Oh, yes, we are back with another one.
And this one is for the culture.
This is the G podcast where we focus on family, friends, finances,
freedom and our future and everything else.
This is the podcast.
And today we got Farmer J.
We get right to it, y'all.
It doesn't matter how you feel.
Take it no talk.
It doesn't matter how you feel.
Yes, indeed, y'all.
We got Farmer J.
in the building.
And this is the G podcast where we focus on family, friends,
finances, freedom and our future.
Farmer J.
Thank you so much for joining.
Oh, man.
I appreciate you having me.
All right.
For those of you who haven't seen before, we really just like to get right to it.
Farmer J.
I know we randomly cross paths through a mutual person.
Shout out to Luke Mon if you're out there watching.
But I know you're in South Carolina, but I want to start with like the foundation.
Where were you actually born?
I'm a Brooklyn baby.
Brooklyn baby.
Okay.
What born and raised in Brooklyn or what was that like growing up?
Oh, it was everything, man.
I grew up in Brooklyn all the way until I graduated high school.
I got all my hustle, everything about Brooklyn, stolen me.
I just kind of brought it down there.
Brooklyn.
I'm a hip hop guy growing up listening to artists like Biggie J.
Like what neighborhood in Brooklyn would you say you would you call home?
Canarsie.
I grew up right by Tilden High School, over there by Remsen Ave.
And when did you-
He's 86.
And you said you stayed up there from up until high school.
Yep.
Graduated in 2002.
What were you doing in those days?
Cause I don't think as much farmland up there in Brooklyn.
What were you doing for fun in New York City around that time period?
We were like rollerblading kings.
We rollerbladed burros.
So basketball, rollerblading.
I was like everything.
Basketball and rollerblading, like at the same time or like definitely?
We do it at the same time, but we just play ball, go park hopping and rollerblade.
Get that cardio in.
That's how we got around quicker.
So everybody had BMX bikes.
We were like only two black people on rollerblades.
When you were growing up in Brooklyn, did you have a desire say to leave and come down
south or what did you imagine yourself doing as a young man growing up in Brooklyn when
you were in high school?
What did you think you'd be doing at this point?
I actually did see myself in South Carolina because I came here every summer.
So every summer all my family's down here.
We always come down a whole summer, every chance we get.
And at the high school, it was kind of a mutual choice.
I'm out.
Let's get out of Brooklyn for a little bit.
Let's get close to the family.
His family's everything and I visit.
So it's good.
Of course.
So that's interesting.
You visited.
So what were those visits like growing up from Brooklyn to South Carolina?
It was like home.
You get off an Amtrak, you get picked up by somebody and the first smell was somebody
burning something in the yard.
I don't get that in Brooklyn.
So that was kind of like that.
Hey, I'm back.
And got to see a lot of friends and family.
So I love it.
Word.
A lot of folks that grow up in that city environment who then say visit more rural, quote, unquote,
country places, they don't necessarily like the slower environment.
What was it about that environment that didn't necessarily or what was it about that you
embraced or that you actually enjoyed as a change of pace?
I like the quiet.
I can go to Brooklyn tomorrow and blend right in.
But I kind of like my space.
I'm great around people, but after a while it's like I got to get to me.
So I mean, I'm in a cut right now.
I saw myself coming down there.
It was one of those things where I just wanted to change the pace.
And I thought that I can bring some Brooklyn down south and kind of do my thing and kind
of shine a little bit.
So.
OK.
How old?
So how old were you when you came to South Carolina?
18.
And what city did you move to?
First, I moved to West Ashley, Charleston.
That's in Charleston or outside of Charleston?
It's in Charleston.
18 Charleston.
So, OK, I guess my question is, why did you come down here at 18 after high school?
So I went I went to college, my bad.
I went to Charleston Southern for a couple of years.
And that was kind of main priority.
I went to Charleston Southern and then I was like, look, I got to get a job.
So I got a job at UPS, stayed there for about five years, did college for about two years.
And I didn't it was I couldn't click with any of it.
It was you know, I was just there.
So I went to Charleston Southern.
I didn't mingle.
I was kind of a loner.
I was a commuter.
I didn't stay on campus.
I worked two jobs.
I did a paper out at UPS and then I was just like, I can't do this.
I wouldn't go into class.
I just go there for the test.
And my professor, my business law teacher told me he was like, what are you here for?
Like, what are you trying to get?
Am I supposed to go to college?
He's like, look, you need to just go out and do it.
So you don't need to be here.
You obviously can think of a plan and make it come forth.
So he's like, just go out there and start experiencing life.
So I got confidence that you'll be just fine.
So I don't think I went to class a day after that.
Kind of hit out a little bit.
It was like, I didn't get no grades back, nothing like that.
And I was like, I can't do it.
Just work and work.
What did you like, like what did, did you end up picking a major while you were there?
Or what, what, what did you think you wanted to study when you originally went to school?
It was business administration.
I basically tried to just get whatever knowledge I can get that they could give me from business.
Cause I grew up in a business field.
My father was an entrepreneur.
My father is an entrepreneur and ever since I was little, he fed it to me and get whatever you want.
You just got to go work for it.
So anytime I asked for anything, I want this.
You can have it.
I want this.
You can have it.
You got to go get the rent.
I went over here.
I went over there.
You come back with the check is yours.
And I was one of those that always came back with the check and then some.
So I figured, let me find a way to push it out there and further myself knowledge-wise.
And I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I tried everything.
And then I tried every business venture and it was just like, I don't know.
It's good.
It makes money, but I need something that I can keep doing, keep doing, keep doing.
But you grew up in a, you grew up in a house watching an entrepreneur every single day.
What were those household dynamics?
Was it just you and your pops?
Did you have both parents and siblings?
Who all was in the household growing up?
I had two active parents, not in the same household.
So it was just me for the first 12 years and then my little sister came and I had a
four siblings on my father's side.
So I had a brother, I have a brother right here over me, some older sisters, some
distance between that.
So I bounced from Canarsie to Coney Island and back and forth and back and forth.
And I watched, I got to see the beginning of things.
I got to see somebody kind of vision thing.
So one of my earliest memories was going into a city block that my pops bought and it
was like Randall and he would take us upstairs to the place and this is going to be this
and that's going to be there.
And we had no floors.
It was just like Joyce, little kids walking on Joyce with like a two story drop.
Got kind of to be brave and just get out there and do things.
And I got to watch it manifest and then he would manifest it and he was like, look, I
was thinking further ahead, I want to go up with this.
And with the foundation that this block has, it's not going through.
So he tore the whole block down.
Everybody thought he was stupid.
You see buildings and then you go to his area of the block and it was just vacant
straight through the next block.
And he went and did steel so that he can go up as many stories as he wanted for the
future. So I see that I got to see a lot of visionary stuff and how to make it
formidable and then how to execute it and then how to just stick with it and keep
pursuing it. So that's what I'm about.
Well, that's that's interesting here.
So you you already not say you already, but growing up seeing that, I think, does
kind of shape the mind in terms of what you expect and how you approach things
because you you often do things the way you see your parents do it.
Right. Like that's how you your first emulations typically are the people closest
around you. And I guess coming to South Carolina from New York.
Right. I know you said you visited family, but did you just did you have anything
else say in terms of options at the time when you were thinking about next steps
after high school? Could it have been anywhere else?
Was there anything other than Charleston South?
I could have stayed in Brooklyn.
I think things would have moved a lot quicker, but I don't know if I would be the
same person I am today.
I mean, back then, you know, I was looking for that money bag, whatever I can get.
And as I've gotten older, I just kind of wanted somewhere to set some roots.
And I wanted I like my lonesome.
You know, I like I like to be self-preserved.
I like to do my own thing.
I don't like to depend on anybody.
If I want to stay home for a month, I want to be able to stay home for a month and
not go anywhere. So that's kind of what I wanted.
I couldn't get that in Brooklyn.
It was it was a little too congested.
I mean, I couldn't find me amongst all those people.
So I was somewhere a little slow pace.
When you got to South Carolina and you're trying to find your footing, at what point
did you like did you have a at what point did you start growing things in South
Carolina or did you start growing stuff in Brooklyn?
Like at what point did you actually start growing stuff?
I didn't grow anything in Brooklyn.
Nothing. I didn't think about anything but basketball or rollerblading.
Chillin with people, man.
We had a big, big group of people that we chilled with.
And I was just, you know, the thing.
See who's going outside today.
What can you do?
But stars growing.
I didn't start growing till I met my wife and grow anything to them anymore.
I don't I don't recall having plants before that.
The reason I actually started growing was I was I was in the dog game at the time I
was raising American bullies.
Everybody knew me as DBK Bully Camp.
So they knew me for so I had tried to the dogs in South Carolina.
I was starting to lean towards the farm side of things.
Then it wasn't manifest and quite vivid, but it was more like just I like I like full
circle. So what I did was I wanted to raise my dogs.
I wanted to feed them a raw diet.
I didn't want to buy processed foods.
So seeing things starting to happen as far as making my own things.
And I was like, well, you know what?
Let's get some livestock and we can we can do it from there.
So, you know, I got some chickens and start buying feed.
And I'm like, it's too expensive.
Like, I'm buying feed.
I'm like, I'm always crunching numbers.
I'm like, I'm like, I'm spending it on this.
Then I'm not making money.
I need to cut out the expense every chance I can.
I like the only way to cut the expense out is to start growing the vegetables.
And then it was like a full circle.
I started growing something called fodder, which is like it takes wheat bran and you
kind of graze it from seeds and soak it in it turns until grass about yay high root
system. And it's a full 30 percent protein.
Good diet for the animals.
And it's it fed everything.
Oh, we have the cows down the chickens.
I like to start feeding the animals with this and start feeding ourselves with it as
well. Just kept trying anything.
Fodder fodder is the same thing.
If you ever heard of wheatgrass fodder, wheatgrass is the same thing.
It's just fodders for what they call the animals in terms of growing.
That was are you saying that was probably the first real thing you grew intentionally.
And it was because of the fact that you you had a kennel and you were grooming bullies
and you were trying to figure out the most cost efficient way to do that, which was to
grow and produce your food for them.
Yep. Yep. As well as home.
I used to go collard greens and cabbage and all other stuff.
Just trying it out.
I would give it away to my family.
I'd make a couple of sales here.
I had a room at one time where I grew 400 heads of lettuce a week.
Supplying them to restaurants.
I was going Michael Green's and supplying them to restaurants.
400 heads of lettuce a week.
Lettuce grow that fast.
I basically would staggered.
So I had had eight shells, vertical shells, five tiers each.
And the very first shelf would basically start my seeds.
And then as they get a little bigger, then I would transplant them and move along the line.
And it would take every every week I would be processing a full batch of full head of lettuce
and then move everything down.
Just kind of like an assembly line.
I kind of learned that from UPS.
So, OK, yeah, let me take a step back.
So you this didn't really unlock until around the time you met your wife.
How did you meet your wife, by the way?
So we kind of grew up and we grew up the same.
My families knew each other.
Families kind of went to school together.
One of the roads that we live on back in the road and on Johns Island, a lot of our family
grew up back there.
So we all went to church together.
My aunt was a Sunday school teacher in the ministry.
My whole family's Christians.
And it's kind of like where we met.
We all grew up.
Hung out during the summertime.
Ran into her again years later.
So you knew your wife before there was ever a relationship between y'all?
Like you always knew of this person?
I would say that we knew each other anywhere between 11 and 12.
Maybe between 11 and 15 years or so before we actually started trying to talk romantically.
What was the thing that made that change?
Knowing somebody that long and now all of a sudden, I think I'm more interested in that.
So it's a full package.
Somebody that you can relate with.
She kind of had a drive at the time I met her.
She's always on the move, always trying to do something and just bumping into each other.
Like different area, different zip codes.
But I have to look for somebody that kind of represents you as well because image is
everything as well.
So I wanted somebody comparable.
Somebody that carried themselves.
Somebody that I thought that would potentially take care of my kids in the future the right
way without worry while I kind of handle business as well.
So somebody I can coincide with.
So trying to start it up from there.
And it was it like an event or like a grocery store or like a moment?
Grocery store.
And I was talking to somebody else at the moment.
So it always happens like that.
It's always it seemingly always happens like that.
But you all met at a grocery store and then we got connected from there.
It was I was I was hustling.
I was selling sneakers.
I was selling socks.
I was selling pocketbooks.
I was whatever I could sell.
I was out there hustling.
So I was hustling.
And initially it was I got these bags.
If I see a lady and I know she likes nice bags and it's automatically I got a nice bag.
You check me out.
All at me.
I think I ran into her at a bank in Orangeburg.
I was living in Orangeburg at the time.
South Carolina and she was going to state at the time.
South Carolina State I believe.
Bumped her at the bank trying to make a deposit.
Actually I was trying to open my bank account because they closed my account.
So they closed my account way back when and they told me that I was banned indefinitely
because of not well practices of taking care of my account and trying to find a nice way
to put it.
And they were telling me like look bro the only way that you'll ever have an account
with Bank of America again is if you can talk a bank branch manager into overriding you.
So I was going to bank the bank seeing who I could talk to.
I found the bank in Orangeburg and he opened the account for me.
I met her there.
Told her get these bags.
Smile at me.
Cute kind of look good though but I'll get these bags.
Trying to not come off bad because I'm talking to somebody but ran into her again at the
grocery store and ran into each other at an event and she's kind of like took it from
there.
Wow.
Okay.
So it's a coincidence of then starting to grow things like did she have any direct impact
on that or is it just more so coincidence of timing?
I would say maybe just supportive and my crazy scheme of things that I want to do and then
listen to me break it down a hundred thousand percent and expanding it as big as I can and
it's like go for it.
Let's get it.
We can grow some vegetables for the house too.
Save some money.
Let's go.
Let's get it.
You hadn't studied this in high school.
You hadn't studied this in college.
You hadn't studied this professionally.
This is just an idea and you're like I want to do this and this is what I'm about to do.
Yep.
Definitely what it was.
So how did you learn how to grow things?
Because growing stuff is not as simple as putting seeds in the ground.
It's definitely a process, art and a technique to doing stuff the right way.
Before you actually took that initiative to grow that feed for the animals, where did
you start to kind of figure out what supplies you needed, how you could start and that sort
of thing?
Bro, I do everything right here bro.
I'll be sitting there staring off in the space and I'm coming up with a formidable plan and
then I'll execute it and I'm one person that I like to go straight to it.
So my best method of learning is constantly making mistakes.
Seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work.
I will not repeat the same mistake unless I'm not focused.
So once I figure out what doesn't work, I can eliminate that completely and I just keep
doing it until it works.
And then once it works, I don't change it.
I continue to do it exactly the way I did it because it works.
Alright, so but most people still will start with studying what already works so that they
don't start from like a place of where they're just trying things that just won't make any
sense because there are proven models of success if you will.
Did you have any sort of resources or models that you tried to emulate at the early stages?
I would say YouTube University.
That's what I like to call it.
YouTube was my best friend.
Anything he wanted to do or learn how to do, somebody was there explaining it.
And I would watch it until I find somebody who thought similar to me.
I didn't like a lot of lally-yagging.
I didn't like a lot of slow talking and long introductions.
Show me what I need so I can go on.
If I got to fast forward a little bit too much, it's exit.
Once I found that person that would give me what I needed, I watch it once.
I watch it twice.
I watch until I remembered it and then I would just go execute.
YouTube University is not to be underrated.
A lot of information out there for people who are trying to figure out how to get stuff
off the ground.
This early, these early stages of growing, this was just for your own benefit.
Not necessarily to scale into a business.
But I heard you say you were supplying local restaurants.
And so how did that become a real thing?
How did you go from just growing this fodder to actually, I can grow more and support the
local community as well?
It takes one sale from me.
I make $10 on my own.
I'm about to make a mil.
And I just kind of run with it.
And I'm comfortable walking into places and grabbing you and making you buy it.
My boys tell me I can sell a shoe that I'm not sure.
I've got a knack for finding a person that will buy what I want.
I can communicate with you for 15 minutes and I pay attention to things.
People give hints and clues all the time.
You gave me an example of what your preference cannabis was when we first chatted.
And it was like, thing, message.
You got them paying attention and I looked out and I show up, show out.
Or I miss it and you don't know what's going on.
I went out a lot.
I just, they call me the person.
They call me ears.
I used to do security.
They call me ears.
I used to go out and hear things and from there I knew which way I wanted to go with
them.
So I just went out.
I went around people and it took a word that somebody said and I fed off of it.
And then I pitched, freestyle pitched.
By the time it was all said and done, it was like, hey, you need to come out.
My first restaurant with the Michael Green's, somebody gave me a tip, I believe.
Nope.
I went online to Google and I went up to every four star and five star restaurant that will
basically use it.
And I spotted Mount Pleasant, Grace and Grit was one of them.
So I went there and told them, you know, I wanted to sell some ice creams and I brought
samples with me.
And I wanted them to taste it right then and there in front of me and they tasted it and
they were like, Oh my God, this is, you know, fresh.
It's a flavorful.
And I was like, I can push this out a week.
And I said, the difference between me is I'm, I build to order so I don't grow it and store
it in the refrigerator.
The day you get it, I harvested it.
So it was fresh.
And I was always wanted to stick with organic and fresh side of things.
That word organic, what makes something organic in the farming world?
Something that starts from the earth, something that's natural, something that will biodegrade
that to where back into earth again.
For example, there might be greens that will degrade, but they're not organic.
Well, it wasn't altered.
It wasn't altered.
And my business isn't labeled as organic, but we practice organic practices.
So it's organic to me.
If it hasn't been altered, if everything that was used to take care of that plant was natural,
you didn't add any chemical or outbound chemicals to pesticides or anything like that.
You didn't use salt based nutrients to feed it.
You'd everything that came from something alive to actually take care of the plant.
That's kind of what we practice.
Word, but why is it that you can do everything to make it organic, but not get labeled as
organic?
Why, why is that the case?
So some things aren't natural.
And I can't give you particulars, but I believe peat moss isn't a naturally organic product,
but it's a, it's a clean product.
It doesn't contain any chemicals.
It's just isn't something that came from earth that was alive.
And it's good for as a compound to hold the roots really well.
It drains very well and it's a little bit cheaper and it holds nutrients very well.
But it's not natural.
It's not organic.
If any of your soil uses peat moss in it, you cannot be considered an organic farm,
but it's natural, but it's clean.
There's no chemicals in it.
There's nothing foreign to make it do anything.
It holds no nutrients.
Everything that gets added to it is added for me.
It's just a substrate to actually hold my roots nice and firm.
So it's a technicality in terms of the, what would you call that?
Like in terms of the actual infrastructure of the farm, in terms of the infrastructure-
How they label it basically.
Basically how they categorize it, because I guess they categorize organic as living.
So peat moss was never living, so you can't consider it organic if it wasn't living.
So that's what I would say.
Okay.
This is interesting to me.
So how much space realistically did you start out with when you're in those early stages
when you were growing the fodder and started growing say those vegetables for the house?
I started with like 50 five gallon buckets and I went on offer up or Craigslist or something
and was looking for buckets for cheap.
I didn't want to spend $5 a bucket at Lowe's and I found somebody 20 minutes away selling
them for a dollar a bucket.
And I went and bought 50 buckets, drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom of them.
Didn't know what I was doing.
I got out there and buying tons of bags of soil to fill them up with and put them in.
I bought plants the first go around.
So I bought plants from maybe Lowe's or something like that, transplants.
And then I put them in the ground and I let them do their thing.
And it came out pretty good.
55 gallon buckets.
Like those paint buckets.
Yep.
And all of them stacked in three rows.
So that's about what?
15, 16, 17 in each row.
And okay, that's not a lot of space.
And other than those buckets and soil, is it just that and the seeds?
Is that all you need to get it started or is there anything else?
I would definitely say a good understanding.
So when I approach something, I failed a lot.
So let's get that out of the way.
I failed a lot and I just keep failing.
And then from days just like, you know, I'm tired of failing.
Let's do something different.
Then I will go back and research a little bit and adjust it a little bit.
And I think I quickly knew that I didn't want to deal with buckets.
It was just too much work.
And it wasn't, it cost too much money to sit here and keep buying all this dirt.
What makes the buckets too much work?
It seems like it'd be easier to deal with the bucket than the actual land.
It is easier, but filling those buckets and drilling all them holes and having to move
it and then having to maintain the area around it because grass grew up in between them.
So ever so often I'd have to move all 50, put all 50 back and quickly after starting
something, I'm always like, it's time to scale up or what's a better way of doing it.
So even if I've been doing something and it works, I will still question myself and see
if I can find a better way of doing it.
So the next course was raised beds.
And that's kind of the next thing we did.
We built, we bought two by sixes and a buddy from church, Anthony came and helped me out
and we built garden beds.
Garden beds on the ground or, or this is where you start talking about stacking joints.
So the garden beds are basically, you just build a frame, a four wall frame.
I think they were maybe three feet by eight feet, something like that.
Four foot by eight foot, wherever we could use a full board and then a half a board for
the shorter ends.
And there was no bottom in it.
So it was natural earth right below it.
I went out there with a shovel and I took the top layer of earth up around bare handed
blistered hands and I got tiresome too.
So I had to keep adjusting because the workload farming is hard, bro.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of physical work.
It's a lot of heat, especially in South Carolina, boy.
I was in my twenties, so trying to stay fit.
I'm a he-man.
I can take on anything in the latter twenties and early thirties.
I'm getting too old for this.
It was Danny Glover up in here and I was like, I gotta find a better way than the bugs.
Anybody that grew up with me, I hate bugs, bro.
They got comedy stories of me growing up, making a scene because I got bit by a mosquito.
So it was like, I need something comfortable and it didn't have to be that hard to do it.
So I started looking at hydroponic growing and that's when I started doing the lettuce
hydroponically.
I did a cracking method, which was the least amount of work.
I don't like to overwork.
It was the least amount of work and I basically just add nutrients to it, to water and you
have your roots sit in it.
And every few days you pour it out, clean it, buff it out and replace it with fresh nutrients
and it worked.
It grew pretty well, but I got tired of lettuce too.
I got tired of dealing with chefs.
I got tired of dealing with restaurants.
I had to drive, it was driving like 250 miles on a Friday.
Friday was delivery day.
It was up five o'clock in the morning, harvesting the packaging, fresh load up and I'm out and
I'm going all day.
What was it about the chefs that you didn't really appreciate?
They didn't appreciate the farmer in my opinion.
I took all this time to grow this product for you and you took the product and maybe
I didn't understand the nature of business back then, but if I worked hard and I'm small
business, I want to get paid today.
I worked hard all week to get paid today.
So telling me I'll get back with you with the payment.
And then I was also delivering to Kiwa Island and they wanted me to buy a pass, supply their
restaurants on their site.
And I'm like, should provide me with a pass.
I'm doing you a service.
If you want a service done to your location, give me a pass.
I'm not spending $250 a year on a pass just to get in when somebody paying me a hundred
dollars for a week.
Like, sorry, I was tight wanting back there.
So how long did you do that for roughly?
The growing for restaurants?
1.5 years.
That's kind of when I started the farm LLC.
I was 2017.
I started the farm LLC 2017.
I was probably four years after I felt comfortable growing things.
My grandmother wasn't a farmer, but she had a green thumb on both sides, my father's side
and my mother's side.
My father didn't have a green thumb.
My mom doesn't really have a green thumb.
They say it's a generation and kind of just came naturally to me.
I would say I'm real close with nature.
I love South Carolina and I love down south when I came because of the animals and the
outside feeling of it.
So New York was outside, but it was a concrete jungle, it was rough.
And I was more into nature.
When I come down here, they used to tease me.
They used to call me Dr. Dolittle.
I would get here and all the animals would be following me and I'd be out there talking
to animals and talking with plants.
I couldn't have pets.
They wouldn't let me have a dog in the apartment like that or much trees.
So I enjoyed it when I came down here and I wanted more.
I spend most of my time outside now.
Word.
It's interesting that you went all in to this idea of growing things when you really didn't
have much background and experience with it growing up.
What was it about the aspect of farming or growing that really helped you lean into it
once you started getting into it?
I know you say you love nature, but what is it about the farming?
I catch.
It gives you peace.
It says I'm always moving a thousand miles an hour.
I have to keep catching myself to slow down.
So plants help me slow down.
It helps me lock out everything that my mind is thinking of and I'm not focused right on
what I'm doing with the plant.
It gives me a little quiet time because I'm always moving.
I want to use every minute of every day and I'm calculating.
I got six minutes left and then I got to dip.
So get out my way.
The plants is usually that time where time doesn't really matter to me.
So I'm cooling it, chilling them, relaxed.
It's hard for me to do so.
So it's almost meditative in terms of just the process itself, what it takes day in,
day out.
It helps keep you grounded and centered.
I can understand that.
And is there any particular aspect of farming that you get more fulfillment from, whether
it be the beginning, the harvesting, the end, seeing it all develop?
What really does it for you?
Every part has its blessing.
And I spent a long time growing stuff and missing the harvest.
So I guess the growing, I guess seeing something that wasn't there turned into something that's
there, turned into something that got bigger.
It kind of helped me stay focused.
It's the consistency, it's the cycle, the way process, it's the way things happen.
So it makes me understand that things take time and it helped me plan ahead.
Because it wasn't, no, I'm gonna grow this week and I'm gonna have it next week.
You had to plan months ahead to have something in benefit for something months later and
stick with it without getting any benefits out of it until it was finished.
So it kind of taught me patience, taught me that things take time.
It helped me plan ahead, keep me grounded.
I think, oh, this is kind of going off in a different, but you saying that even, that's
something I think our community doesn't have a lot of when it comes to just being grounded
and at peace and being able to slow down and take things slow process what we do.
And it's crazy because farming was such a standard as black Americans historically.
It was something that we were gifted at.
It was something that we, it was second nature.
I even think of my grandparents' generation.
They grew up on farms.
My mom and their siblings grew up having to work on their grandparents' farms growing
up.
So we're just like one generation sort of removed from that being wiped away.
And I think we see some of the impacts of that in that a lot of us as a community, we
aren't grounded.
We don't have the ability to, like we see so much more diagnosed things of ADHD, anxiety,
a lot of emotional diagnosis.
And it's, I think a large part of that is because we're disconnected from nature and
farming is one of those hobbies and crafts that just inevitably brings you back to nature.
It just does that by default.
So I think that's important to highlight.
It helps with balance too.
And I think every day is set on autopilot.
I did the work course forever and it felt like the twilight zone.
And I really couldn't take it anymore.
I was like, what's the purpose?
I need some more fulfillment out of this.
Anytime I worked a job, I did UPS for five years.
I did security for five years.
And every day I was there, it was like, I'm limited.
This is all I can do.
I get paid this an hour.
I'm allowed this many hours a day.
That's it.
And I go home.
And it was like, I don't like tax.
I don't like limits.
I like to push it as far as I want and scale it back as quick as I want.
So I go hard for months and then months I'm chilling because I reap the benefits from
the months before, stay cool with it and I can relax a little bit now.
But I'm obligated on autopilot and I couldn't take it.
I wasn't happy.
And plants kind of allowed me to balance my time, appreciate nature.
And it allowed me to also make an income off of it.
It was like the ultimate trifecta.
I can read off of it.
I could sell it and I could save money from it.
So it was like no brainer.
Right.
That is a dope thing about being self-sufficient in such a way where you're farming your land
to produce food, to produce economic opportunities.
Like you said, you get so much value out of something that you can create.
And I do think that is one of the dope things about self-sustaining, those self-generating
sorts of things that you have to create and put the work in.
You start off with the vegetables, but more recently, you also started growing cannabis.
Realistically speaking, like that's not an easy shift I would imagine to just be like,
you know what, I just want to start growing something that is very taboo too in terms
of stigma, in terms of even I think the access to be able to do that.
Can we just talk about what that was like at the beginning when you made this decision?
It was nerve-racking, man.
I was legit scared to do it.
I had some people I knew that grew in.
They kept pushing me to do it.
It's like, nah, you can grow anything.
You got a green thumb.
If you can grow this, bro, I'm telling you, you can grow this.
I'm like, nah, I can't.
I don't know how to do it.
And I just kept telling myself I couldn't.
But I got to grow it.
And I was like, I'm telling you, you can grow this.
I'm like, nah, I can't.
And I just kept telling myself I couldn't, but I got tired of it was out here too.
I'm a cannabis lover.
I'm not lying.
You know it.
But I got tired of everything that was out there was trash to me.
I got standards.
I'll spend big on meals.
When I get something, I want to really enjoy it.
I don't want to just get it and get through.
And I wasn't satisfied with it.
I took time and I got stuff all the way up the East Coast.
And even when I first started growing the plant for the very first time, I started thinking,
let's put the East Coast on the map.
West Coast has always been known for it.
I got to travel to the West Coast and try some stuff.
And I'm like, we're way behind.
I felt like a newbie.
I've been smoking since I was a teenager, like 15.
Mom, I'm sorry.
And even back then, we enjoyed the stuff back then, but it didn't really have flavor.
It was just something new.
That was something that we had.
It was good times.
I guess it was so new to our body that we really got to enjoy it.
I wouldn't enjoy it right now.
I wouldn't enjoy anything I smoked back then.
Now, when I went to Cali, it was like, oh, and then I went to Portland to visit my brother.
It was like, whoa, this is different.
And I come back here and I will legit go without if I can't have what I want.
So after being open-eyed to what the West Coast was smoking, it was like, wow, you smoking
this.
You were acting like you enjoy it.
It's not big.
Yeah.
It's hard to go back to the hamburger helper once you didn't have some filets and rib eyes.
It's like, ah, yeah.
So I know my brother hooked me up with some seeds.
I just had a ton of people giving me advice on what to do.
I watched a ton of videos.
I actually bought the weed Bible book and I didn't understand anything in it.
I was like, I don't know what any of this means.
So I went back to the basics.
Just go through it, figure it out, either make it to the end or fail and then figure
out why you failed or critique how you did it and get a little better.
I went through the first one.
It was fine.
It was lifted out of my mind.
It was good.
I was like, all right, now I got my feet wet.
Let's get it.
I'm ready to open a business.
I take this one time for me.
It takes making $10.
Now I want to make a mill.
So I was like, let's get it.
As I grew it, I learned.
I've grown a couple of groups.
My cousin put me onto a group on Facebook, weed world.
Shout out to weed world.
He put me in and was like, this is the admin of the group.
He was like, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do this.
How did you get in there?
You were there admin now and you're selling stuff in the group and doing stuff.
It was nice.
She gave me tips.
Then I joined another group with Dr. Green Thumb.
These people kind of understood the fear of growing a plant.
I'm afraid to grow a plant because if somebody come, you're in trouble.
Seeing other people doing it and then realizing how many other people did it for such a long
time.
I was like, you're growing?
I'm like, yeah, for a long time.
I was like, stop being trifling.
I scared money.
Don't make no money.
Let's grow some stuff and let's go ahead and go for this license to get legit.
I know medical marijuana comes somewhere down the line, but let's go ahead and get this
hemp license.
Let's learn.
I figured the first few years is just learn to plant.
It's the same plant.
Let's learn it.
It gives me time before I actually get out there and start pushing it.
I'm now at a point where I feel like I can grow it.
Now I'm learning how to maximize my yields and critique anything I'm scaling up to a
larger amount so I can actually showcase it to dispensers.
I didn't have enough to push it out worldwide or nationwide.
I had just enough that I can handle solo.
I typically handle a solo so that I can learn every aspect of it and then I can train every
aspect of it and take the pressure off of me and actually just start delegating a little
bit and critiquing and getting them up to the standards that I want.
A hemp license.
Is this just as a matter of filling out a piece of paper?
What is that process like in the state of South Carolina?
What does the hemp hemp license provide?
So you need a clean background.
I don't know how clean my background is clean.
Talking to them, it's not like they just don't want any kind of drug possession charges on
your background.
It's what would stop you from being licensed to do one.
You need a farm license, a farm number.
So I had to figure out how to make my land farm.
I mean luckily years ago I actually made agriculture trying to save us some taxes and I was like
that was another reason why to start growing some things.
They wanted $4,000 a year in taxes for the land and I got it down to like $400 a year
so it was like I'll grow some stuff for that.
You need a farm number and they'll pay for it though.
Get your fingerprints done.
Submit the application.
They want your GPS coordinates so they know where you're at so stay clean.
Did you find it difficult?
Did you feel like you got put through any hurdles or was it just as simple as filling
out the requirements and waiting for approval?
The very first time I did it, whenever I'm not sure of something, I've never been through
the process.
I get a little anxiety because I don't know what the process is and I overly questioned
and asked what does it take?
What do I need?
After doing it, it was nothing.
It was more so what website to go to and they do a very good job at breaking down the steps.
The hemp agency out here actually answers the phone.
You have a question.
They helped me get my GPS coordinates.
The only thing I would say is if you get your fingerprints done, do it early.
As soon as license available, go ahead and get them done because they book up very fast
and they will deny you for missing it and they've extended it for like 30 days now but
it'll cost you an extra $500.
Oh wow.
So it's 500 bucks for the license for a year.
You got to renew every year.
So a hemp license costs 500 just to apply even if you don't get it or once you get it,
you pay your 500.
It's a $100 application fee and then you don't pay to actually go into orientation and get
approved.
So once they say welcome to the hemp license club, whatever, you basically go to the link
that they provide with you, pay it and then they'll send you an actual.
Wow.
So that hemp license gives you the ability to do what exactly?
The farm license gives me the ability to grow, to harvest, sell it to a middleman, to sell
it wholesale, to sell directly to the consumer, to ship nationwide.
And they also have a handler license.
They have several handler's license.
One is I believe a delivery service, which we don't have many in South Carolina.
So you want to open a cannabis delivery service, you can go apply for the license and there's
no cutoff time.
You can do it any time of the year.
Whenever you do it, your year starts whenever you apply for it.
You reach out to all the growers and offer a service to deliver to dispensaries across
state lines and all.
You'll get a license and it's like 10 more bucks per employee that you hire that actually
works under your license.
You can get a license to be a middleman, a broker, it's another handler's license, but
you can basically not have the ability to actually grow your product, but you can store
your product and have it and possess hundreds of pounds of it and actually market it and
sell it.
And if you're like somebody like yourself who's growing, do you need to have the multiples
to be able to sell and do all those things too?
Or how does that work?
My particular license allows me to do all of that.
The only thing I'm exempt from doing is processing.
You'll have to get a separate license to process.
If you want to make oils and you want to make gummies and you want to extract the cannabinoids
and stuff from the butt itself, you'll have to have to get a processing license.
We plan on doing that in the future, but for now we're sticking with just the growing and
distribution part of it.
Okay.
Word.
And when we talk about growing hemp, like there are different types of hemp plants or
marijuana plants.
In the state of South Carolina, what are you allowed to grow with that hemp license?
I am allowed to grow hemp CBD derived plants.
I'm not allowed to grow THC marijuana plants.
So marijuana and hemp is basically the same plant as a cannabis plant.
You just have certain active ingredients in it that one doesn't.
Hemp has 0.3% or less THC in it.
Anything above 0.3% is considered marijuana.
And THC gives you the psychoactive effects of marijuana, so of the cannabis plant.
So they don't want the psychoactive part of it here in South Carolina.
So we're sticking with the CBD part of it.
Is it something that you do as a farmer to make it CBD versus not, or is it the seed
or the plant itself that determines if it will be CBD versus a marijuana plant?
You'll definitely have to buy seeds from a reputable breeder that has tested their plants
and can say that it grows to a certain ratio, CBD to THC.
And they'll specify that good for passing the hemp license testing and all of that.
And they give you advice.
I used Oregon CBD and I used their lineup for my plants.
And they will actually tell you a good time to actually test your plants.
I usually test my plants at about four weeks, which is about the halfway mark of the flowering
cycle.
And that's it.
You definitely have to get it.
You can't grow a THC plant and say you're going to get CBD out of it.
Because most THC dominant plants will be CBD not dominant.
You want to pay attention to who you get it from for sure.
If you grow marijuana seeds thinking you can test it early or harvest early, you're going
to fail.
Anything over 1% is a hit on your license.
Think three to five hits on your license will be a ban for five years or so.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
And a hit is considered a failed test?
I can test my plants at any time on my own and it's confidential.
I use clear water biometrics.
I can send my samples in privately and it sticks between me and them.
We have a really good relationship.
But if you request to get your cannabis plants tested for harvest, it's considered a formal
request.
You better be ready.
So if it's above 0.3%, but less than 1%, it's considered just a failed test.
But you can also request to retest it, which I failed.
We tested it in the past.
Environment pays a big factor into it.
You have to make sure the drier the plant is, the higher she tests.
So make sure she stays wet.
Make sure the soil stays moist.
Sorry.
My cousin loves that word moist.
But anyway, that's a practice.
The night before, I would water my plants heavily to get it tested.
And I send my plants in early parts of the week, Monday or Tuesday.
And I pay the extra to next day Eric because if it sits in the mail for three days and
you're in South Carolina, you're getting 100 degree weather, she's drying out real good.
Best believe you'll be real close to failing.
So there's techniques that you can use to make sure you pass.
I'm losing you on the vocal side.
Growing these CBD plants and oh, shout out because I was able to sample some of some
of the goodness and the Hawaiian, was it the Hawaiian silver?
Hawaiian haze.
Yeah.
Very, very flavorful plant that you have.
And I was surprised.
I'd never had CBD.
And you talk about getting introduced to quality.
So a similar experience and that like I lived in Amsterdam for two years.
Once I had that experience with the culture and what was available, it was like, yeah,
this is a lot different than what I was used to growing up.
And then coming back from Amsterdam, I went straight to Cali and visited out there.
And then I went to Colorado and visited out there and it was like, yo, it is a whole new
world over here.
Like, like you said, the East Coast is lacking so much.
And when I had never had CBD until I tried some of your products.
And I was surprised at how similar some of the flavor profile was.
Like if the outside of the effects, right, everything else was, you really couldn't tell
the difference.
So we call that terpenes.
The terpenes is everything.
So what's over here?
Terpenes is it dictates the flavor.
It dictates the effects and every strain will give you something different.
And that everything tastes the same.
I didn't like that either.
Actually, what I was smoking was tasting like cardboard, man.
It didn't have any taste.
It was just like, I guess it sucked.
I didn't enjoy it.
I didn't want anymore.
If I put it out, I wasn't wanting to light it back up.
And I'm a flavor man.
I like flavor.
So that was everything.
I've said, even if it didn't hit, it's harder.
Somebody would like it.
It tasted great.
I'm about to roll another one up.
It doesn't matter.
It's like getting that one knockout drink that made your face skin up or that mixed
drink that was delicious.
And it's like, let me get another one.
It's terpenes is everything.
Terpenes decides the effects that you'll get from it.
And it's such a wide range of effects that you can get from it.
You can get something that helps suppress your appetite, something that gives you an
appetite, something that works good with anxiety.
And taking the wrong bud with the wrong terpene profile isn't helping you.
So something that I do is I typically ask my people, one of the first questions I ask
is, what do you want out of the plant?
And most people don't know.
Like, you just smoke the smoke.
Like, yeah, like you've had anxiety attacks.
You've had it where it just wasn't a pleasurable effect after the smoke.
Like, yeah, like you're not smoking it for the right reasons.
Find out what made you smoke.
Find out why do you smoke.
And smoking for me a lot of times was slowing myself down.
So I probably need to smoke something now.
But most people are dealing with pain.
Most people are dealing with depression.
I physically used the plant last year for depression about a year ago now.
And it hit me, man.
I didn't even know what depression was to the point, like, I can say I felt aspects
of it, but I was oblivious and ignorant to what actually was happening to me.
Like, why do I feel weird?
What is going on?
Why am I aggy?
What's going on?
Just whatever.
Fight through it.
Keep going.
Well, I had that spell where it was like, man down, you ain't moving.
And nobody's really ever seen me like that.
So it was like, what is going on with this, bro?
I can hear everything around me.
But I was so tapped out that it was like nothing mattered.
And I had to kind of hold myself together.
I came in the same room I'm in.
We call this the lab.
Where I kind of like come up with the ideas.
I come up with a concoction.
And I was like, man, you want to be some kind of herbalist and you want to do alternative
healing.
So what better person to test it out on than yourself?
I looked up the terpene profiles on all the CBD strains that I had in stock at the moment.
And I looked up Souver Hayes, 90% of the people.
I use Leafly.com.
That's a website that I use.
Anything you ever get from me will have a strain name.
It won't be loud.
It won't be gas.
It will have a particular name to go with it.
And you can look that up on Leafly and it will give you a full description of it.
And you'll get customer reviews and it'll give it what it's good for.
It's flavor profile and it's effect profile.
And 90% of the people said it helped with anxiety, depression, panic attacks.
I was having panic attacks.
So I made an oil out of it and I made some tea.
And then I made a body rub out of it.
And I made a bath oil out of it.
And I was catching a glimpse of relief.
Now I understand that that feeling isn't going to last forever.
I'm not stuck in this depressive state.
It's something that's going on.
I got to figure it out.
I got to slow down.
I got to take a break.
I need some relief though.
In between it getting to a point and really kind of opened my eyes on, don't just grow
and then sell it.
Grow it for a purpose.
Kind of help people do things.
So since then I've helped a few people with the exact same conditions that I had, effects
that I had.
I was getting like tightening of the fingers, jittery eyes, excessive heart rate.
Can't catch my breath.
Everything closing in.
And we're like, all right, we got to go to the hospital.
And they'd be like, why?
I don't know.
It's about to happen.
I couldn't tell you what it was.
But they can go there.
And when I got there, they were telling me my blood pressure was irate.
It was sky high.
I couldn't keep control.
I had to keep pacing.
I had to keep getting up.
I couldn't.
Then they told me that I was a panic attack and it started subsiding.
I started introducing Souvahase into my, I would say my diet because I ingest it as well.
But as many different ways as I can intake my cannabinoids and my terpene profile from
that particular plant, I do it on a daily basis now.
And it helps.
Yeah, that's the ingesting.
Like, because it's CBD, I think for the average person who maybe got introduced to the THC
plant and then it's like, well, why would I ever take CBD if it's not THC?
Like a lot of people might think that way, but you're, you're highlighting some of what
those benefits are that you don't get from THC.
In fact, I think research has demonstrated that THC can unfortunately intensify the ____
out of it.
Exactly.
It'll, it'll, it'll, it'll make you more anxious, more paranoid.
And if you have like those hyper wound up tendencies, THC can have a negative effect,
whereas CBD is actually what you probably need to help balance that out.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
So I also noticed because I pay very much attention, I will jot notes down in my head.
So I'm bad about writing things down and I started actually paying attention.
I stopped panicking, started actually paying attention.
I would sit there and just watch my fingers start to twitch, then it would get locked
up.
And then in my arm, I thought I was having a heart attack.
I started paying attention to it.
And then I started noticing that I was getting it after smoking a blunt.
I would smoke some weed and I was like, hold on, it's happening.
It's happening.
I'm like, you doing it to yourself, bro.
Like chill.
So I had to stop.
I couldn't even smoke.
I wouldn't even be in a room with you, man.
Like everybody around me was enjoying Farmer J's smoke.
And it was like, yep, stay over there.
I don't want to be nowhere near you.
I tapped it two times, I said, put it out.
I can't touch it.
So I legit went like four months, no tree.
I've had other people that I just said, cut the tree out completely, smoked the CBD.
They were like, what are the effects of it?
I feel like we're only known marijuana to basically smoke and low eyes, heady high,
and get high.
That's it.
That's what we consider good weed.
That's what we consider.
My eyes got low.
Crazy, crazy much.
My head was pounding.
If it was extensively high, that was what it was.
But the older you got, we kind of looked for some more calmness.
I can't do them ciphers like I was doing when I was in my early teens and in early 20s where
it was just blunt after blunt going around the room.
I'm more laid back now.
I don't need to go that far to get what I need out of it.
So I just started taking the CBD and I realized that I still felt satisfaction.
I didn't have the low eyes.
I didn't have the head high, but it was like something happened and I feel better now.
Like me, that high pace, I have anxiety all the time, but I'm able to work through it.
I'm able to understand that there's something happening because I'm overstimulated.
I get anxiety when I'm overly happy.
So I get anxiety when it's overly crazy and just hectic.
I've learned to just enjoy the CBD parts of it.
More so my daily thing.
I found some marijuana strains that will help me out and everything's categorized.
I smoke them strategically.
I'm not smoking some of the stuff, some of that stuff in the daytime because I won't
be productive.
I immediately have a, I will do it tomorrow.
And it'd be like nine o'clock in the morning, but I like tapping out already.
It ain't happening the other day.
So CBD helps.
It helps me get that fixed, but I still have to go through it.
And recently another partner of mine has created a one to one strain equal parts CBD equal parts
TC.
Oh wow.
I believe that full spectrum is the way I can smoke.
Full spectrum is basically equal parts of everything and there's different ways of doing
it.
So, so far out of a full spectrum cannabis plant, the flower that I get from it, I don't
get the complete feeling that I get that that was a good feeling out of full spectrum mixing
it to where it's equal parts CBD in a blunt.
And then I added some TC on top of it and mixed them into the blunt and roll it up.
Same thing.
So if I do overpowers the hell out of TC in my opinion, it, it counter effects the psychoactive
part of it.
So if I do 50 50, I'm not getting no psychoactive effects out of it.
If I do a one to three ratio TC to CBD, I'm not getting a feeling.
I have to basically do a sprinkle of CBD on top to balance it out.
And I didn't like that either because flavor profiles, I kind of smoke certain things because
I want to get the flavor out of that.
What I have noticed is if I smoke a full blunt, a TC and I get to that point, I got low eyes,
I'm borderline, did I smoke too much?
Did I stop in time?
Because anytime you have an anxiety attack, it's basically like overdose overdose.
You sent your body into shock.
You took in more cannabinoids than you were supposed to.
It's too much like having a stomach ache.
You ate too much.
So you smoke too much.
You got to find that sweet spot and let it settle and bring it on.
So I will smoke it.
So about where I like and then I will come behind it and I'll ask you to smoke a pre
roll CBD by itself.
It's like the most perfect stress free balance.
You go from extreme heart rate to just everything's just mellow floating through everything matrix.
That's my my best.
My my my preferred method of smoking is a balance.
I don't want any disturbance while I'm smoking.
I'm smoking for peace, not to increase what was going on before I started smoking.
Word.
You've been growing the cannabis plant for how long now?
I've been growing.
I have my license for three years will say that I've been growing in legal states on
a better part of five years.
I would go visit my brother, get some playtime, grow some stuff, learn some stuff, understand
what he knew about it.
And anytime you tell me this is how something go, I'm always critiquing it.
Even if I believe you're right.
I'm not.
It's not that I don't believe you're right.
I'm always looking for a better way of doing things.
So when you tell me this is this and I can actually understand why something happens
and why it works, I'm always able to make it work better for me or make it productive,
more productive.
So I got time to actually practice with him and and learn some of these things and critique
it a little bit.
And after every first global I had, I want to say like he broke me in.
He had like a I want to say like a 20 yard tote, like laundry tote.
And it was just full of tree breath.
And it was trimming time.
And I'll tell you this, by the time I finished trimming, I didn't want to see no tree.
I didn't want to touch it.
I want to smoke it.
I just wanted to get away from it.
So I was like, I already see this is going to be a problem.
Because in order to make the dollars that I want, I'm going to have to go hundreds
of pounds and I'll be damned.
I'm going to be sitting there trimming by hand and trimming all of this stuff up this
way.
So I started critiquing it then.
Every grow, something happens.
Every grow, I learned something.
Every grow, I adjusted something.
So I'm at a point now where I'm scaling up.
I'm finishing up my biggest building that I've designed and executed.
I always go from scratch.
I don't just get somebody to do it.
I got to GM the whole job.
I got to find the person that I think can do it the best and see my vision.
If you don't see my vision, then I can't really hire you unless you just straight professionally
get the job done for certain things.
But I GM it.
I take my time.
It took me from February to now, way past my expectations of when I would be done with
this building.
And it was more so finding the right people, working through getting a license and inspections.
I've never done any of that.
I always worked under the tables.
Like, I'm not talking to nobody.
I do what I want.
But if I want to get into the medical field of it, then I have to have everything on the
books.
They have to be able to look back and see, I don't want anything to come back and bite
me because I didn't do it the right way.
So this way, this right there, we don't want to right way with it.
And the next two buildings, I don't want to be in there 30 days.
Now I understand what it takes.
Understand what license, understand what inspection I need.
30 days in and out, turnkey from delivery or that building.
And I'll be able to start flipping these things.
You've already built or you're in the process of finishing your first building.
What is this building going to allow you to scale to once it's done?
So I was going, I repurposed a lot of my spaces.
I was growing in a room that I was doing the microgreens and the lettuce in.
And that turned into a chill room, a little man cave.
And it was like, let's get back to the dollars.
And it turned into my growth space for my growth.
The max I've been able to push out of that room was about 10 pounds at a time.
It's not really enough to get to a point where I can say, I can talk to this dispensary and
I can have him on a schedule or subscription where he's getting a pound a month.
I can't fulfill a whole month with one possession.
So I didn't want to get to the point where I was like, I can't get you this month, but
I'll get you next month.
Because people get, they'll go the other direction quickly.
You're only as good as how consistently you can keep doing it.
So I wanted to, I wanted to keep it at a scale to where I felt proud of the income that I
was making from it.
But I knew the potential was only the amount that I had.
And now I'm going from being able to push 10 pounds per grow out of this room.
So every what?
Like eight, 10 weeks, so to speak for four months, like four months for me.
And it's kind of like a perpetual grow.
Like basically by the time I harvest, I've already got a group of plants that's been
growing in a smaller location for a month that I basically put right in after I sterilize
and clean the room for weeks, flip again.
So every three to four months, just depending on how on top of it I am, because I'm doing
50 projects at one time.
That's just one aspect of it.
And anything that I've made so far from it has went right back into it.
So everybody that's helped me, I'm saying they're my sponsors.
I appreciate you.
I'm trying to, trying to do this for us as a people, as a culture.
You don't know many black farmers, but I'm trying to set an example that we can also
do this as well.
And I'm open to everybody, of course, everybody for the culture isn't race dominant.
It's for all the people that had to sneak and buy weed, that had to hide it, that got
locked up for throwing it and smoking it.
Anybody that's been for the culture, that's what for the culture is.
But it's a personal achievement to kind of fill the minority gap in it.
And the minority gap in it is really because you don't know, it seems more difficult than
it is.
So I will be offering classes and I'll be offering help with filling licenses out and
starting your plant.
I'll provide an SOP on how to actually grow the plant and do it the right way.
You grow great and you match my integrity for the plant.
As far as what I put out there as a product, I can help you get rid of some of it.
So I'm not just putting anybody's stuff out there.
You'd have to exceed what I'm pushing for.
You mean we might be able to work together.
I'm still kind of doing most of the growing part solo.
The logistics part of it, I got wifey, you know, Kush right here.
She embroidered this for me.
I got my boy George that jumps in the loop a lot and helps me with a lot of the crazy
ideas.
I want something that you can put a hole through it and it's going to have a face on it.
It's going to feed this and feed that.
He's the dude that's like, I'll smoke one.
I think I got it.
And then we're in there just building it.
So somebody that can vibe with you.
I got my boy, my nephew that helps me out.
I got big Bubba Jerome that's been there forever helping me out.
Bubba G that's been helping me out.
I got a lot of people out there that aren't always physically able to help me out, but
they're always telling me to keep going because it's hard to stay focused.
It's your brain and your mind and that depression will always take you be at it for a month
and then you go like, you know, I ain't even be able to do good at it.
And I'll just give up now.
And they kind of keep me grounded.
They keep me going forward.
The need for it keeps me going forward.
What I'm about.
I think, I think this is important too, because especially today, there's a new opportunity.
A lot of black families have land within the family, but it's just land and it's undeveloped
and nobody's really doing anything with it.
Maybe it won't even make it to the next generation because the whoever has it is don't want to
keep paying taxes on it because nobody's doing anything with it.
And states like Virginia.
So I'm in North Carolina, you're in South Carolina, but right above us, Virginia has
gone recreational DC, Maryland and on up north.
So it seems like we're, we're quote unquote next in line in terms of North Carolina, South
Carolina.
But we'll see when, when that day comes.
But I say this to say that's going to present opportunities to do something that with that
land that can be very lucrative that we have not been able to take advantage of like in
the past.
And you, someone like yourself putting in this groundwork, not only on how to grow,
but how to build facilities to grow at scale, which is a big key to the process too.
Because like I said, that land is there, but what are we going to do with it?
What are we going to build on it?
What are we going to grow on it?
But you literally have taken land and just built stuff on top of it through trial and
error, YouTube, university, figuring it out.
And now you're growing a facility to scale.
You said you're going to go from 10 or roughly 10 pounds every three or so months to how
many once this is done, give or take.
We're talking 40 to 50 pounds per grow.
So you're, you're a four to five X in your operation with this one unit with that volume.
Do you like, is that going to be enough to help you do the next phase of what you need
or do you think you need those other two or three units as well?
It will, it will basically finance everything forward.
I mean, right now I'm basically just hustling months at a time.
I go months without spending and I, and you put it right in.
My family's patient with me to trust me with making the choice that that's going to work
for how I see this thing going.
Give me full control of what move is next.
Trust me, we're going to pay this a little late so that we can go ahead and get this
up and going because I kept up with everything on time, man.
I wouldn't even have the finance to build up everything.
I didn't want to stick check, check, check.
I went years, bro, bad credit.
Can't get a loan.
Can't get a hundred dollar credit card.
But I was always good at hustling and stacking bread up.
So I just got to the point where I started putting that money in and investing in got
my own LLCs and started my own 401ks and started saving some money on taxes by putting it in
the IRA.
And now we just basically use the income from the business to supply the next one.
And at times we'll take a loan off the 401k and pay back no interest.
Pay yourself back no interest.
So that's, that's, that's pretty good.
But this one building is going to basically be able to supply the next building a hundred
percent in the first year.
So a full year of growing in that room, I'll be able to have enough bread to do the very
next building a hundred percent.
And like I said, 30 days in and out turn key you ready to start another growth.
And then the following year, those two buildings will basically be a lot, allow me to do two
more buildings than I'm at for and I can keep scaling up with leaving residual leftover
to take care of home a little bit less stressful and keep pushing forward.
I think it's dope because again, a lot of opportunities are ahead and individuals like
yourself who have figured it out from the ground up, that's opportunities to help enlighten
other people on how they can build something for themselves.
I could easily foresee just that part alone, helping other people figure out how to build
something where they can grow for themselves in a sustainable way to also make some money
from it.
Like that is very dope and you're at the forefront of it.
Being in a state like South Carolina and like you say, you're, you're, you're going through
a new process, dealing with inspections and, and you're learning a lot of lessons.
Can we just talk about what, what, what's behind you?
I see you got, you got several bags behind you.
Can you just walk me through a little bit about what, what's in store here?
Is that, is that allowed there to give us just a little insight on some of the great
things the farm has produced here?
Yeah, I've got some Hawaiian haze, some Electra, some special sauce, some Subahase.
So the four screens that I currently have in stock, not too sure if I want to show too
much on camera and they kind of like drop the whole feed, but you can always hit me
up personally.
All my personal info is listed.
You can get it from me.
You can, you can directly hit me up.
My phone number is right there.
My email is there.
My messenger is there.
If you don't want to give your phone number out.
I do offer in-person tours at times.
I have a lot of people come visit the farm.
I will definitely teach, man.
I'll definitely show.
I'll definitely want hold back information.
My goal is to teach a hundred people how to become successful in this.
And that's just a starter goal.
Once I reach that, then we're going to push it out a little further.
I've ran several businesses, man, like, and I've stopped them not because they weren't
making income, it's just because it wasn't something that I wanted to do every day.
I didn't want to just do it for money.
I just, I wanted to, wanted to have something out of it.
I wanted it to be useful for me, for my home, for my family.
I wanted to be able to hire my family as employees.
Like the people that actually get paid for helping me do these things are blood.
It's my household.
My son is 16, 15.
He'll be 16 this year and he's making income already.
I mean, he's got his bank account set up.
He's got W-2s coming in for working.
So the fact of being able to not just do it for me, but to, you know, have it feed the
family, not just me feed the family.
Cause my last name Dunning that I hold, it holds some heavy weight, man.
It's the man the family's been providers forever.
We've been, we hold a family together.
We don't leave no man behind.
It may take longer than necessary, but we always come back and hold our word.
I feel that weight of making sure everybody makes it minus all of that hell you got to
go through in the beginning of life.
Most people are starting from scratch, working a job, making as much as they can.
Not everybody's doing a career.
You're not making enough to do what you have to do.
And that's good for experience and getting out into the world.
But I wanted mines to be able to make much more and invested into what they want to do
with their life.
You can stay with it.
If this is what you want to do, they use this business as a staple to finance some of the
things that you want to get started minus all the hell it takes to make a good income
these days.
Hmm.
Yeah.
For sure.
Man, the name of the farms, DBK Farms, what does that DBK stand for?
Destined to be Kings, man.
It stood for many things, man.
DBK has been in front of every business that I've started since I was 21, man.
I've had Dunning Bullified Kennels, I think was the very first thing it was.
And then I just left DBK as Destined to be King.
And it was a staple.
They didn't mean anything behind the front of everything.
It was just that whenever you saw DBK, it was always five star.
You've never had a bad review ever.
You can't find one person, I put it out there.
If I ever did you dirty, say something about it.
So the vibe that you get from seeing DBK is I trust them.
I already know what time it is.
If I put DBK in front of an idea that I'm planning for the future, people already know
I'm about it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to be dope and I'm going to succeed at it because I won't stop until I figure
it out.
So it's our branding.
I don't really use it no more.
We really go by Farmer J's Natural Remedies.
My boy Donny gave me Farmer J way back when I was farming out here and getting started.
And I hated the name.
I hated Farmer J. I was like, stop calling me that.
And then it just started clicking.
And then I'm at a gas station and somebody's like, yo, Farmer J. I looked at him and I'm
like, that's me.
And then it just kind of stuck.
No, I'm holding strong to it.
I'm sticking with it.
It's something to be known for and it represents something major, I hope, one day.
No doubt, man.
You're setting yourself up for long-term success.
The vision is there, which is something I can see.
And you're moving toward the vision.
And that's something that I respect from creators, entrepreneurs, people who pursue their ideas
and thoughts.
It's clear that you're not just doing it off of a whim.
You're aiming for something and you're moving steadily towards it.
I can't wait to see what that ends up or continues to evolve into.
But G-S**t Podcast is definitely going to keep supporting Farmer J and all the products
that you got to offer.
And for those listening, again, if you've never tried CBD, I would recommend right here
with that Hawaiian.
That thing is so flavorful.
It's so fluffy and light.
You will definitely enjoy that Hawaiian.
I could say that from experience.
And the Electra, I have to say, the Electra was pretty good, but the Hawaiian was...
It stood out.
It stood out for sure.
For sure.
And we got the link.
We got the information in the description, so y'all make sure you check that out.
Farmer J, do you got any just final words or anything you want to leave with the audience
before we close out?
I appreciate everybody listening and just understand.
I don't put too much information out there in the book because there's a very thin line
between crossing their line and getting banned for stuff and getting Facebook jailed and
all that crazy stuff.
I don't want no parts to that.
But if you ever got a question, inbox me.
I put it out there.
The brave ones know.
Word up.
This is the G*****t Podcast where we focus on family, friends, finances, freedom, and
our future and f**k everything else.
Shout out to Farmer J for joining.
Make sure y'all subscribe.
Greatly appreciate y'all.
Thank y'all.