MEND Season 1 - Episode 21

A Family Affair...

We are closing down the shop here soon on this first season of MEND and so it is with great pleasure that we bring you one of the final installments of this romp through the history, fields & families & glimpse into the future of this, our beloved culture & county.

In this episode, we sat down with Joshua & Sadie - She - a second-generation cannabis grower - who started down the same path as her urban-dwelling parents back in the day - even using their ballasts and scale when she first got started on her path in Humboldt’s indoor scene over 17 years ago.  And he - an East-coast transplant brought to this life by his love of cannabis, the land on which he lives and cultivates &, well, the love of a good woman, as well.

You’ll hear the story of their own relationship to the plant unfolding.  

From moving to the smaller, more secretive world of indoor into the free-range world of sun-grown, small-scale outdoor.

The beautiful life they’ve been able to carve out for themselves and their three children working with this plant and the abundance it’s provided them.

On what it means to finally step out of the shadows after all these years and claim cannabis cultivation as a legitimate path & profession.

On raising their children in a no-bullshit zone & how cannabis has actually sewn the seeds to start the conversation around Morality, Civic Involvement & Civil Disobedience - good & early.  

And how they’re equipping themselves for the fight they know they have ahead to survive.  To compete.  To stay afloat, relevant & maintain the beautiful way of life they’ve cultivated through the years.

And the magic 5th element inside all of this - they see as crucial to every small farmer’s survival in this swiftly-shifting landscape we are in.

At the end of the day, it comes back to this.

The families.

The freedom.

The community.

The rich way of life that is unique this region - and to the caretakers of this plant.

We are reminded, one again, that this privilege - is THAT.

A gift.

And if we are to see it continue…

We must all be willing to do what we can to maintain what we’ve been given.

At the end of the day, may these stories remind us… of what exactly we are fighting for.

Help us to keep the faith.

And to do the painstaking work of paving the way forward… for us all.  

MEND Season 1 - Episode 15

Looking Back to Find What's Next..

As I was sitting down to draft an introduction to this week’s chat, these words from Dante  Alighieri went flashing through my mind:

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. …...I cannot rightly say how I entered it. I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, where the valley, that had pierced my heart with fear, came to an end, I looked up and saw its shoulders brightened with the rays of that sun that leads men rightly on every road. …...It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was,.....but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.”

Anne & myself have chosen to take this week to re-group to some degree.  

A moment to step back and look at where this shifting narrative has taken us thus far, but also to try to regain the larger thematic thread toward which we’re aiming overall.  

To that end, we sat down, on opposite sides of the country and asked each other some questions.

*Stuff like -

What is the larger story we are trying to tell?

Have we succeeded thus far?

What are some of the voices we have yet to hear from and that we feel, are needing to be heard inside this story?

And... After all is said and done… is this really about Pot at all??

We re-cap some of our favorite episodes to date.

And talk about the process of trying to share a larger, Universal story with a message and a deep, pulsing heart - using the syntax of the humble everyday.  

Can the personal truly reveal the Universal, as they say?

We talk about Commercialization - both in this industry and beyond - and the effects it has.  

About what we’ve lost.  And hopefully what we are un-earthing still.

We talk about the underbelly of this story.  The dark, shadowy bits we had hoped to move away from - and how they’re part and parcel to this whole tale.  

And ultimately - we come back to: Who is this For?  

And begin to shift our focus from the past - of what has been - and invite in Voices that are beginning to pave the way toward our collective Future - whatever that may hold.  

Enjoy.  

MEND Season 1 - Episode 13

Raised in These Hills...

This week we speak with Iris:  a woman born, raised and now raising a family in the hills of Humboldt County.  When Iris was a child, her father was ‘busted’ by the infamous CAMP, Campaign Against Marijuana Cultivation, and given the option of 1 year of jail time or losing his land.  He chose to keep his land and spent the next better part of a year in prison.

She recounts to us:  the details of growing up in the marijuana culture as a child, the advantages and disadvantages of herself and those around her; knowing the safe house in the neighborhood, the one with no marijuana on the property, where the kids could flee to when CAMP came flying, learning all of the local plants and trees, as well as not having even a phone for many years.  And how she appreciates the openness of her parents, and recognizes the sad fate of too many of her peers whom, as she says, “Feel very big, very early.”

Iris acknowledges the benefits of marijuana cultivation in her earlier years, but tells us the big WHY she no longer participates.  It’s not the threat of jail, "That part wasn’t scary".  She tells us how, as an adult, just two plants helped get her family set.   What her community is doing to integrate the outsiders coming in, and poses the very important question of why Humboldt has alarmingly high numbers of childhood trauma and neglect.

This week we recognize not only the beauty of rural living, but the darker sides of growing up in an outlaw community.  Perhaps it is only through looking at these shadows that we can hope to understand how to come back into the light.