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GROW SISTER GROW<br />
SIOBHAN DANGER DARWISH<br />
SECOND GENERATION FARMER<br />
FOUNDER OF GROW SISTERS<br />
TELLS IT LIKE IT IS<br />
The Grow Sisters’ mission is to amplify sustainable growing<br />
practices while revealing and celebrating the culture of the<br />
northern California Cannabis community. Founded by me,<br />
Siobhan Danger Darwish and with the help of my sister Sloan<br />
Reed, to promote our family farm, Blessed Coast Farms.<br />
Though we were the first permitted Cannabis farm in California, we had<br />
no marketing budget, so we got brave and creative, filming videos and<br />
posting them on YouTube—radical moves for formerly outlaw farmers!<br />
Since then we have grown into a sisterhood of wise women who all<br />
have the same vision of creating sustainable value through our farming<br />
and business practices. Collectively we do not support extractive farming<br />
and business practices that harm the planet and squeeze people while<br />
enriching a few. We know from research and experience that longterm<br />
solutions are regenerative, gentle on the planet and supportive of<br />
people….and bonus: result in the highest quality cannabis in the process.<br />
We are from The Emerald Triangle - so called for the hills of green<br />
forests that make up much of Northern California; and for the Cannabis<br />
culture which has thrived there since the early ‘60s. The narrow roads,<br />
hours of travel from big cities and protection of the trees were ideal for<br />
the outlaws with hippie hearts who came to farm an illegal medicine.<br />
They came, like my father, to create their own communities, risking<br />
imprisonment, loss of property and death—with the conviction that<br />
cannabis was more important than the unjust laws with which they were<br />
persecuted.<br />
The communities we renegades created ran by different rules than the<br />
‘straight’ world—here in the Wild West business was conducted with dirt<br />
road handshakes, slang and big trucks. We stayed behind the curtain, and<br />
kept out of sight—developing our culture by growing food and medicinal<br />
gardens, raising our families on the hill and creating unique art and music.<br />
As a second generation grower, the War on Drugs was the war on us: on<br />
my parents, my friends and neighbors and myself. Our unique collective<br />
ethos required self-sufficiency and we survived through paranoia. Few<br />
understand that multiple generations of Cannabis cultivators live with<br />
PTSD as a consequence of continuing to grow a medicinal plant facing<br />
constant risk of persecution and attack. These farmers also have the<br />
greatest depth of knowledge on growing sustainable, outdoor, organic<br />
plants - this is the heritage that Grow Sisters celebrates.<br />
Medicinal and black-market Cannabis growing exploded again in The<br />
Emerald Triangle with the resounding passage of California Proposition<br />
215 in 1996. Written and championed by Dennis Peron in response to<br />
the raging AIDS epidemic, this proposition legalized the use of cannabis<br />
for medicinal purposes in California. This made California the first place<br />
in the world to challenge Cannabis’ worldwide prohibition.<br />
In 2<strong>01</strong>5 Gov Jerry Brown signed into effect the first Cannabis<br />
regulations and created a path to permitting. In Nov. 2<strong>01</strong>7, voters passed<br />
Prop 64, expanding the Cannabis market to non-medical consumers.<br />
All us outlaws got a good case of whiplash with these intense directional<br />
changes! We were faced with two risky options: stay the course in the<br />
‘underground’ market, or make the expensive, stressful, and public choice<br />
of legalizing our farm. In our community some talked of waiting for<br />
others to navigate the minefield of change before themselves coming<br />
out of the shadows. As a family we choose to go legal because we saw<br />
an opportunity that few ever have, to be the change and co-create the<br />
new legal market (differentiating ourselves from The Black Market.)<br />
Trailblazers that we are, we proudly obtained the first commercial<br />
Cannabis cultivation permit in California in June of 2<strong>01</strong>6, for our farm<br />
in Humboldt County.<br />
Once we had our cultivation permit we were overwhelmed by the<br />
many expected and unexpected financial challenges of staying permitted:<br />
County and State application fees, County and State taxes, professional<br />
service costs, implementing the Track and Trace program, and on and on.<br />
We quickly realized that we needed to build a brand to keep our business<br />
flowing, but as a self-funded team on a shoestring budget, Blessed Coast<br />
Farms had no line item for Marketing. Plus, Sloan was new to farming<br />
in 2<strong>01</strong>7 having joined me in California from Utah, so we combined<br />
our need and our opportunity: Educational videos on cutting edge<br />
sustainable growing, with a cultural peek behind The Redwood Curtain<br />
—the birth of the Grow Sisters.<br />
Our YouTube videos explore the grow season of 2<strong>01</strong>7 on Blessed Coast<br />
Farms, from seed to harvest. Topics range from hands-on cultivation tips<br />
to product education. After hiding our entire lives, we love joining the<br />
world of social media where we can normalize Cannabis and our lifestyle.<br />
ISSUE <strong>01</strong><br />
64
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