One of my least favorite things to talk about is myself. But I will give it a shot. I am not an overly social person and keep mainly to my self and family. In my day job I am an IT engineer at a credit union in Michigan. Which has helped in my growing journey. One of the early lessons in IT was that just because something happens once doesn’t mean anything more than it happened once. And I use that mindset in growing, while researching what and how I wanted to grow I applied this to things I read online. Hearing the same things from several people that I considered credible was invaluable. And obviously I like tech. Being in IT in the financial services industry means that basically I am on call 24/7 so I can’t always get the time in the grow room that is needed. This is where I have learned to embrace automation in the garden. One of my next posts will cover what I do for automation. My relationship with cannabis started in 1976 (man I feel old) when I hit my first joint. That relationship continued pretty regularly until my wife and I had our first daughter. Both my dad and step dad were in prison while I was growing up. I was not going to let that happen to my kids so I gave up cannabis. We had four daughters and my relationship with cannabis took a long break. After it became legal in Michigan I started smoking again. Then late in 2019 while day dreaming at the computer I did a search for growing cannabis at home. In my early adult years my friends would talk about growing our own while getting high. And I thought that sounded cool but never got around to it. When I went upstairs to tell my wife I wanted to start growing cannabis in the basement she gave me that are you crazy look. But like she says to all my crazy ideas, if that will make you happy you should go for it. And I can’t explain how happy I am that I did.
The Journey Began
The research took months and took me down more rabbit holes than I imagined it would. There are more ways to grow your own than I thought. Dirt, water, and seeds. How hard could it be? I won’t get into all the details but once I found out about soil, hydroponics, deep water culture, coco, and others I knew right away I needed to find what I thought would work best for me. Mind you I have really never gardened or knew much about it. It came as a big surprise to me that I wanted to grow organically. The environment was never a big concern to me but the passion and knoweledge that I picked up from the organic cannabis community taught me a lot. And it started to change my mindset about this rock we are all living on. Without going into great detail here my mind was made up and I was going to grow organically. And for the first time in my adult life I found a community that I was comfortable hanging around with. Again I will get into more of the community I found in later posts. So with my mind made up I did research and picked up what I needed to get started. I won’t lie my first couple grows were pretty mediocre. But I did not give up and kept trying and every grow has been better than the last in one way or another. I grow for myself, my family, and a few friends. So getting a pound or more each round is not important to me at all. The feeling when someone tells me my cannabis is good and they really like it is more rewarding than I can tell them.
The Unexpected Benefit Of Growing
The most unexpected thing that happened while growing is how much I learned about myself. I used to find it easy to get down on myself or talk myself into giving up if I was not good at things. But the people that were giving me advice had way more confidence in me than I did. And these were people I had gotten to know online in forums they never met me in person but were willing to spend their time to help new growers like me out. My thinking has always been analytical and that helped me with figuring out how to do things better. The journey to become a better grower has taken me down paths that I never expected. I started to care about the environment, about what I was putting into my body, about how to make things better and cleaner. How I can use nature to make my own inputs for the garden. I attended a weekend event to learn about growing organically, mushrooms, and foraging. We went out in the woods and foraged plants and I made my first tincture. We learned about making inputs, inoculating logs for mushrooms, soil health, and plant medicine. There have been hours watching videos to learn about many topics that I never would have thought I would be in to. As I said earlier I am a pretty private person. So getting involved has taken me out of my comfort zone a number of times. And it is still not easy for me to go to events or outings but I am finding it easier as I attend more. My eyes look at different things these days. While walking the dog I look at what plants I come across and what is going on with nature. If you want to make inputs with acorn shells I can tell you a place to go to get them. I have spotted several places that I think would be good to start an IMO culture. So there is a whole different world out there if you just know where to open your eyes and look. .
Wrap It Up
To wrap this post about me up I feel I should probably get into a few of my beliefs about cannabis. First I believe that it should be legal everywhere. Unfortunately we are not there yet, but we must keep working until that happens. Second I believe that if you are going to open a cannabis business in a state that you should be a resident of that state. Home growers, caregivers, and small operations grow much better cannabis than the big corporations can. And by legalizing in most states they pitched how great it would be for the states. Then came in greedy conglomerates that only care about the bottom line. Laws and regulations are needed to protect the people that buy their products in stores. But in my opinion it would be better if we could all grow our own and share it with who we choose to. And I really believe that it needs to be de-classified. And treat it like alcohol with regulations but leave it up to us how and when we will use it. Both my dad and step dad deserved to be in prison. I also believe that there should be no one in prison for non violent cannabis offenses. It is a plant not something that deserves a prison sentence. This plant brings people together, heals people, and does no harm. So let’s treat it for what it is. The stigma surrounding cannabis is outdated and we need to get past it. And it all starts with an open mind and being able to have discussions about the plant in a smart level headed way. That sums things up for now. I am excited to get into how I grow and how I go about making it easier and better in future posts. For now let’s get growing.