Yesterday evening’s salon went well. Here is the link where it will be archived. Comments are still open till 5pm Pacific Time today, so stop by with your comments, opinions or questions. http://firedoglake.com/2010/12/13/fdl-movie-night-one-good-year-2/
I’ll be checking in during the day and will try and reply to anyone before the comments close.
Thanks again to FireDogLake for the opportunity to discuss the project and I promise I’ll be back once the film is done!
(Note: this story was from a week and a half ago! I was originally going to add some commentary based on some feedback I got from various people, so I held off posting it for a day. Then, between shoots and a major veterinary emergency with one of my pets that distracted me for a week, I spaced-out that I hadn’t publicized the story. Duh. It’s what happens when I try to be director/producer/cinematographer/social media coordinator and everything else on top of trying to keep the rest of my life together. Thanks to Donna Tam for making the trip all the way to Southern Humboldt.)
Spotlight on the marijuana industry: Local filmmaker working on a documentary to capture the spirit of the pot trade
Donna Tam/The Times-Standard
Posted: 11/09/2010 01:27:13 AM PST
Five young trimmers sit out on the deck, surrounded by buds, sunlight and the open air of Southern Humboldt.
The scene is set nicely for local filmmaker Mikal Jakubal, who is intent on capturing a slice of life within Humboldt County’s marijuana industry.
One trimmer, a seasoned hand who has a sunny disposition and no shoes on, talks as her fingers nimbly pluck buds and trim them with Fiskars, a brand of scissors.
She said she isn’t a pot smoker and had no position on the recently failed Proposition 19 — which aimed to legalize and regulate pot for recreational use — but she thinks the work is fun.
”We get to hang out in the sun, listen to rad music and hang out with cool people,” she said, with the camera rolling.
Jakubal said the trimmer — who does not live in California but travels to Humboldt for seasonal work — is a part of an industry spawned in Humboldt, just as much as the small pot farmers eking out a living or the big growers who are making plenty of money.
The story he hopes to tell with a documentary he has worked on since March is the underlying culture that attracted many of the older growers in the first place — going back to the land.
”It’s not about dope growing. It’s about what Southern Humboldt is about,” Jakubal said. “You can’t talk about it without talking about weed.”
In his film, Jakubal follows four growers throughout the course of a year.
One of the growers, a woman
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who referred to herself as “J,” said she was drawn to the Emerald Triangle during the 1970s because of its lifestyle, not its pot.
”I’m a Bay Area girl that migrated to the hills to raise a family and go back to the land,” she said. “We didn’t come to grow marijuana — I didn’t. It just happened.”
A single mom who raised her children in the area and now has her grandchildren growing up in the area, J is a medical marijuana patient as well. She chooses to smoke pot rather than take pharmaceuticals for her anxiety disorder because of the side effects that kind of medication has on her.
One of the themes of Jakubal’s film is the effect of Proposition 19 on the industry. He said what the film will best depict is how much doesn’t change, even with legalization front and center for the nation to watch.
J said she voted for Proposition 19 despite being wary of its lack of protection for small farmers. She said that ultimately, she’s glad it didn’t pass, but she very much would like to see a legitimate marijuana industry.
Both she and Jakubal agree that Prop. 19’s lack of success was not just because of some greedy pot growers but fear of the unknown.
J said she has watched the price of pot cut in half in the last 15 years. But there is fear that if big industry takes over marijuana, the plant will “lose some of its sacredness, its specialness.”
She said a lot of her friends are not happy that she is in a documentary. They are concerned the industry will be glorified or that it may not be safe for her to be so “out” about it.
J said she wanted to tell her story and help the world see that she is just a grandmother trying to keep her modest middle-class lifestyle and positively contribute to her community any way she can.
”I think the rest of the people in the world have a misconception of marijuana growers — that we’re a wild bunch, and we’re rich and we drive big trucks.”
Jakubal aims to have something produced by next winter, but that will depend on funding. Jakubal said he hopes that the chance for the outside world to access the Humboldt County grow scene in a manner more intimate than what the recent media attention has produced will attract funders.
”It’s such a unique, amazing place,” he said. “It’s this secret little subculture that no one gets to see.”
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_16562195?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com
By Mikal Jakubal
I’ve been working on a post-election story for a while now, but haven’t been able to get my thoughts together on it due to work, filming and the OMG-winter-is-here-and-I’m-not-ready hecticness that comes with country living. Since the Times-Standard story came out today and many people have been asking me how I feel about Prop 19, the election overall and the next steps for the film, I thought I’d do a quick update.
For those who don’t know already, I was very pro-Prop 19 and voted unequivocally “yes.” Was it the dream legalization initiative? Of course not, but I’ve been following the issue closely enough—including some of the behind-the-scenes organizing at the local and state levels—to know that it was workable and that most of the negative aspects could easily be mitigated with active, grass-roots organizing. I’ll explain that soon in a longer post.
In my opinion, the biggest election threats to the pot industry and the legalization movement—medical or otherwise—were the Humboldt District Attorney’s race and the State Attorney General’s race. Progressive, pot-tolerant Gallegos is secure as Humboldt County D.A., but as of this morning, Republican Steve Cooley is still edging-out Kamala Harris in a very close State A.G. race. Cooley has said he’ll shut down dispensaries and will probably try to do a whole lot more if elected A.G. I can only hope that all the pro-weed people who put so much energy into opposing Prop 19 also realized the greater importance of the A.G. race and convinced friends to vote Democrat on that one.
I’ve always been pro-legalization. The whole thing seems like such a ridiculous waste of time and energy for everyone and society as a whole. It was never an issue I cared that much about until the first time I smoked weed at about age 32, during my first year here in SoHum. I remember the evening well. It was at a potluck “up the hill” as we say. My first thought, after I stopped coughing, was, “now I understand ‘getting the munchies!'” The second was, “so this is what all the fuss is about?” I had expected something much stronger. The thought that billions of dollars had been spent and countless lives ruined over something so harmless cemented an already deep-seated skepticism about any moral ground the government or society would ever lay claim to.
As for the documentary, I’m still shooting, but now have the end in sight. I was up filming the election night mayhem at KMUD until after 2 a.m. On the drive home, with Prop 19 a clear failure at the polls, I realized that my film was done. Though the production work is far from finished, the story now has a logical conclusion. I’ll be shooting wrap up material and a bit of settling-in-for-winter-on-the-homesteaad footage and then probably follow up in the spring with the new planting season.
I’ll keep shooting sporadically over the next two years since a 2012 ballot initiative is virtually guaranteed and local organizing efforts will continue. There is also the possibility that the State and County governments will pass some sort of new regulations in the interim and I’ll want to keep up on that for the historical record—or the sequel.
Along with the wrap-up shooting, the next step in the film involves getting funding for post-production. I do not plan to edit ONE GOOD YEAR myself. I’ll need to raise a serious budget to be able to hire a top-notch professional editor.
I’m constantly asked when the film will be out. The answer depends on my ability to raise said budget. With a full professional budget, the film could be done by late summer 2011. If I have to raise money $20 at a time, it might take years. My tentative goal is to have it completed by late September 2011, in time for the Sundance Film Festival submission deadline. If accepted into Sundance (which is VERY competitive), it would premier there in January of 2012.
There is also the possibility that I may choose a self-distribution model and release it the minute it is done, not waiting for festival or broadcast deadlines years from now. No matter what, it is important that it be out in the world in time for the 2012 election season organizing efforts, as it will dramatically change the perception and the story of who “pot growers” are, what the values and farming lifestyle of rural pot-dependent communities are really all about and why Prop 19 was such an emotional issue for those who feared their way of life was being threatened. (More on this will also be in near-future posts. Hint: it ain’t about the money.)
Everyone—growers, legislators, economists,the DEA, RAND Corporation—has predictions about the pot economy and what will happen next, with or without Prop 19. Most of this is wild speculation, with the best of it being informed wild speculation. There is one thing and one thing only that can be predicted with any certainty: next spring, farmers in cannabis-dependent rural counties in California will plant seeds and, in October, harvest high-quality weed that will be sold to willing and happy buyers. You can put money on it—for at least a couple more years.
Yours truly was a featured guest on KCRW’s To The Point talk show on Monday. KCRW is a major NPR affiliate out of Santa Monica that serves much of Southern California, while To The Point is syndicated nationally to other NPR stations.
I come in at about minute-twenty-nine in the program and am on and off for the next ten minutes or so till the program’s end. Listening to what I have to say here gives a good overview of the key issues facing this community at large, as well as the questions the main characters in the documentary are grappling with. So far, two of the four are staunch supporters of Prop 19, one who was wavering decided to vote yes with her mail-in ballot and I haven’t heard if the fourth has decided yet.
Below is the description from the KCRW site.
Proposition 19 on next week’s California ballot would legalize marijuana for people over 21 and allow for commercial production. Local governments, now strapped for revenue, could regulate and tax a new industry and lower their costs for law enforcement and jails. Both sides are making extravagant claims, but nobody really knows what the financial, social or medical impacts might be. The latest polls show it trailing, and the Obama Administration promises a challenge, but Prop 19 could still have a nationwide impact.
Sacramento, California ABC News 10 will be airing a half-hour special entitled “Proposition Pot” this Sunday. There were here last month interviewing various Southern Humboldt locals. They’ve got a short segment on ONE GOOD YEAR, which includes an interview with me. There is a preview story up on their website at the link above, with a short video excerpt from the longer piece.
It was amusing having them try and set up to shoot in my tiny office, but we made room. Then we went and visited a pot patch where I filmed them filming a (face masked) grower who had agreed to talk to them.
They interviewed other locals, including blogger Kym Kemp and Tea House Collective member Liz Davidson, both of whom represented SoHum intelligently and well. It’s nice to see journalists getting beyond the superficial and sensational stories usually done about our home town. Maybe after so many years of cliche, Humboldt County has reached Peak Hype and we’ll be seeing more sophisticated reporters taking the time to find real stories.
By Mikal Jakubal
I filmed the local Sheriff Sergeant today telling the story of a deputy stopping on Hwy 101 last night near Garberville to kick two large plastic trash bags off of the road. Turns out they were full of untrimmed pot. We walked over to the evidence room and opened them up for my camera. There were some decent sized buds, but most looked kind of scraggly, with lots of sticks. (I’ll try and post a screen shot later.)
I figured that someone must have been transporting it from a garden to their trim scene. Seems crazy to do that in a way that it would blow out of the truck.
A short while after the interview—by sheer coincidence, at 4:20pm—I got a follow up call from the Sergeant telling me that the bags actually flew out of a Drug Task Force truck after a raid. He said, “it’s evidence and they want their dope back.”
Only in Garberville do you find bags of fresh weed on the road. Now, if I could just find a bag of money to help finish the film…
By Mikal Jakubal
If the full moon of two weeks ago was the “Ripoff Moon,” as my thieving neighbor put it, this dark moon has to be called “Rot-off Moon,” in dubious honor of the brown stem mold that is sweeping Northcoast pot gardens.
“Stem mold” or “bud mold,” as it’s alternately called, is a species of the fungus Botrytis. It is one of the many predictable pests of marijuana in damp climates and appears each fall at harvest. What makes it so vexing and anxiety-inducing is that it starts invisibly on the stems of the biggest buds, rotting them from the inside out.
Often, the first sign is a yellowed or wilted bud leaflet or two. Pulling the bud open reveals either brown slime or grey fuzz where green, crystal-coated calyxes, pistils and leaflets should be. Trying to cut the rot out is often futile, with each successive cut leading deeper and deeper into the bud structure until nothing is left but a disheartening pile of brown and green clippings destined for the compost pile.
Of the many crop-loss threats a small-scale cannabis farmer faces on the Northcoast, bud mold has become the most serious, far surpassing losses to law enforcement eradication efforts.
For many growers, this is the worst mold year they’ve ever experienced. The combination of a long, wet spring with rains persisting well into June, a relatively cool summer and an unseasonably heavy rain in September has provided an ideal climate for mold growth. The fact that everyone has doubled and tripled crop size this year means that a farmer’s limited time is spread thinner, with less time per plant to monitor and take preventative measures.
Once it starts, Botrytis can race through a crop, destroying most of the large buds in mere days. Since it forms mostly in large, maturing buds, the usual remedy for mold is immediate harvest of the surrounding healthy ones. But, what do you do when half of your crop—which this year is three times a large as you normally handle—shows signs of mold all at once?
This is the dilemma that many growers face at this very moment and there is some major freaking-out going on in Garberville. Stores are selling out of heaters, dehumidifiers and propane. I’ve spoken with many, many growers and only a very few are not having mold problems. It was even a topic of discussion on the popular Thank Jah It’s Friday radio program on KMUD radio this morning.
Throughout the hills, large piles of moldy buds are being tossed on the compost heap as growers race to get plants cut and dried before mold can consume their entire season’s work. I’ve heard of people putting large fans outside in their gardens to keep the air moving, though this is probably about as effective as a bucket brigade trying to make a river run uphill. Many people get up early and shake the dew off of each branch. Others cut large branches at once, hanging the whole thing indoors in a dry-room to be properly processed later. The best solution, for those who have the money, is to hire a large crew to do an accelerated harvest, converting your entire house into a drying shed.
Of my four documentary subjects, one harvested early and another is in the process of a slow, phased harvest. Neither had any significant mold. The other two, however think they might have as much as 30% crop loss. One of the two is also a meticulous breeder and she lost years of breeding work when carefully pollinated flowers rotted off the stem.
The accelerated harvest has pushed my ability to keep up with filming. Where I might have otherwise had weeks to show the harvest process, I’ve now had to run around to grab footage of plants being cut before they were gone. With mold running amok, no one is going to wait for me and my camera. Of course, the mold has also added a significant new level of tension to the story, temporarily backburnering concerns about the coming vote on Proposition 19 and the effects that might have. It’s hard to worry about something that might affect you next year—for better or worse—when your entire crop is melting before your eyes.
Farming of any kind is never predictable and pot-growing is no different. I wonder if a future, legalized cannabis industry will have crop-loss insurance available for bud mold?
By Mikal Jakubal
Checking the weather report this morning, it looks pretty typical for August in SoHum: 100° today, cooling down to the high 80s during the week. A small reservoir-worth of water will get dumped on pot plants here in the next day or so. By the weekend, however, they’re forecasting a slight chance of rain showers, a rarity for August.
While some rain would be a welcomed by veggie gardeners, pot farmers dread late-summer rain. The moisture from even a light sprinkling can weigh-down the branches to the point where they snap off. Once the plants develop more “buds” (flower clusters) in the coming weeks, this will be an even bigger problem, along with mold that can form when buds hold the moisture in. To get a sense of why this is so worrying, a fat branch on a heavily-bearing strain might yield anywhere from $30 to $100 worth of finished product. Imagine a rainstorm where $20 and $100 bills are dissolving away in front of your eyes.
Most growers who are on top of the game have already used some combination of stakes, wires and large mesh cages to support all the main branches on their plants. The mere threat of rain on the horizon will send everyone else out to the garden with stakes and tie-wire to get caught up.
Two of my documentary peeps have their plants completely tied up, the other two, not at all. I think I know what I’ll be filming this week.
By Mikal Jakubal
Things have been a bit slow the last two weeks on the film production front. I was out of town and then had a cold for a few days, so didn’t do much. My participant who had the emergency surgery a couple weeks ago is doing well. Tomorrow at 8 a.m. I’ll be at her house shooting her putting in a new crop of peas and some other garden veggies. Like all my other documentary peeps and most of the homesteaders in SoHum, she is an avid gardener of all things, not just pot.
A while back, I filmed her removing the black tarp from her light-deprivation garden. Those plants were ready for harvest just as she had to go into the hospital, so her family helped bring those plants in. I missed catching that on camera, but tomorrow she’ll be taking some of the plants down from the cool, dry spot where they’ve been drying. She likes to cure her weed for a couple weeks, nice and slow.
My Northern Mendocino subject, the one who had to pull out all the big male plants last time I filmed her, just had to get water delivered to refill her tanks. The little spring I filmed her opening back up last month finally dried up. She’ll need water deliveries every few weeks from now until the November rains, so I’ll catch the next delivery on camera.
I just got an email from my graphic designer. The new drawings for this website are coming along. She’s just did a move, so will get back to it soon. Can’t wait for the new look. It’s going to be fun.
By Mikal Jakubal
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I got a phone message from one of my subjects explaining why she hadn’t callled me back a few days ago. Turns out she had a health emergency and ended up in surgery. While she was in the hospital, her child fell and required stitches. Both are home now and will be fine, but that was a scary and unfortunate message to come home to. I wish them healing, happiness and swift recovery. I’ll go over with the camera and catch up as soon as they feel up to it.
This morning I got another message that my other subject, the one whom I filmed pulling the big male plants out a few days ago. She found a bunch more males and tore them out as well. Serious bummer for her, since she doesn’t grow much at all. She said she got a bad batch of starts from someone. They were supposed to be clones (i.e. all female and all the same strain), but apparently weren’t.
Seems it’s going to be one interesting year for everyone.
