Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
I get by with a little help from my friends, and I reciprocate in turn. I’m writing from the couch of a dear friend in San Leandro because we’re on the road for our 4-20 sales trip, and I’ve been thinking about how much love and good energy we share when we’re out in the world, and how that energy comes back to us in so many ways. It feels good to build human connection, to strengthen relationships, to share the goods from our farm and connect through herb, food and fellowship.
Pops makes his famous farmstand cookies for us en masse to share with our friends at dispensaries, and I’ve been thinking about the ways that these types of efforts demonstrate something about us. We bring pepper jellies that we make from our summer harvests, small gifts of our work, yet also symbols of the lives we lead and the practices we cherish. These tokens impart some of the essence of our farm, communicating a bit of who we are to the people who interact with the customers who purchase our herb from the shops.
When I think about our lives as farmers, sales are an integral part, for there is no farm if there is no money coming in. I’d rather live in a world that didn’t require money, that we could give the gifts of our labor and receive our needs in return, but we do our best in the system within which we find ourselves. Sales work is fun because we’re proud of the quality of our work, glad to share it with the world because it represents the love and care we put into our efforts.
It’s fun to stand behind a table of goods that we grew and produced because we believe in them, we consume them ourselves, and we know that we’ve done good work to create them. It makes sales fun, and we treat it as such with jokes and banter and joy. Whether standing behind my farmers market table or representing our cannabis during demos at dispensaries, we have a good time because we enjoy the connections we make through each interaction.
We’re learning about being good brand partners, checking in about inventory, finding out what things are selling and what things need a little help. These data points help us refine our production strategies, deciding what to grow in the year to come. Vegetables are similar in this sense; I used to really like to grow kohlrabi, but customers didn’t buy them much so I stopped producing them.
When I garden for myself I grow what I want (usually flowers and herbs for cooking and for making tea blends), but when I farm I try to grow things that people want to buy. It’s not a fun feeling to put effort into producing things that don’t sell, so I’m highly responsive to input and refine my methods immediately to avoid overproduction. I want people to be happy with our products in part because they’re spending their hard-earned money, but even more so because of the intangible yet important energetics. We put love into our work, and we want people to feel that love and be bolstered by their experience with us.
I think a lot about how the salads, greens, root crops and heartier heading brassica, squash, tomatoes and more find their ways into the kitchens of family, friends, neighbors and community members. I think about the experiences that people have with our herb, and how these interactions support life and happiness. It brings me great joy to serve in this role as a farmer, and gives a sense of deep responsibility to reciprocate and produce the best goods that we can.
Getting to meet so many people is a highlight of our work, broadening our range, and traveling around Northern California with brother Lito is exciting and fun. It also creates a strain for us to be off farm, and I’m grateful to family and friends who work with us to maintain the farm while we’re gone. It takes teamwork and coordination. While we’re visiting with customers on 4-20, harvest will still be happening to be ready for market the next day. It’s a whirlwind that can be stressful and intense but I’m expanding my capacity to manage and take it all in without being overwhelmed. I remind myself of this lesson often, taking a moment to catch my breath and focus as I coordinate the many moving pieces that make up our farmscape.
As we celebrate cannabis, I’m also conscious of loss and struggle, of how badly the rollout of regulation has gone, of the damage to rural communities from the loss of cannabis dollars. I’m reminded of the testimony I gave to the State Assembly in 2017, warning of an economic crisis if changes weren’t made to make the process more workable for small operators. I’m reminded of how many people in this country are still in prison for cannabis, and of how the wrongs of Prohibition will be felt for many years to come. There is a long way to go to normalization, with a lot of work to be done.
I think about the ways that plants and substances change consciousness, of how many experiences I have had that have indelibly changed me. I’m glad that our work is in support of experiences like that for others, and we strive to put love and good energy into our herb so that people feel it when they smoke it. Grandpa said, “Let us be happy in our work,” and I say, may it be so. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!