Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. Nederland is home to small craft beer breweries, coffee roasters, and mom and pop coffee shops and restaurants that are not run by out of town corporations. Next week, we will also have the first individually owned and run marijuana grow shop and retail store.
Stacy Johnson, of Rollinsville, has grown marijuana for the past 26 years and is happy to finally own his own business while growing and tending his own crop.
Located in the A-frame on the highway just south of town, the Harvest House will sell the product that is raised in the barn behind it. No outside growers or distributors and no middle men, unlike the other marijuana businesses in town.
Stacy grew up near Washington, D.C. becoming an estimator in the excavation market. He began growing pot when he realized that the only way to smoke good pot was to grow it. He read books and did research and came to the conclusion that good marijuana is the result of correct genetics and correct environment.
He created gardens and experimented, observing what worked and what didn’t. In the early 1990s, Stacy moved to California, near San Rafael. He noticed that all of his old friends who didn’t move to California moved to Nederland, and he visited our mountain town often. In 1998, he joined the migration and became an active home-grower in Nederland. In 2007 he went through the legal channels to become a medical marijuana care giver.
Opened the original Harvest House in 2009.
At that point, Stacy did not anticipate the legalization of marijuana. In 2011, he withdrew his application for medical marijuana with the state. “There were regulatory issues, when I applied to the state before the regulations were promulgated”. I applied for my current license in Dec. 2014. In February of 2015 I received state approval and then local approval in April But I had to make all sorts of improvements to the building; everything had to be brought up to regulatory standards.There were improvements to the mechanical cultivation area and ADA compliancy for the bathroom in the shop area, all other areas were brought to current building standards.
In late 2015, last fall, Stacy was finally able to begin cultivating. According to state regulations, a grow operation has to begin with clones purchased from another licensed marijuana grower. Stacy says they won’t allow cannabis that didn’t come within the state regulatory agency. This is mandated by the Marijuana Enforcement Division. To begin with, Stacy bought 100 plants four inches tall from an existing licesensee. They come in rooting cubes and include a variety of strains.
Stacy then plants them into dirt containers of potting soil that sit in large trays. After a little over two months, the plants were ready to harvest. Stacy said all the plants survived. When they were large enough, they were put under lights for 12 hours, then kept in the dark for 12 hours, forcing the plants to flow. The big cuttings were kept to breed with the initial crops and the plants were hung to dry.
When the Harvest House opens next week, it will have an inventory of a variety of extracts, hash products, edibles and home-grown pot.
“We harvested 20 varieties which we will be opening with next week,” says Stacy. “Marijuana is sold by the gram or portions of an ounce. Sales are limited to an ounce per transaction.”
Learning about the complicated regulations was a challenge and Stacy hired a general manager who is also a regulatory specialist . This is one of the biggest differences between the Harvest House operation and unlicensed growers in the area, which are not inspected or approved by any regulatory standards.
In the beginning, growers were told that pot would be sold to the public and would be regulated, much like alcohol is. Stacy says that marijuana is actually held to a higher standard in every area, more than other businesses. He says that there is no future in black market cannabis, that regulated markets are being developed all over the county and the black market will die because of the surplus of regulated cannabis.
“That’s why a mom and pop shop will survive. We are only one that I know about in this industry dominated by highly capitalized business models. The other two Nederland pot shots are owned by out of town chains, one of which only sell wholesale produced by other gardens. My model is to provide homegrown like product as opposed to commercial big warehouse grown.”
No pesticides and no fungicides are Stacy’s standard. He uses preventative means with a natural approach to keeping his crops clean. He says between planting and selling time only three or four people will touch the product. Stacy says that when the vote to legalize marijuana in Colorado came up, he voted against it because he didn’t believe the state had the potential to regulate the weed like it does alcohol. He says they also did a bad job with the regulation of medical marijuana.
“House Bill 1284 destroyed a vibrant and thriving cannabis business community by vertical integration. Everything had to be sold by a storefront association with a grow. Now businesses are not forced to be vertically integrated.”
Stacy’s business acumen developed as he grew up with his entrepreneurial father who recently came to see how Stacy’s business was developing. Stacy says, “He is proud of me. It is very nice to please my pop.”
