Before we start, just a couple quick notes: Please refresh your browser every minute or so to see new comments, questions and answers. To reply to specific comment, hit the reply button underneath it and then type away. Always after a comment or question hit “send comment.”

Please stay on topic–in this case One Good Year, Humboldt County, pot growing, legalization, medical marijuana, the changes in the economy of Humboldt, etc.

If you want to jump in about tax cuts, WikiLeaks, politicians, Pakistan, Palestine, predator drones or anything else not about tonight’s topics please find a post elsewhere on FDL to do so. Thank you.

Please be respectful of our guest and of each other. And yeah, I tpye badly…

Hello Mikal and welcome to Firedoglake Movie Night. And thank you all for being here tonight!

Hi Mikal, and welcome! Let me firs toff say I have spent some time in NoHum, but have yet ot travel south. I am curious about Garberville, Fortuna and Mateel.

You mived to SoHum 15 yrs ago…what prompted the move?

luv the humboldt – it’s killer, dude.

Hi y’all, sorry for the delay. I’ve been updating my site.

And how long had you been thinking about making a movie about SoHum abd its unique culture of cultivation?

So, what prompted me to move here? Long story, but I came here mostly for the forest activism—specifically Headwaters Forest— and for the very active eco-forestry movement that was blossoming in the early/mid-90s. I had lots of friends here and was running (still am) a portable sawmill and selling eco-harvested hardwood lumber up in WA. Seemed like the place to go next.

I’ve been thinking of this film for a couple years. The two main problems were “What is the story? What is the ‘hook’”? and “How do I tell a story where no one will go on camera!?”

When Prop 19 got on the ballot last fall, I knew that was the “hook”, that would provide a logical story arc. Then, in late winter, everyone here—well lots of people here—felt the need to come out of the closet and begin a conversation about our collective future. That was it.

OMG, Headwaters Defense and the pepper spray case (which btw is required reading at UCLA Law School)

To answer the obvious question, How did I find the subjects for the film?…
I started asking around in January 2010 or so, to see who might be into it. After the first “What’s After Pot?” public forum was held in late March (200 in attendance), I met some people who were into it or thinking about it. I also got on the local radio station and put it out to the community. That is where the first person jumped on board. Another two were active organizers and the fourth came on in May or so, referred by a friend.

This was indeed an intense year–Prop 19, plus the governor’s race, Attorney General and DA races

Really, required reading? Cool.
Yeah, I was very involved in the protests from ’95 to ’98 or so.

Is it 50/50 men/women?

ANd do you go into the “trimmer culture” at all, the travelers who come up to trim, the many young women who trim at grow scenes?

(By the way, just noticed my name is misspelled up in the intro.)

Yes, this was THE year to make this film. Not only because it COULD finally be made because people felt the need to talk about the subject, but because Prop 19—pass or fail—was a historic event that everyone I know sees as a harbinger of things to come.

Hello, Mikal!
I was just at a meeting in Amherst, MA, trying to envision how MA would look like with a thriving cannabis community, and we mentioned collaboratives as something we need, besides just dispensaries. Can you describe some of the workings of these? Thanks!

My subjects are three women and one man. I was very, very glad it worked out that way because it goes even farther to break the “grower dude” stereotype.

The film covers the entire scene, from planting to harvest. So, yeah, I follow a trim scene where young people come and go as work is available. They all work for one of the subjects.

Apology – typos fixed

(we’ll fix tye tpyo I am a little hard of seeing!)

Prop 19 was an amazing hook. Tell us a bit about your subjects. Nad about SoHum and why pot makes sense there as a crop.

I read a very interesting article about ancient Jews and the annointing oil. Scientist claim cannabis was the main ingrediant in the holy oil which helped to heal. Do you know about this?

Kathryn, that is a bit above my expertise since laws in each state vary and are changing yearly. “Collective” in California is a very specific legal entity. In short, it is legislated communism! (In the technical sense.) All pot is equally shared/owned by all members of the “collective” and none can be transferred (given, sold, etc.) outside of the collective membership. There are patients and grower-patients. The non-grower patients can fairly compensate the grower-patients in the collective for the reasonable cost of producing their collectively-owned “medicine.” So, it is not…technically [smirk, snicker, wink, nudge]…ever “sold.”

Frankly I thin, that is not a model to emulate, but it’s what we have here now.

No idea. For the record, I’m a documentary film maker and I run a sawmill and bamboo nursery. I never really was that into pot activism or even paid all that much attention to it (preferring forest issues) until I started this film. Now I have to know way more than I ever wanted to. :-) What I do know is mostly directly related to Southern Humboldt County, the local economy, legalization in California, some medical use, cultivation and so on. But, I do find the hidden history of the plant to be fascinating.

Humboldt had one of the most progressive grow laws: up to 99 plants per person–which was overthrown because amounts could not legislated.

I wish they could legislate away grow houses–hideously wasteful of electricity. Outdoor organic is astoundingly beautiful and now in Los ANgeles it marketed in dispensaries as a rare and wondrous thing.

A quick NB: I’m trying to more or less keep up with questions, so I might get some of the legal details wrong or omit an important part. You experts out there feel free to correct me! It’s not an intentional mistake, just one of expediency.

So do I. I am not an active participant. College days were my last uses, which were over 30 years ago. I just found it very interesting and the scientist stated that the healing that the Rabbi’s and Jesus did were with the weed oil. It was not just drizzled on the head of the patient, but rubbed all over them. I know that many newer lotions and creams for severly dried and chapped skin contain a small amount of the oil.

Well, understand what was behind the 99-plant limit. It was not just 99 plants, but 99 plants OR 100 square feet. So, a 10′x10′ indoor space might have 99 tiny plants or an outdoor grower might have four plants of 5′x5′ each. The 99 number comes from the Federal prosecution threshold. They don’t generally like to mess with less than that, so that number was a way to keep people out of the Feds’ hands.

Note also that when D.A. Paul Gallegos proposed that limit, he was just bringing Humboldt in line with neighboring counties in the Emerald Triangle.

Mikal, Take your time, our readers are understanding.

Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick promoted the use of hemp oil in her chain–it was scandalous a revolutionary, but legal. And relaly opened the door for pot products.

In Humboldt, I am sure there are many peopel who would welcome the entire plant being processed for all sorts of things aside from finger hash, keef, bud and edibles, though keeping the strains seperate might be difficult! It REALLY likes ot pollinate, so much so that a plant will produce male flowers in order to seed itself.

While I’m kind of a rabid environmentalist, I don’t disparage indoor growing entirely. Sure, it’s wasteful, but if you live in San Francisco or Arcata or the Oregon Coast, it’s very, very difficult to grow weed outdoors. It can definitely be done, so no need to jump on me for saying that, but once you get into the “my farming is better than your farming” debate, it can get quite moralistic.

Really, to be honest, I routinely drive to the S.F. Bay Area for film events, shows, dates, classes = 400 miles r/t. So, I’m not in any position to overly judge others’ carbon footprint.

What I do object to are the giant warehouse grows proposed for Oakland and Berkeley (and we can presume elsewhere). These require a small coal-fired powerplant to run them. That is utterly dumb when “solar” alternatives exist just over the hill or a couple hours north.

I think growing for personal use indoors is fine because not everyone is privileged to own land in a sunny location. But industrial grows indoors are a bad idea and bad direction for the industry.

:-)
Too much coffee.

What I do object to are the giant warehouse grows proposed for Oakland and Berkeley (and we can presume elsewhere). These require a small coal-fired powerplant to run them. That is utterly dumb when “solar” alternatives exist just over the hill or a couple hours north.

That’s my most huge objection, followed by the houses that have electrical bills of $10K..that’s a bit above personal use! The underground deisel fueled grows were a bit much as well!

Your subjects–tell us about them!

Oh, the hemp question is fascinating and no one is hardly talking about it. There are at least a couple, if not more, legalization initiatives being hashed out right now. Much of the stoners-against-19 crowd were supporting one for 2012 that had an explicit hemp component (Prop 19 specifically said that hemp could later be added on, but didn’t in itself legalize hemp).

Up here in Humboldt, people are so careful about not seeding their pot (overly-seedy pot becomes a giveaway or maybe can be used for hash, but won’t be salable) that if neighbors are sloppy with their male plants, other neighbors will have a talk with them. I’ve heard (apocryphal, but likely true) stories of angry neighbors pulling and burying or burning others’ males plants out of fear that the pollen would blow over to their gardens.

We don’t have much to worry about, hemp-pollen-wise, here. There is very little farmland and if someone tried to grow mixed-sex hemp, it would get destroyed. No way would everyone let one person grow hemp and risk the crops of many, many more people.

But, in the Central Valley, where hemp would be grown hundreds or thousands of acres at a time? Woo hoo! Talk about a fight! Air pollution from the Bay Area has been shown to be contributing to the decline of amphibians in the Sierras, so it is totally reasonable to think that a massive hemp farm might contaminate a sinsemilla crop in the Sierra foothills. This is going to be a very, very interesting debate!

There are lots of smaller businesses that support the growers–specialty fertilizer companies, hash bag makers etc based in Humboldt, as well as businesses that have been funded by grower money, volunteer fire depts, social services.

The flip side is the Humboldt is on paper a very poor rural community, and without pot..YIKES

My film subjects. First an explanation for why they are still secret and why there is no footage on the site.

Remember, while the pot economy is THE economy in Southern Humboldt and has been for decades and while it is a public secret that everyone talks about openly, there is a very, very big difference between hanging out with friends and discussing the crop like corn farmers might discuss their crop and discussing it with the world.

Starting in 1983, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP; a Federally funded anti-pot-farming program) came in to this area every year from August 1 to the end of September and terrorized the community. Even the local Sheriff Sergeant used that term when I interviewed him (he wasn’t a cop then). It’s not just a matter of some story about a friend of a friend of a friend and a story about their house getting ransacked or a dog getting shot. Every single person who lives in the hills here has a personal story of having to flee their home during a CAMP raid. Or of having their dog shot or having to have their horse put down after CAMP helicopters hazed it into the fence. Or of being threatened at gunpoint by camo-dudes with M16s who wouldn’t identify themselves when they walked out of the woods. Or having their water lines to their house cut to pieces because CAMP thought any water line must be for a grow scene. Every single person here has a CAMP horror story.

After Prop 215 passed and legalized medical marijuana in CA, things gradually quieted down. Now, most people I know are glad CAMP is out busting the large trespass grows on public land and breaking up the camps with the guys with guns. It’s very open and chill now and you can grow right in your garden (like my subjects do) if you have your doctor’s recommendation and “collective” paperwork on site.

(By the way, one of the early posts on my film blog http://onegoodyear.com titled something like “weed truck, of fuck” has a detailed description of how growing was done back in the CAMP days.)

The result of all this is a community suffering from collective traumatization. Mass PTSD if you will. It has infected the culture and mindset and remains a powerful force long after the original impetus is gone.

I’ll post this and then explain a bit more about my characters.

I do know that the kanebosm mentioned in Exodus 30 is cannabis, because i asked a rabbi!

CAMP is out busting the large trespass grows on public land and breaking up the camps with the guys with guns.

Yes.

I know people who got chickens, and/or a cow so that they had “livestock” and could hopefully not get low buzzed by CAMP.

I really appreciate the plane and helicopter reports on KMUD, the local community radio station.

Lisa, I’ll get to your other points…

So, with all this history, it was a big, scary deal for most people to come out and talk about pot in public and on the local radio. It is an even bigger deal to finally be able to confront decades of fear and say, “I’m proud to be a marijuana farmer and I don’t want to have to hide or feel stigmatized any more. I’m good at what I do and am tired of hiding.” It’s been defacto legal to grow small amounts of weed here with virtually no risk for a decade, but it took Prop 19 to break the spell of fear and paranoia.

I’ve got lots and lots more to say (well, the film will say it) about that phenomenon, but for now back to the subjects.

In the spring, the agreement was that no footage would be released until after harvest and after the election. What if the Republicans had swept Sacramento and Washington and Prop 19 had failed by a huge margin and there had been a big crackdown? We had to make sure that didn’t happen before releasing footage publicly. Now that things seem pretty mellow still and into the foreseeable future, we’ve all got to sit down and talk about that. Since the main task at hand is to raise tens of thousands of dollars to hire a top-notch editor, being able to show footage is important. We just need to have that conversation.

It’s also important that everything is in the context of the whole story.

The four subjects are two women in their ’60s, one who is 40 and a man in his 50s. All have doctors recommendations and are part of collectives (blah, blah, standard disclaimer) and all are small, but fairly typical Humboldt growers. Three grow outdoor and one grows in a greenhouse because she is in a fog zone.

Fire with any questions about them if you want.

That never worked well, if at all. I know a guy up the hill here who got his ostrich farm buzzed. People got horses buzzed. CAMP had no respect for anyone.

I was worried that if 19 had passed, the feds would crack down massively.

Good reasons, and compelling and true. How is funding for the film going?

Quick geographical explanation: Humboldt County is really two distinct areas. Southern Humboldt (SoHum) goes from the Mendocino County line to the south, up the Eel River to Weott or so. That is where the fog starts. Northern Humboldt is wetter and more populous, with Fortuna, Eureka and Arcata.

The hippies mostly settled in SoHum in the ’70s and they are the ones who brought pot here. They came here for the land, but eventually started growing pot—which grew well here. Northern Humboldt has always been very conservative, except for the People’s Republic of Arcata. That has changed in the last decade, with the whole county becoming more progressive.

Growing in Northern Humboldt is mostly indoors because of the weather. In SoHum it is mostly outdoors because people own rural land and the weather is good. There is a lot of indoor diesel-generator powered growing in SoHum too, as a response to the need to hide plants from helicopters in the days of CAMP.

Anyway, SoHum has something like 20,000 people in the economic orbit of Garberville, where there is NO OTHER industry besides cannabis. Northern Humboldt has real towns and real industries besides pot.

I’d guess that in SoHum, at least half of residents actually touch pot—as growers, processors, dealers, etc. A quarter of them are one step removed. And even those who want nothing to do with the industry know where the money comes from to support their store.

If the pot economy crashes here, there are no jobs. NONE. Look in the local weekly papers. There are usually a few service jobs and a few skilled ones. It is an expensive place to live and those with the service jobs often work two jobs just to make ends meet. You can make service-worker wages or you can work for your neighbor trimming weed at $20hr. Your call.

So, when you hear people talking about how their worried about the price of pot and what will happen to the local economy with legalization, this is what they’re worried about.

They’re…we’re…worried about how we’re going to pay our mortgages, put a new roof on the house, support the volunteer fire departments (I’ve been on Briceland VFD for almost 10 years), support the nonprofits and alternative schools and so on.

It’s not simply a matter of “getting a job.” There are none. So, when Prop 19 put this in everyone’s faces, that is what forced the question into the open and got people organizing and talking.

Funding—I’m working on it. Just before logging on here, I rewrote the funding page on my site http://onegoodyear.com (shameless self-promotion!) It is my main focus right now. The more funds I can raise, the more of a top-notch, award-winning editor I can hire. I directed and shot the entire thing myself (to get the kind of candid intimacy I have on film would have been near impossible with a crew of strangers), but I’m not going to try and edit it. That takes a very experienced pro.

Within a week I want to have a donate button on the site along with a Kickstarter.com campaign set up. I’m also seeking fiscal sponsorship so that donations can be tax deductible. I know, I know, it’s getting late in the year and I’ve got to get on that! Only so much one person can do.

If anyone is interested in seeing this film get done, check out my site :-)

I don’t think anyone here was worried about that. When A.G. Holder threatened to enforce Federal marijuana laws if California passed 19, he was most likely referring to taking the State to court, not swooping and busting every mom and pop grower.

Oh, wow hadn’t been paying attention to the time! Thanks!

More about ONE GOOD YEAR and Humboldt’s unique cannabis culture can be found here

Mikal thank you so much for being here and discussing the film and SoHum, pot and stuff.

Hello Lisa. As always I look for your posts. This one on
marijuana and your scoop on the upcoming movie One Good Year
is very interesting indeed. I am in disbelieve that the
price you mention is $4,000, and I have to assume you mean
for a pound of weed. I can remember when I paid around $80
back when Gold and (Xuahaca?) where the best around, well
I mean in the South. Things have really changed and I wish
the best for the movie to be a smash and change some minds
to legalize it forever.

roblo, back when I first moved to SoHum, people were selling weed—any decent weed—for $4K-$4,500/lb. Nowadays, I’m hearing prices from $1,800 to $2,800/lb and buyers wanting only top-grade, perfectly-trimmed named varieties. Someone told me they got an offer of their whole crop for $1,500/lb. I’d guess that some people who grew a hundred pounds and are desperate for money will take that. I haven’t talked to anyone who has personally taken less than “two,” with most holding out for “twenty-four,” as it’s usually said around here.

Kathryn, if you’re still around… You might want to check out what some local groups are doing with regard to patient-, consumer- and farmer-friendly local regulations for the cannabis industry.

One group, Humboldt Medical Marijuana Advisory Panel has been actively working on helping to craft a good local ordinance and they’ll also be lobbying for a much better recreational-use initiative for the 2012 ballot.

Their website is http://hummap.org Everyone is taking a break for now, so the site is not very up to date, but if you friend them on Facebook, you can keep up with what they’re doing. They’re also a great resource for questions if you have them. (Two of the main organizers are subjects of my film, by the way.)

Oh, and Kathryn, be sure to check out what the Tea House Collective is doing to promote eco-friendly cannabis. http://teahousecollective.org (One of my subjects is a member of this grower-patient collective.)

There are other local initiatives to help create a thriving cannabis industry—medical, recreational or both. This is what people are talking about now. How to take advantage and guide the coming changes in the economy? How to capitalize on the “Humboldt” brand? How to transition from living as an outlaw to living as an above-ground business owner? Those who can embrace the future will do okay. Those desperately trying to cling to the past will eventually get left behind, wondering what happened.

There are a few other thoughts I’d like to leave here to help readers get a better sense of this community and the perspective the film will show.

Let me repeat the point about why the entire community is worried about the potential for the pot economy (as we’ve known it, anyway) to collapse and be taken over by legalized, warehouse mega-grow monopolies in Oakland or elsewhere. Not only is it the only economy here, but it is one of the only industries anywhere and probably the only agricultural industry where everyone makes a living wage and has decent working conditions. $20/hour (cash) starting wage for agricultural work is pretty damn good! Many growers share the wealth further by providing meals and other perks.

And, the work is far easier than working the fields in the Central Valley at any wage.

Far from people in the cannabis industry being greedy, this is how ALL industries should treat their workers. The visionaries here (some of whom are in my film) are fighting their own fears and the community’s decades of secrecy to push people to envision how the best aspects of the family cannabis farm industry can be preserved in an increasingly legal market.

Only a few misguided people here truly want cannabis to remain illegal so they can continue their black market profits. (But, it only takes one or two sensational media stories to spread the myth that ALL growers think that way.) On the other hand, most people are scared and a bit confused by it all.

Prop 19 wasn’t well written and certainly didn’t have small growers in mind. Weed is still Federally illegal. The decades of fear don’t go away overnight. No one keeps records because it could constitute “evidence,” so very few people really know how much they’re making or what methods will work best in a tightening economy. There is barely even a language with which to talk openly about pot. These are just some of the obstacles to moving forward.

As one of my subjects put it, “in SoHum we still whisper the word ‘marijuana,’ but in Oakland the dispensaries have neon signs outside their doors and large newspaper ads proclaiming the latest strains and special deal-of-the-day prices on an ounce.” Local politicians are still trying to figure out how to say “marijuana” out loud.

In one sense, the real story might be what happens in the next few years as the community adapts or doesn’t. Maybe I’ll shoot a sequel….

By the way, I forgot to mention that you can follow the film’s progress and the Humboldt grower scene on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/OneGoodYear and “like” the project on Facebook http://on.fb.me/f6dynE

Thanks! Clicking over there now!