Smoking local and dreaming of what could be

As we enter this age of deglobalization, eating, snacking and smoking local can be a special experience.

For generations, low fuel prices and even lower-priced foreign manufactured goods were the preferred consumables of the first world. This led to a lower quality product being accepted by consumers and our landfills piled up with cardboard packaging and goods suffering from planned obsolescence, while we Amazon up another round of rubber dog shit from Asia.

It has come to the attention of the small-but-vocal hippie minority that there is a better way. All around Tucson are farms and talented artisans that produce a wide variety of food products, art pieces and functional crafts that have so much character and quality.

At ReLeaf, we have had our own sort of locavore moment. Two years ago, we opened a rural adult-use cannabis establishment on Naugle Avenue in Patagonia.

Earlier this year, we took over operation of Elephant Head Farms, a cannabis farm located in Amado, the far northern stretches of Santa Cruz County. We had public meetings in front of the Santa Cruz County Planning and Zoning Commission, and they approved our conditional-use permit, saying our plan and team was a breath of fresh air. This was exciting and encouraging, because it felt so different from the stigma and skepticism cannabis has long suffered.

Our new brand, Soil Sun and Love, recently had the first harvests, and the crew carefully prepared this historic crop for quality assurance testing and subsequent retail sale. The entire Elephant Head team is extremely excited and proud to bring you cannabis, grown as clean and green as can be, to our Patagonia store and to the rest of the state. We plan to have vendor days in both Patagonia and Tucson to celebrate and allow all local cannabis consumers the chance to meet the people who grow your medicine.

To meet those responsible for producing what you consume is important.

The farm in Amado is a special place. It has a long history of being grazed by cattle, and the land slopes gently from I-19 to the cottonwood-lined banks of the Santa Cruz River.

We are honored to be the caretakers of this property and have big plans there over the next several decades. We plan to grow organic herbs and vegetables in addition to our legal cannabis production. Eventually, we would like to invite the public to farmers markets and festival-style events that will be fun and educational.

We wish to promote our ideals and show people, especially the youth, how to be in tune with nature, rather than control it with pesticides and herbicides. We wish to highlight the synergy we have with our crops and how they respond to the love, respect and intention placed into their daily care.

It is mission-critical that we keep the soils vibrant and healthy and the water supply clean, so we will continue to use regenerative farming techniques, crop rotation, companion planting and focus on building our soil.

Even at this early stage, the results of these efforts can be seen in our first batch of cannabis. This long-awaited product hit our stores in Tucson and Patagonia this week. The cannabis is dense and fragrant, the result of all the hard work and love being infused into it by our team. We are supported by rich soils and a perfect climate for farming.

We invite you to try Soil Sun and Love and to see for yourself. If you like the experience delivered, we invite you to follow along over the next couple years as we develop the farm and expand our product lines.

The food and medicine we grow can help people heal and restore balance internally, but the psychosocial benefit of being a part of something special is perhaps even more empowering. It is fun and special to try imported products from afar, but the pride and self-sufficiency of eating or smoking local creates a special sort of satisfaction. It means we don’t have to depend on anyone else. We don’t need their permission or assistance; instead, we can use our creativity and culture to provide for ourselves.

This creates a pride in ourselves and in our community, an admiration for other people’s skills and contributions to our health and daily lives. This gives us each permission to do what we do best and to make our contribution, our mark on the world, and it is a human need to be seen, to be useful to our fellows. As we wrap up 2023 and our growing season in Amado, I wish to give the biggest heartfelt thanks and congratulations to my dedicated team that made it all happen. I can’t wait to see the next evolution at the farm and what you guys accomplish next, one love.

This article appears in Nov 23-30, 2023.