Underground Farmer: Cannabis culture through time and a calling for soil stewards
I worked in cannabis cultivation and spent the last seven years in an underground ring, living lawless and meeting misfits. I realized we all go back to where we were formed and it starts underground. Out here in bumfuck, the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, I have seen and experienced things I will never forget:
U-hauls filled with weed plants, chainsaws to buck down center stalks, eight thousand starts, hand planted and tended. That was the year I started to lose it. Watching top soil deplete, knowing better options existed, realizing small grower, non recreational farming was becoming impossible. Competing with massive operations and being manipulated by brokers, I decided to ask people in the industry how they were dealing with the shift. I was curious. After watching so many people pack up and leave while pound prices were falling. Can we do this? Keep true organically grown, tended plants and seeds? Set our market while maintaining our physical health?
I care deeply for the earth. Growing plants, swapping seeds, creating compost, and using sunlight as a clock have been a powerful experience. A part of myself that I would like to continue to share with the world. Some of the people I interviewed were optimistic, while others laughed and said last year's crop was still in the barn somewhere, sitting. By that time, the price per pound had dropped to half of the previous year's average.
Setting our own market becomes a joke when numbers override quality cannabis.
Timeline of prices per pound . USD.
(Calculated as an average from interviews, specific to PNW grower sales. Not limited to out of states sales)
1980 - $5,000-$6,000
1990 - $2,500-$3,000
2000 - $1,800-$2,000
2010 - $1,700-$1,800
2016 - $1,800
2017 - $1,200
2018 - $1,000
2019 - $900
2020 - $1,000
2021 - $500-$600
2023 - $450-$500
2024 - (not an average, but someone today (( 2/23/24)) offered me) $250-300… yikes…
…
“I was struggling to break even that year; lots of people didn’t sell a single pound. That’s a shit ton of compost . I was able to pay lower rent , but it was hard to compensate.” -X (2020)
“I wanted to have a big garden and make things a bit more simplified , with less variety and in succession of harvest in between. Worked in cutting my labor in half. I knew it was a big risk, but I had so many leftover nutrients and growing supplies. I told myself I would trim the whole crop( which didn’t happen) .That was the year I decided to ask myself if the toll on my well being was worth it” -X (2022)
“A lot of us went without getting paid, people started asking us to work and get paid ‘when things sold.’ Sometimes, they never did.” -Yz
Maybe it was a mix of people who had gotten used to a lifestyle they couldn’t maintain when the market crashed. I would go so far as to say many of them were trust fund babies. Making money, spending, but not understanding where it comes from. What it takes to spend nine months alone for hours, sometimes days. Tied to something that we cannot always control . Getting seeded by your neighbors for example. Eventually funds ran low , and they couldn’t pay people to do the dirty work. Couldn’t afford expensive products or bags of soil, and lacked knowledge of how to recycle what is around us.
Understanding a cycle of life and death, how everything becomes everything else without intervention. I wonder if trust fund babies will ever graduate? They can talk all day about what they’ve done and their own genetics, but as for longevity in soil, they know nothing. They would rather discuss their monthly spendings, how they have no money but this winter they’ll be in Kauai..
As the valley clears from transient people, others who have been here for years pack up their lives and move on to new endeavors. I’m looking around at who is left.
…
"I went from flipping lids of Panama Red, Acapulco Gold and Thai Stick for a couple hundred bucks. Five years later I got my first seeds from Amsterdam. I was blown away. A few of us decided to take these seeds and grow them out in the mountains, disguised with shrubs and trees. We would take a map, look for water sources, and hike for hours to find places that were difficult to see from above because they were starting to put out helicopters. I never grew more than ten or fifteen plants but pounds sold for five thousand." -xXx (1980)
“But it was more dangerous then, buying 5$ bowls or 90$ quarters. They left thinking they got a good deal. We were selling things in smaller amounts , 300$ per ounce” -$ (1999)
Driving semis filled with pounds across the country, using microwaves to package and send money, suitcases of hash travel through country borders. A time when everything sold and there was a window, an appreciation for quality products. What about the people growing, who cared about their offerings, producing a medicine, organic, that was intended to heal? When did we move into mass production? Quantity over quality mentality？
Multiple acres of pre plastic pipes bull dozed, left in trash piles. Cartels are clearing the side of mountains to grow plants sprayed in miracle grow, and other toxic chemicals.. Gas powered generators and vehicles leak, and all of it leeches into our watersheds. Waterways trickling down tainted with poison.
And the people (law enforcement) who are there to “help” we all know don’t complete their part. In it for the profit once again, they come in and trash a gorilla site but never takes time to clean. Perhaps they take some photos to scare other growers, blast some news stories, Install fear and blame, and get some funding. While plastic piles decay, trash floats downstream. Land is left for dead. Skelton grows littered in crevisis, I’ve seen them on every mountain near my house.
Deep in the forest they are eerie, awkwardly quiet and massive. Some of them have been burned, and others simply abandoned but they all feel the same. Soil needs revamping.
….
An Ode to the Brokers and Gro Bros :
Lowballed by another broker, for fucks sake I don’t even have a dick to suck on.
I’m a lady though, rare in my field. Doesn’t change the fact these vampires are a different breed.
I may be low key but truly I don’t give a shit for these people who come in acting like they have some knowledge, drop some math about the market.
Bitch this isn’t college, I’m not interested in an equation you made up to convince me to sell my stuff.
I didn't grow up on the streets but I know something about peddling downtown, hoping the next move will make a difference.
Cuz I didn’t grow up with inheritance.
Had to grind for dollar and dime.
Spend a year taking care , buckle down , take root to tend lives … I swear most people couldn’t do it if they tried .But that’s the thing with authenticity I guess, someone always tryna make us feel less than we are worth.
Sorry not sorry, Broker ass.
Here's a dime bag for your chillum, you ain’t even worth a sample take those numbers back where you found ‘em.
Because if they are as low as you want me to believe, you wouldn’t be here. You are like a two way mirror but I’m on the other side, you are in it for the money . Nice try.
Wasting your precious time, I know you’ve got 10 more people on the other line.
Gonna offer them the same price,
Eventually someone desperate is gonna break.
Go swing your schlong elsewhere,
Find your own pot to piss in, discover what it feels like to chase your dreams. A creative outlet instead of taking advantage of our wellbeing.
….
On another side of the guerilla growing is the legal world. Recreational style cannabis grows became popular in the late 90’s as “medical” cannabis was legalized by the State of Oregon.
“Starting to grow with a permit was like are you kidding? County covered with thousands of pounds, fields in the open along the freeway. It was shocking” -xXx (1997-1998)
“I used my medical card for the first time, it was laminated. I remember laughing about that. Lots of people were pushing for legality now, underground nonprofits were fundraising going where you could get access to “excess” marijuana if you had a medical card . Had to be hidden from cameras , the government came in and shut down the establishments. Lots of people growing were getting busted by Feds.” -$
"We have people doing shady things, like blasting mold into their cartridges, being featured for OLCC information in magazines. They started installing cameras, forced onto payroll twelve dollars an hour, once the metric system was in effect lost their jobs. Those who stayed were forced to work faster, and let go of our health care. They pitted us against each other like a competition.” -$ (2016)
I find it incredibly frustrating this is where the industry, cannabis cultivation is heading.. A plant that provides so many people with relief from ailments, stress, insomnia, pain. Is turned into a
"cash crop" to people who already have more than enough money.
At that point it doesn’t matter the quality because people are buying and selling as a comodity.
People who have cared to craft seeds, cross different seeds for genetics that thrive in our climate are simply voices in the air.
This is not some hippie shit, calling for love, light and rainbows. Not a boujee bitch looking for community or a handout. But I am seeking a more conscious way of growing. l have encountered farmers with talent beyond commercial understanding. Putting in effort for years without complaining. Seed banks bigger than pantries in the city, full years worth of work, instead of pop tarts and processed sugars.
And now the question poses:
Are you in it for the profit? Do you truly care? To grow soil instead of deplete, keep our crops safe from pesticides that make us sick? Are we willing to live outside a system that will always be trying out consume us and still be able to live freely?
Not everyone's situation is the same. We all do what we have to do, with what we've got in the moment to get by. And I am not saying we can live without money, this is not about being completely self reliant.
I see an opportunity here for something different. It comes through those who understand guerilla growing in mountains. The willpower, quiet knowledge, and seed stockpile. Can we outsmart “Monsanto”?Throw up a middle finger to bastards with bigger bank accounts? Keep our grows small enough to do it consciously and not get bought out?
Maybe our power rides in creating seeds that have no competition in their strength. Showing people there is value in quality instead of the cheapest option …
People are trying regenerative farming, and bio dynamics is becoming more popular.
I’m rooting for all of you who regenerate without taking advantage.
…
Butterfly Wings
Light a candle, watch smoke billow above it and pray something is happening.
Something I guess is broad,
But what I mean is Spirit is always working hard.
And doesn’t have to try, opposite as us humans who feel a need to comply . Get by.
But I keep getting the feeling we lost it at tape measure.
Documenting numbers and equations and rhymes , teaching them as a law if we don’t follow it’s a crime.
No way of telling.
Life happens, hopefully you are aware of your own proactiveness.
No one is going to write those words even if you lack source or motivation.
Like a butterfly with no body , you are the wings .
Like a left behind feather we may hear the songs you tried to sing,
But without a body you are only a wisp.
A memory flashing through my dreamscape.
Butterfly wings, you are extraordinary, exquisite , you move without wind.
Without a body, though, without a connection to the wholeness,
Wings flutter into dust, ultimately water running over metal creates rust.
Turning molten inside our cocoon is a must.
A sequence of events as life continues.
Who am I to judge you? Butterfly wings?
By all means, falling away from a body that does not serve our purpose is only a tendency to keep moving, becoming.
It’s not about the direction but more about what is calling us.
Perhaps, there is a purpose in our wings . But it is similar to a voice , if we don’t use it to sing. Beautiful on its own, yet more prosperous as a part of the whole.
I want to provide some soul food for our bellies..pure smokes to calm our nerves, prevent diseases we can avoid. Let’s not forget cannabis and CBD , CBG are medicines to ancestors before us.
We've come a long way from Columbian brick weed, Turkish hash, and flipping ounces. To permits, cameras, barns stacked full of wasted pounds. Small time farmers thinning out.
Maybe it's mass production , monocrop farming. Perhaps if there were no cartel hiding in the mountains tainting water sources, using shitty products, consuming everything yet giving nothing back.
If trust fund babies would grow the fuck up and decide to participate in something magical. Instead of feeding their own thirsty ego. Maybe it's too far to say many of these people have never been hungry, down and out or sick without help. Someone in their life is always around to bail them out.
I know I haven’t had a shred of the difficulties some humans deal with, but I do know what it's like to come from the streets as an addict, lost, and growing cannabis saved my life. Realizing the way I did things for the first few years cracked open a place in my heart.
Laying in a field of eight thousand plants, knowing I needed to tear them out before harvest , my world crumbled . What I didn’t know then, was how important it is to “tear down and build again.'' The underground , soil and mycelium is the most important part to what gives the sprouts surface. That day I sunk into a realm where I was shown we must regenerate what we take from.
Tending and learning simultaneously, very important lesson came from this: as farmers, growers, seed savers and life keepers, we have a responsibility to continue to try.
Keeping things organic, biodynamic, un-exchanged with "monsanto" bullshit. We may not have a trust fund, but our seed banks are far more valuable. Why else would they buy out small farms or force us to grow only their crops..?
Why would cartels from all over the world move thousands into hiding twenty miles from the nearest store, never letting them leave? Growing crops in monoculture , greenhouses galore ?
I believe there lies incredible wealth in seeds and knowledge others see as profit , in this, they miss out on the process. Power lies in seeds, soil, but it’s not meant to be taken advantage of, exploited.. They force our prices down, year after year.
…
I decided to take that risk, seven years ago with only a backpack in a van I didn't own. Watched the industry fall out all around me. I lived in ways I would rather not repeat.
But the peace I feel in a thriving garden, enjoyment in a worm bin, dropping seeds in early spring.. that is my bread and butter.
Soaking up information like a sponge about bio dynamic, inoculation culture farming. Constantly looking for ways we can regenerate our Earth, home.
I am not trying to change the world, though.
As underground farmers, I believe we can pass along our stories through this language , plants are speaking, nature is calling, can you hear them ?
Lesson from the Underground : Mycelium is the web from which life stems , through us you are born and when you die, your bones come back to us. Conscious or not, Life continues on.
Article / Poetry / Photos by : Medusa G Rilla
Interviews from a collection of: Forest Dwellers, Mothers and Fathers, Gro Bros, Rascallians..
Colorful characters of the Pacific Northwest
