Jim Berry’s Homegrown: From My Basement to Yours
As you can probably tell from the title of this column, it’s all about homegrown. I’m a staunch supporter of home grow rights. As they say around FNM, “It’s not legal without homegrow.” I’ve embraced that. If lobbyists for the industry had their way, no one would be able to grow in the privacy of their own home for personal consumption. They like to frame home growers as either criminals or too inept to grow safe product. I push back on that narrative. Hard.
As for my credentials, I don’t have a horticultural degree but I’ve overseen countless grow cycles. I’ve grown under just about every type of light fixture in every type of substrate available. Dozens of strains over the years, pest and pathogen free, all from my 100 year old basement. I’m a techie and a perfectionist. And I love critical thinking. I jest that my first word as a toddler was, “Why?” I love to learn and I love to teach.
But still, why me? Well, indulge me while I step back in time a few decades to share my story. My love affair with the leaf started when I was 15 years old, on the back deck of a middle class home in suburban Detroit. A friend of my sister visited and must have discarded a seed in a pot of dirt sitting on the deck. It germinated and continued to grow for several weeks before I even knew what it was.
Unfortunately, my mom found out what it was just a few days after I did, and ordered my sister to get rid of it. I was happy to help her out. But it didn’t end up in the compost pile, it ended up drying in my closet. Now, there were no flowers yet, so it didn’t really smell that much as it dried. When it was dry, my friend Brett and I proceeded to smoke those leaves out of a pipe we had fashioned out of a Coke can.
It would probably be another six months before I experienced the actual flower. And so the courting began. Not an unusual story to many of the readers of these pages, but mine nonetheless.
The reason I’m really here began about 15 years ago when the state of Michigan legalized the use of medical cannabis and implemented a caregiver program. At the time, I was suffering through what is called avascular necrosis, a disease that results from the temporary or permanent loss of blood supply to the bone, among other subsequent conditions, which had ruined both of my hips and was wreaking overall havoc on both my body and quality of life.
I spent most of two years on and off of Norco and Percocet to manage pain both before and after seven surgeries. I know what it’s like to be addicted to opioids.
One day, I decided I was going to use my medical status to get a card and start growing my own flower. Honestly, at the time I didn’t see it as a pharmaceutical alternative, just a get-out-of-jail-free card for getting high. So, I sold a slightly-used silk screening machine that was collecting dust in my basement and bought my first set-up.
I quickly became addicted to cannabis instead - not to the consumption, but rather the cultivation! For someone who never before had much patience for gardening, I was immediately hooked. I remember rushing home from work to see each day what new magic had occurred. I actually learned patience from cannabis. As my interest and experience grew, so did my operation. What started out as a 2x4 grow tent ended up being 10 lights, allowing me to produce about 75 pounds a year.
What my licensed patients didn’t need, I sold to gray market dispensaries in Ann Arbor. Retail was by no means legal at the time, but by then, the city of Ann Arbor was allowing storefronts and generally, the state was tolerating it in a few Michigan cities.
Then, in 2016, the legislature approved commercialization of medical cannabis and in 2018, Michigan voters approved recreational use. And just like that, Michigan was off to the races. Like many growers, I scurried around trying to match my intellectual property with someone with the capital means to make it happen.
It was a much more daunting task than I anticipated, but eventually we teamed up with some jokers out of Toronto. Canada had recently approved public companies to invest in cannabis in the states and a flood of money came across the border.
A partner and I went to work researching and planning every aspect of a cultivation facility. Over a year, we received state pre-approval, lined up an attorney, an architect, MEP, vendors, HVAC consultants, and so on. We even negotiated a lease on a 24,000 sq. ft. building, at a time when it was almost unheard of to lease a cannabis-zoned property.
What happened next is not unlike many other stories in this space; our investors left us at the altar. They, with their infinite business wisdom, got involved in a reverse merger with Harborside in San Jose. They took the company public on the Canadian exchange and almost immediately lost millions. The IPO was about $5.50. Last time I checked, it was $0.43. Real financial prodigies. Anyway, they strung us along until they couldn’t lie to us anymore. I was heartbroken.
After that, I continued to grow as a caregiver for a while and eventually went to work for another would-be craft facility until a year later, when those investors were scared off by the falling prices of industrial cannabis.
So, I brushed off my resume and started interviewing for leadership positions at Michigan operations. After about two dozen interviews, I realized a few things - no facility in need of replacing a director is going to hire a cultivator who’s unproven in a large, licensed facility.
No matter what the angle, I didn’t see any fulfillment for me. What was I going to do? After a few days of panic, I made a commitment to myself.
I thought back to the days before cannabis, when I’d been in the video production business. With the sub-prime mortgage collapse and my subsequent health issues, my studio started to struggle.
Eventually, I began to resent the work, as it became less about creative expression and more about struggling to survive. Now, I decided that I wasn’t going to let my frustrations with the industry spoil my love for growing, as it had for editing.
So I decided to resuscitate my digital skills and combine them with my cultivation experience to hopefully create some new opportunities, or a new vision at least. Now with only two lights running, I started posting pretty pictures of flower on LinkedIn, along with whatever musings I had that day. As I witnessed the positive response, I slowly focused my posts on educating home growers, from my basement to yours. I decided to embrace the basement I fought so hard from which to surface.
It was through those posts that I got to know Dustin Hoxworth at Fat Nugs Magazine. He was a fan of my posts and as we got to know each other a bit, we found common ground and he offered this opportunity to me. And honestly, I couldn’t be more excited. I promise not to disappoint.
Next time, we’ll delve into the physiology of the cannabis plant and how we manipulate it to create the flower that we all love so much. We’ll also go over all the basic things to consider when beginning a home grow. And, if you stick with me long enough, you’ll laugh at yourself for ever having spent a dime buying mediocre flower at the dispensary, when you can grow absolute fire at home. I promise.