Welcome back everyone to Reefer the Reefer the podcast. I'm your host, Little Farmer.
I'm here with Matt. He is the owner and founder of BrainStrap Genetics and also co-founder
and co-owner of the Flower Factory down here in area 420. Thanks for coming on, Matt.
Thanks, man. I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate you guys coming down to be able
to do your thing here, hook up the audio, get the podcast studio back up and going again
and continue to put out new content. Yeah, that's the plan, man. It's a beautiful
area down here. I love the concept. Thanks for you inviting me down here to meet everyone.
It's been a great opportunity to network and meet a lot of new people. And so I wanted
to talk to you about your cannabis consumption. What got you into it? You're obviously very
not obsessed, but your life is driven about cannabis just like mine. So it gives a lot
in common. And when was the first time you ever consumed cannabis?
First time I ever consumed cannabis was at the age of 13. I was at a little snowboarding
event with some of my friends and one of my friends had some weed. He'd already had a
joint rolled up and they asked if I wanted to smoke it. And I don't know if it's pure
pressure or just curiosity, but I did. And I smoked it and I didn't really get high off
of it my first time. I don't know. It was maybe because I was expecting it so much,
or anticipated the high, but I didn't feel like I got high off of the first joint that
I smoked. It wasn't until that same friend I linked up with him because he was the one
that kind of had the plug amongst our group of friends. And when you're 13, 14, coming
up, getting ready to be into high school, still in the junior high years, it was hard
to get weed. You had to know some older kids or some older people you were hanging with
to be able to score a bag. So it wasn't until I smoked off of a waterbomb, which is when
I really got high. And that was what it really hit me. I remember watching me myself and
Irene. It was a Jim Carrey movie and it was just high as hell, man. The laughs, the giggles.
What year was that? And you're from Indiana, correct? Yeah. So highly illegal in Indiana.
And it was probably not easy to get back in the day, was it? No, probably. It's probably
like for me, man, I'm 36. So that was probably like 99, 2000, when I'm talking about. Before
that it was, it really didn't get brought up too much to me. I mean, I went to school
where like, dare was a big thing. Like, dare, resist drugs and everybody's rocking the t-shirts
and weed was considered dope. And they had like the commercials and everything with like
the eggs frying and the skillets and all that shit. So, it's interesting to see where it's
come from a time like that to a time now where it's becoming more and more socially accepted,
more normalized and more and more states are jumping on board and recognizing the value
that this plant can bring. So many different avenues. It was the same way. I didn't get
high the first time. I didn't really feel it as much. Second time I smoked, it was out
of a homemade toilet paper roll with some aluminum foil, a little steam roller and the
quality was much better. And it slowed my brain down. And I was like, whoa, made my
nose run a little bit. I was like. At that time, when you were scoring bags, like did
they have a strain name or a cultivar name to it? Or was it, cause for me, it was just
like, it was kind of like, you know, watching a half baked when the dude pulls up to the
apartment and he's like, yo, you want the highs, mediums or the lows, you know, for
me, it was like, he either got kind of bud or in my generation, it was considered more
chronic at that point. But I'm from Indiana kind of bud, you know, the terminology, if
you look into some of that comes from that deer Creek era, the dead heads, you know,
traveling through. And that's where the kind of terminology kind of came from, as well
as the bubblegum strain. And for me, when I was coming up, it was more chronic. Like
if you were getting high grade cannabis, it wasn't like it was the chronic strain. It
was just considered chronic because you were usually paying $20 a gram for it. You know,
there wasn't many strain names when I started smoking. It was swag, Mexican brick. Yeah.
Or as mids or kind of bud. And if you had some good, some good bud coming from the dude,
usually, I mean, if you were trying to grow, which not a lot of people work as if growing
up in a prohibition state, it was some risky shit to try to grow. And because one, if you're
young, you want to, you want to talk about it. You want to brag about it and flex, you
know, and it's hard to hold back quiet and not tell anybody. And that's like the number
one rule you'll read in any type of gorilla growing is don't talk about what you're doing,
you know, unfortunately, or keep your circle very small. And so, yeah, if you had some
good bag seed, man, you were for me, I was just throwing it down on the ground and seeing
what I got. I had no idea what I was growing. You know, I kind of had an idea what it leaned
towards, you know, a little bit from the lineage, but it was kind of a guess at that point.
You know, you didn't just get, you know, seeds. I mean, you did, you could get them from like,
you know, certain seed banks at that time. But the genetics were kind of like me, you
know,
we always had a hash plant. Now those famous for West Virginia, West Virginia or a hash
plant and or it was swagweed. That's all we ever got back home when I was young. When
I got to college, we started getting mids. It was shipped from all over just people from
college there from all 50 states, national, international. So we got a little bit of stuff
from everywhere, but it wasn't available to every everybody. Yeah, you had to know somebody.
Yeah. I mean, I do I do remember smoking some like old school skunk back in the day. I mean,
I don't know if it was exactly roadkill skunk or not. It did have a roadkill trait. I mean,
I've seen plenty of dead skunks on the side of the road and I know what that smells like.
And it was very similar. But it's hard for me to say, man, that was that was kind of
before my time. And so I kind of got the back end of that that that ride. You know what
I mean? So yeah, I didn't I didn't get to choose any of the strains until I came to
Colorado and I came here in 2000. So in 2000, it was still illegal here. But you were getting
some skunk strains over some very infamous people in the mountains growing at that time.
They had a lot of good, lot of good strains. That's where I came into the to the good herb.
Yeah, awesome. Have you ever had any problems trying to get herb in your days? Like been
in any situations trying to get a hookup? The dry dry spell season? Yeah, everybody
had dry spells. Yeah, it was like a seasonal thing, you know, and you don't really realize
it until you start cultivating cannabis. You know, when you're just you're just buying
it as a consumer, you don't put much thought into the cultivation of it. You're just looking
for fireweed that gets you high. But if you're cultivating it, and you have been for a while,
even like in the late 90s, early 90s, and before my era, you knew when dry season was
coming up. And so you wanted to make sure you're prepared because a lot of times the
local dudes, if you will, didn't have the supply. And so you had to resort to either
lower grade or shake or whatever you could find scraping your hash out of your pipes,
you know, we were from the country, we ended up having to get out to the city, not me personally,
but I know people who would drive down to the inner city, try to find some score down
there and end up getting robbed. Yeah, or end up getting pulled over because they are
so far out of place without out of state tags. Oh, yeah, I got ripped off in New Orleans
like that one time I gave it due to money and he never never came back with my money.
I was so young and gullible that I didn't think much of it. But looking back at that
now is a very stupid decision. But yeah, I'm the same way, man. I'm from the country from
the backwoods of Indiana, spoil banks, cornfields all around me, very few neighbors. So like
when we went into the city, the closest city to me at that time was Evansville, Indiana.
And it's probably the I think it's the third largest city in Indiana, you know, next to
Fort Wayne and Indianapolis or Marion County. So I never really went into the city too much
to score, but because I could usually get it from some of the locals around me. And
and they they weren't necessarily growing it. They were just bringing it in from their
sources. You know what I mean? So it was kind of I mean, it's kind of neat, you know, looking
back at it then it was like, you know, highly illegal and you're going to get locked up.
But now it's like, it's a everyday part of our life. You know, we're transporting product
every day. We're selling product every day legally in the state that recognizes that,
which is nice not have to be in hiding anymore. So yeah, so awkward when you go back to another
state that I can't do it, man. I can't do I haven't been back to Indiana really since
I've been out in Colorado just because I just don't really want to go that long without
my weed. You know, I don't want to go from being a medical patient to driving across
state line and being a criminal again, you know. So yeah, that's where I wanted to get
talking about to you were talking about you started recreationally, but you ended up getting
sick and cannabis turned out to be your medicine. Yeah, talk about that little. Yeah. So when
I was 26, it was like my the end of my sophomore year in college, I got diagnosed with Hodgkin's
lymphoma stage two cancer. And so I had to go through chemotherapy and radiation treatment
to get cured of that or in remission now. But yeah, I found a lump growing on the side
of my neck. I was in the best shape of my life. I was like 215 pounds. I was working
out every day, great college diet, like had plenty of financing to back me from the Marine
Corps what I'd saved up to get me through college. So but then I had found a lump in
my neck. And I didn't think much of it. I just thought it was like a head cold or just
like some flare up from you know, six season coming up where it was getting cold, but it
never went down. And so I like, you know, eventually I went in to get it checked out
and they did some, they like jabbed a big gauge needle into like, it was a tumor growing,
but I didn't know it at this time. And they just jab this big gauge needle into this tumor
to get cell samples to look at the cells underneath the microscope. And that's when I got a phone
call a couple days after I had that procedure done. And they told me right on the phone,
they were just like, Hey, is this Matt Aldridge? And I was like, yeah, this is him. And he
was like, well, this is Dr. So and so from Indiana University medical, we want to let
you know that your test results came back positive for Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer. We
don't know what stage it's in yet. But stand by your phone for the next 24 hours to seek
additional medical assistance. And I was just like, Whoa, like mind just blown instantly,
you know what I mean? Because I had no clue what Hodgkin's lymphoma even was at that time.
It wasn't even on my radar, man. I was thinking about so much other different stuff at that
point. So then I started to go on WebMD and go down the rabbit hole with forums and online
readings. And I was like, Oh shit, you know, luckily I had a good cure rate. I think the
cure rate for that cancer is around like 80 something percent now. But you know, I know
other people, close people in my family, my dad died of cancer, my grandfather died of
cancer and I've already had cancer. So it's very apparent it's in my genetic code, you
know, as a breeder, I have to recognize that, right. But all I can do on my end is try to
live a better life, you know, lifestyle change my diet, how active I am, what I'm exposed
to go in and cut it out and then, yeah, they did a biopsy on this tumor on this side of
my neck. And then they did a biopsy on a tumor on this side of my neck. And then that's when
I started like the heavy shit like chemotherapy, radiation, all that. And man, they had me
prescribed to so much shit when I when I had cancer and I'm 26, you know, 215 pounds going
into this. So I'm in good shape, a lot better shape than a lot of people when they get their
diagnosis. I was very fortunate and very lucky. But they had me on stuff for like anxiety,
depression, constipation, nausea, pain, you name it, man. And like, so that's when that
at that point in my life, and I had been cultivating a little bit up until then, as far as like
popping beans, maybe dusting some branches with some pollen here and there, from some
strains from some guys in the circle that gave me some old school genetics to work a
lot of hay stuff I was running at that time, Mako Hayes, golden tigers, stuff like that.
But then at that point, that's when I really, really got into cultivating cannabis, and
I really, really took it serious. And I started researching and learning about stuff like
subcooled super soil recipe, how to how to make my own organic blend, collecting my rainwater,
all that stuff, what to look for in plant deficiencies, pest identification. And I'm
just researching all this online at the time, because there wasn't a lot of avenues to go
down. Like you couldn't just plug into a podcast then, you know, podcasts were just becoming
a thing or they weren't. From what I remember, it was non existent. I don't even think the
earliest cannabis podcast was going then. And especially not about cannabis. Yeah. So
you had to go down like, you know, roll it up or what is it grass city forum or whatever.
And you had to kind of read the old online forums to really get your information and
you and you and it was always so sketch being in prohibition states because you like you
get this like weird anxiety feeling that the feds are watching you on your proxy servers
and everything. They say that the cannabis is the one that makes you paranoid. But like
you just mentioned, I think it is the actual fact that it's illegal that makes you paranoid.
It's not the cannabis consumption itself. It's the fact that it's illegal. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
I mean, I was growing some really like racy high dominant sativa strains then. I mean,
they were like, you know, a guy in the group called a rocket fuel, but like rock and roll
juice, sorry. But like it kind of, it kind of heightened that a little bit. But yeah,
you're right, man. It wasn't necessarily the cannabis. It was all these other external
influencing factors that were on, on my mental state at that time for growing a plant, man,
you know, the plant that helps me and to kind of get back into the whole cancer thing with
this, I was just upfront and honest with my oncologist and my radiologist. I told him
straight up. I was like, look, I'm not taking any of this medication you prescribe me because
I don't like the way it makes me feel, man. It makes me feel like a zombie. Like I'm all
drug. I can't respond properly. When you're asking me questions, I have to like think
about it. And it just, it just sucked. I hated the way I felt. So I would start making brownies.
And that's when I started getting into like edibles and making my own brownies. I was
still consuming as far as like smoking it every day, but it was really the edibles when
you're going through like chemotherapy and radiation and you've got the nausea associated
with all that and you don't feel like eating and food doesn't taste the same. It was the
edibles that really pulled me through, man. And I'd make a big ass batch of brownies
and that brownie batch would last me a couple of weeks. And I'd make another batch. And
like I said, I didn't lie about shit. When I went to the VA, I told him right away. I
was like, yeah, I use cannabis every day. My oncologist didn't have anything to say.
I felt like she was pretty supportive of it, but my radiologist did have something to say.
And he was totally against it. He was trying to convince me that the marijuana was going
to cause additional potential cancer of the throat and just all this stupid shit that
had no evidence to back it up. It was very clear where his political stance was on it.
And so yeah, I was like, all right, well, I'm going to listen to what you have to say,
dude, but I'm going to take it with a grain of salt because like I see what it's doing
for me. I see what it's done for people in the past. And then after I got cured of cancer,
you know, eventually I watched my dad go through it. He had esophageal cancer. He passed away,
withered away in two years. And the only thing that was really like helping him with pain
other than until he got to the point of like fentanyl pumps and all that was the hay strains
we were growing right there together. You know what I mean? Just kind of, you know,
all the old, all the homegrown cannabis that we had Mason jars locked up in the safe, we
were just popping jars. We'd bust that out a year or two later. It was still good smoke,
you know? And that's how we kind of got through without having to go through the side dude.
You know what I mean?
Well, that's one big thing. I came to Colorado and I started eating a lot more edibles. I
felt a lot better, especially during COVID when I had really bad fatigue and was in bed
for three or four days. Some high grade sativa edibles gave me energy and they made me feel
better. I could actually get something done when I felt like crap and nothing else was
helping.
Yeah. It's tough because like those same strains, it'd be tough for me to grow those outdoors
here where I'm at in Colorado, because it's just a lot different, longer growing seasons
back in the Midwest. You've got, you know, a little bit more humidity. It's not near
as dry. But yeah, it's just a different, just a different, I mean, right around here, it's
mostly hybrid and heavy, you know, indica leaning, Kush lineage, in my opinion. So,
how has your consumption changed? You said you started smoking edibles. Do you enjoy
doing dabs, browsing, or topicals at all?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like concentrates of all types, dabs. I've done the salves and
lotions and stuff like that. I've even dipped into the CBD side of things, you know, as
far as tinctures, sublingually, capsules, you name it. I've tried it. Other than suppositories,
I haven't dipped into the suppository thing yet, but I know there's a couple guys out
there that are trying to make a niche into that, you know, side of things.
When I worked in the dispensary, for sure, for females who had menstrual issues, the
suppositories from phoria, off the shelf. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have good things
about them. They didn't make you high, but they may really work for localized help for
certain aches. I can imagine somebody had colon cancer, it would really help.
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, there's just so many beneficial sides to this plant. We're
just tapping into it, you know? And I mean, rosin has just become kind of a new thing,
I felt like, within the last decade. Before that, it was like bubble hash, and you were
just taking a lot of time to make good hash. Now you can do it fairly quick, and you can
do it right at home, just by looking at a YouTube video, you know? Pretty cool.
I like bubble hash. That's the first type of hash I ever smoked. Other than that, I
do like some rosin, but other than that, I don't really dig the high THC shatters too
much. I knew people would do, it's just not for me though.
Yeah, in the beginning, I was trying a lot of the BHO, butane honey ash oil, and it
was good, man. It's still good. I like to smoke it. Somebody's got some in front of
me. I'll take a dab of it. I'm not going to turn it down. But any more when it comes to
dabs, I prefer fresh rosin. Fresh rosin all day, man. You know, low temp, fresh rosin,
right off the drip, put it right in the container and fire it up in the in the car to two, shout
out Focus V. So do you have, or have you ever had any bad
reactions to consuming cannabis or know anybody who has had bad reactions that you've had
to deal with? Myself personally, no, but I'm able to do
it and have, at this point, I'm able to consume cannabis with discipline. You know what I
mean? And that's for really anything out there, whether you're consuming alcohol, whatever
it may be, psilocybin, you do it in small increments, discipline status. But I mean,
there have been times in the past when I was younger that I've smoked some of these hay
strains where I've kind of felt like my heart was going to race out of my chest, you know,
kind of that, that rush, if you will. I had a cousin, that's the only person I've really
known other than maybe my mother. She had a bad experience one time because, and it
wasn't the cannabis, like we were just talking before we came into the studio here, it was
the alcohol is what did it. She was drinking a bunch of homemade wine with my dad. They
were getting ready to go to a kiss concert out in the parking lot. They were pre-gaming.
Dad just popped open a barrel of homemade wine he had made, elderberry and blueberry
mix. And so they were getting fucked up on that. And then somebody had a joint in the
circle and lit it up. My mom hit it a couple of times. And my dad told me that they were
in like the women's restroom, the entire concert, because she was getting sick because she had
kind of that merry-go-round spin feeling, you know? And I think that's the thing. If
you're jumping into this for the first time, or you're just getting into it, might just
separate the two, you know, alcohol from cannabis use, you know? And then as you kind of get
used to it, maybe you can have a glass of wine and smoke a joint and be okay. But if
you're going into it and you're already like shit-faced on alcohol, it's probably not going
to leave a good taste in your mouth for your first cannabis experience.
Yeah. I know that happened to a good friend of mine. She had consumed after a few beers
first time, got sick, will never smoke again. And it just turned her off. So I recommend
the same thing. If you're out and you're in a new state where it's legal and you want
to experiment, oh yeah, I want to try it just because I can. It's legal and I'm not going
to get in trouble. Don't do it after drinking a couple of drinks. Do it first and then go
drink a couple of drinks. And then I had a cousin that I'm assuming it was something
pretty racy as far as the height to him. And again, this affects everybody differently
here. But he had smoked some cannabis with some friends and when he was younger, and
he apparently thought he was going to have a heart attack and had to go to the hospital
or whatever. He was fine. They gave him an IV, but it was just kind of that freak out
moment. You know, you kind of start to sweat and your heart's racing and you're just like,
whoa, you know what I mean? It's almost like, what's that shit you used to smoke that was
like, they called it legal wheat. Salvia. Yeah, dude, that shit. Like how the fuck did
that get on the shelves? You know what I mean? Yeah. It is not anything like smoking cannabis.
No, dude. Not at all. If anybody out there smokes salvia thinking it's like cannabis,
do not even put them in the same category. You're like, you basically hallucinate on
it for like a good 60 seconds. Like you kind of come in and out and it's just like, and
you're sweating and it's just like, it doesn't feel right. It's not the same high as what
it would be with some homegrown or just any type of weed in general. Yeah, I tried it
once when because cannabis was illegal, dry season, trying to find a substitute. And I
was like, Salvia, try this. Did not like it. It was one of the worst feelings I've ever
had in my life. Yeah. Yeah. Panic almost. Yeah. It was a thing when I was in the Marine
Corps, we couldn't smoke cannabis because we would get urinalis tested. So some guys
would go out to the local pipe shops and would buy that and bring that back. And we smoked
some of it. And I was just like, dude, this is not like being high. Like this is some
heavy shit, man. Whatever is on this. So yeah, I like, I used to drink or drink alcohol heavily
and I use cannabis to wean myself off personally. I find when I'm in another country for more
than a month and I'm not smoking cannabis, I'll tend to start drinking alcohol again.
Yeah. As a substitute, just more out of nervous, wanting something to do with my hands, fixation
on putting my hand to my mouth. You smoked cigarettes before? I used to. Yeah. I used
to smoke cigarettes when I was in the Marine Corps for a little bit. So I smoked blunts
heavily all day, but I don't recommend it because it has a little tobacco in it. It's
just a way for me to hold something in my hand as a crutch. So I'm not holding a beer.
Well, it's the pesticides and the blunt wraps too. That's a thing. There's a couple podcasts
out here that have harped on this. Bill Drake does a great job talking about pesticide levels
in blunt wraps. Some of the more common ones that people use, Swister Sweets. I'm not throwing
any brands out here to blow anybody's brand off or anything like that, but these are facts.
Bill Drake did the independent research on this. You can look him up. He's got all of
this. Talking about Swister Sweets blunt wraps and some of the main top selling other ones
and how high of pesticide levels residuals are still within that tobacco leaf, even after
it comes to you as a consumer on the shelf. It's pretty crazy. The numbers are astronomically
higher than anything would be approved by the FDA.
So that leads to another point that I wanted to get at too about getting weed illegally,
especially in illegal states and being laced with pesticides and things like that. It
could be really harmful. I think a lot of the tobacco companies or a lot of tobacco
products are already laced with these pesticides too and they're very harmful for your chest.
I don't like smoking the blunt. It's just, it's comforting.
If somebody's got it, I'll hit it. Yeah. You're not going to see me go out. You're not going
to see me behind the counter buying blunt wraps. If somebody passes me a blunt in a
circle, I'll probably hit it. But yeah, again, I'm not going out of my way to roll it up
with a blunt wrap. I like just like the hemp papers for the most part, but even some of
the rolling papers, you got to be kind of careful with what you're investing in because
they can contain heavy metals. We found that out in the commercial. And then when we go
to send pre rolls out, it's not necessarily sometimes the flour that's popping hot for
heavy metals. It's the paper that you're using because the entire pre roll itself or the
entire joint or blunt or whatever you're selling is getting tested before that goes into the
consumer's hands. So that's another point too. You, you news
consumers out there's be careful what you're consuming out of cheap papers can lead to
chest issues with your lungs. Like I said, I've had bronchitis and pneumonia a couple
times in the past. And most of the time it's from smoking bad cannabis or not smoking cannabis
and air pollution. And I'm a hundred percent believer that the cannabis breaks up the phlegm
in my chest. I can spit it out. It's like a expectorant and it, it helps a lot. And
I haven't got sick since I've had my own cannabis that I grow myself. It's clean.
That's what I was going to say. Yeah. If you can, and you're in a state where it's legal
and you know, I'm not condoning anything illegal here, but it's, it seems to me it's always
better in my opinion, when it's cultivated on your own, you do that yourself, whether
that's through, you know, hydro salt style or organic style, I would just rather cultivate
my own versus going to the dispensary to buy it. Now with that being said, I'm saying that
from a consumer standpoint, as well as an industry standpoint, cause I work in the commercial
industry as well during the day, do the brain strap stuff and a home grower and enthusiast
by night and the evening. So it's, it's 24 seven for me. My whole life is cannabis. It
has been since I've been in Colorado. I mean, even before I jumped into this industry, I
was growing hemp. So from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, I mean the touching
plants, I'm talking cannabis over kind of around the scene. So again, back to that.
If you have the opportunity to, you get some good genetics, good clones, good beans, whatever
it may be. I always encourage you to grow your own. It's always going to be better than
what you're going to buy on the shelf. And it's going to get better and better like a
fine wine. The more you do it, whether that's indoors or outdoors.
Yeah, I agree with that. I think everybody should at least try to grow cannabis once.
If you can't do it, then you can go to the store and buy it. If you can do it, continue
to grow it. I think that's one thing I want to keep alive is home grows. Definitely the
caregiverships. You can see here, the caregiverships in Colorado is not destroying the businesses
out there. They're still making their money. I was super surprised when I came to Colorado
that not more people are actually growing their own cannabis when they have the opportunity,
but very few people do actually. Yeah. And I mean, if you're growing vegetables
or fruits already, I mean, what's it to you just to stick a couple of cannabis seeds or
some hemp? If you want to get some CBD, throw some hemp seeds down. If you're around me,
just make sure you pull your males though. I got no seeds in my backyard. I got the CBD
plant going now and I got a CBG. I want to make tinctures. I had a really fell in love
with the tinctures and that's one great thing. If you grow your own, you got a surplus most
of the time. You can toy with it. If you fuck it up, you fuck it up and you don't have to
worry about it. Man, I just wasted so many hundred dollars and it's down the tube. You
grow it yourself. You can experiment and find out exactly what works for you. Like I said,
I've started using topicals. I've found topicals, localized areas. If you do it right with the
alcohol tincture, it is sub or how it's systemic. Yeah. It's when it soaks through the skin.
I know what you're trying to say. I can't think of the name for it either. Yeah. So
it's right there. Just getting a systemic trans dermal is the word I'm trans dermal.
Yep. And it helps arthritis. My mother's a believer. She used to hate it. The smell
now, I wonder if it helps from arthritis. It helps. I mean, it does a smell. She's not
smoking. She doesn't want to feel lethargic. She hates cannabis, but she finally realized,
Hey, it's helping him in a better way. So she's okay with it. I'm not saying she's pro
usage for me, but she's okay with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's always interesting. You know,
like 10, 20 years ago, it seems like every, if you were against it, you hated the smell
of it, you know, like that skunky smell or that kind of musky smell. But now as times
went on, more and more people like the smell of it. I mean, we're talking about terpene
profiles left and right. What is your favorite terpene profile? Have you like come across
the terpene profile here in Colorado? You've never seen before, never smelled before. That's
just like, wow, that's something different. For me, it's got to be me. For me personally,
I like offensive stuff. I like the offensive terpene profiles, the terpene profiles that
are like the ugly child of the bunch, you know? And I'm not saying that on like the
growth structure, you know, stuff like that. I'm saying that on the way it smells, you
know, I'm looking for stuff that's offensively gross, funky, skunky, rotten, putrid smell.
That's what I like. What I call face slap funk. But some people don't like that. Some
people like the, there's a, the one that surprised me the most when I came here was actually
a Tropicana. It smelled like Hawaiian fruit punch. People love it. It made a mouth water
and they would come back and buy it.
And the flower looks good too. You know, it's one of the, it's the type, it's the type of
strain where it's got not only, you know, violet, purple, amber fan leaves, it's also
got that on the calyx as well, all the way up to the pistols. So when you have stack
like that and, and eye appeal like that with flavor and smell, that's going to move on
the shelf all day. You know, you got to hit all those categories when you start getting
into stuff like that. But yeah, me man, it's more about, it's more about kind of that kind
of gross, rotten kind of nasty smell. I've got a couple of things in the backyard this
year from some new beans I'm running. One's a super silver haze crossed with a dirty taxi.
The dirty taxi came from JJ from Top Dog Seeds. And that one is called diaper. And it does
smell like, this is pretty gross, man, but it smells like baby shit, you know, like,
fresh baby shit in a diaper is what it smells like when he rubbed the stock. I mean, some
of the phenos I smell kind of smell a little bit like burnt rubber or like burning rubber.
Like if you've got a tire, a pile of tires, you're burning and you walk across the smoke
once and that catches your whiff and your nose hairs, something like that. But that's
the shit I like, man. You know, I mean, I got some moms and some high fruity sweet stuff
that's out there, you know, some of the newer stuff that's a little bit more sweet, fruity
and good eye appeal with like trichome density and stuff like that. But for me, man, it's
really it's got to have a nose right off the bat.
That Harambee breath. I've heard good stuff about that smell and the Tropicana funk or
trop. What was it? The trop funk?
Yeah, trop funk. I'm getting ready to actually harvest one of those in the backyard in like
a day or two.
And that's Tropicana mixed with?
No.
Or what is what's the lineage on that one?
So the lineage on that is tropical runs crossed with garlic breath 2.0 and that trop runs.
So there's two trop runs out there. There's one that Tiki man did one and exotic genetics
did one. The one I pulled from was from exotic genetics, which is a tropic truffle crossed
with runs. He made the trop runs. The other one from Tiki man, I believe has got skittles
in it. So that's the difference between the two there. We kind of decipher that. And then
the garlic breath 2.0 sides from thug pug genetics, which is a Mendo breath crossed
with GMO.
That's one of your.
I'm sorry. GMO cross a Mendo breath female to male.
That's one of your males you pollinate.
And that's the male that I have currently. That's the dad of all the brain strap crosses
was that garlic breath 2.0. He is undeniable funk, heavy GMO recessive on the terpene
profile, big stature stack, tight pollen stacking with purple stripes on the pollen sacks.
So which is kind of cool for that little extra icing on the cake there. But yeah. And then
his offspring that he produced, it just, man, I'm seeing it. I've seen it now. This is my
second season outdoor that I've ran those seeds from, from that mail and they just crush
every year, you know? And I think the hack out here is to get your beans out early. When
I say early, I don't mean like May or June, 2023 spring. I'm talking like here in a couple
of weeks, you know, before the frost or the snow hits, go ahead and barely trench some
rows, lay some beans down. If you've got plenty of beans to throw out, go ahead and lay that
shit down. What comes up in February or March, it may get snowed on. It may, it may go through
some frost damage, but it's not going to be able to fuck with that taproot once that taproot
dives down deep enough and it locks in like an anchor. You're not going to get those same
results like you would with the clone, where it's a short root rhizosphere starting to
spread out more shallow surface area. So getting your beans out early, like October, November
timeframe, whatever, wherever you're at in the region of the US.
Right. And they get that taproot holds them down. Oh yeah. And the shallow roots. And
you'll see it in, yeah, man, you'll see it in the stocks too. Like the, they'll just,
they'll hold tight. I mean, this year I've got it to where I don't even have to cage
my plants in the past years. I've had to cage my plants like tomatoes, because the wind
is so heavy around here in the fall that I'm able to beat that out and have a harvest here
in a couple of days before it gets super, super windy, dusty, potential hail, you know,
Jack Frost is going to come knocking and hit us with some like, you know, upward 20 degree
nights here soon. I mean, this morning when I woke up, it was 37.8 degrees on my front
porch. So if you've got genetics that got perp in them, they're showing it right now
in Colorado straight up. So
I saw a lot of purple yesterday walking the fields here. And I think it's probably four
generations of planting the way you do that will naturally select the strongest and breed
what will grow in your area with the same strain as the seeds. And you keep going with
those same genetics, the natural selection will bring out and you'll have huge trees
here.
So it's like 10 to 15% of the genetics are influenced by the environment by environmental
factors. So where they're grown, that's like they say like I could I could take a cut of
Oreos, let's say I'm growing it here in Colorado, but then I give a homie a cut of Oreos in
Florida, they're probably going to smoke different, probably going to taste different, probably
going to smell different, even though it's the exact same thing.
It makes a big difference humidity, everything makes a big difference. One big thing we learn
is if a bug attacks it brings out a lot of turps sometimes. So those outdoors with bugs
attacking could bring out different turps.
Yeah, yeah. Shout out Queen of the Sungrown. She was talking about that a little bit with
you know, pest pressure will bring out higher cannabinoid levels as well as trichome density
or content. So definitely something to consider there. And I've noticed it this year with
some of the grasshoppers, man, they just fucking do a number on the fan leaves in the back
on some of the outdoor. But the ones that are they're chewing on the most it seems like
the frost is just out of this world. I mean, it's so super frosty right now. It's crazy.
It's a natural defense mechanism, right? Yeah. So you say you like to grow all your personal
home stuff outdoors. Well, what about the flower factory? You're co-founder of the flower
factory. You do have commercial license.
I do. Well, just real quick, I do do some stuff indoors. My indoor cultivation method
is different than my outdoor cultivation method. So I'm not I'm not a indoor living soil organic
kind of guy. I'm going to try to jump into it a little bit. I might designate one room
for that. I got some some of the homies and the people are really into that scene and
I can get some good knowledge off of those guys. But for me, it's pretty much hydro indoors.
I'm hydro all the way indoors, outdoors, living soil, native soil, water only, no pH, maybe
some fish emulsion here and there. Over at flower factory commercially, we're hydro grow.
So for the commercial, it's a different different format, right? Just to make it. Yeah. And
I mean, you could pull it off. You can do it organically. You can do a living soil style.
It's just for us in the model that we're running. It's this is what works for us. But you got
to do that in the future. You mentioned to me. Yeah. Yeah. Mix it up a little bit for
outdoor. Yeah. Yeah. For like raised bed system, native soil. Yeah, exactly. All that stuff.
I'm going to get some ferments and do all that stuff like that. But when it comes to
the indoors in the greenhouse, warehouse, shipping containers, in our model, we're doing
it hydro style as much automation as we can. I still have to intervene on certain tasks
like transplanting, identifying certain deficiencies, scouting for pests, etc. But yeah, I'm trying
to as much as I can automate with that, the easier it's going to be and it's going to
save us a ton of money on labor cost. You know, I think right now labor is like $20
an hour, which isn't a lot of money to live on. If you think about it, if you're coming
in as a laborer or 1099 employee, but that's stuff that you got to take into consideration
as a business owner, you know, is that, you know, your labor costs is going to eat you
up. If you're hand trimming, your labor costs is going to eat you up. Sure. The flower looks
good. Sure. It's going to have great eye appeal on the shelf, but what is your overhead? You
know, how much are you selling your packs for? These are all things you have to take
into consideration. What are the facts showing? What are the analytics showing? And let's
build the blueprint and the bulletin board from there.
Yeah. I know a lot of the tax implementations have changed the way that the legal market
is and the quality from the grow to the shelf is different than what you can find at home
sometimes. It's just the facts. And that's why I encourage the home grow. Everybody should
home grow. But if they can't, yeah, then yeah, you got to go. You got to go get from a source,
right? And if, and preferably a legal source, if you're in a legal state, I mean, I mean,
yeah, I know there's people that are here in Colorado that still support the traditional
market and the black market much love and respect to those guys that are out there still
fighting the good fight. But if you've got a good, reliable legal source, like a dispensary
that is putting out quality flour, I would just hit them up and still support that, especially
if they're a mom and pop business or a small businessman. Like that's, that's who I would
be giving my money to me personally, versus trying to support like big corporate, you
know? And that's the good thing about where we are here at area 420 to bring it back is
that we are the largest mom and pop owned independent cannabis subdivision in the world.
We do have some corporate companies out here operating. I mean, we're a massive subdivision,
but we also have a lot of mom and pops and a lot of these mom and pops are all cultivating
differently. They're either hydro, organic, I mean, this guy's growing in cocoa, pro mix
blends, build a soil blends, raised beds with earthworms and cover crops to full blown hydro,
deep water culture, et cetera.
So right now, if somebody was in the state of Colorado or somebody came to visit from
out of state, where could they find some of the flower factory products on the shelf so
they can support you as a small business owner?
So right now we've got pre-rolls, our purple punch pre-rolls are on the shelf at High Valley
Dispensary here in Moffitt, Colorado, AKA Cush, Colorado, 1143. And then we've also
got a couple of other spots out on the Western slope. I don't know the names of those, but
they're in three shops over there. Our boy Wes is running the show over there for those.
We've got five pre-rolls for 20. And then we've got another shop getting ready to come
on board, Social Equity Dispensary in Denver. Shout out Green Remedy Denver on Instagram,
a couple owners there that are going to provide, I believe, this is what I've heard, nothing
but Area 420 flower.
And then we've got right next to us here on the right, the Area 420 train dispensary that
was just purchased in an agreement with Miracle Farms, both trains. And those guys are out
there walking it right now as we speak on the other side of the wall, looking to start
ripping stuff down and getting that moving this week. So a bunch of moving pieces right
now on top of the lodging out here for the construction project for the silo homes.
Good thing I'll be staying in them for sure.
Yeah, that'd be cool, man. Yeah, I know Mike's pretty stoked that you're out here doing this.
We appreciate it, man. You're the dude that we need for this straight up.
So I want to come down and help you guys get as much publicity as you can. I'm the mom
and pop supporter myself, small business, local economy goes right back into the economy.
And where or who do these dispensary owners or people who want to support you, where who
do they need to get in contact to get some of your products onto their shelves?
Yeah, cool. So you can find us if you just type in Colorado Area 420 or Area 420 on Google.
It should pop up Flower Factory and that'll put you right to our Flower Factory address.
And then if you go to coloradoarea420.com at the bottom of that homepage on the home
interface, if you scroll down, you'll see Mike's phone number and Mike's name there
at the bottom. Give him a call. He's my business partner over at Flower Factory. It's Mike,
Matt LaTrina and myself. So there's three owners of that operation. And so Mike and
Matt are really kind of on the front end and handling sales as far as pushing that out.
I'm more of an operations guy from seed to harvest. And then I help out a little bit
on the back end with some packaging here and there. But mostly you can find my office in
the greenhouse. I'm around plants for the most part every day unless I'm doing PR stuff
or stuff like this to kind of help push the brand. So yeah, give Mike a call. Colorado
Area 420.com. You can also reach out to us, Colorado Area 420 on Instagram and Area 420
on Facebook. Just look for the Area 420 logo or brand. Give us a like on Facebook, follow
on IG. We don't have a Twitter page up yet. I don't have a YouTube page yet, but I think
we're going to link up. We're going to do some collaborations with Little Farmer over
here and he'll put that up on his new podcast coming out called Refer the Reefer. Is that
what the title is?
Reef the Reefer. Yes, sir. We're referencing cannabis usage, trying to make it public knowledge
on good consumption practices, what to avoid, what to use. There's a lot of new states out
there and a lot of curious people. And I just talked to Bill over here. He didn't start
consuming till he's in his 50s.
Wow. I didn't know that.
Oh, he's the only big consuming.
This is wild Bill we're talking about. Humboldt humidor.
Yeah. He hadn't been smoking his whole life. So, you know, it's like new users out there.
As a butt tender, I've talked to hundreds of people from Texas and I try to give them
a little bit of a
sense of what's going on in Texas. And I try to give them knowledge so they could take
that knowledge back to Texas, talk to other people, get them to change their minds, get
their laws changed. You know, Texas, there's a lot of people, there's hundreds and hundreds
of people coming up to Colorado just to consume cannabis from Texas.
It's politics, man. Like you gotta like, as much as people hate it, they need to get involved.
And I'm not saying you got to get involved on the big level when it comes to red or blue,
like, you know, who you're voting for president wise or Congress and this and that, but you
should definitely be trying to get involved on who your local representatives are, who
that local municipality reps are.
One of the greatest things I love, it was talking to 60, 70 year old consumers from
Florida that never wanted, but they could come in for topical. They come in for a little
edible CBD to sleep, you know, like point one gram of TAC with about 50 grams of, or
50 milligrams of CBD and knock them out. And they slept a full night and they haven't slept
a night in a long time and they're believers now.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And then I can talk to their little communities of retirees and they're like, man, this cannabis
thing is awesome.
Word of mouth still spreads.
And then the next thing you know, the whole community is like telling their kids and remember
we told you cannabis was bad. Well, you know what? It really helps me for my arthritis
and dementia, appetite.
I think a lot of it too is what you read, what you read in the headlines. You know,
that's really, I feel like what shapes a lot of the, yeah, whatever you want to believe,
it really shapes the mindset of people. And back then, man, like you weren't reading a
lot of like positive literature or press on cannabis. You know, it was like who got busted
this week or like, and then like when there were cannabis busts, there was always like
other hard drugs affiliated with that. And so like, you still got that fucking the gateway
drug theory, you know, kind of being pushed at you. So it's nice to be able to see it
now where it's like, you're seeing it in magazines. It's like, it's become, it's becoming normalized.
More celebrities coming out.
More celebrities. Oh yeah. They're jumping on board left and right.
And not worried about what people think are going to put in a tabloids about them. And
they're like, I don't give a shit anymore.
Yeah. It's, that's kind of an interesting thing too. That's probably never conversation,
but just like some of these celebrities that jump into the cannabis scene that have never,
I don't know, man. I kind of think of some of that stuff like being a culture vulture,
right? Like, yeah, man, like you weren't, you weren't a part of this culture in the
beginning. You weren't backing it when this shit was illegal or this wasn't the cool thing
to do. And now that it is, and like, you see like people are making some money off of this,
not everybody, but some people are that have established themselves and now they want to
jump in and like, I guess it's cool, more power to you. But it's like, I kind of look
at that like a culture vulture. Like you're just trying to pray off of a culture that
you've really never contributed to or really been a part of, but yet you see some type
of monetary gain.
Yeah. I see it in California. The legacy growers are getting pushed out and are fighting back
in the same way you guys are here collaborating. I really appreciate you coming on here, Matt.
Dude, I appreciate you, man. This has been kind of a long one. I'm sorry to drag it out,
but you know, I love having you down.
The more information, the better for these newbies and also for doctors out there. I'm
my sister's a doctor. She wants to know more about it. She's like CBD. She won't do use
cannabis. She doesn't like THC, but she does like CBD. Yeah. And it is actually cannabis
too. So she is a cannabis supporter now and she wants to know more about it. You know,
it's like she has CBD is the gateway. She has clients with epilepsy, children, seizures.
It's something that is really medically beneficial for them.
Well, yeah, man, I'm stoked you had me on. I'm stoked you're down here and you're getting
all these interviews. I look forward to future ones and continuing to kind of collaborate,
push this thing forward and get the information to the people that deserve it, you know, and
that have deserved it for years. And it's nice to be able to talk about it now and to
continue to do what we're doing.
Yes, sir. All right. Thanks, buddy.
Take it easy.
Okay.