Potcast 203: Save Craft Cannabis Farming
Down Om Farms | North San Juan, CA
Down OM Farms is a family owned and operated cottage cultivation in the Sierra Foothills of California. Building soil and compost through the use of our small Alpaca herd and worm farm we minimize our carbon footprint and implement many regenerative practices, supporting the microbiology that supports us. Growing our food, flowers and cannabis alongside each other was a natural evolution of our process. We desire for our gardens to not only feed our family but to enrich the ecosystem and community in which it is a part. Being such a small farm allows us to cultivate an extremely high quality product by showering each and every plant and bud with our love and intention.
Today’s potcast is dedicated to my farmer friends and family. It matters not whether you’re a food, hemp, or cannabis farmer - it’s one of the toughest and perhaps least appreciated career paths.
I remember as a kid growing up in a rural farming and ranching community - the struggle was real - but it didn’t occur to me to deeply explore the why. My dad told me we were tougher out in the west and everything will be alright. And that was that. It got filed away in my little JoJo brain that farmers and ranchers struggle and are somehow the better for it. That’s just the way it is.
Fast forward forty years - I’m tired of struggling. And I know a shit ton of farmers and ranchers that are tired of struggling. Caring for our land and growing healthy food and medicine for folks like you and me is noble. And it needs to be respected and honored and farmers need to be compensated appropriately.
The nascent cannabis industry provided a hopeful clean slate for us to treat small farms better than we’ve done in every other industry. But it isn’t happening. History is repeating itself. In California, small cannabis farming operations are folding under the financial burden of regulatory pressures and a lingering market surplus from last year’s grow—a supply that’s proven too large to be absorbed by the legal market.
What I know for sure is that if we want things to change, we gotta talk about it. So I invited a remarkable human and cannabis farmer to show us what it looks like to walk the walk. You might hear terminology thrown around like craft cannabis but not really know what that means beyond “the farm must be small.”
Daniel Fink from Down OM Farms will explain what it actually means to be a craft cannabis farmer, he highlights the fundamentals of regenerative agriculture, and why that’s such a badass gift to share with the world. And for you, green thumbs - Daniel covers responsible ways you can evolve your at-home gardening practices.
And if you’re looking for a one-of-a-kind cannabis-infused getaway, I invite you to join me in the beautiful wine and weed country of Sonoma County, California. As a cannabis lifestyle guide, I’ve cultivated a one of a kind farm stay experience where you can enjoy the casually baked lifestyle and the magic of sun-grown cannabis farms and vineyards. If you’re into wine, weed, wellness or all of the above, get ready to have a high time customized just for you. Click the link to learn more.
Kumbaya and cannabis, -Jo 💚
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‘After the Show’ Notes
Daniel Fink | Down OM Farms
Connect with Daniel on IG @downomfarms and catch his instructional videos and posts. They’re great!
Daniel Fink is part of the new guard of responsible cannabis cultivation. Daniel operates Down OM Farms, a micro-scale regenerative polyculture farm near Grass Valley, CA. Through the use of a small alpaca herd and a large worm farm, they make their own compost, worm castings, and soil. Incorporating polyculture and permaculture principles Daniel’s family operation seeks to exist in balance with both nature and community.
As Cofounder of Grass Valley Growers Cooperative Daniel seeks to unite small farmers and to maintain market position as true high-grade craft cannabis providers.
Regenerative Farming Principles Daniel Discusses:
Daniel uses wooden boxes with free flowing drainage at the bottom for his worm farms. Each box processes between one and two months. That's about a yard and a half of material that will then shrink down into about a yard of clean worm castings. Daniel takes that material and puts it directly into his gardens - worms and all. He cautions that if you do sift, do so gently so as not to disturb the microbiome.
“I'm not just trying to create organic matter. I'm trying to create microbial dense innoculation. I am micro farming. I seek a higher density of microbes per handful than most products on the shelf would have in a whole bag of their compost.” -Daniel Fink, Down OM Farms
Create a closed-loop system so you are importing as little as possible onto your farm (in your garden). Engage with fellow farmers and work together as a community.
Construct Hugel Beds - Over a couple of years, that breaks down into an incredibly fertile, healthy, gardening space that has phenomenal water-holding capacity. (See video below)
Move towards no or low tillage practices or infrequent tillage practices. Tilling disturbs the microbiology and smashes fungal networks, which are incredibly important to the overall health of the ecosystem.
Use ground cover and cover crop rotation to rejuvenate and reinvigorate the soil. For example, in the off-season, Daniel sprouts 20 or 30 different types of seeds in his cannabis beds. From grasses that cycle the phosphorus to legumes, beans, peas, and clover which fix nitrogen back into the soil.
Move away from a mono-crop or a monoculture (huge field with one type of plant) which very easily succumbs to disease and pests because it's not communicating as an ecosystem. Try to have lots and lots of diversity (polyculture).
“All of these things are to increase the organic matter content, sequester carbon. And what that does is create topsoil. Topsoil is the greatest thing we have on this planet to sequester carbon. Even the microbes themselves exist to sequester carbon; they are carbon-based life forms. And so the more topsoil that we wash away into the rivers and oceans through tilling hundreds and hundreds of acres - that takes ages to grow back. But there is hope with regenerative agriculture methods.” -Daniel Fink
Turning Dirt into Soil
Book recommendation from Daniel: Dirt to Soil, by Gabe Brown
First, know what you’re working with by performing a soil analysis. Get a soil fertility test kit online or at your local garden supply store. Without knowing what you're working with you could go in the wrong direction very easily.
The recipe for amending most native soils is to add organic matter - start making homegrown compost!
Compost should be a blend of wood chips, poop, and grasses. Daniel talks specifics on each of those 3 categories in the potcast. (I think around the 25-min marker)
Let it heat up! 140-150 degrees for a couple of weeks.
Shovel it out. Turn it.
And then let it continue to cook for about a month. 90-120 days is the sweet spot according to Daniel. “When it’s a chocolate cake consistency I know it’s ready,” he said.
Then feed it to your worm farm to make it even richer. The worms remove any pathogens and leave behind highly bioavailable nutrition for your plants.
Daniel has been studying, practicing and implementing some really interesting, advanced and ancient farming practices at his farm in Northern California!
From @downomfarms on Instagram | Meet Antonio. He is one of our younger alpacas and a real charmer. Without the assistance of him and his friends we at Down OM Farms would have a hard time building soils and creating compost and worm castings for our closed loop farming systems.
Farm Cut is a group of small heritage family farmers that care about the earth, sustainable practices, and quality cannabis. Every day we see jars full of tiny nugs that have been machine trimmed on the market. This method of quick trimming degrades our traditions of a careful craft of preservation. Our farmers decided to share what’s actually in our head stash, full flower cannabis without the trim. With minimally processed flower, you get all of the good stuff, sugary leaves filled with terpenes and trichomes that can be used in edibles, topicals, or smoked. Our flower is carefully cured and lovingly packed with minimal processing, preserving the optimal state. This is the finest whole-plant cannabis produce on the market, grown with love and care for the earth.
The Sustainability Roll-up is presented by OCB Rolling Papers. In perfect harmony with natural, sustainable practices, it’s always been the OCB signature to provide the highest quality, responsibly sourced, and sustainably crafted rolling papers.
An article was recently published in High Times where my buddy Johnny Casali from Huckleberry Hill Farms was quoted discussing the concern of Emerald Triangle growers about alarming price drops for their product and what that means for their future.
“This is an extinction event. Things are really, really bad,” Casali said referring to a recent wholesale price collapse in California’s outdoor-grown cannabis market. The High Times article also quoted Chris Anderson, founder of Humboldt County-based distributor Redwood Roots - who is a former cannabis farmer himself.
Anderson said, “This time last year, a pound of the best quality sun-grown, light dep weed on the market cost between $1,200 to 1,600. Wider wholesale prices settled between $800 to 1,000 per pound. Now, some of the same quality cannabis is fetching as low as $400 to 600 a pound and “going downhill.”
The lowest price reported was $275-per-pound. Keep in mind that licensed cannabis farmers pay a $150-per-pound cultivation tax which begins to seriously cut into any profits if wholesale prices tank.
“This state has an overproduction problem,” said Natalynne DeLapp, executive director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance. She explained that owing to the local control provision of Proposition 64, so many municipalities in California have opted out of allowing sales and distribution within their limits that there simply are not enough places to sell the amount of legal cannabis grown in the state.
“Currently, there are 1,775 acres of cannabis licensed by the state, which conservatively produces more than six million pounds of cannabis,” Delapp said. “CDFA [California Department of Food and Agriculture] has estimated in its Standard Regulatory Impact Analysis in 2017 that California likely consumes 2.5 million pounds of cannabis. Not all cannabis consumed in California is purchased at legal retailers, so a very conservative estimate is that we’re producing twice what the legal market can consume, but in reality, it’s probably worse than that.”
That 2.5 million number, Delapp explained, is the “only and ‘best’ number we have from the state back in 2017.” She added that the state’s opacity and not releasing data from METRC, the tracking system, that shows what amount of cannabis is legally sold in licensed retail shops is part of the problem.
Surprise, surprise - there’s some shady shit happening with our State government.
At the same time, the state and many counties continue to issue cultivation licenses, and the lofty licensing fees and taxes produce revenue for municipalities. As the number of growers increases in size, so does the amount of cannabis being produced, but the pool of would-be legal customers isn’t following in lockstep.
Bigger cultivators pose a very specific problem.
In addition to flooding the market with large amounts of cannabis, driving down prices, they are also able to sustain market fluctuations, seeing as they are highly capitalized. To add insult to injury, these larger cultivators weren’t supposed to be able to participate in the legal market until 2023, but the provision that granted small farmers a five-year-long head start in the market was scrapped just as Prop 64 was passed.
So while the policymakers figure out how to fix this debacle, what can we do as consumers to help small, regional farms that need our support right now?
Shop locally! Buy their premium flower!
Find your area farmers and follow/engage with them on social.
Ask for their specific craft farm by name when you’re in the dispensary. And if they’ve got unique genetics - specifically ask for that cultivar.
Treat your craft cannabis farmers like your favorite musicians or sports teams. Wear their gear, show up to their workshops or webinars, and most importantly, I repeat, buy their premium flower!
Ask for Sun+Earth Certified cannabis. The Sun+Earth seal certifies cannabis that is grown under the sun, in the soil of mother earth, without chemicals by fairly paid farmers.
And if you care about premium flower then might I suggest rolling with OCB. All OCB rolling papers are “plant to puff”; OCB makes their own paper from their mill in Evian to the factories they own in Perpignan, France with all fibers and packaging material sustainably farmed within a 500km radius. And all OCB papers are vegan, GMO-free, chlorine-free, and dye-free. Of course, you must be 21 and older to buy OCB rolling papers and to follow the natural wonders of OCB on social @ocb_usa.
Roll With Me, a new video series launched on the Casually Baked YouTube channel in April 2021, is a collaboration with OCB Rolling Papers. Get lessons and insights on the craft of rolling while chatting about all things hemp and cannabis culture.
Complete This Form to Roll With Me On An Upcoming Episode
We all know practice makes perfectly smokeable joints so I’m engaging my cannabis industry friends to coach me. And if you’ve got some rolling tricks up your sleeve, perhaps you, too, can school me on an episode of Roll With Me.
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Get 4 booklets of OCB and a rolling tray for only $4.99! This bundle is worth 20 bucks and is around for a limited time. But the rolling skills and street cred we’re going to earn together, my friend, makes this bundle priceless as far as I’m concerned. ✌️💚
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