for bigger plants? I personally think that the fastest I can get a crop to legal retail outlets here the better because the market will be glutted quickly and since all my start up money is borrowed I need to get in the black as soon as possible. Also I think the first crop to hit retailers will bear the highest prices just so the retail shops can get moving. I have literally been waiting for this for the last 30 years and am so excited I can barely contain myself. I have so many questions and want to do this right from the start up. Glad to share my phone number and talk to anyone with good advice for me. Will have the building to start the set up by Dec. 15 and need to be ready and raring to go!
Wish I could do that because I would know exacly what to do. And I could do it with hardly any help. But good luck man. My two cents. Most commercial product is lack luster in comparison to many because of the size it takes to control them and the types of nutrients and pesticide used. If I was in your shoes the best weed would be for everyone. No synthetic nutrients or pesticides. Most commercial dispensary growers can't grow organic well because they lack the skill and the size of the garden gets more risky with molds and pests. If you want my opinion. Don't be like the rest of the dispensaries selling "medicine" that has a giant list of synthetic nutrients and pesticides preventatives. Every grower has their own secret formula for success also.I live in wonderful WA state where I have just applied for my legal license to grow, have secured a 4400 sq ft warehouse and am looking for any reasonable advice I can find. I have been reading the threads here as much as possible but have not found too much info on using so much space. I have a 41'x34' veg space and a 58'x26' flowering space with 3 other closed off rooms of varying sizes for cloning etc and a 34'x12' space for drying and processing. I am a 57 year old lady that used to grow indoors 20 years ago and things have changed greatly since then:-/ If any of you experts could see it in your hearts or have time to give me some specific pointers I would be seriously grateful. This is all out in the open...don't have to worry about anyone "catching" me because it is LEGAL....never thought I would see that in my lifetime:) I am so open to knowledge and have a short window to get everything set up with a budget of about 20,000-25,000 to put into it. We will be the ground breakers for the rest of the nation and I can use all the help I can find! Do I grow hydroponically or with soil? Do I use the SOG method or go for bigger plants? I personally think that the fastest I can get a crop to legal retail outlets here the better because the market will be glutted quickly and since all my start up money is borrowed I need to get in the black as soon as possible. Also I think the first crop to hit retailers will bear the highest prices just so the retail shops can get moving. I have literally been waiting for this for the last 30 years and am so excited I can barely contain myself. I have so many questions and want to do this right from the start up. Glad to share my phone number and talk to anyone with good advice for me. Will have the building to start the set up by Dec. 15 and need to be ready and raring to go!
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