As many New Yorkers and tourists enjoy apple and pumpkin picking during the fall season, the state’s new recreational marijuana farmers are also harvesting their crop — with high hopes for the future.
On a 280-acre farm at Mystic Meadows in Hopewell Junction, Alex Keenan and Ryan McGrath have what’s left of their first acre of marijuana plants spread out over two acres behind a fence declaring it the “Field of Dreams.”
Giving WAMC a tour of the farm, the Hudson River Hemp LLC partners say because they previously grew hemp, they were given a license to move on the marijuana early on. Now, Keenan says, the growing season is winding down.
“What we have left out here is all of our full terms, we also grew auto flower plants, which are shorter, but they're already harvested, we'll show you those are up in the dry room right now. And these are going to get harvested, I mean, really soon. You can kind of see that the bud on them already. And we're going let those get just a little bit bigger, but you can see how they've got this kind of little white hairs if you get really close to them. And that's, that's the resin, that's what we're after here. So, these are going to get harvested probably next weekend,” Keenan said.
McGrath says while the leaves on the five-foot tall plants are out all season, the buds on the inside emerge this time of year. He says knowing when it’s ready to harvest is more art than science.
“They switch into the flowering phase when the sun cycle changes. So, once you go into 12 hours-or-less of sunlight at night, they'll start to enter into the flowering stage and you can see some of the plants that have some of these more yellow leaves are probably more than mature ones. So, that's (the plants) actually switching to pull nutrients into the flower, which is actually the actual marijuana bud and that's why the leaves are starting to yellow, because the energy is going into creating the bud.”
Keenan and McGrath say they jumped at the opportunity to grow cannabis after tiring of growing hay, which they called incredibly labor-intensive. They also started growing hemp just before the pandemic. But echoing many other hemp growers, they say hemp prices plummeted when the industry opened up to national competition. They say that’s why it was so important the state gave the first cultivator licenses for growing marijuana to hemp farmers.
The state Office of Cannabis Management has been issuing cultivator licenses since April and the first processor licenses were issued in August. What the public is waiting for is the date of the state’s first retail stores. The application period for the first retail licenses closed Monday.
McGrath commends the state’s rollout of the program, but echoes concerns voiced by other growers to WAMC about the deliberate timeline.
“We can see their (thought) process on why they gave the cultivators time to grow this season. If they didn't get us licensed in the spring, there's no way there'd be any product next year. Would I love if they had dispensaries already approved and all the processors already approved? Yeah. But, we're hoping that the end result will be there.”
State Office of Cannabis Management spokesman Aaron Ghitelman says he understands farmers’ concerns. Ghitelman says they expect to issue the licenses in mid-fall and have stores open by the end of the year.
“I think for a lot of people, we're asking people to trust the government and I understand why a lot of people might have some trepidation with that, but we're kind of showing our work. We're doing everything In this positive good faith effort and we haven't had any snags yet, and we're very concerned about making sure that these cultivators are able to bring their product to market and will move hell and high water to make sure that they're able to sell this year's harvest.”
After the plant is harvested, it goes to Hudson River Hemp’s drying room.
“We have to keep everything together, right? So, if it came out of a certain row and it's a certain strain, all those plants have to be kept in the same batch. Then we get few of us up on ladders and start hanging them from these plastic nets here and we hang them as close as we can to each other without them touching. And this room is obviously very insulated and we have a couple of air conditioners and these big guys up in the ceiling are industrial dehumidifiers. So, once all the plants are hung, we kind of seal the place up and we have monitors on the inside so we can track the humidity and the temperature. And we let the machines do their thing!”
The plants dry out for two weeks while hanging upside down. The two farmers say a few weeks ago, the drying room was filled from floor to ceiling. Now, only about 15 garbage-sized plastic bags remain. They will be processed by extractors to be made into edibles. They say if stored properly, the buds can last for quite some time. They hope to get some product moving by January or February.
Keenan thinks the market will outpace expectations. He’s increasingly hearing from people who choose cannabis over prescription drugs, especially given the opioid epidemic.
“Certainly, people who have been smoking it and hiding it very well under the radar do seem more comfortable coming out and saying things. Even once they hear that I'm involved with a cannabis grow operation, they're like, ‘Oh, well, let me tell you what's going on, what I've been doing the last 10 years.’ And you're just shocked by it. But,' OK, great, good for you!' Hopefully those people do kind of come back into the mainstream and start buying from legal dispensaries and become part of this market. Because, it'd be nice to know what you're buying and where it came from.”
While the black market isn’t likely to disappear entirely, McGrath believes the quality of the cannabis will attract new customers and smokers.
“I think outside of a lot of more experienced legacy growers and users, I think that's going be a large part of it. We get that all the time, like ‘This is this isn't what I smoked in high school!’ That's the most common phrase we get, probably.”
Already, they’re looking to future and how to expand as the industry grows. Keenan imagines the cannabis industry becoming similar to state’s homebrew industry. OCM’s Ghitelman confirmed to WAMC this type of “microgrow” license will be considered in the next few months. Keenan is excited about the prospect.
“They are talking about a new type of license. I don't know when, but where they're going to have kind of a farm brewery-type situation where you grow it on the farm, you consume it on the farm, you can sell it on the farm, it's kind of becomes like a tourist destination. So, I mean, that's something that could be on the horizon for us too.”
Although the crop might be changing, right now a familiar farm ritual is under way: patience.
