Pubdate: Wed, 26 Oct 2005
Source: San Francisco Bay Guardian, The (CA)
Copyright: 2005 San Francisco Bay Guardian
Contact:  http://www.sfbg.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/387
Author: Ann Harrison
Note: Author's note - My story on the medical cannabis harvest, which 
is out today in the Bay Guardian, emerged mostly as I wrote it - but 
with with an egregious cover headline written by a clueless editor: 
"Ann Harrison follows the marijuana trail, from clandestine farms up 
north to the alleys outside your local dispensary." The headline 
suggests that this cannabis is being sold in the alleys outside your 
local dispensary, a claim that I do not make in my story. The 
editorial process is frequently a vigorous struggle between 
attempting to tell an accurate and fair story and attempted editorial 
meddling. Most of my editors at the Guardian supported this project, 
but the headline writer should be forced to smoke moldy, over priced 
ditch weed from a dirty bong. --Ann Harrison http://www.sfbg.com/

GREEN HILLS

While San Francisco Debates Zoning For Pot Clubs, Somebody Still Has 
To Grow This Semilegal Medicine ' - And It's Not Always Safe

Deep in the hills of Mendocino County, past three locked gates and up 
a winding dirt road, the trimmers at Green Mountain Farm are bringing 
in the harvest.

The marijuana plants, which stand four to seven feet tall, are 
garlanded with dense clusters of fragrant, seedless buds that must be 
carefully picked and cured before they are dampened by winter rains 
'Ai or seized by law enforcement, which has set a record by 
destroying well over one million marijuana plants this year.

The 50 trimmers at this clandestine grow site work 16-hour days for 
three weeks, hand-trimming top-grade marijuana destined for medical 
marijuana patients and dispensaries in San Francisco.

"It's a race against time," says Antie M, manager of the Green 
Mountain Farm collective, which is cultivating 280 plants for 125 patients.

Under state law, caregivers and patients are permitted to grow 
marijuana for a group of patients and can be reimbursed for their 
expenses. In exchange for allowing the growers to post medical 
cannabis recommendations from patients' doctors at the grow site 'Ai 
providing some degree of legal protection for the growers 'Ai the 
patients receive free cannabis. Most collectives meet their expenses 
by selling their surplus pot to dispensaries or directly to other patients.

Each patient at this collective will receive a quarter pound of free 
cannabis, plus a chance to take in beautiful scenery, eat good food, 
and listen to live music.

While San Francisco city supervisors haggle over cultivation limits 
and zoning restrictions for medical cannabis dispensaries (see 
sidebar), there's another reality taking place a couple hundred miles 
to the north. Whatever the supervisors decide, someone has to grow 
all the pot that gets smoked by patients in the city 'Ai and no 
matter how friendly city officials are to the end product, the 
growers are still hounded by law enforcement.

The trim camp at Green Mountain Farm is only one of many such 
gatherings taking place throughout northern California this month. 
And this constellation of quasi-legal outdoor marijuana grow sites 
doesn't just cultivate exquisite medical cannabis.

The farmers who tend these plants are also creating environmentally 
and socially responsible cannabis farms very different from the 
armed, old-school, commercial marijuana plantations that feed an 
insatiable market but often damage the land.

An estimated 80 percent of the medical cannabis consumed in San 
Francisco comes from outside the city. Let's follow some of these 
buds as they make their way into town.

Family farm Quietly cultivating a cannabis crop and then hosting 50 
trimmers at a clandestine grow site miles from a power line requires 
impressive planning. Arriving blindfolded at Green Mountain Farm, I 
discover a comfortable camp resembling an agricultural version of a 
Rainbow Family gathering.

The trimmers at Green Mountain sleep in a tidy tent village and eat 
tasty vegetarian meals prepared by two paid cooks in a well-equipped 
kitchen complete with two gas ranges and two refrigerators. They take 
hot showers and listen to music from a laptop and iPods 'Ai all 
powered by a generator running on 50- -a-gallon vegetable oil.

The cultivators here trucked in $30,000 worth of compost to privately 
owned land to ensure that their cannabis met San Francisco standards.

Under California law, patients and caregiver-cultivators are allowed 
to grow at least 6 mature and 12 immature plants per patient unless 
the county or a doctor authorizes more. Mendocino County allows 100 
square feet of plant canopy per patient. Antie M, who is descended 
from eight generations of tobacco farmers, says the lush plants in 
this garden meet those guidelines.

The water that sustains this crop is supplied by a well. A 10,000- 
gallon tank feeds the irrigation system for the garden, which grows 
to the edge of the kitchen. A 75-foot-long temporary structure, which 
serves as a trimming and drying room, stands nearby.

The atmosphere in the camp is relaxed but focused. There are no 
alcohol, hard drugs, or weapons, and everyone must be quiet by 
midnight. Some people smoke cannabis while they work. The night I 
visit, the camp puts on a talent show. A shiatsu massage therapist is 
on hand for those with aching shoulders.

"We live together and work together, we sit and trim plants all day 
long, it is a very harmonious organization," a 56-year-old trimmer 
named Jojo says.

The trimmers at Green Mountain Farm range in age from 18 to 65. They 
are people of color, white folks, queer, straight. Antie M says he 
met many of the trimmers at music festivals and other gatherings. 
Others are simply friends. Many trimmers are patients from the 
collective who also get their free quarter pound. Some are not.

The trimmers are paid in cannabis, and the pay scale is set up to 
encourage a rapid harvest. Trimmers earn 2.5 grams of cannabis an 
hour for the first 100 hours, 3 grams for the next 100, and 3.5 grams 
per hour after that. After the first 200 hours, those who work 8 
hours a day can make an ounce 'Ai worth $400 retail 'Ai a day.

According to Antie M, 90 percent of the grow is sold to medical 
cannabis dispensaries. The rest goes to patients in the collective 
and workers: Trimmers who work hard the entire season can leave with 
as much as $8,000 to $10,000 worth of cannabis.

"A patient can get their entire year's supply of marijuana," Antie M 
says. "[With] what people earn here, they can support themselves for 
a year, they can live their dreams, travel."

"If you put in a long day, you can earn two ounces a day," says a 
sixtysomething trimmer named Sheila, who clips steadily at the bud in 
his hands. "Thank you, God. I came to work, and I would love to hold 
on to a half pound and sell the rest, maybe a pound and a half or more."

Sheila, Antie M, and many other people at Green Mountain Farm are 
queer men, radical fairies who say watching friends die from HIV/AIDS 
motivated them to become cultivators. A trimmer named Keer, who has 
lived with HIV for 10 years, sits quietly on the sofa inside the camp 
kitchen. He says he first started cultivating marijuana 15 years ago 
with medical cannabis pioneer Dennis Peron. Keer says Peron 
emphasized growing high-quality cannabis, not just quick marijuana 
crops designed to generate fast cash.

"When Dennis and Brownie Mary came along and started the Medical 
Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco, it felt safe, and people could 
get higher-quality marijuana that was not sprayed or at least 
organic," Keer says. "The seed they planted caused people to start 
educating each other, and it grew into a community and set a good example."

Community service Not all the growers are men. Green Witch and 
members of her all-women's cannabis collective slip quietly into San 
Francisco one night, taking a break from their harvest up north. High 
Priestess Farm, which the collective operates, serves 24 mostly 
low-income women in San Francisco, who each receive six ounces of 
free cannabis every year.

A member of the collective, named Elf, runs three patient-support 
groups. She works with eight collectives, which contribute free 
cannabis each week and earn the money to feed at least 100 indigent 
San Francisco patients.

"The old-school model are drug dealers, and the new-school model are 
community workers and healers," Green Witch says. "Our business 
structure is not about a guy who is never on the land but gets a huge 
percentage. We share the responsibilities, the risk and profit, evenly."

Mary Jane, a 63-year-old elder in the medical cannabis community who 
grows for the Grandmother Farm collective, in Mendocino County, also 
helps supply dispensaries. Her collective provides a pound of free 
cannabis to patients who are often unable to grow it for themselves.

Plant yields vary wildly. Mary Jane, whose plants have been besieged 
by fog and rain this year, says she'll be lucky if she gets two 
ounces per plant.

Mary Jane says she's working with the Mendocino Branch of the Medical 
Marijuana Patients Union to develop LINK, a matchmaking service 
between cultivators and patients. "If we have a number of small 
collectives growing for patients, we can help prevent profiteering 
and make sure patients get their medicine," Mary Jane says.

While the collectives have protection under state law, all are 
concerned about being raided by federal authorities. The women keep 
their grows under 100 plants 'Ai the cutoff for a federal five-year 
mandatory minimum prison sentence.

"There is a legal fund for the risk-takers, and our sister farms make 
sure that no matter what happens to us, our patients will get their 
medicine," Elf says.

The women of High Priestess Farm emphasize that they run an organic 
farm. Benedict, who spent five and a half months alone tending the 
plants at Green Mountain Farm, shares these values. And he is wary of 
a possible raid by law enforcement. When he first arrived, Benedict 
says, he was frightened of being arrested. "I'd lie awake at night 
completely terrified."

One day law enforcement paid a visit. Three helicopters surfaced over 
the ridge and circled the grow, hovering so low that Benedict says he 
made eye contact with the officers inside. Those officers, Benedict 
says, worked for CAMP, the California Department of Justice's 
Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, which destroyed almost 100,000 
marijuana plants in Mendocino County this summer.

That time, he was in luck: They never came back.

The old world The officers of CAMP meet at dawn for a raid in the 
Shasta Trinity National Forrest. CAMP is an interagency marijuana 
eradication task force, and there are officers here from eight 
law-enforcement organizations, including the National Guard. Five 
CAMP units, with 15 officers each, are on call around the state to 
support local law enforcement when they raid marijuana gardens.

The men wear camouflage and carry a variety of weapons: AK-47s, .22 
rifles, .410/.22 combination guns, Colt sidearms, and M16s. There's a 
helicopter on site, which transports a Short Term Airborne Operations 
team that drops agents into marijuana grows. The helicopter has flown 
five days a week since May and burns a hundred gallons of fuel a day.

CAMP commander Michael Johnson says he relies on county officials to 
tell him whether a grow site is a posted medical marijuana garden in 
compliance with local cultivation limits. He says CAMP is not a 
threat to medical marijuana farms.

"To my knowledge, we have not been involved in one medical marijuana 
grow all this year," Johnson says.

As a California law-enforcement officer, Johnson says he respects 
state medical marijuana laws and has orders from the state attorney 
general's office not to step outside them.

"There is so much commercial marijuana out there, we don't have time 
to deal with medical marijuana," Johnson says. "We are focused on the 
large gardens-for-profit, and there are plenty of those to keep us busy."

Johnson says CAMP has destroyed well over a million plants this 
season, up from 621,000, in 2004.

Funded by the state and federal government, CAMP's 2004 budget of $1 
million was increased by 30 percent this year, Johnson says. He says 
his unit targets multi-thousand-plant grows that are mostly on public land.

Jason Gassaway, of the Shasta County Sheriff's Department, arrives 
with his dog, Jet, whose job is to run down suspects fleeing from a 
grow. "Most of the grows are armed, so it's good for us to prevent 
deadly encounters," Gassaway says. "Most of the time, when they see a 
dog, they give up."

Johnson says three hunting parties have encountered armed growers 
this year. A cultivator near Los Gatos was killed earlier this summer 
in a shoot-out with a Fish and Game officer, who was wounded in the exchange.

We pile into trucks, drive to a trailhead, then hike silently up a 
steep slope. A half mile up the hill, we see irrigation hoses and 
smell cannabis. I look down and see we are surrounded by marijuana 
plants 'Ai or what's left of them. The entire garden, camouflaged 
under oak trees, has been harvested. An agent estimates the grow 
appears to have been several thousand plants, cut down a few weeks ago.

The plants, terraced on the hillside, appear to have been small. The 
stalks that remain support runty, shriveled buds. A detective on the 
raid says most of the marijuana on these farms is sold for $2,500 a 
pound out of state because it doesn't meet the standards Californians 
expect from their cannabis.

Kris Hermes, legal campaign director with Americans for Safe Access, 
a patients' rights group, says he has heard no reports this year of 
marijuana grows raided by CAMP. But he notes that medical cannabis 
growers around the state continue to be prosecuted by local, state, 
and federal authorities. He points to two collectives in Butte and El 
Dorado counties raided by local sheriffs last month.

Down the hill from the harvested garden, we find what remains of the 
growers' camp. They've left behind their camp stove, plastic 
sheeting, pots and pans, and pieces of cardboard that appear to have 
been slept on. No snug tent village or lovingly prepared food for 
these farmers.

Agent Eddy, a quiet Latino man, says many of the farmers apprehended 
in the gardens this year come from one Mexican state.

"They come from very poor towns in Michoac^ n; the organizers go 
there and pay them a couple of thousand of dollars to come here and 
farm marijuana," he says. "I don't think I'd want to stay here all 
season and live like this."

Johnson says CAMP made 46 arrests this year, almost all Mexican 
field- workers. He says the grow owners are members of Mexican 
cartels that plant multiple large grows with the assumption that a 
certain percentage of them will get raided.

Hermes is skeptical about the Mexican cartel allegation, which, he 
says, is an attempt to draw public support away from marijuana 
growers. He says this account is similar to a claim put forth by the 
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that a group of San Francisco 
dispensary owners raided this summer were members of an Asian mafia.

"Law enforcement loves to issue sensational statements grabbing the 
public attention and providing a favorable environment to justify 
their harsh reactions to marijuana cultivation and distribution," Hermes says.

But CAMP officers are just as sincere about the righteousness of 
their cause as the medical cannabis growers are about theirs. Many 
agents point to the environmental damage done by commercial grows, 
and it's clear this grow site was no environmentally sensitive 
cannabis farm. We see bags of nitrogen fertilizer, rat poison, and 
malathion pesticide, which the agents say leaches into the local 
water supply. The hillside and the growers' camp are strewn with trash.

When we descend the hill, I ask Agent Jeff Wallace if he thinks the 
environmental damage from grows on public land would be eliminated if 
marijuana could be cultivated openly. "I wouldn't agree with that 
argument," he says. "It's still a gateway drug for meth or cocaine; I 
wouldn't want my kids out there recreationally smoking marijuana."

Johnson argues it would be too difficult to control the quality of 
legal marijuana, and public land provides rent-free, cheap, well- 
hidden grow sites. "People grow marijuana freely in Mendocino," 
Johnson says. "But there are still hundreds of illegal gardens. Why 
would legalization stop that if there is a market and money to be 
made growing it?"

Sheila, the trimmer at Green Mountain Farm, disagrees, pointing out 
that large marijuana grows are still illegal. "The laws that were 
created force people to be clandestine," Sheila says. "They have 
created a problem for themselves; it is a way to keep busy."

The trim continues Meanwhile, back at Green Mountain Farm, the 
trimmers work with quiet intensity harvesting Trainwreck, Grand Daddy 
Purple, New York City Diesel, Super Kush, and other cannabis strains 
grown at the site.

Each carefully numbered plant is first chopped at the base with 
pruning shears, and the branches are cut off with buds intact. The 
branches are trimmed and brought to the fanners, who cut off the 
larger outer leaves with two patented Canadian TrimPro machines that 
look like giant fans inside a metal mesh cage.

The roughly trimmed stalks are carried over to hand trimmers, who sit 
among the plants on a sunny ridge. Using tiny scissors, the trimmers 
carefully shape the buds. The trim is gathered in cardboard boxes on 
their laps and sent to trim racks, where it is dried and used to make 
hash or marijuana edibles.

After manicuring, the stalks are walked over to the dry room, kept at 
a constant 50 to 60 percent humidity with the help of a humidifier, a 
dehumidifier, an air conditioner, and a swamp cooler. The buds are 
dried for 10 days before being snipped off the stalks and bagged.

Antie M says his intention for Green Mountain Farm is that it be a 
place of healing where people can ease off alcohol, hard drugs, and 
turbulence in their lives. A handsome young trimmer named Travis 
Wade, who says he used cannabis to kick a methamphetamine habit, says 
living on the land is strengthening his body. A trimmer named 
Shockra, who fled his damaged house in New Orleans and refugee camps, 
says the money he makes trimming will help him start a new life.

"Creating community is a major driving factor in bringing this all 
together," says Antie M, who arranged for a six-piece band to play 
all last weekend at his trim camp. "I want it to be an incredible 
experience for people."

I ask Antie M if he's worried about getting busted. He says two of 
his grows were raided in previous years by county authorities who 
seized the crop but declined to press charges. He says he has learned 
to plant smaller grows and has no animosity toward law enforcement.

"If they really want me, they can come and get me, but I am really 
trying to play by the rules," Antie M says after dinner at Forrest 
Farm, a smaller 100-plant grow he also manages. "It will be 
interesting to see what happens between now and Halloween."

The risk Up in Lake County, Eddy Lepp's collective openly cultivated 
the largest-known medical cannabis crop 'Ai 32,000 plants 'Ai and was 
busted by the DEA. He's now in federal court pleading a religious 
defense, because federal law does not allow him a medical defense. If 
convicted, he could serve life in prison.

Phil and Bobby, the cultivators at the Oak Tree Farm collective, in 
Lake County, are keeping a close watch on their grow. To prevent 
potentially losing their entire crop to law enforcement, they grew a 
second, early harvest in their greenhouse, forcing the buds to mature 
early using light-deprivation techniques.

The two growers have also banded with other small cannabis farms to 
create an insurance fund that would partially reimburse a farm that 
gets raided or suffers crop failure.

But these cultivators say one of their greatest concerns is simply 
being robbed. "The biggest risk is our neighbors," says Bobby, who 
says two men jumped the fence in the middle of last year's harvest 
and demanded a payoff. "Someone was going around with a map of the 
farms last year strong-arming people."

"You can call the local authorities and have them come out and 
support you and just hope that they don't turn you over to the feds," 
Phil says.

Back in San Francisco, Hector is also worried about federal agents. 
His 350-plant indoor grow, which produces about two ounces per plant, 
supplies a 12-member patient collective, two dispensaries, and an 
AIDS hospice. Over the past year, Hector says, more of San 
Francisco's medical cannabis is coming in from outside the city 
because it's become perilous and costly to grow in town. "I am 
concerned about the San Francisco Police Department kicking in the 
door because of their past cooperation with federal officials," he says.

San Francisco's proposed dispensary regulations offer no specific 
protections for grow collectives. City supervisors are debating 
cultivation limits. The regulations attempt to protect dispensaries 
under state law by defining them as "any association, cooperative or 
collective of ten more qualified patients or primary caregivers that 
facilitates the lawful distribution of medical cannabis."

Some dispensaries have become grow collectives to comply with the 
law. But Hector says his collective, which does not run a retail 
operation, has no intention of registering with the city and 
revealing the location of its grow. To do so would be too dangerous 
and expensive. "We are not going to pay $7,000 in permitting fees to 
give away free marijuana to hospices," Hector says.

On the road Antie M still has to get his cannabis into the city. We 
load up his vehicle with several pounds of dried, manicured bud and 
head into San Francisco. "I've got some Trainwreck," he says on the 
phone to a dispensary manager. "It's very sparkly."

State law allows eight ounces of medical cannabis to be transported 
for each patient but doesn't explicitly permit sales to dispensaries. 
Each county has different limits and interpretations by law 
enforcement. They could seize the cannabis and arrest us.

Antie M asks me to keep an eye on the speedometer. He says he learned 
to abide by motor vehicle laws after he was stopped once for running 
a stop sign with two pounds of pot in the car. We drive like model 
citizens. I watch for police. Near San Francisco City Hall, we get 
stuck in heavy traffic. As we approach the dispensary, I ask Antie M 
please not to make an illegal left-hand turn.

We arrive without incident, park legally, and walk into a dispensary. 
It's evening, and the place is almost empty. We sit behind the 
counter, and Antie M and the clerk look at the cannabis under the 
microscope. It shows no sign of rot or pests and shimmers with 
droplets of resin. "Beautiful job; well done," the clerk says.

The room is pungent. Purchasers come and go. A patient asks for 
Trainwreck and is told they'll have it soon. It takes Antie M almost 
an hour to find a scale large enough to weigh his cannabis; the 
triple beam scale is too small. We finally find a larger scale to 
weigh the crop. The buds weigh eight and a half pounds.

Antie M agrees to a price of $3,600 a pound. He is pleased to 
discover that while most of his plants yield an average of one and 
three quarter pounds of buds, he has just sold a plant that yielded 
almost three pounds.

He steps into an enclosed alleyway behind the dispensary and loads 
the transparent bags of cannabis into a bucket. The dispensary owner 
pulls the bucket up to his second floor office and sends down $5,000 
in cash. The rest of the cannabis will be sold on consignment.

Antie M puts the cash in a bag and heads back up to Green Mountain 
Farm, where the harvest continues.

Ann Harrison is a San Francisco-based science and technology reporter.
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MAP posted-by: Beth