Briceland Forest Farm: Growing Food and Cannabis Together

Sunday, 3 November 2019, 9:29 am Emily Hobelmann 82 comments

Though cannabis is often grown as a mono crop, Briceland Forest Farm is at least one local instance where traditional ag and cannabis production intersect. The farm is a familiar fresh food brand in the SoHum community, with regular booths at the Friday Farmers Market in Garberville and at the Thursday farmstand market in Briceland. The farm also distributes produce to various local restaurants and supplies the CSA program at Flow Kana’s cannabis processing facility in Whitethorn.

Briceland Forest Farm is now starting to rack up publicity on a broader scale for its craft cannabis production, notably with a win of the 2017 Emerald Cup Regenerative Farm Award and for being featured in Flow Kana advertising campaigns. The Willie’s Reserve and Brother David’s brands source flower from Briceland Forest Farm. Brother David’s, in particular, flaunts high standards for its producers and features source farms prominently on its website.

Taylor and Daniel Stein [Photo courtesy of Briceland Forest Farm]

Owner-Farmers Taylor and Daniel Stein do about an acre of commercial fruit and vegetable production out a dirt road in Briceland–an acre that includes 5,000 square feet of licensed cannabis cultivation space. They’ve been commercially producing fruit and vegetables here for more than 10 years, carrying over and expanding on the family homestead garden established by Daniel’s parents decades ago.

The Steins have cultivated cannabis on this parcel for some time too, but modest amounts, then engaged in the permit process in 2016 to secure their current square footage. They take pride in their regeneratively grown cannabis, but the bulk of their day-to-day work during the growing season is devoted to food crop production.

My toddler and I were able to spend a morning at the farm back in July, and after a quick catch up session with snacks and books for the kids (the Steins have a son that is close to mine in age), we headed out into the heat of the day to check out the ag production zone. As a novice kitchen gardener, I am intrigued by the level of planning that goes into diverse food production, so I first asked Taylor and Daniel to contrast fruit and vegetable production with farming weed, compliance and permitting considerations aside.

Without hesitation, Daniel declared that the food production scheme at their farm is “much more complex” than the cannabis production. Food crops are harvested weekly and planted continuously during the commercial season from May to November, whereas the cannabis crops are comprised of a full term garden that is planted just once and harvested once each season and a dep garden that is planted twice and harvested twice.

Briceland Forest Farm produces on the order of 60 different food crops every season, including greens like baby mustards, arugula, head lettuce, kale and chard, plus broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, onions, garlic, green onions, leeks, beans, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, summer corn, sweet corn, popping corn, winter squash, peppers and eggplant. The production regime includes continuous weeding, watering, planting and harvesting, all essential tasks for ensuring a consistently diverse market selection.

Veggie Starts [Photo courtesy of Briceland Forest Farm]

Take carrots, for example: The first planting is in early March, and they start seeds every 2-3 weeks thereafter, “so once carrots come on,” Daniel says, “we have carrots to harvest every week.” Other crops, like lettuces, are also started weekly or biweekly all season; some crops are only planted one to three times, with even further refinement and accommodation for varying maturity rates. They work out a planting plan before the season starts, then make adjustments as necessary.

The cannabis is more straightforward — full term and the first round of dep are planted in the spring, and a second round of dep (if they opt for two rounds) is planted mid-summer. It’s the harvests that can get tricky, Taylor says, and “so all consuming.” They have to be mindful of maintaining momentum on the veggie farm during cannabis harvests, to keep up on the aforementioned continuous chores.

The Steins farm cannabis in a way that improves the environment, and the farm’s Sun+Earth certification is verification of their “higher than organic” standards. According to its website, the Sun+Earth agency indeed sets the standard “above and beyond organic,” certifying that “cannabis brands are holistically, responsibly, and regeneratively grown for the well-being of all people, farmers, and the planet.”

So how can commercial producers farm cannabis — and food — in a way that contributes to the well-being of the planet? First of all, the Steins care for their land in general. They routinely thin and limb trees in the interest of forest health and fire safety; and they’ve done creek restoration work through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to minimize sediment accumulation in salmon spawning habitat.

Daniel and soil [Photo by Emily Hobelmann]

In terms of farming practices, the Steins point to their practices of no till, cover cropping, crop rotation and crop diversity as ways to not only improve soil health and resilience, but to also make their farmland a carbon sink, in other words, to facilitate soil carbon sequestration and storage in their ag production zone.

(For a primer and a discussion of how farmers can enhance the ability of soils to store carbon through these practices and potentially (collectively) mitigate climate change, consider this 2018 story in the Columbia University’s Earth Institute blog, “Can Soil Help Combat Climate Change?”)

I’ve heard the phrase “no till” bandied about quite a bit in the last few years, and I ask Daniel and Taylor to break down how this method works at their farm in particular. In short, they don’t ever rototill the soil and “disturb its profile.” Instead, beds are at most minimally worked with tools like a broad fork, which basically cracks the soil a bit, aerating it without flipping it.

“The analogy I’ve heard,” Taylor says, “is that rototilling is like if you took a breath of air and just left your mouth open forever,” whereas the broad fork works like taking a breath of air in a normal, rhythmic fashion. It lets air get down below the surface of the soil, without excessive moisture loss or destruction of the strata or soil biome.

The complementary practice of cover cropping further enriches and builds up the soil (betters aggregation) without excessive disturbance. Crop rotation, crop diversity and the strategic use of compost increase organic matter and improve carbon holding capacity of soils as well.

Both the dep and full term plants are in the ground. Taylor calls the long-cultivated pocket of soil that is home to their full term garden “amazing.” The dep garden, on the other hand, is newer and has “clay like” soil with less organic matter. The weed does well with it, but still, season-by-season, the soil becomes ever richer as a result of their no till and cover cropping practices.

At the time of my visit, the full term seed plants are lush, large and flanked by herbs like yarrow and chamomile, which Daniel says can increase the oil and terpene content of the cannabis. The companion cilantro, ornamental Queen Anne’s lace and marigold plants in the full term garden create refuge for beneficial insects.

Daniel and flowering cilantro [Photo by Emily Hobelmann]

A patch of flowering cilantro sandwiched between two rows of weed is clearly a hot spot, swarming with countless insects in the morning sun. “If you look closely, you’ll see small pollinators,” Daniel says, “like little tiny bees and wasps,” some of which predate on aphids and other harmful bugs in the garden.

We walk out into the ag production area adjacent to the full term garden, a broad flat that they cleared of whitethorn, a known nitrogen-fixer that left a legacy of rich organic matter in the soil. As the Steins opened up this area to work it, they came across the edges of old creek beds marked by ribbons of worn rocks; the soil is comprised of alluvial deposits mixed with soil that’s come down off the surrounding elevated areas.

A patch of shrub no more, the area is now an expanse of myriad vegetables, with onions popping out of the ground and ready to go, lettuces and tomatoes beckoning, and volunteer sunflowers standing tall. My toddler comes bounding up to where we are chatting, and Daniel kneels down to help him pick a carrot.

Picking a carrot [Photo by Emily Hobelmann]

The Steins are no strangers to kiddos romping through their fields, and Taylor speaks to the multi-generational element of regenerative farming. She and Daniel are bettering the land, steadily increasing the soil wealth over time, and Taylor can envision a time when her kids or grandkids will recognize that “it was this incredible boon to have us farming here, just as they recognize the value of inheriting the long-standing homestead garden area on the property.

I ask how it is to raise their kids on a farm with cannabis in the mix, and Daniel says their 3 ½ year old son can identify most of the plants in the garden. “He knows what’s edible and what’s not, and he could care less about the cannabis… He comes and pulls carrots to eat.”

“Growing cannabis … has always been a crop on our family homestead,” Daniel adds. It has a different kind of vibe than, say, a factory in the hills pumping out weed. Cannabis is viewed simply as another plant in the garden, and “the kids don’t have any more interest in it than anything else.”

As we wrap up our time in the sunshine, wandering amongst the cannabis and vegetables, I ask if they’ve experienced invasive aerial surveillance this summer. While Daniel says they haven’t been flown with a focus on their farm, helicopters have been a presence in their valley and the surrounding hills, a “too low, really loud and obnoxious” presence.

The enforcement of cannabis laws through military action is not what you expect for a crop that’s now legal, he says, not what should be done to address people who are basically breaking tax laws at this point. Furthermore, he calls talk that the flyovers are necessary to defend permitted farms “bullshit… We don’t support that in any way. We don’t feel that the legacy market is in competition with us as permitted farms, and we disapprove of that action being done in our name.”

To make the permitting process so hard, and then to punish people for not wanting to do it… “What is the incentive to leave the legacy market and to participate in a market where the prices are lower?” Daniel asks, “…where the paperwork is higher and there are huge barriers to entry?” He sums up this line of questioning by citing Mendocino cannabis farmer Casey O’Neill’s dictum: “‘Enforcement without opportunity is a broken paradigm.’”

“We have our own motivations and incentives,” he continues, “but I can see why somebody wouldn’t want to enter this market.”

While the drama of all-things-cannabis continues to shake out in Humboldt County and beyond, Briceland Forest Farm is permitted and arguably well-positioned in California’s craft sungrown market. The farm is suited to its place and serves as a model for small scale commercial and diverse crop production schemes, diversity that includes cannabis.

The Steins are active in the community and produce cannabis and a substantial volume of food in ways that better the land. Its stewards are in tune with the seasons and their soil, their success achieved through methodical planning and a combination of intuitive, experimental and tried-and-true farming practices.

Cannabis in the nursery [Photo by Emily Hobelmann]

A point of reference: A recent check of the CalCannabis cultivation licensing database showed over 1,000 active cannabis cultivation licenses in Humboldt County, including nursery licenses and processing licenses. The 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture County Profile for Humboldt shows a count of 849 local farms that produce crops, livestock, poultry and “products.”

The USDA ag census counts and surveys farms that produce all sorts of commodities, including poultry, pigs, fruits, berries and Christmas trees, but not weed, and the CalCannabis data only lists cannabis farms. (It is worth noting here that a number of businesses hold multiple cannabis cultivation licenses. For instance, 1L Garden Supply has both Nursery and Small Mixed-Light Tier 1 licenses.)

The dual nature of Briceland Forest Farm is a rarity — commercial fruit and veggie producers and cannabis farmers tend to stay in their own lanes. So far.

As cannabis legalization spreads and its use becomes more mainstream, it is destined to become just another crop at farms of all stripes, big and otherwise. If ever increasing numbers of cannabis consumers recognize the value of small biodiverse farms, the demand for this type of production model will increase as well.