CANNABIS IN THE COUNTY
An interview with Covelo resident Blaire Auclair
Blaire Auclair and her husband, Daniel, are small-scale cannabis and vegetable growers operating as Radicle Herbs and Folk Life Farm in the valley floor, just outside of Covelo.
Both apprenticed on biodynamic farms and they are Demeter/biodynamic certified, Sun+earth certified and Dragonfly Earth Medicine certified and recipients of the Regenerative Cannabis Farm Award honoring farmers who are cultivating in a way that promotes environmental health while growing safe, pure, high-quality medicine.
They grow high quality food and produce for their community, grow high quality cannabis for the state of California and raise cows, chickens and merino sheep.
“Part of biodynamics is looking at the whole farm as a living organism that strives to be selfsustaining. All of our cannabis is grown in the ground and 30 percent of the ingredients used for compost comes from within the farm.”
Cannabis is incorporated into their garden with other crops— for every cannabis bed there are two vegetable beds.
They have two 5,000 square foot grows, one outdoor and one grown with light deprivation, allowing them to harvest two crops, one in the summer and one in the fall.
“We didn’t initially plan to do it that way but we’ve come to appreciate it. It’s hard to rely on one crop per season; the year before last, we had an early frost that destroyed much of our outdoor crop. If we hadn’t had our light dep crop, I don’t think we would still have our property today.
“Cannabis is the regal queen of the garden. It enables us to have a sustainable lifestyle while also producing vegetables, somewhat unattainable for those growing vegetables only.
“We’re very lucky to be growing both.”
She is also grateful to be growing on the legal market, to have gotten her feet in the door but says it has been nothing but challenging… to say the least.
“We’ve created a name for ourselves in the regenerative cannabis world and we sell to a variety of distributors throughout the state; there are people who want to buy our product and want to promote what we’re doing.”
They are first generation farmers, growing cannabis prior to 2016, and have provisional status, an “embossed receipt” from the county, and are in the process of applying for a state annual license.
“We’ve been trying for a long time to get an annual permit from the county.”
In the beginning of 2018, they went to the county with a list of required documents to attain a legal permit. They paid $1,500 and received an embossed receipt that shows the size of their cultivation and grants them permission to begin the process.
“We still have those same receipts from 2018.”
Having turned in every required document over the years, she doesn’t know what is holding the county back from giving them their annual permit. She has called asking if there is anything more for her to do; they tell her that is it and they will let her know what the next step will be.
“I am one of 800 or so who are in that queue.”
They recently hired a consultant who came out to do a site visit, assisting them in the completion of the county Appendix G that would allow them to get a state annual license; she feels hopeful about passing this process.
“If for some reason someone cannot pass Appendix G, they don’t get to continue with their current license and will have to pass with Phase Three requirements. There’s no way for them to congruently be able to cultivate and there are many who cannot afford to not cultivate for a year; we only found out about this in the last six months.”
Of the approximate 1,100 applicants, about 250 have annual permits from the county and about 800 have state provisionals and have to get through Appendix G.
“Cannabis growers have contributed 6 million in tax dollars to the county each year, abiding by the rules and, through no fault of our own, there is an issue. I think the county owes it to us to find a pathway forward for us to continue to cultivate. There needs to be a recognition of who we are as legal cultivators and the value we have to our communities and to the culture here in the county.
“There is also discussion of putting the legal growers in a bowl with the illegal growers; there needs to be a distinction between those of us who are doing everything we can to be right and those who aren’t.”
Auclair is against allowing 10 percent of property size to be used for cannabis cultivation but is in favor of allowing up to an acre on certain parcels.
“Let’s see how it goes for a couple of years, do a proper EIR and go from there.
“It’s not a good idea for the supervisors to try to push this through without an EIR for this larger expansion, especially considering our current situation. Water is a huge issue, not only for cannabis but for grapes and industrial agriculture, as well. We need to look at all of this and figure out how to conserve, especially when we are stretched so thin. We need sustainable development both economically and environmentally.
“Everything needs to slow down.”