Frank - Pot farm

2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.

All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frank, Matthew Gavin.

Pot farm / Matthew Gavin Frank.

p. cm.ISBN 978-0-8032-3784-1 (paperback: alkaline paper)

1. Marijuana industryCalifornia. 2. MarijuanaTherapeutic use.

3. Cannabis. 4. Frank, Matthew Gavin. 5. Agricultural laborers

CaliforniaAnecdotes. I. Title. HD9019.M382U64 2012

331.7'633790979415dc232011031406

Set in Electra by Bob Reitz. Designed by Nathan Putens.

For Hud Goliath and PSG

I WOULD SAY: At dusk, the crops silhouettes held to the sky like herons cemented into the earth, leaves flapping feebly in the Northern California wind, unable to lift themselves from the forthcoming hands of the Morning Pickers, and the watchful green eyes of Lady WandaI would say that, but I was likely stoned. Its just as likely that the crops didnt look like herons at all, there was no wind, and it might not have even been dusk. It could have been morning. It could have been afternoon. Having worked on a medical marijuana farm, filling six notebooks with scribblings of varying degrees of sense, and engaging along the way in the attendant and standard subcultural vices, I have made of myself an unreliable narrator.

Indeed, much of my memory of the experience exists somewhere between the hazy and the disturbingly vividit is the stuff of fever dream and emotion, and drugs, and hangovers, and hard physical labor. The pot farm, and that stage in our lives, still has a tenuous feel, an uncertain connection to reality. But thats exactly what the place and that time were: tenuous. I have, by default, forgotten certain things, and am deliberately going to leave others out, like how, on our drive out to California, my wife and I stopped along 1-80 to sleep in a small town outside Lincoln, Nebraska, one day after a tornado had destroyed much of the region. I am going to leave out the detail of the giant yellow Super 8 Motel sign that lay crushed in the middle of Main Street.

I am going to try not to dwell on the details of our lives up to this point: How we moved into my parents house after my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and how, because my father still works six days a week, and they maintain three large dogs, my wife and I became responsible, for just over a year, for the animals feeding, walking, watering, and shit removal. How we slept on an air mattress in the bedroom I grew up in (I will certainly leave out any discussion about how weird it was to have sex there, in that room where I discovered masturbation and fantasized about the popular girls while listening to a cassette of Bon Jovis Slippery When Wet, because everybody writes about that), and always, before falling asleep, cried too much, laughed too much, talked too much, were too fucking silent.

Im also not going to talk about how that stint drove us to do something deliberately foreign and off the grid, the way people do when they realize, but are fleeing from, the awareness that they may have just shed their youth, or whatever it was that allowed them carefreedom. How we quietly said goodbye to ourselves, packed up the car, and took off West, thinking, without saying it, that we could somehow have a hand in jump-starting a new phase in our lives. Some people have children, or shave their heads. We took off for the pot farmnot because were a marijuana-crazy couple or anything, but because it sounded like the experience could spark... well... something.

Given the nature of the pot farm and the people who work there, I am changing names as well as not talking about certain things. Unreliable. I am Binjamin Wilkomirski, and James Frey, and Helen Demidenko, and Wanda Koolmatrie. I am waiting to be crucified on Oprah, then sign a seven-figure deal.

So: I was likely stoned, and lets say it was dusk, and lets say the crops looked like some kind of water bird. My wife and I strolled the first few rows before the communal dinner, our shoes picking up soil as we moved. I do remember that: the place was soily, though soilys not a word (and soil-rich sounds too green, and soiled sounds like a dirty diaper). Unreliable.

I must admit: Im a little neurotic about engaging the whole mom-with-cancer thing. Books about such events seem ubiquitous these days, and I hope you dont think that this is one of those stories. I do have to warn you, though: Its likely to come up again, but only to further the main threadthe pot farm threadand to provide a dramatic (and truthful!) backdrop, such as in a passionate love story set against the backdrop of the post-revolution 30s and 40s Mexico (Jonathan Holland, review of Tear This Heart Out, Variety, December 19, 2008).

So: In Mendocino County, summer confuses itself with fall; fall with winter. Likewise, the seemingly dissonant landscapes comminglerocky headland shore, redwood forest, and wine country overlap, yielding an environmental cassoulet that somehow works together. You can fact-check that. Im pretty sure Im right.

The crops average just over six feet tall, looking down on my wife and me as if concerned parents, hands on their hips, braced to praise or punish. Behind us, the sun wounds the sky, and scores of tents from the Residents Camp whip like sailsanother would-be moveable species held in place with cement shoes, or stakes, or the bodies of the weary crew.

As you may have noticed, Im switching to present tense. Thats my choice, I feel, even though this happened in the past. Im hoping it lends this tale some of the same paranoiac urgency I felt while living it. If you care about that sort of thing, then...

We can hear the tinkling chorus of four acoustic guitars making their way through a mocking, overwrought rendition of Journeys Dont Stop Believin. (Here, I probably rolled my eyes and mocked a dry heavemy usual response to Journeythough secretly I was also choking down an uncool reflex to hoist my right fist into the air. Maybe I should have felt more comfortable being myself around my wife; after all, wed been married for five years at that point. What was wrong with me?)

As the moon asserts itself, the guitars suddenly go quiet, one of the singing voices missing the cue, left stranded without music: Hold on to that feeee-lay-eee-aayng! I am quietly jealous of the picking crew. They seem so at ease making asses out of themselves, which is to say, being human. I feel I can learn something from them.

A dull orange cloud of Durban Poison smoke hangs over the Residents Camp tonight. This exotic strain of medical marijuana was only this morning the bane of our existence, as the Pickers were asked to trim even more quickly and carefully than usual.

We have three times the requests for D.P. than any other, Lady Wanda told us this morning. More than Northern Lights, more than Trainwreck.

That Lady Wanda allows some favored Pickers to sample such an in-demand product speaks to her benevolence. As Johanna and I watch the sky drain itself of light, the Residents Camp seems to yawn as one. Some crew members take naps before dinner, some take walks, some stretch and meditate at the evening yoga class in Lady Wandas cavernous basement, some sit alone and smoke their paycheck, enjoying the crop.