In this episode from the 2023 which is just now being broken out of the curing vault like fine hashish, Dr. Dominic Corva and Cannabis Studies Lab research assistants talk with Christopher Carr of The Cannabis Connection – a weekly radio show in Santa Cruz on KSCO AM 1080 – which has been going strong since 2015. Over the years, Chris has interviewed many luminaries and shares his insights about legacy genetics, hopes for updates to cannabis regulations, Santa Cruz’s unique and often overlooked role in cannabis genetics and legalization, and the future. They dive into the history of WAMM, Santa Cruz, Chris’s human connection with the cannabis plant, his show, and the many cannabis connections he’s made along the way.
Subsistence Crop S1E5: Christopher Carr, The Cannabis Connection Transcript
Jada Morrison 0:02
Hi everyone, and welcome to Subsistence Crop, a podcast cultivated by the Cannabis Studies Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt, where we talk about human cannabis relationships beyond commerce and prohibition.
Dominic Corva 0:13
Welcome to subsistence crop, the podcast of the Cal Poly Humboldt undergraduate Cannabis Studies major.
Christopher Carr 0:23
Honor to be here. How cool. Congrats.
Dominic Corva 0:26
Thank you. Thank you. Well, your radio show, which is to me, also a podcast, yeah, has been, you know, since we started speaking several years ago around Santa Cruz, history and legacies in Santa Cruz has been a fantastic learning, you know, opportunity for anybody who listens to it as well as it’s given, given me a lot of inspiration in terms of, you know, how I think about how to talk to people, interview people around the subject of legacy cannabis genetics, because you have that passion for it and that knowledge, and you just, you have these great guests, and pretty much, no matter what their actual subject is, it always comes back to, like, legacy and community, right?
Christopher Carr 1:11
Yeah, big time. Yeah. I felt, I felt really honored when I moved here, you know, in 2008 I just was kind of taken in by a lot of legacy people, operators like Val Corral kind of came up. I recently interviewed Mike Corral, which is kind of fascinating to hear the other half of the WAMM story, right? Because, as co founders, they were married for so long, they went through the the raids with the DEA and the whole legal, you know, experience they had with the federal courts and beating the Feds in federal courts. So, yeah, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been kind of just authentic. It’s a truly Santa Cruz story. Santa Cruz cannabis in Santa Cruz is, you know, I’ve had some people on that were connected to Dave Watson, Sam the skunk man, learned the original skunk genetics. Some of the like this this other person named Wayne, who’s from Corralitos, came to a grand opening. My band played a grand opening in Watsonville. And there were some of these, like legacy. What would you call them? Like stewards of the seeds of the original skunk, the grandpappy skunk, some people that knew the Hayes brothers. So it’s just been an honor and connecting with people like Michael Fratis of Coastal Seeds, and a lot of these kind of land race preservationalist people that are very passionate about holding on and preserving and seed increasing some of these rare lines that because we live in this Mediterranean climate in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I’m here in Bonny Doon, right by the UCSC, where they have an arboretum, where they have plants from every continent except for Antarctica. So we’re really lucky, just geographically and historically, to be here the keepers of the seed home of the haze.
Dominic Corva 3:03
Yeah, this is something that I think a lot of my Humboldt friends, they know about Santa Cruz, but they don’t really know about Santa Cruz, like they don’t understand how early Santa Cruz was in on the breeding, in particular, like the self conscious breeding, you know, going on in the 60s, and the development of these communities of people who are just these cannabis nerds, you know, like that that loved the Botany of it and the science of it. And, you know, it was such a fertile ground, especially, I think, because of the university and its attitudes about it at that time, which were open and this general kind of, when those undergraduates got the right to vote, basically in 71 they started electing these, like just left wing city councils and so forth, that for for decades, you know, had Santa Cruz in this really unique position, I think counter culturally. “Yeah.” Same time in the 80s, Santa Cruz got obliterated, I think more by enforcement than than, say, Humboldt did, right? I mean, it was hitting hard everywhere. Like people went more underground, right?
Christopher Carr 4:22
Very underground, Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. It was, yeah, it was, it was unfortunate. And I think part of it too pivoted to the to the importing, because things were so hot. There was this moment in the 70s. I recently had some old editors at High Times. Steve Bloom, yeah, Steve Bloom is a really interesting fellow. And then Malcolm MacKinnon was, oh yeah, he would go to these cultivation sites that were like war zones, truly, you know, as a result of the CAMP. Campaign against marijuana planters. They were, you know, it was, it was really scary times. And so I feel like Santa Cruz and Northern California kind of went, they pivoted and brought in some of these imports. Tim Blake was a high school student SoCal high doing, you know, getting, getting kilos off of Italian fisherman boats in the Monterey Bay, and spoke to that of the begonia festival in Capitola and selling lids at Soquel high. And so there was that moment of like, yeah, just trying to, like, survive the intense. You know, the 70s were a beautiful time because there was this moment, maybe even the High Times editors I’ve spoken to, where they thought it would happen federal, and then it kind of backfired with Nixon, and that was kind of like part of the Santa Cruz story to is we, you know, we had ups and downs with our with our leaders. I think that’s a very much a metaphor, too, for what we’re experiencing now in modern cannabis and kind of like ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys in our confidence, like for Gavin Newsom and decriminalized nature movement and him to veto some some new bills that we’re trying to, you know, provide access. It’s just fascinating to see the one step forward, two step back, where that prophetic word of the Rasta man and reggae music, you know, we’re just always in a Babylon. But then, you know, these things are part of the story. That’s part of like, what these endeavors we do with these conversations is to preserve that, and especially, I do look at the making lemonade out of lemons, and providing funds for the work you guys are doing is so important, and to preserve the cultural history and thinking about genetics specifically is very important.
Dominic Corva 6:55
Right,because the work we’re doing is not really just about the genomics and the plants, it’s about the stories, it’s about the communities. I was just on the phone with Mojave Richmond. I don’t know if you know Mojave. A couple of days ago, him and Rob Clark were actually driving around Santa Cruz for Croptober. Yeah, you know, smelling the flowers, basically. And they caught wind of my of our grant, which I want to emphasize, is not just the function of me and what I did, but our team and I work, you know, I work for them and with them, not, you know, they’re not working for me, even though, you know, technically I’m the PI we are. It’s a horizontal team. And they got wind from Kevin Jodrey, basically was talking about it. He’s in Pakistan right now making a documentary.
Christopher Carr 7:45
Hey, yeah, pretty beautiful with that beard he’s got.
Dominic Corva 7:49
So he fits right into the… blends right in. I was actually like, what’s up with this beard? Like in August? But I didn’t say anything. And then I realized, Oh, he’s blending in.
Christopher Carr 7:59
I was wondering about that as well, but I think, yeah, I think when in Rome, you know do as the Romans do.
Dominic Corva 8:04
That’s an actual plan. But it’s funny, because you know Douglas Fir, basically, who, I don’t know if you know Douglas, but he’s one of the Southern Humboldt back to the landers that in 79 went to Pakistan, right near where Kevin is now, and brought back, like, five kilograms of seeds. And then that actually was one of the… there were many people who did that, but like, that was a pretty big had a pretty big effect throughout the region, because he went around, you know, Johnny appleseeding it, and so he reached out to Kevin, and he was like, Kevin, you’re going to be where i, where i got these seeds from that I think are in a lot of the, you know, watershed genetics. And he’s like, you know, please see if you can bring back the the land race, and maybe we can start to do some genomics comparisons to see, you know, how much of that is, may or may not still be in there.
Christopher Carr 9:02
Amazing. Yeah, well, yeah, it’s so important to when we have these opportunities to to leverage our network and hopefully connect the dots there. I am unsure. There’s a breeder in the Santa Cruz Mountains here, Bodhi of Bodhi seeds used to do these treks. He would bring heirloom food crop seeds and trade with the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca, or go to India, or these different, you know, regions in the Middle East as well. And you know, at least, he was trading food for ganja seed. But I know you see these YouTube videos of the Strain Hunters and these seed groups, and they kind of just adulterate. , you know, indigenous lines is and then, unfortunately, the most the natives don’t really know any better, right? They’re like, Oh yeah, hey, sounds great. You know, we want to grow what people know and and it just muddies the the gene pool. And that’s it. It’s a it’s a shame, it’s tricky.
Dominic Corva 9:11
And there are, you know, practical problems with that too, right? Because, you know, when you hybridize those seeds, you produce plants that were not bred for that landscape. Snd you’re gonna, you know, you’re actually disrupting, potentially, their, you know, ability to produce, I’ve been hearing a little bit from some folks, Zomia Seeds, over in Southeast Asia. That’s, you know, in that area, like there’s been much less of that kind of penetration of the Euro North American hybrids, yeah? Because they just don’t grow there,
Christopher Carr 10:45
Yeah? There you go.
Dominic Corva 10:48
Like, just not, not where you know, like,
Christopher Carr 10:51
that’s one way of preventing the infiltration of yeah, Dutch genetics. Yeah.
Well, okay, let me, because you bring that up, let me ask you, like, Okay, what do we even mean by, like, Dutch genetics, right? Like, because Amsterdam was this crossroads, that had, you know, the our Santa Cruz brethren, right? Like that were over there, Dave Watson, Rob Clark, and also, you know, like, an international kind of landrush land race hunting that was going on even back then. So, like, what do we even mean, I think, like, I guess, broadly speaking, when we’re thinking about, like, the genetics that came back from Amsterdam, I guess, um, in the in the 90s,
yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good thing to that’s interesting. Yeah. I think that the research of the tolerant policies of the city of Amsterdam and just the Dutch people in general, I feel like it was the Mellow Yellow was the first, like coffee shop, the first place where there was an impetus to bring cannabis out of the street drug culture and facilitate a brick and mortar kind of community vibe, a third place, not your home, not your job, but a place to go, build culture and have access to cannabis. And that kind of blossomed into this, like tolerant cannabis gray area that is Amsterdam, and we’ve all pilgrimaged. I was lucky to go in 2019 when we went to Europe, and was pretty impressed with just the the experience. It’s a beautiful city, just in general, and the art, the history and the the Ryke is it the Ryke Museum, and Van Gogh and we, we, we did all this fun. It was in the winter too. So there was, like the festival of lights and the canals, and the boat guide let me drive the boat so he could drink wine with the girls I was with. It was fun. We had a wonderful time. But when I think of Dutch genetics, I feel like it’s like a terpinolene. I feel like it’s just this is, there’s a certain flavor profile, there’s a certain terpene profile. And unfortunately, like, for example, with Sam the skunk man in Santa Cruz, there was a raid, and he’s he he left Santa Cruz, but he did stash his seeds and he went to Europe, and I think a lot of the hazes and a lot of the skunks that became like the Sensi seed bank and all these big Amsterdam seed companies were built on the foundation of of of of stewards in Santa Cruz, like South County […] area, and also all over Northern California. But I feel like Santa Cruz specifically is a very special epicenter of innovation. And there was because of our unique terroir, I would say we have mountains meeting the sea. The Santa Cruz Mountains and some of the redwood forests of Henry Cowell provide interesting microclimates and areas to cultivate clandestine like for domestic production, not just the Monterey Bay and the import of, you know, kilos from all over the world, but we had these little nooks and crannies in this mountainous part of the Santa Cruz Mountains that that provided these opportunities to breed equatorial varietals that wouldn’t mold, but also bringing in some of the like you mentioned, Pakistan or Afghani, and that was kind of the impetus of creating these original haze lines, or even that skunk, the original grandpappy skunk was like a combination of these super equatorial varietals, with trying to shorten the growth period via a more broad leaf, kind of Middle Eastern from the kush mountain range, which could be Afghanistan or Pakistan. And, you know, it’s those genetics, you know, kind of were, were, like you said, it was a crossroads, because of that tolerant nature and that pioneering of mellow yellow and the first coffee shops. And. But in my experience, a lot of the lines kind of were, you know, it’s not a great sun growing region in Amsterdam or the Netherlands. You know, there’s
It’s all indoor breeding.
It’s all indoor breeding. That’s part of the this. The situation there is, you don’t really have a semblance of some of the best cannabis, in my opinion, comes from these rugged areas in the Middle East or in California, in these, you know, Santa Cruz has challenging parts to it. We have a marine layer where things will just mold overnight. You know, like 100% humidity. I grew 7200 plants for WAMM last year. And in South County, it was blown away. It was like James and the Giant Peach, where the rhino comes, and like, all the clouds behind it, like, soon as that sun sets, we have, like, just in 100% humidity, just water everywhere. And when those, you know, an acre of buds blooming, it’s a mold fest. And so know what I mean? It’s like they have these natural rites of passages. And so the lines that are bred in these areas, have this natural affinity and kind of develop these survivability traits. But when you’re growing all indoor, all the time, and you’re kind of facilitating all of this kind of mash up, it’s like when you have a I have a toddler, and you give her enough colors, you start mixing enough colors, it all becomes brown, poopoo or black. So in some ways the that’s the metaphor of some of the Dutch seed lines that I think of is like the strongest sesquiterpenes that piney amnesia, haze profile, or some of these citrus varietals kind of just dominate and kind of muddy the unique, you know, chartreuses and colors in the color wheel that are the rare, kind of unique lines that were developed in these different areas, for example, like Pakistan, or the Santa Cruz Mountains in South County, you know, the Haze work, or the skunks and so that, that that that unnecessary, you know, practice that they were trading those Dutch genetics to Like rare land races like the Punta Roja in Colombia, or the, you know, Swazi in the in the bush. Planned as just a heartbreaking almost, like, I don’t know it’s like,
Dominic Corva 17:13
I mean, it’s Neo colonialist. I
Christopher Carr 17:14
I was just about to say that, yeah, I didn’t want to get too political, but, yeah, oh, you know, I’m sure there was an element to that like no one else will have it. And so let’s muddy the waters. And you know, yeah, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.
Dominic Corva 17:30
This is very interesting, because in talking about specific places we’ve actually stumbled upon, I think, an interesting topic around the development of genetics that is actually about, really, like, indoor and outdoor selection. And so, like, the early breeding in Santa Cruz was happening in a context of, you know, largely outdoor selection, like, Can this grow well here? And in the process, you know, these, flavor profiles that got developed, like, like skunk number one, that’s what people are looking for now, is they can’t get the exact DNA, what they’re looking for in that flavor profile, right? But, you know, in every attempt to get back to that, like, it’s all happening, like, indoors, right? So, but that’s going to affect what the possible flavor profiles are. So there’s Yeah, a cul de sac,
Christopher Carr 18:25
Yeah, no, it’s that nature versus nurture. And sometimes I feel like some of the best things that can happen are the happy accidents of a sungrown and full term season. And when you have controlled environments by default, it’s going to, kind of, yeah, you’re kind of in this, like, cycle of maybe the cultivator or the breeder or the selector, you know, we’ll select for about specific traits, whether it be phenotypes. You know, we’re in this weird time, as in the market, where we’re we’re kind of just, you know, running in the cycles of candy Terps and purple gas phenos and Gelatos and cookies and papayas. And I think Rob Clark and Mojave were at a farm that I’m very familiar with the the Jadenectar collective in in Santa Cruz, and they grow only landrace, only full term. And a lot of their medicine or products that are on the market are hyper local infusions of like olive oil from from the area and in land race cannabis to produce THCA rich profiles, and I think, like some of those things that we’re looking for, these minor cannabinoid or mixed ratio profiles or rare terpenoids, or the other thing that’s interesting is, like you mentioned, the skunk and that kind of like garlic profile or acrid. We’re learning with a recent white paper that just came out that it may not even be terpenes, it’s these secondary compounds that are there. So it’s fascinating to think about this and that you know, maybe, as you know, the the product of adapting and the low stress training of intense humidity or wind or or clay in the soil produces these rare secondary compounds that produce that profile that we can’t replicate in a controlled, nurtured, coddled, indoor environment. There’s something to be said about the roots and getting back to the roots, and I’ve kind of gone full circle, obviously, with my show. I’m so passionate about the land race and the preservation and the regenerative agriculture movement and these wonderful conversations that really give me hope for the future. But then I also fall victim to like, I want to produce a product that will sell, that people will recognize, and so I, you know, I’ve sourced some indoor genetics and ran some clones, and just got humble this year, just like, oh yeah, everything molded to the point of, like, like, it was outrageous how fast things would mold. And we had a weird gray May and June gloom. And then it got sunny in, like, July, so everything, like, was had a late start. Um, we had that atmospheric river that, like, you know, half of Bonny Doon washed down into the ocean, and so we’re all kind of like humbled this year with the sun grown cultivation. But you know what’s doing the best in my garden, after all this mold and all of this devastation, it’s a Maui haze from equilibrium genetics. I have a Swazi haze that is just thrushing. It’s like everything that just wasn’t flowering when everything molded. Is like this picture perfect, you know, fold out from High Times Magazine, like pink pistils, amazing resin, just chunking up and…
Dominic Corva 21:52
Vegged during the bad weather.
Christopher Carr 21:54
That’s it. That’s it, well, and that’s just something to be said. Like the things that I kind of like, literally, what were I wasn’t paying attention to but I always have a spot in my garden for some rare fun. You know, equatorial sativas, whatever you want to call it, these. You know, Jason Mathys of equilibrium is a dear friend of mine. He has roots here in Santa Cruz, and so he sent me some like rare, you know, some Hawaiian cross with this haze variety from Santa Cruz. And of course, it’s thriving. It’s the best plant. It’s the queen of the garden. I neglected it. I barely water it. And it’s just, it’s like, Thank goodness I did throw that out there, because it’s going to be what head stash I have. Because everything else I was trying to do for production is now just, it’s mold. It was gone. It’s gone. So there’s something to be said about, you know, growing to your environment and then also working with nature and and sometimes it’s good to not have control. And last loud,
Dominic Corva 22:55
I want to just patent that statement, like, sometimes it’s good to just not have control.
Christopher Carr 22:59
I have control. Yeah, it’s, it’s really wanted,
Dominic Corva 23:02
I want to actually, like, translate that in an actual, like, you know, policy complaint that I have all the time, which is that, like, Why can’t your unique stuff get to the market? And it’s, it’s because we don’t have deli style. We don’t have the ability to appreciate the consumer has nothing to buy off of, except for the package and the numbers on the package, yeah, even now, even if people have terpene percentages, like, there’s other things going on. And so, like, you know, I think that that’s a, you know, the policymakers are worried about, like, oh, increasing THC, and yet, like, their policy makes it the only incentive, you know, essentially, for for the market is like, oh, what’s the THC percentage? Or even just fixation on numbers,
Christopher Carr 23:50
you know, what I imagine, these hazes and having what I find, you know, through my radio show, you know, I interview. I had a an operator that is operating 24 stores in California. And he wouldn’t be the mom and pop operator that I would bring on, but because he was kind of collabing, there’s a spirit of CO opetition Right now in Santa Cruz, I imagine all over the nation, all over California too, because the market is so challenging, and people have been humble, yeah, yeah, it’s just, like the cost of compliance and the it’s just challenging, like the margins are so slim, so people, instead of competing or coming together in the spirit of cooperation and building, you know, collabs and brands that are, you know, like you have a cultivation And a manufacturing I have prowess and SOPs and retail, let’s come together, and we’re semi vertically integrated by working together and and so it was interesting, though. The reason why I bring all that up is I learned from his feedback and from his data of all these stores all over the state that you know, in covid, there was a. And this is maybe why Gelatos and runtz started dominating The Emerald Cup started dominating every sort of, you know, Instagram feed, or wherever people are and wherever the cannabis culture goes. It was like a handful of lines that were being crossed back to each other, you know, runtz to this, and zkittles to that, and cake to this, and gelato, the that, and Cookie, cookie, cookie. And so like, you know, that was kind of comforting when we were in that hub, 2020, 2021, and then a transition in 22 and people started exploring new, new new new experiences, new terp profiles. And now he’s saying, like, every sku, instead of like going with what they know they are trying something new almost every visit. Then that there’s a trend going that direction? And also, there were trends away from, like the heady myrcene dominant, caryophyllene dominant, linalool dominant varietals that are like, colloquially known as indicas, right? Just more like stimulating cultivars. People were looking for citrus, looking for Hazes, looking for Jack even, like bringing back some of these bronchio dilators, these, these like stimulating cultivars to go do things with and have experiences with and socialize. So I thought that was heartening, and I think that’s part of this interesting progression of what dreams may come in the cannabis community. And there’s a lot of opportunity, and if we explore land race specifically, they have natural profiles of CBD with THC or minor cannabinoids that aren’t really necessarily psychoactive, but that do provide a benefit to the endogenous cannabinoid system by stimulating, you know, different CB1, CD2 receptors. And then the other thing is this, this, this brand new world of the olfactory and the entourage effects with terpenes. And I think a lot of these rare land race cultivars have the like parsnip profile or, you know, these wild kind of vegetable different flavors, not just gas, not just candy, but something new, something savory, something bright, something maybe not as high in THC too. I mean, the state should encourage diversity, because it actually might provide a product that is balanced. It might be a one to one mixed ratio profile with…
Dominic Corva 27:15
Exactly! You heard about cultivar that won Cannafest here in Humboldt this past month.
Christopher Carr 27:27
No, tell me about it. I saw Cannifest happening there almost made it But we have…
Dominic Corva 27:34
16% THC was its number. It was year old, full term outdoor with just an awesome flavor profile. And I’d been actually getting samples of it, because the cannacountry cultivator was was dating my co director at HIIMR, and she’s bringing me samples of it. And she’s like, they can’t sell this because it’s 16% and I’m like, This is so good though, this is what I want to smoke, yeah. And then, like, then, then he won Cannifest with it. And just like, out of the blue, I’m like, I was like, of course, you know. So I was just super excited to see that development, you know. And I really think that, you know, it’s good news for all of us. And I think potentially, it’s good news to start talking to, like, policymakers and regulators about, like, if you’re so afraid of high THC cannabis that you’re pouring millions of dollars in research money into, like, something that is, you know, a) like, it’s flower, so it’s really not that much of an increase. And also, there’s such a thing as, like, a lab inflation going on here. So, like, I don’t know how much of this is real, yeah. Then, like, you know, let’s talk about your other policies that basically make it to the consumer, just like, they’ll get to experience something different. They don’t get to try balanced cannabinoids. They don’t get to try, you know, these, these, these flavor profiles. So I’m trying to kind of work with that a little bit. I’m more in touch with, you know, policymakers and regulators than I used to be, on account of this grant and some other things going on that, you know, I don’t even, I don’t even, I don’t want to actually pollute this particular conversation with those topics. But maybe that’s another discussion to have some time up
Christopher Carr 29:27
I would love to man wherever. I mean, the beauty of the show too. I meet someone new every week, and have for every week since 2015 and I think we need more Dominic Corvas in the space talking to regulators seriously, because it’s, it’s unfortunate, how many conversations I have with amazing stewards of the plan that feel so discouraged and disheartened that it’s almost like out of out of their mind. You know, it’s just a big can’t. They don’t know how to begin or how to bro, even, even. Legends like the matriarch of medical like Val Corral, was just so, so frustrated, to the point like, you know, fizzled like, WAMM is barely anything now. It’s a whisper. It’s a it’s a memory. You know, I was working full time for WAMM, and I put my heart and soul in a in a massive garden, and I don’t even know if any of that flower made it to market, because I had to get a new job this year because WAMM couldn’t make payroll. And that’s just kind of like a sad sign of the times for many that don’t know, WAMM is potentially why we have prop 215 which is potentially, you know, one of the big contributors to why we have an industry in California.
Dominic Corva 30:43
I mean, you can’t, you cannot overstate that, by the way. I think that, you know, a lot of people know about Deniz Perone. They know about what’s going on San Francisco, but you know, Valerie and Mike were the huge parts of what happened with prop 215
Christopher Carr 30:58
Yeah. I mean growing. I mean growing was not on the language at all, until Mike and Val insisted be like, Oh yeah, no, you need to. We’re not about this unless there’s gardens, unless there’s this ability to caregive, because that was what he was doing for her since they met in the 70s and her traumatic brain injury.
Dominic Corva 31:17
That’s the legacy, right?
Christopher Carr 31:19
Well, yeah, that was the beginning, yeah, the collective, the caregiving, the medicine, it was brought to 15 that was the essence of of the mission, and that’s why Dr Grinspoon, Lester Grinspoon said, you know, there was only one truly compassionate collective.
Dominic Corva 31:36
Yeah, there’s so much to that that’s like, I wish that we collectively could, could even begin to address this like gap in public knowledge. And I think that, you know, I would encourage anyone to read, you know, Wendy Chapkas and Richard Richard Webb’s book, Dying to get High. There was also a documentary about Valerie and Mike La vie en vert something like a French name, but it’s about the WAMM, you know, hospice collective. So, I mean, it was sick and dying people. They were, they were growing their own medicine, you know, under supervision from especially Mike, and making their own medicine from what they grew and they were able to come together in a garden, you know, socially as they were dying. And then, like, in terms of therapy, therapeutic doesn’t begin to touch what that that’s like end of life, like gold standard, like, what you would want, you know, like, I think at the end of your life is to not be sitting there in a bed, you know, with like machines on you and nobody coming around, but to be with other people, and especially because some of those people have been stigmatized, as, you know, especially the HIV AIDS patients, to be able to come together and laugh. You know, these are the stories to me that are that legacy, you know, like it’s the plants, but also that joy that people could feel together that is most clear, you know, in a hospice collective, but, but is also something we all need in every, every part of our life, at every, every, any given moment. I, you know, I feel very passionate about this, and I’m sick to my stomach that the city of Santa Cruz fell down on the job. We brought them right to the edge. Here you are. Just do the application, and they wouldn’t apply for the equity grants, even though they’ve been given the money and and my team had done the work to write an equity assessment that really honored that, that legacy, um, but I will tell you, like, we didn’t even talk about Mike Corral back then. Like, and then listening to his interview takes me back to the plants as well, because, like, he’s been apparently, like, so he was a breeder, yeah, like,
Christopher Carr 33:57
Big time, big time talking about preservation. I mean, that interview really opened my eyes. I have it here. He provided me that it’s kind of, it’s kind of full circle. It’s really timely that we’re talking here is, I hope my blurring thing doesn’t this is a shoot, no doubt. This is Rob Clark’s. It’s a photocopy of, like, the manuscript of his thesis for UCSC, so pre book. And it’s, it’s really special because there’s, you know, it’s like typewriter and then shoot. This is tough with the blur, but there’s like nothing Mike. Mike has notes in the margins. Rob gave a copy of it to Mike, and then Mike gave me a copy of his copy that he wrote his own notes off of Rob’s work. Um, so in many ways it’s like it’s there. It’s just like I hear and obviously it’s Rob, but then I see my learning from Rob in this copy, which is very special, and that was really sweet for him to share that with me. That’s how I got him on the show. Is think I shared a picture of memory, some silly thing, like, from my phone said, Oh, this day, five years ago, you were with Rob Clark, but it’s feature of him signing my, like, super tattered, you know, marijuana botany book, and, like, keep growing Chris, Rob, yeah, and I shared that. Then Mike hits me up and he’s like, Hey, man, I got, I have, like, the pre release of that, and with my notes annotated on it, you want a copy? And I was like, you want to come on my show. Let’s do this. And, yeah, full circle, it was really cool. It was really cool. And he had, he had rescheduled me a few times because he had covid, and was like, really sick. He was kind of not feeling good. And so I was like, You know what, Mike it’s all good, but because I was patient, he did come through with some really good joints and a really nice gift, and it’s fun to read through it and to see, yeah, like you said, Mike very passionate about breeding. He took that manuscript to heart, and then on the show shared that he’s got all these rare malawis And a lot of like, the WAMM genetics.
Dominic Corva 36:25
WAMM genetics. Like, like, this is the thing, the thing that, like, I would like to know more about, learn more about, is that combination between like, that breeding and that hospice garden, right? Like, how did that the cultivar selection happen? You know, for the patients, in terms of what they found, works the best for them, yeah, like, in addition to, like, the the breeding and breeding logic that that Mike was doing, I would like, I hope, uh, that perhaps, with this, with this grant, we might be able to catch Mike, you know, with an interview that that that maybe addresses some of that.
Christopher Carr 37:07
I think it would be good for Mike too, because he’s, by default, laid pretty low, and then was doing projects abroad, yeah, no consulting. It’s really cannabis researchers, consulting European groups. I feel like there’s this medical movement piece happening in other countries that is kind of, that’s what he was speaking to. I mean, he’s so he’s been so frustrated with policy ever since prop 215 let alone post prop 64 era, right? You just kind of disheartened and over trying to make something work here, But kind of elsewhere, and felt like he was more effective in other places, other countries that are kind of starting. It’s like prop 215 in Poland or Israel. You know, like things are happening in these other areas, that he feels like he can have a bigger impact. But one thing he did share about and the anecdotal like testimony from the show, but also being a part of WAMM and getting to know Leona and Douglas and some of the members and some of the board and like there that what you spoke to it really well that everyone was involved. I think with the post prop 64 era, is hard to have, like volunteers. It’s hard to have people come and, you know, there’s this whole accountability piece, there’s the metrc, there’s all this, you know, of course, that needs to be a part of a compliant system. But we kind of lost touch to the human aspect of of the ethos of love grows here in providing was a space to to grow love, but also it was that can that cannabis connection to to the patient, to the caregiver. I think a lot of what him and Valerie learned together was, you know, what cultivars would help her and what things would help with her seizures. And then they that kind of just fractaled out into these other friends and into it becoming a collective, into having this bigger garden, I believe in […].
Dominic Corva 39:20
You could not control that process.
Christopher Carr 39:23
No it was so beautiful and organic. Yeah, yeah, exactly no control, yes. And that’s kind of WAMM. It is, kind of like you’re in this, like, wild space. I’m not sure if it’s just the the.
Dominic Corva 39:36
I mean that’s a wild group you know? It’s a matter of, like, new forms of life can emerge out of uncontrolled conditions, you know, whereas, like, if you just control everything, nothing new will ever happen. It’s just like, I don’t know, we’ve got to deal with this, you know, control and maybe letting things go, thing at a very high level. Uh, which, which is actually where I’m at right now, because you and I have been talking for about 45 minutes, and my students who have been tasked with going through your archives and creating transcripts and getting stories, getting those stories, these are the parts of the project where, like, it’s archival research, right? You’ve been asking these questions, and you’ve been talking to these people, and there’s been other places to have but, like, you know, none as consistently as you really at Cannabis Connection. And so I’m like, Okay, you guys, instead of just, like, scattered everywhere, like, while we do the dive into Cannabis Connection. So, you know, I’ve had my research assistants, and they, they just wanted to be here for this podcast hour. And you know, many of them are pretty eager to maybe jump on say hi and ask some questions. And, you know, like we can figure out what happens in edits later or whatever, but I just want to give them a chance to talk to you for a little bit, if that’s possible.
Christopher Carr 40:59
Yeah. 100% Wow. What a What an honor, what a privilege. Thank you.
Dominic Corva 41:02
Thank you. Great, wonderful. Thank you. So I’m going to start over here with Kaid Chapman, to my right, and
Kaiden Chapman 41:11
Is this mic on […]
Dominic Corva 41:24
So he’s not Jada Morrison. I’m not Yes, and that’s actually Jada Morrison right next to him, right now. So okay, yeah, yeah. Take it away. Guys. Got some questions or, you know, comments, yeah, for sure. I
Kaiden Chapman 41:39
I mean, I think I’d just like to know a little bit more about you, maybe, what are some of your favorite genetics that you’ve grown that you can share?
Christopher Carr 41:48
wow, yeah, wonderful. One that immediately cut like a gut reaction is there’s a Goji OG from Bodhi seeds, a Nepalese land race. I love the kind of Middle Eastern profiles. I love, for example, too. There’s another land race, like California Land race, or heirloom the big sur holy weed, which theoretically I believe might be from Zacatecas might be from Mexico, but yeah, I do enjoy some of those kind of, like, interesting, like spicy profiles. Me and my father grow together. So there’s sometimes the most beloved genetics come as a result of the journey of cultivating that garden and that and that and that round or or you breed and keep going and work a line and and so I’ve worked a few lines with the Big Sur holy weed that is very special to me. There’s a banana cultivar that was very special in Santa Cruz, and we put it to the Big Sur holy weed, and that is the Santa banana. So we just grow that for headstash. That’s just for my dad and I. It’s like a special little rite of passage project, a lifelong life’s work we’ve been doing together, and that Goji comes to mind. There’s a raspberry pheno we really like, yeah, very interesting Nepalese Landry’s. That’s really cool. That’s
Kaiden Chapman 43:21
That’s really cool. really cool that you mentioned the holy, yeah. That’s awesome. That is great.
Christopher Carr 43:27
Yeah. Little banana helps with the flavors too.
Dominic Corva 43:32
And you guys feel free to jump in organically, but I can if you want, just, you know, pop you around. You know, I don’t want to stop Kaid but I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to to jump in. Yeah,
Jada Morrison 43:45
I just had a question, what do you think makes Santa Cruz unique in terms of the ongoing legacy of different cultivars? And can you recall any particular strains that stand out in the SC community?
Christopher Carr 43:57
I think when I first moved here, it was the birth of Blue Dream. So the blue dream is a Santa Cruz haze with the DJ short. And I have, for example, my other love is reggae music. And so there’s a I just had him on, kind of like, coincidentally, he showed up. He’s been on the radio for almost 30 years. DJ Daddy Spleece. He just had an reggae hour on KCSC. I think the the community of UCSC, the city on the hill, makes it unique. I think what Rob Clark coming to UCSC at that era. The beginning of UCSC was trying to build a university where there were no grades. There was kind of like almost an anarchy approach to education and very hands on, and you would evaluate yourself or evaluate your peers. We have this history of a very progressive climate of regulation and policy making. We are the birthplace of CCOF organic farms, the Chadwick gardens, and some crazy amount of counterculture and rock and roll. I think Hunter S talks about coming, you know, down from the city on a motorcycle for some crazy times. We also were the murder capital of the world for a while, so we’ve had, like, interesting ups and downs as a community. But when it comes to cannabis, I feel like part of that is tandem, the the the art, you know, history, the kind of, in a way, organic cultivation, and the kind of ruggedness of where these mountains meet the sea, the Mystery Spot, you know, like there’s some weird vibes just out in the woods. Out here in Santa Cruz, we have an amazing micro climate. We’re the second smallest county in the whole state. But I think we have the most diverse populations of like bees and and, like some you know, amazing opportunities for flora and fauna. And I think that all kind of, you know, went into the secret sauce of people picking imported cannabis from the Monterey Bay. I think that’s also a part of it too. Is we have this crazy underwater trench deeper than the Grand Canyon, some of the most interesting sea life and marine biology, and who knows what’s at the bottom of that crevasse, but I know we know more about space than we know about the ocean, and so there could be something happening out there that’s contributing to this. But I think in general, we have this wonderful counterculture art scene. I feel like we’re a small town with a big city draw. Whether you’re on tour from the LA to the bay, a lot of people would come through Santa Cruz. And I think millions land Ranch is up here. Janus Joplin needs to come to Henry’s. We just have this really interesting geographical location. I think the the redwoods meeting the sea adds a piece to that. And I think part of it was we, were just a fertile ground for innovation, you know, the Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis. I took that, that major, the community studies majors, kind of like the legacy of some of the thought experience of the, you know, of that of that community at that time. And so I think it all kind of adds up. And then, of course, growing out in the Santa Cruz Mountains is just a beautiful place to be. And we had that, that proximity to, you know, whether it be the the bay area or San Francisco. But then, of course, I think a lot of people, like Tim Blake is, you know, the founder of the Emerald Cup, and he moved to the Emerald triangle. And I think a lot of people did that, and when with the back to the land movement too. And so we have that connection to the Emerald triangle as well. So it’s kind of like a feedback loop. As we were providing seeds, they were providing pounds. I’ve had a lot of conversations with smugglers and people that were, you know, bringing work from Northern California back down to the Bay Area, Santa Cruz, and it kind of was this interesting circle. We all helped each other out throughout prohibition.
Keaghan Morrisey 48:10
Hi, Christopher. I’m Keaghan. I’m actually, I grew up in Half Moon Bay, so And my grandmother was, like, part of the second graduating class of Santa Cruz. So I am kind of a question just asking you a bit more about, like, kind of surrounding counties, you know, like Santa Clara and San Mateo being just a lot more stringent in regulations, especially comparatively to Santa Cruz, and historically, both of those places, you know, especially along the coastline for like, San Mateo County, like, you know, going up on unincorporated communities down there, there’s been cultivation happening for decades, and then going out 17, like, into Lexington hills, over nine into like, the Los Altos Hills, Saratoga area has also been like, you know, had a lot of cultivation going on for a long amount of time. I think it’s just really interesting that there’s such a disparity nowadays. And I was wondering if you had any input on that, on why that might be and kind of, like your thoughts on it?
Christopher Carr 49:09
Yeah, you know, it’s, I think, in general, the cannabis community was so worried about the civic process that I, you know, I don’t, I don’t know, to be honest, it’s really challenging. I’m from a very conservative community that in the in gold country, that El Dorado County, that had a ban until this year, just, just outright banned. Yet the amount of cannabis grown in that community is, is, you know, comparative to Santa Cruz, comparative to Mendo. And so sometimes the policy doesn’t reflect what’s really going on with the people. And I think in general, a lot of cannabis stakeholders are really hesitant to get involved in local politics or the Civic Process, which I find is very unfortunate, and I think long term, in order to have responsive policy, we need leaders in the cannabis space to pursue or or align with or educate regulators. I really commend the work of of this, of what you guys are doing with your university studies and initiatives like what Dr. Corva is doing. And then, of course, the example pioneers like Val Corral and Mike Corral have said, I really commend them, and I think there needs to be more more of that in the future. And it takes, it takes a village. All politics are local. I don’t know why, but I can, I can understand, you know, coming from a very conservative Trump country County, that you can still grow a lot of weed and have, you know, the antithesis happening in the Board of Supervisors chambers, yeah. So it’s frustrating because it doesn’t reflect the values or the best practices or the livelihoods of the constituents, but the constituents have been very secretive, and that’s a product of prohibition. And I think in many ways, we’re still dealing with the negative stigma, and we’re still dealing with the wounds of the drug war, and in a way, it’s prohibition 2.0 now,
Yeah,
Kaiden Chapman 51:21
what’s your history with the plant? When did your relationship with cannabis start?
Christopher Carr 51:27
I love that. I was really into the performing arts growing up. It was a wonderful outlet for me, I grew up in a very rural great growing fruit growing kind of place like very, very, very country bumpkin existence, Gold Country Apple Hill. So I got into theater, and it was a way for me to kind of take my mind and my imagination to places, you know, outside of this very sheltered place, very special place, wonderful childhood, but I always had ambitions to go and explore. And then in high school, I auditioned for a there was like a festival at Sacramento State, which was like the big city, and I got a pretty big role in a one act play. It was like a competition where all these groups would come together, and there were monologs and one acts. And I was a part of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. I played the role of Joe Canaan. Was like John the Baptist, kind of a heavy role. But I was 14, and my counterpart was 18. Everyone, and everyone that got casted was 18 plus, or, you know, like they were all seniors, and I was a freshman, and the they kind of hazed me and took me out one fourth period, and they said, Hey, Chris, you know, we want to have a cast meeting, the safety meeting. And I was just naive, and I was like, oh, safety, yes, yes, cast, yes, of course. I was trying to fit in. I was trying to be cool. And so we got on the back of a pickup truck and drove out to these orchards. And that was my first experience. I tried some purple bud in a bubbler called Purple Haze, and that’s how I earned my name. Smiley. Is I started smiling, and I couldn’t stop and like it just chit like everything just, it’s like I was hungry, and I finally was fed, I experienced something that I had never really knew, that, you know, sensations and that elation, that euphoria, really changed me. And so the rest of my tenure in high school, you know, obviously I would do a lot of plays, and we would take a pilgrimage to Ashland, Oregon for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival once a year, and we would, I was in charge of bringing the good, the good flowers, to Lithia Park, and we would go see some Shakespeare after having a safety meeting a cast party. So that was kind of the exception. And one time, we took a road trip to Santa Cruz. We had a mutual friends with an older sister that was a dancer at Cabrillo, Cabrillo stage, and so I saw a dance recital at at Cabrillo, and then was busking on Pacific Avenue. And we even slept on the beach here, north on the one waldell Creek. And I just thought to myself, I’d like to, I’d like to find a way to come back here, and through playing music, I had a friend when I was 18. He was going on tour, and he’s like, I got a room. I’m like, where, where I’m trying to get out of Placerville. And he said, It’s in downtown Santa Cruz beach hill. It was around Christmas and on January 1, 2008 I moved to Santa Cruz, and one of the first jobs, that was one of the first jobs I got was making coffee at Lulu carpenters downtown, and I would trade espresso beans and leftover pastries to to my plugs to to get cannabis. And then eventually they we got to know each other, and I started trimming for them, and I would chop my way to the top. And the way we paid for my band. So. First album was with funds. We made trimming for all the info. That was kind of it. And I took care of the plan, the the plan’s taking care of me. And yeah, in 2014 we opened a dispensary, and I went on a radio show. And then the program manager at KSCO that’s been around in Santa Cruz for 75 years, said, like, I like the way you guys talk about cannabis. It’s not a Cheech and Chong conversation anymore. Let’s, let’s have more of that. And she gave me a prime time slot on Friday nights, and I’ve been doing that ever since. And even, you know, like, like, what Dominic was saying, it’s more, it’s become a podcast. I think a lot of our audience listens in their gardens. Not live with who we have on our show but they, you know, they kind of bring and that brings a more international audience too, to scale it out, um, Spotify and Apple and whatnot.
That is such a great story. I’m glad you asked that question, Kaid.
It’s cool. Yeah, but it’s fun to reminisce, yeah?
Dominic Corva 56:06
Well, it is a question that actually I asked my students as well, well, good. Yeah? That because I also share, you know, I try not to go on at Super length, but like, just want to get them comfortable the idea that, like, there’s a human plant relationship, right? And to think about not just this, like set commodity you consume, but like a, you know, a socially valuable experience and relationship. And so it has been really great, and to hear the different, you know, stories about how folks relate to the plant, and how they how they got started, where they’re at now, because it’s for many, change over time. For many, it’s, it’s something that is very seriously medical. You know, I think we have a number of students in in our classes that are here because they already get it, because, like, they come from families or themselves. Have you know, had that connection with, like, the plant as a healing force? And so it’s really cool.
Thanks for asking that Kaid.
Christopher Carr 57:20
Well, I love it. I love it. I ask a lot of guests that too, when we start a show, so I imagine it familiar. Say how great starting point. I feel like it helps break the ice too. It’s funny how some people are just naturals, and some people are very nervous to talk about things right to come out of the cannabis closet a little bit. And
Dominic Corva 57:43
Yeah, I think we need to respect that. But also I think that, like in general, move the dial so that people are afraid to talk. Yeah,
Christopher Carr 57:53
I think it’s very important to emphasize that human plan relationship. I think that’s really well said, and it resonates. It makes a lot of sense.
Dominic Corva 58:04
Let me just cast out one more time for for questions from folks and Jada?
Jada Morrison 58:09
Going off of that, just what made you decide to start a cannabis broadcast as a forum for coalition building between activists and the community?
Christopher Carr 58:18
Wow, I think, I think it naturally kind of snowballed to something that I followed my interest in wanting to learn and having an opportunity and a reason. When I read something or heard of someone like, for example, Robert Connell Clark, I found that book at the bookery in downtown Placerville when I was, like, 16, and it’s been kind of traveling with me wherever I would tour. It’s like it’s been with me for this whole time. And now, when I have the opportunity to go on the radio show, it provided that kind of legitimacy, or some sort of it had a little gusto behind it. And so I would leverage it to be like, to have confidence and reach out cold call someone like Robert Connor Clark, and be like, Hey, I have this radio show. Would you like to come on? And nine times out of 10 they’re like, Sure, let’s do it. Can I call it? Can I come in person? And then when it comes to, like, the advocacy piece, you know, that was me being present on the floor running what was a medical collective, kind people’s collective, and seeing, for example, the Santa Cruz veterans Alliance started. They’re a pretty big brand. Now they’re a business, but they started as a couple guys with some really rough looking veterans that came in with them, asking, since we had such a big dispensary, if they could go upstairs and just talk, have like a men’s group, like, just sit down and talk, and maybe you. So, you know, if that was okay, then the next time they would come and say, Hey, can we give away a few, you know, bags of weed or big Pete’s treats. Gave us all these cookies. We want to give them out to these guys. And they said, you know, come here at this time, because Smiley is the manager on these nights, and we’ll meet upstairs. And over time. You know, I got more involved learning about veterans, learning about patients. I met Valerie through the radio show, and then I got involved with WAMM more volunteering in the community. We were part of a group called community prevention partners that I was a co chair eventually for. We’re talking about youth and harm reduction and youth prevention. But part of it was also like educating people that misunderstood cannabis, and then sitting at a table with them and talking about the people we were serving in these compassion programs or or the opportunity to, you know, write policy. I had Dan Peterson, who was the manager, the cannabis licensing manager at Santa Cruz in the very early days. And then, you know, building a relationship with someone like that just opened my eyes to like well, we can hopefully advocate for something that makes sense, and we can become more than just this kind of outlaw constituency. And so I tried to leverage that radio show as a platform to give voice to a voiceless group. And at some of that, I learned at UCSC, through my studies, at Community studies, and through some of the works and the people that came before me, and I was very honored to be a part of that. And I will be honest, I had good friends and role models and roommates. We started our band ancestry in 2010 and a lot of the founders of that band were community studies. They were older than me. They were community studies alumni, and one went to Oaxaca and worked with all these indigenous peoples in Mexico. And, you know, I was just inspired by their stories and their service and their and their passion, and I poured that into the cannabis community. And then the radio show continued to just progress. And every time I talked to someone, I would learn about, like, today, I’ve learned about Douglas Fir, I’ve learned about I have like, five names here that I’m probably going to follow up with, and you’ll hear shows on, or I’ll talk to Dominic later, and we’ll work it out. But yeah, it’s been, it’s just been something like a labor of love, like growing cannabis, like making seed and preserving seed. That’s my life’s work, and I’ll just continue to do it. And even if there wasn’t an industry, I would still be doing the show and still be growing and taking care of the plant, because it really has done so much for me, and I feel like there’s so much more to learn. It’s amazing how humbled you think you kind of know something, and then you just get completely humbled. And I love that. I love being a part of a community. We are having a lot of challenges. It’s not a rosy thing like it was when we started in 2015 that was the green rush. Everyone was so excited, and everything was kind of like, it’s kind of perverse how money driven things were, and now it’s so challenging and and to grow a big crop like I did last year and not have a job at the end of it was like, wow. Talk about humbling. But I was able to pivot, and it was actually through the radio show. Someone that I had had on the radio show in 2017 offered me a job right when I needed it, when WAMM was collapsing. And so in a way, the radio show is like the plan. I’ve taken care of it and it’s taken care of me, and we’ll just keep it going.
Jada Morrison 1:03:59
Can I ask who you were working for 2017 because my research time for the cannabis connection podcast is 2017 to 2018 so I’m a little intrigued by that.
Christopher Carr 1:04:08
Oh, very cool. So there was a period where I didn’t work for anyone but, but the plan, um, 2017 was the end of my 10 year with kind peoples. We opened the kind people’s collective in 2014 February, I was hired january 1 of 2014 we had like 30 days to open. And it was this big Ducati, like motorcycle, Italian motorcycle dealership that was just run down. So it was, imagine a big space, but very dirty, very, very not up to code. And so Santa Cruz is very rigorous with their codes, and it’s a challenging place to operate in, especially when it comes to prop 215, era retail cannabis. And so we had a lot of work. I was employee number one. We scaled up from one to 90 in like 18 months, and we opened a second location. In 2017 was that era where I was finding the writing on the wall prop 64 passed in 2016 we were trying to implement policy to be compliant at kind peoples the second location wasn’t working. It was the one location paying for both very trying times, the leadership at the collective went a very corporate direction. We hired a CFO from Silicon Valley, and she implemented policies that really took away the kind family vibe. And like one of her first initiatives was to terminate the compassion program, which I inherited, and I was just like getting crushed and crushed and crushed and crushed. You know, it’s just Oh, boom, boom projects before pounding on my soul. And so I actually applied to become a cultivator, and I worked with a local family in Happy Valley. I think in that era, 2017 to 2018 were my early gardens in Happy Valley with this […] family, and I got a temporary outdoor cultivation. And that was a weird time, because there was like a transition period. So we still were kind of kind of prop 215 but implementing new policies to be prop 64 and so there was like end of 2017 and part of 2018 where I was, I was transitioning from working for a group that I poured my heart and soul into, and things changed. And so I went a different direction. Essentially, I kept doing the compassion, but with weed I grew without kind people’s involved. And I was growing a garden at this 80 acre ranch by myself. It was very challenging, and I was doing all the compliance work, and they were just relying on me to just… I was the expert. I knew what to do. They provided the land, which was huge opportunity, and I’m really grateful for that opportunity, and that the crops we had were stunning. But unfortunately, it didn’t last. It was super hard, policy and compliance and we cannabis ordinance in the county was really, really not an easy process. I worked with Pat Milo, Jim Coffis, the green trade group, and it kind of fell apart because not enough people could become licensed to have a trade organization. And that was kind of the beginning of the end. Is that era 2017 to 2018 but it enabled me to take the risk and to grow as an individual by growing crops on my own and trying to become compliant in this new post prop 64 era. So it’s kind of part, kind people’s part, self employed, just hustling, trying to survive.
Dominic Corva 1:04:33
That’s gonna put some extra context when you’re listening.
Keaghan Morrisey 1:07:49
Yeah. So kind of building off of that, something that I’m just fascinated with is just actually how hard it is in this modern landscape. Post before and on, being able to actually get a license for cultivation, and, you know, going through that process, because you explain it maybe a little bit more for people who aren’t as familiar with it, and also kind of the monetary value associated with it, because anybody who I’ve ever explained it to is shocked when they hear actually, you know, the barrier for entry,
Christopher Carr 1:08:19
yeah, well, with Valerie, so, my, my, my experience, local control is a big challenge. So every, every county has its own word nibs. So you might go, you know, the city of aromas, for example, you can, like, cross the street. You’re at a new county. You go over here, you know it’s like this kind of interesting intersection of places, and that, in my experience with county of Santa Cruz is very challenging. Santa Cruz has a very unique constituency. For example, where I live now is Bonnie Doon, and we’re the epitome of the not in my backyard, coalition and they knew. the NIMBYs. They had such power and sway that they outlawed growing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, pretty much all together. And I think what happened was in Santa Cruz, we were pushed, by default, to South County, which is where a lot of industrial agriculture happens. It’s where the berries are grown for Driscoll. Which is a huge, you know, corporation, like pretty much all, like, 60% of the berries of the nation are coming out of Watsonville, almost very big ag, industrial ag zone. And putting cannabis, a bio accumulator into that area was, was not really aligned with what I was really set on this. This is why it didn’t work out in Happy Valley. Is we were in a we were in a red zone, but because the parcel was 80 acres, there were opportunities for exceptions. Um, but. That said it comes with a big cost. You have to have these environmental reviews. You have to have a lot of stakeholders involved, and part of it is maybe paying for legit plans. You know, leveling up, we had to become legit operators post 80 years of prohibition. And I think a lot of people didn’t know those, you know, the red tape processes of developing a compliant dry space in a, you know, a place to quarantine genetics, and if you have employees, you need all the things they need, right? Like OSHA Cal osha. It’s just we live in a place, especially in Santa Cruz County, like so it kind of compounds on itself, like California alone is a state known for a lot of regulation and environmental which I love and appreciate and support. But then when it comes to cannabis, it was a misunderstood crop. I don’t even know if we’re still considered an agricultural I’m not sure if we have the same rights as other agricultural crops. “We do not.” And so those things can compound on themselves. And then you get to the local ordinance, and then you get to the you know, we were with, or the red space within that. And every little compression has a cost. And for someone like myself, I was bootstrapping it. I wasn’t seeking outside investment. I wasn’t trying to bet the farm, literally, like, have my dad take a, you know, reverse mortgage on our house, or anything. Like, I just worked my butt off and put 10 G’s aside here, a couple G’s aside there. Um, hustle to make, to make that, you know, tax payment. You know, we were complying, and we were in good standing. We were paying everything we needed to pay. But I think by default, we were just not setting up the garden for success, because we were in Watsonville, we weren’t going to grow in this industrial part of the county, and there is some cunning things happening that we weren’t privy to because we’re it’s tricky. Like, politics are very, very, very tricky, especially in a community like Santa Cruz that it’s very think local first used a few families to kind of run things, not to say like, get Godfather on you. But it kind of is like that, if you look at the boardwalk and some parts of like, the big, you know, economic drivers in this community, we’re a tourist community, and so there are certain special interests that have more sway in in the drafting of policy, and kind of pushed a lot of the cannabis operators either out completely or just to South County. And one thing for your question that I’m not trying to avoid, but the market has changed. The price per pound is very low, and so you could pay like the costs are pretty much the same. There has been some flexibility with excise tax. There has been some shifts at a state level, but the cost of compliance is the same, but the the price per pound is much less. And so there’s just the margins get slimmer and slimmer, and then it gets to the point where you can’t even continue to operate compliantly. Yeah, it’s really sad. And that’s like the WAMM situation where we were, we were working, we were giving people our licenses and hoping they would either donate to the compassion program or help with the cost or cover costs, and they were just growing lots of weed and not really providing, not fulfilling their end of the deal. And that was really heartbreaking. And then, similarly, you know, we were working with a group in South County. We were in the right zone. We were kind of all systems grow, but then just the the cost of trimming right? You grow 500 pounds. You grow 7000 plants. You can dry it, you can box it up, but then you have to process it. And it’s like, we went to the Emerald Cup. We had a small farms initiative booth. I went to a bulk buyer showcase. Everyone there was from every county in California. And like, there was like 30 farms and three buyers in that bulk buyer showcase. So it’s just like, it was just dire. It’s like, no matter what, if we did everything right, and you still show up and you have everything, and all your P’s crossed, your I’s dotted, you’re like, here we go. Here come the buyers. And like, eight hours in, I talked to like, three guys, and none of them were really buying. They were just shopping. And I think, I don’t think anyone sold anything that whole weekend. And that’s not any one person’s fault. I don’t know the solution there. And I think there’s obviously a lot of backdoor deals happening too, because in the end, people have to make ends meet. And, oh, the branch is broke, you know, 10 pounds out of metric, or 100 pounds or whatever. You know, I don’t know how it works, but I feel like that’s another piece of the puzzle too. Is that there’s still an illicit market undercutting the compliant operators, and until the regulators and the the you know, different ordinances make it accessible to become compliant, like what you’re speaking to, if you had a more permissive process to become compliant, maybe that would discourage the illicit culture, but it’s really hard to say, and I don’t even know if they’re doing as good as they used to, because times are hard. I think there’s a lot more cannabis available everywhere. Not to say that it’s good, but it’s, you know, in some ways, access is better, so unless people are going to jail. So there is a try to stay positive. But it is uncanny how how challenging it is to become a compliant operator. And I think a lot of people are, are running out of business for that reason.
Dominic Corva 1:15:56
Well, I do want to let you take a breath here, Christopher, and perhaps wrap it up. It’s been almost an hour and a half. You’ve given so much of your time. Caleb has rejoined us. Caleb, did you have any final comments or let’s give you a chance? Yeah, you haven’t gotten a chance to actually do anything. So let me, let me give him the last word,
Caleb Chen 1:16:18
Just a quick question. Can you shout out anyone you know, besides Equilibrium Genetics and Jadenectar that are stewarding landraces for the audience to hear and look up.
Dominic Corva 1:16:30
Oh man,
Christopher Carr 1:16:31
I love it. You know, there’s operators in Southern Oregon: Green Source Gardens, Nicholas and Elizabeth Mahmood. There’s Jesse Dodd and his creative collaborator La Osa. They have a movie called Tending the Garden that I think is very important.
Dominic Corva 1:16:55
They’re coming to class. And the documentary and Briceland Forest Farms would be there too.,
Unknown Speaker 1:17:01
Yeah, I would say Briceland is another great farm. Moongazer is a great farm. There’s Radical Berbs. I mean, pretty much everyone mentioned in that movie. I mean, Jesse is a dear friend of mine, Pride of the Lion Seeds, Daniel in Potter Valley, Mendocino. Very special. Heart Rock Mountain Farm, I think is his farm. Silver dragon cannabis, another friend of mine. He’s David. Very special cultivator in Santa Cruz, I would say Snow High is Snow High Seeds – His name is John. Bodhi. Bodhi, I think, is one of the best. I have mixed feelings to be honest about Jadenectar. I’ll be, I’ll just be transparent there. He wasn’t the best to WAMM. He was one of those people that had the WAMM license, and I don’t think he really held up to his part of the bargain. But he is a steward of landrace genetics, so I will give him that. And I think he’s, you know, I think he does mean well, of course. Michael of coastal seeds. And who else would I suggest? Oh, Mark Greenshock Farms. Very special person. The boys of Mendo Dope. Those guys are, you know, out there with their music and their performance. But I think they really do care about genetics and living soil and like Mark and his family and his team, I think are some of my, my most beloved people. There are people in Santa Cruz that are kind of still, you know, in the shadows, I would say Myers Creek has had some interesting genetics that I grew up this year, that I was really happy with. Um, Mike Corral’s got a lot of amazing landraces. He’s not really selling them or but, I mean, if you get to know someone, that’s the beauty of community, and that’s that cannabis connection come full circle, as you can provide seeds. And every time I see some of these friends, it’s always nice to hook them up with them seeds. Hook them up with seeds, and then it’s always funny, because their pockets are full of seeds to give away too. So that’s kind of the gift that keeps on giving is just every seed is a prayer, every breath is a blessing, and keep on growing.
Dominic Corva 1:19:11
Wow, Christopher, thank you so much for joining us today. I just you know your work has been not just inspirational, but you know, quite useful for, you know, keeping these stories going, connecting them up with other stories. And I really look forward to, you know, being more in touch with you in the future. And hopefully, maybe we can get together and scheme a conversation with Mike Corral,
Christopher Carr 1:19:37
Happy to help in any way, in any endeavor, everything, everything that you all are doing, I’m so proud of and would love to help. So keep me in mind if you need anything, and we’ll, we’ll keep this going absolutely for sure.
Dominic Corva 1:19:49
Thank you so much. Kind words.
It means the world to me. Thank you all and we… Yeah, I just can’t say enough. Thank you so much. Christopher. Really appreciate you and your work, and we’ll be talking to you soon, alrighty,
Christopher Carr 1:20:03
Likewise. Byebye.
Kaiden Chapman 1:20:09
Thank you for growing with subsistence crop. A podcast by the Cannabis Studies Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt.
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