Have you ever jumped on the internet just to search for things like tincture, cannabis dispensary near me, cannabis dispensary, recreational marijuana dispensary, cannabis store near me, recreational marijuana dispensaries near me, microdosing thc, microdosing cbd, or anything like that and just been disappointed?

DESCRIBE WHAT MAKES YOUR HEMP BASED CBD PRODUCTS – AND YOUR APPROACH TO AGRICULTURE – DIFFERENT THAN OTHER HEMP FARMERS.

We practice regenerative agriculture here. Everyone uses that term, but what it means is our primary job is to build the soil and create a super biologically active soil, one which allows each plant – carrots or hemp – to perform to its fullest potential, and to be as rich in nutrients and terpenes and medicines as possible. That results in a totally different hemp-based product. 

The level of attention and care into each plant -when you nurture and provide a level of attention and care into each plant, really give it the attention it deserves, you’re going to wind up with something different from comercial agro in terms of food, hemp or marijuana. 

For us that starts with using real compost, and doing field work with a team of large draft horses. We don’t have a tractor. All the field work is done by Polly and Trixie. The less you work and disturb the soil the better, because in each handful of soil there are more microorganisms than there are humans on the planet. That’s the level of complexity good soil (like what we grow our hemp in) is operating at. When you invert and constantly turn that soil, you’re basically creating a mass destruction event of those nutrients. 

DO WE EVEN NOTICE IT, THAT IMPACT ON SOIL HEALTH IN OUR HEMP AND PRODUCE? 

We’re used to it, tractors plowing up soil for big agro, and we’re accustomed to the mass extinction events of those microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, etc. But in the field in our acreage, there are uncountable individuals and hundreds of thousands of species of microorganisms. 

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING THOSE HORSES BEYOND HAVING HUGE HORSES DO THAT WORK?

One of the things the horses encourage us to do is be really gentle. You’re aware of each field activity you do with the horses. You can‘t just give it more gas, let’s say, and do whatever you want. They encourage you to focus on the task you’re doing, and the gentle way to do it to be the easiest on the horses. 

It feels like a discipline that encourages us to align with what we know is best for soil health, the plants we produce, and the power source we have to help produce them. It’s all about being gentle and mindful. Doing that, you disturb the habitat less, your crops hold nutrients better, and can produce high quality produce and hemp from year to year with little input from other sources. 

YOU MENTIONED YOU DO YOUR OWN COMPOSTING. 

Yes, we don’t buy fertilizers or anything…the only things we use for fertility on the farm is our own homemade compost. A combination of goats, cows, hens, horses, woodchips, local leaves and put it together you get a terroir of super high quality compost we apply once a year. The rest is used for aggressively using cover crops – plants you grow not to harvest but specifically to improve the soil and they die in place and the roots feed all the microorganisms.

WHY PARTNER WITH CANNA PROVISIONS?

The level of education you present to the consumer means the way we grow and the quality product we offer which I think is unique is something Canna Provisions consumers can learn about when they walk in to Lee or Holyoke. It’s not just another CBD on the shelf, and you are not just another dispensary. You are there to walk customers through our product and your other products, with an education-forward approach to retail. 

TAKE IT HOME: WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WANT CUSTOMERS TO KNOW?

The concentration in one of our carrots is going to be double or triple even an “organic” carrot from a large scale farm, and that’s all about the soil it’s grown in. Our hemp or cannabis is exactly the same. I think consumers are going to start asking those questions and dispensaries like Canna Provisions is in a good position to educate these captive positions. You can break it down in a way the consumer can understand and appreciate. There are very few hemp companies out there in the northeast where this level of focus on soil health and plant health is at the heart of what they’re doing. Hemp grows – it wants to, but it’s easy to grow it poorly. And that’s most of what’s out there.

It’s up to the consumer to take that next step and figure out how to differentiate between a high quality product and a standard one.