In [read more ...]]]> Funny that I’d never heard this term until recently. It refers to the practice of mixing multiple strains of marijuana into the same bag. This was how it was often done in the past, where “pot was pot” and no one really cared so long as it looked and smelled good and got you stoned.

In 2004, I was in New York City to protest the Republican National Convention and I asked a friend there to show me what kind of pot they were getting. He pulled out the predictable small zip-lock bag with unappealing lumps and crumbs of green-brown plant material. “This is B.C. Bud,” he said, adding that it was considered the top grade. It did smell good, but you couldn’t have given that away here. When I asked if he knew the specific strain, he just said “B.C. Bud.”

I suspect that even to this day, much of what ships out of Humboldt County loses its unique identity and ends up labeled only as “Humboldt” or “kush” by the time it ends up in someone’s personal stash. Still, with legalization of one form or another, unidentified or haybaled pot would be the barrel-scrapings of weed. Or maybe someone would reintroduce generics and we’d have black-and-white packaged “marijuana” or, as it would certainly be called in the vernacular, “pot pot.”*

As with any agricultural product, wholesale buyers and retail consumers want a uniform look, smell and effect. Some things, like mixed nuts or mixed greens, lend themselves to being jumbled together, but not weed. The effects of each strain are too distinct and people want a consistent experience. This is especially crucial to medical users who might be looking for strains with specific cannabiniod ratios. For those people, a haybaled bag of weed would be the equivalent of dumping multiple bottles of, say, psych meds in the same jar and picking randomly.

While there have always been pot connoisseurs who demanded specific strains, the increasing branding and specialization of the product and the increasing sophistication of pot aficionados has been driven by the medical marijuana dispensaries. They have been the first businesses ever to be able to openly advertise and give customers…er…patients…a consistent, reliable choice. When you have dozens of strains on display, each has to have a unique name and description so patients can either try something new or get an old favorite.

I think this specialization and professionalism is good for the industry. The sooner everyone involved gets on board, the better position the community will be to take advantage of whatever markets open up once pot is eventually legalized in California and elsewhere.

I learned of the term “haybaling” in the context of a grower who is still operating as if it were the ’80s and pot was still just pot. I’ve said before that one of the downsides to decades of marijuana suppression in the SoHum community is a pervasive paranoia that prevents people from stepping into the light—or at least into the hazy gray—and adapting to the new, rapidly-evolving marijuana economy. Those who still practice haybaling—if they even bother to track their strains as all—will be left behind.

*When generic foods and other supermarket products were first introduced 30-ish years ago, they had stark white packaging with black, block lettering. So, alongside the Budweiser and Pabst, there would be a row of white cans with a cheaper price tag and black lettering saying “Beer.” This was widely referred to as “beer beer.”

This new sign on Hwy 101 northbound (in Sonoma County) omits any mention of Mendo’s number one economic engine, “weed.” The choice of “w” words for the other three features is almost a subtle joke, since whoever commissioned the sign was obviously aware of the county’s reputation and industry.

Whatever [read more ...]]]> …uh…in Mendocino? (Apologies to Little Feat.)

This new sign on Hwy 101 northbound (in Sonoma County) omits any mention of Mendo’s number one economic engine, “weed.” The choice of “w” words for the other three features is almost a subtle joke, since whoever commissioned the sign was obviously aware of the county’s reputation and industry.

Whatever the thinking behind the wording, I think it makes a profound statement about where the Northcoast is with regard to marijuana: still in the closet, still in denial, still playing “let’s pretend.”

Mendocino just suspended its permit program and Humboldt County placed a moratorium on new dispensary applications, both due to federal saber-rattling.

I have some pretty disparaging things to say about Northcoast County Supervisors with regard to their inability or unwillingness to pass decent medical marijuana policy a decade and a half after the passage of Proposition 215 and about their chicken-hearted cave-in to the feds. Same goes for the California state legislature. But I’ll refrain for now and hope that one or more of the upcoming marijuana legalization and medical marijuana initiatives passes in November and clarifies the subject once and for all.

No matter what, we can be guaranteed of one thing: in the next month, thousands of growers will be starting hundreds of thousands of seeds for this season’s crop, starting the cycle over again.

Speaking of which, I have a proposal: When you growers out there have some nice, big male plants, instead of juicing them for the CBDs, complete the message by planting them around that sign one night. Take a photo and I’ll publish it here and on the film’s Facebook fan page. Whoever sends the best photo will get a thank-you mention in the film’s credits!

Times have changed, no doubt. Last week, a member of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and a sheriff’s sergeant testified in a Santa Rosa courtroom on behalf of two men charged with transporting pot through Sonoma County. The defendants are employees of Northstone Organics, a permitted medical marijuana collective in Mendocino County. [read more ...]]]> By Mikal Jakubal

Times have changed, no doubt. Last week, a member of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and a sheriff’s sergeant testified in a Santa Rosa courtroom on behalf of two men charged with transporting pot through Sonoma County. The defendants are employees of Northstone Organics, a permitted medical marijuana collective in Mendocino County. Yes, you heard that right: the sergeant testified for the defendants. These two men were stopped on two consecutive days in what was a clear case of intentional surveillance. It’s unclear why Sonoma County law enforcement would prioritize intercepting an operation that is merely passing through Sonoma County en route to its Bay Area delivery route, nor why they’d intentionally provoke neighboring Mendocino County, throwing down a de facto challenge to the validity of Mendo’s medical pot permitting ordinance.

"Purple Diesel"—a little something to spice up an otherwise all-text post.

The North Coast counties are producing counties, dependent on medical marijuana “exports” to the rest of the state (and to the rest of the country on the black market, but that’s another subject). By testifying in favor of the defendants, the Mendo officials were indirectly acknowledging something that few in politics or law enforcement have been willing to say out loud: for the Emerald Triangle’s nascent white-market medical marijuana economy to have any possibility of success, we have to export to and transport through the rest of the state.

From the point of view of officials in more restrictive or conservative counties, many of whom have been tripping over themselves to put the lid on the medical pot business, that must seem like a slap in the face. So be it. Times are changing. Kudos to the Supervisor and Sergeant for standing up for their own laws, economy and citizens.

Mendocino County has an openly vested interest in seeing its program work, as hundreds of thousands of dollars are generated by it every year for the County government and Sheriff’s Department. It also provides a clear framework allowing legit growers to be legit. It likewise provides clear guidelines for law enforcement about what is and isn’t a legal or permitted medical grow. Sonoma County needs to catch on and join the 21st Century. As does the rest of California.

If you visit the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department home page and look on the lower right sidebar, you’ll see links to .pdf files with the 9.31 Mendo medical marijuana ordinance, the State Attorney General’s guidelines, Q&As and so on. After that, wherever you live, go to your local law enforcement agency’s web page and see if you can find helpful information on the front page about how to grow weed legally. It’s different up here. Really.

In other seasonal update news: the price of early or light-depo pot (all medical, of course!) seems to be quite high at the moment. I’ve heard of anywhere from $2300/lb to $2700/lb for wholesale amounts. I doubt these early season prices will last like this too many more years, as more and more people get hip to light-depping and the market begins to saturate earlier. (Ah, another upcoming post.)

Typical of any farming culture, crop prices are as much a topic of conversation as the weather. Those with early weed, trimmed and ready to go, are looking to sell it at the best price. Those with full-term plants are counting their chickens, babying their plants and hoping for another good year.

There are such things a aviation weather reports for pilots, nautical weather reports for sailors and so on, so why not a special weather product tailored to the pot industry? The KMUD daily weather reports already include the exact length, down to the minute, of daylight—an important factor in when pot goes into flower.  Special mold, [read more ...]]]>

There are such things a aviation weather reports for pilots, nautical weather reports for sailors and so on, so why not a special weather product tailored to the pot industry? The KMUD daily weather reports already include the exact length, down to the minute, of daylight—an important factor in when pot goes into flower.  Special mold, wind and rain alerts could be issued, along with regular data on daylength, temperatures, humidity and so on.

That would require some drastic changes in federal marijuana policy, given that NOAA  is federally-funded. In the meantime, you don’t have to be a shaman or clairvoyant to read about the rain predicted for this weekend. Blame global warming or chem trails or a HAARP conspiracy or chalk it up to “shit happens,” but it looks like we’re in for another crop-thrashing early rain. Most pot on the Northcoast is nearing harvest, with buds swelling in the warm fall days. Early strains have already been cut, dried and trimmed, while the later-finishing varieties are two to six weeks out. For those, there is enough water-retaining bud on most plants to over-tax branches. We had a similar situation last August. At that time, flower clusters were much less developed, but the rain still shattered unsupported plants.

Well-prepared growers have their plants well-staked or caged or netted already, but many will be scrambling to tie things up before Saturday night’s predicted rain. It doesn’t matter if it is only a couple tenths-of-an-inch; the bud will hold the water in its tight flower-cluster structure until the branches give way. It doesn’t help that the rain is predicted for the middle of the night. If it were daytime, growers might go out and hand-shake buds during the day, only staking any that threatened to snap.

Add to this the threat of Botrytis mold and powdery mildew from all the extra moisture and it’s going to be another stressful harvest for some people. I like to mention these problems to counter the notion that pot growers don’t have to work, don’t have any risk of crop loss and thereby are somehow greedy and lazy. No one will deny that it is the highest-paying agricultural work you’ll ever do, but it’s also easy to lose an entire year’s work and investment virtually overnight to mold, ripoffs, “hermaphrodism,” bag mold or law enforcement confiscation if you’re operating in the black market and get busted. Unlike soybean or apple farmers, there is no crop insurance for weed.

Yet.

As I’ve probably mentioned already, I’ve been on the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department for over 10 years now. (My first day of EMT training was September 11, 2001, in fact.) Yesterday evening, during our regularly-scheduled bi-monthly training meeting, the discussion about fighting fire in [read more ...]]]>

Donated tub of pot trimming supplies at volunteer fire department auction

As I’ve probably mentioned already, I’ve been on the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department for over 10 years now. (My first day of EMT training was September 11, 2001, in fact.) Yesterday evening, during our regularly-scheduled bi-monthly training meeting, the discussion about fighting fire in the urban-wildland interface was momentarily disrupted as everyone turned to watch out the open station doors as a pickup truck full of marijuana plants drove westward down Briceland Road. I had my camera, but it all happened too fast to get a shot. After a few seconds of snickers and admissions of “I’ve done that,” by a few members, we continued on with the evening’s training.

Speaking of the fire department and pot, we recently had our annual 9/11 fundraising party at the Beginnings Octagon in Briceland. Beginnings is where this community has many of its smaller, more intimate gigs. Folk singers, small benefits, marriages, memorials and so on fill the space nearly every weekend.

Among the fundraising activities was a silent raffle and among the items donated by local businesses was a set of pot trimming supplies. Included were two clip lights, a hanging dry-rack, Fiskar’s floral snippers, a locally-made herbal hand cleaner for removing hash from fingers, a box of plastic contractor bags and a couple other things I can’t quite identify in the photo. I’m sure there must’ve been a box of turkey bags in there somewhere. If you don’t live here, looking at the contents of the bin in the photo might be a bit baffling. It would be a good subject for a guessing game along the lines of that ’70s game show “What’s My Line?” Here, it’s a standard kit and it would take two seconds for anyone to name what you did for a living.

The pot culture and economy pervades and shapes every activity here. It seems redundant and self-evident to even say that. It’s just what we do.

This post from two weeks ago was about a woman in Redway who has been feeding ravens and now claims someone is poisoning them. Her solution is a bit, um, wacky, to say the least.

The post generated a few comments, one of which I’ll excerpt below because it got me thinking about our [read more ...]]]> By Mikal Jakubal

This post from two weeks ago was about a woman in Redway who has been feeding ravens and now claims someone is poisoning them. Her solution is a bit, um, wacky, to say the least.

The post generated a few comments, one of which I’ll excerpt below because it got me thinking about our relationship with those birds.  The comment excerpts:

By providing (ravens) with an artificial food supply she encourages them to congregate in unnaturally high numbers…. In the best interest of these wild creatures we can help keep them wild by not feeding them and keeping garbage and compost secured in tightly covered cans and bins.

True on the one hand, regarding ravens being wild animals. And true also about securing trash from other wild animals. On the other hand, ravens can also be thought of as one of our commensal species—in the literal sense of the term, “sharing table” or “sharing food”—who have cohabitated with humans for countless millennia. They thrive in our disturbance, eat our leftovers and provide us amusement through their antics. Sharing food with ravens, whether out of hand or incidentally when they raid our dumps, continues an inter-species bond stretching back into evolutionary eternity. Ranging throughout the holarctic, they figure significantly in mythologies as diverse as Native American, Christian, Scandinavian and North African. The human/raven bonding through shared food is ancient and deep. It is no accident that many of us feel compelled to feed them.

It is likely that ravens migrated to North America over the Bering land bridge about the same time as humans. It would not be at all surprising if we came here together, since following our camps would be a natural behavior for ravens. (Ah, a bit of searching turns up the fact that there are two different groups of ravens, one that has lived on the West Coast for 2 million years and the other that came over the Bering land bridge contemporaneously with us.)

I think we all too often fall into unnecessarily rigid or overly-generalized rules of behavior with regard to animals. If, in a given place and time, there is a specific reason to not feed ravens, then we should not do it. But, in general, we are co-adapted and get along quite fine. While they can live on their own, they’re quite happy and healthy living with us and sharing our table as well. Given the duration and durability of our bonding over food, it is not really accurate to say that feeding them constitutes an “artificial food supply.” In fact, eating our toss-offs is quite the natural thing for them to do.

Should this woman or anyone feed them in Redway? Meh, I dunno. Ravens were here eating our food when the Native people were the only human inhabitants. They were here when the European settlers moved in and they’ll be here in a thousand years, no matter who is or isn’t here.

In short, it doesn’t—though it might impair your spelling.

[read more ...]]]> Local Humboldt blogger extraordinaire Kym Kemp has a piece today that is both hilarious and informative. She uses a hitchhiker’s apparently misspelled plea for a weed handout as a point of entry to discuss numerous recent studies debunking the old notion that smoking pot makes you stupid.

In short, it doesn’t—though it might impair your spelling.

Garberville Highway 101 onramp.

Trim room for one.

Whale Gulch Labor Day party at Four Corners.

One of my main documentary peeps lives in the Whale Gulch community, possibly the most remote region of the SoHum area, straddling the Humboldt/Mendocino County lines on the ridge above the ocean. You get there via a winding, one-and-a-half-lane mostly-paved road with blind corners and [read more ...]]]> By Mikal Jakubal

Whale Gulch Labor Day party at Four Corners.

One of my main documentary peeps lives in the Whale Gulch community, possibly the most remote region of the SoHum area, straddling the Humboldt/Mendocino County lines on the ridge above the ocean. You get there via a winding, one-and-a-half-lane mostly-paved road with blind corners and no shoulder. Deer and other wildlife, falling trees, landslides, boulders, mud, flooding, fog, rain, pot holes and vehicles driving on your side of the road are normal hazards. Though located in Mendocino County, people from “The Gulch” use Garberville, in SoHum as their town. When they go to town.

You probably won’t find yourself in this unlikely somewhere unless you go looking for it. The only indication you’ll have that a “there” exists will be the bulletin board at Four Corners and the Whale Gulch school, which you’ll pass a bit farther on. You’ll know you’re almost there when you see the sign on the treacherously-slim, serpentine, one-lane road with steep drop-offs that warns “Road Narrows.”

There is no green sign welcoming you to Whale Gulch, no store, no gas station, no post office or zip code, no rows of houses, no street lights or stop signs. And yet a vibrant community three-generations old lives all around, in homesteads intentionally out of sight, tucked into the comfort and insulation that this remoteness provides. This land is steep and rugged; the forests, dark and often foggy; the dirt roads snaking into the hills, unmarked and muddy or dusty, depending on the season. Large fences obscure the lives of those who live within eyeshot of the road. You may see the occasional helmetless, unlicensed ATV rider out on the road, going somewhere with an air of purpose. Slow down to let them pass or use turnouts when you can, because they will be going faster than you.

Like most of these hermit-ish hill communities, it is rare to see more than a handful of people out together in public at any one time. It takes an emergency, a funeral or a big party to bring people together. While disasters and funerals are ad hoc affairs, each place has its regularly-scheduled parties and gatherings. Elk Ridge has Sunday potluck/music/volleyball games during dry weather. Ettersburg has Sunday softball games. Salmon Creek has a famous Halloween party. Other places have similar weekly, monthly or annual events, often held as fundraisers for their neighborhood hill schools or fire departments. Especially at harvest, pot is the most common topic of conversation, followed by the weather and gossip.

After the Whale Gulch community center building burned down ten years ago, the intersection informally known as Four Corners has become the community gathering spot when they need a large, open area for events in this otherwise steep and forested landscape. The annual Labor Day picnic and barbecue is held as a fundraiser for the Whale Gulch Volunteer Fire Department, one of many such “bake-sale fire departments” that provide the first response in remote areas like The Gulch.

While Four Corners is an official Mendocino County road, the event goes on without a permit. Traffic can still pass slowly through, once the kids with their chalk and toys, the dogs and the random clusters of chatting people with plates of potluck food lazily clear the way. This event is emblematic of the community spirit that pervades much of SoHum, despite the isolation. It gives it it’s unique “placeness.” Food is mostly potluck—and good! In addition, there is a huge table of deserts and a barbecue churning out heaping pans of chicken that I could smell a quarter mile down the road as I approached. The donation jar was stuffed with cash—though mostly $20s, not the $100s you might have seen ten years ago. They made the intersection into a community center for the weekend like they owned the place.

Which, in a certain sense, they do. There is virtually no law here. The Mendocino County Sheriff would have to drive an hour and a half from the nearest small town in Northern Mendocino to get here. There is no County Roads crew here on Saturday and they wouldn’t care in any event. The Highway Patrol only comes here when called to a real emergency, especially on a busy holiday weekend. So, the road belongs to the people.

In sixteen years, this was my first time at this event. I came partly out of curiosity and partly out of hope to shoot my doc participant at just this sort of community event. While I’m formally done with principal photography, I’ve realized that I still need some pickup shots of participants being involved in grass-roots community events. I ended up not being able to shoot today, but did have some great food and caught up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while. I’m usually not much of a meat eater, but smelling that chicken for a quarter of a mile, I couldn’t resist. By the time I was leaving at dusk, some musicians were talking about where to set up. I was told the party will go into the night. In the morning, everyone will come back and there will be a big breakfast and more events throughout the day. And then it will all be packed up till next year. If I hadn’t already committed to working on the film at home tomorrow, I’d get up and go back. Maybe I still will.

***

Along the road from Four Corners to Whale Gulch, not far from the “Road Narrows” sign, a small, brushed-out clearing in the trees affords a zen glimpse of the ocean from the high ridge you’re on. Not a gaping picture window or an observation tower with a 360-degree view, but a narrow slot, more like a rifle port. Enough for a passing glimpse. The ocean, like the community, is always there, behind the trees and hills, visible only when the brush is occasionally cleared.

I see my film very much like this little clearing. It will be a sliver-thin window into a rich and complex world. My intention is not to try and bring you up to the bell tower to see the city spread before you like a map, nor is it to expose anything or to remove the mystery. If anything, you should come away with a deepened sense of mystery, or maybe awe, at this place. You will realize that there is no map to see. Hopefully you’ll also let go of every misguided stereotype you ever heard of about the Humboldt community and pot growing and come to understand why people feel so much is at stake.

SoHum’s off-grid lifestyle and our extremely rugged topography create special access challenges, whether by car or computer. We live on the dusty, tortuous, slide-prone backroads of both the physical landscape and the internet superhighway. We surf the web in high-clearance 4WD.

While many people are still on 16K-24K dialup modem connections [read more ...]]]>

Internet antennas atop ancient redwood

SoHum’s off-grid lifestyle and our extremely rugged topography create special access challenges, whether by car or computer. We live on the dusty, tortuous, slide-prone backroads of both the physical landscape and the internet superhighway. We surf the web in high-clearance 4WD.

While many people are still on 16K-24K dialup modem connections and others with southern sky access have satellite internet, one local provider has found a way to bring high-speed wireless broadband to many remote areas via a network of repeaters that bounce the signal deep behind the Redwood Firewall—the 21st Century version of our perennially puncture-resistant Redwood Curtain.

The small white antennas barely visible at the top of this ancient redwood are in line-of-sight to a tower on a high ridge somewhere that in turn is line-of-sight to another tower and so on, bouncing the internet signal via microwaves to the residents in this narrow, wooded canyon. A ladder up the inside of the tree, hollowed out over the centuries by multiple wildfires, provides maintenance access. The steel ladder is a recent improvement over the old wooden ladder nailed up behind it.

And, no, your cell phone won’t work out here.

Ladder access up hollow tree to internet antennas