The Future Cannabis Project Cali High Episode 54: Nat Pennington, Owner, CEO, HSC

TRANSCRIPT

yes

when you wake up

and you feel like you need a little

upper

or when you’re down and out

and you need to get a little higher

if you feel like you need a blessing now

and you feel a little high today

welcome to the

church welcome to cali high episode 54

i’m your host chenzo nico and this week

our special guest is nat pennington

owner and ceo of the humboldt seed

company

as planting season draws near we talk

with nat about the new strains at the

humbled seed company the selection and

process for making a stabilized strain

improved quality of autoflower strains

how to save a phenotype with tissue

culture trends in strain popularity and

commercial versus personal seed choices

we also talk about the current problems

with the legalization of cannabis in

california and more

coming from a science background matt is

one of the best informed people in

cannabis breeding and as in our previous

interviews with him he lays out a

cornucopia of valuable knowledge before

us in this must-see episode

that also appears in cali high episodes

39-23

stay tuned

kelly high is blessed to be here with

nat pennington for the third time

good morning nat how are you

good morning doing well excellent

you know we were going to talk about a

few things today the state of cannabis

but before we get to that part i just

want to find out what’s going on with

the humble seed company

what new strains are on the lineup this

year

we’ve got some pretty exciting new

strains out this year uh

we’ve been

definitely putting a little bit more

giving autoflower some more attention

and it that’s been sort of like a

gradual process over the last i don’t

know

seven eight years but

it took a while for our you know like to

convince ourselves that

there was

you know

i mean the biggest thing that i always

kind of point

point out is that

i really truly believe that there’s no

baggage that comes along with the auto

flowering

trait and so you know

when people say

autoflowers are

are this that or the other i mean if

they’re referencing any

anything other than the fact that they

flower

automatically without having to change

the light

then it’s a

it’s a false stereotype i would say

that’s something that i’ve

learned is is a fact i think it’s got a

bad rap well i don’t i mean yeah there’s

been people that

have

you know said that they’re just

i’ve heard things like oh they’re all

crap or whatever stuff like that and

just like firsthand

experience there’s

you can

through just i’m not even talking like

i’m not talking about

gene editing or anything weird

just through

traditional breeding practices selective

breeding

you can uh

essentially just kind of cut

that trait that is the

you know no matter what i’m gonna flower

after a month and a half or after a

month whatever um

and paste it into

whatever

style cannabis you want so whatever

you know

you can have the dankest cannabis in the

world could easily be an autoflower uh

yeah well that’s great for outdoor

farmers right it’s one more than one

crop i would imagine it’s it’s

convenient for a lot of people i mean

we’ve got a we’ve got a guy

who is i would say sort of a little bit

of a pioneer

who uh

you know what what i’ve always kind of

assumed is like our the

least likely

client that we would have as a genetics

company

especially for our autoflower varietals

or strains is is a like indoor

hydroponic type grow environment

and

we’ve got this indoor hydroponic person

who is just

absolutely loving

being able to run autoflowers because

you know it’s just

zero you know pests zero pathogens

and it’s just this like

incredibly low

low maintenance

process of just like sticking the seeds

you know he uses like sort of the rock

wool yeah yeah um

hydroponic growing style and

just you know plugging the seeds in

getting them

a few inches tall

trans planting them into the bigger

rockwool cubes and into the main

you know what what you would normally

think of as a veg space

and uh

then it just goes and there’s no like

having to

you know shut the lights down for

12 hours and and because of that

the plant is actually photosynthesizing

and

being able to build flower the entire

time

that

you know i think that they’re leaving

do you know whether he’s on like 20 hour

light 18 yeah so some people go

18 some people go 20.

and uh it actually is just like it’s a

more efficient

way of growing and you you might not

necessarily think that because you’re

like oh there’s like more electricity

but actually that electricity

is being used by the plant to build more

flour

and it cuts down on on the number of

hours

therefore it stays

power right

well overall you can cut you can have a

quicker life cycle

um overall because you you know thinking

about

you know clones and having to keep

mothers

and that whole process of getting

something to where it’s a you know a

five inch tall clone or

or whatever um that takes a lot of

energy and and people don’t necessarily

think about it they’re like well i just

pay

you know

eight dollars a clone or whatever and uh

but that eight dollars is is energy that

they’ve spent yeah yeah yeah and uh

you know

long story short there’s i think a lot

of different applications that people

don’t even realize the obvious ones are

like well you know we don’t have to do

uh light depth

in the outdoor growing environment

which is a huge advantage and uh just

also just a lot of like agronomic

advantages and then we always think

about just the personal

grower and um

we think it’s easier for them as well

just

have some plants in the backyard and you

can actually do it

you know at least two times in a summer

right for her and you know if your state

says

you can only have six plants or

something well

you can probably

have

two harvests and so then you can kind of

have 12 plants yeah exactly like the the

big new strains that we’ve released are

the potty mouth which is um was actually

kind of a collaborative project with our

friend jason

ridgeline farms

who’s a fellow humble farmer who just

kind of like

won emerald cups you know year after

year and uh is an excellent grower

obviously so

what’s it like

it’s

the reason that he

gave it the name pottymouth is because

it was so

it’s the flower structure of it is not a

lot of

leaf not a lot of fluff it’s just like

all the

the bracks that make up the best part of

the cannabis flower yeah and so when it

grows it just looks like this

monster like you know kind of all gnarly

like that

and uh

and that so he kind of came up with that

name we were like screw it you know the

cannabis strain names are

are off the wall these days no i know

anyway so

if we can have stuff called meat breath

and

you know yeah

whatever else garlic breath yeah

yeah then

you know we’re just so anyway it’s a

it’s an awesome one and we just got the

test results back

and it tested it 34 and that’s through

like a lab in california that’s

uh known for integrity

which you know

not

i don’t want to

say but there’s just so much going on

with the labs

yeah everywhere that and this stupid

race for thc we don’t really

personally

give it that much

credence but you know it definitely uh

seems like it’s it’s a driver for

economics yeah people like the high thc

numbers and you know

yeah they want to feel 34 is pretty high

i must say

yeah well especially from like a lab

that’s

that’s legit um

and then the farmer’s daughter is

another one that was just this like

shining star in our final hunt efforts

in the last year and uh

that one was

a pleasure to be able to get out to the

world what would you compare these two

i mean

the potty mouth is like this

you know what seems to be

what people are

gravitating towards in the

sort of

vast commercial

marketplace is the purple uh

gassy and purple strain yeah

which you know we’ve always had

really good

purple gasty strains like our all gas og

is kind of a purple

royal highness is another one

that’s like that that that we’ve had for

a long time and it’s just funny how

i mean there was

a few years where

people

thought for some reason that

purple cannabis was

it turned purple because there was

something wrong with it like that

it had a

deficiency in a nutrient or something

like that

and of course we always knew that it was

just

genetic and we always like oh the purple

stuff is beautiful you know and it

it’s good and stony and and all that

but it’s just funny how um

you know the trend will go one way and

then it’ll go another and so yeah i was

going to ask you about trans

quite some time

quite a while where

you know people were just like we don’t

want any of that purple

don’t give us any genetics that have the

purple and

now everybody wants purple flash forward

four years and and everybody’s super

interested in the purple yeah um

one of your pineapple plants turned

purple for me

yeah yeah some of the yeah and the

lesson for me as a breeder is just has

always been more and more just like

trust

trust your instincts

as a both a

smoker and a breeder

smoke what you like

who gives a [ __ ] you know like

what you hear is supposed to be the best

because

you know everybody’s experience is

different and

and the only way to to know is to get

out there and get in touch with the

plant and

and check stuff out

experiment

grow your own

uh-huh oh yeah

so one of my questions was you know have

you noticed trends towards certain

strains this year as as compared to

years past and i i see that that kind of

leads into it

um yeah the purple gas is

is really popular right now which is

great because

we we have lots of that stuff yeah

it still

has to be high in thc the the potty

mouth strain is really high in thc

and it’s purple

it’s gassy um

the vanilla cream pie is another one

that’s purple and gassy and it’s really

high in thc

some of the most strongest turpin ones

like the all gas og

and the royal royal highness like those

ones are probably

some of the most gassy

just

rank

[Laughter]

really you know super pungent

strains that we have

in that

kind of gas

genre uh

those ones

you know i i wouldn’t say that they’re

going to like

crush it with with the test results but

certainly

if people just want to

grow something that you know they’re

going to enjoy

those are really good candidates for

that and and both of those the royal

highness and the all gas og are um

quick finishers too

so they they

only take you know until

like 50 days or

late september rather than

mid-october yeah

doctor that’s cool what about farmer’s

daughter

that one is

that one’s

just it was this amazing fino that stood

out to us actually it was kind of funny

because you know we take all these

clones from

fields and fields

uh partnerships with

big farms all over the

you know really all over california

and uh

and

keep all these cuttings because we don’t

want to lose anything so we take it the

cuttings like before they really are all

the way in flower

and then code everything so we can go

back and reference it but um

every now and again

there’s something will just be so

amazing in one of the breeding chambers

that will go and try to

you know we haven’t necessarily cut

every clone in the breeding chambers and

that one was one of those and it was

like almost touch and go we were like

all right we’re gonna try to re-veg it

and get it to come back out of flower

and and capture some clones off of it so

that we can preserve it because it was

just this

unbelievable standout

individual

yeah that’s so cool

yeah out of a breeding chamber that was

i don’t even know how many

siblings it had but it there were

you know

at least i would say a hundred um yeah

so you have to keep like a hundred

mothers going until you figure out which

one you want right or something well

that’s i mean every year we do thousands

of them and we do that but mostly that’s

just on stuff that we’re not

pollinating so that’s like right on

fields of sensemia whereas

don’t tend to take cuttings off every

single thing that we’re pollinating

because

i mean one of the things about

pollinating stuff is it kind of changes

the way that the flower is going to

express because it’s full of seeds right

and so

but you can still tell a lot about

you know i mean it’s you can

almost tell just as well basically that

if it

looks really good and smells really good

even if it’s got seeds in it

so occasionally

we’ll find something that’s so amazing

that even though it’s flowering and

seeded and and yada yada yada that we’ll

just do our best to

get it back and put it back in the

vegetative you know get it back in veg

and and get cuts off of it yeah and

that’s how the farmer’s daughter started

it was just something that

stood out so much that we were like oh

my god you know

and and i honestly

i basically did tissue culture to get it

to come

back from being in flower because um

you know that is a way to

essentially kind of clean stuff up yeah

yeah

baby and pamper something that may

otherwise be

kind of jeopardized or whatever yeah

interesting can’t wait to try that

actually

yeah no it and really like all it is

the essence of tissue culture

is starting with something that’s so

you know like the only thing that’s

alive

inside the

the little

petri dish kind of

environment is the the cannabis plant

no powdery mildew no

um funguses no

obviously no

insects no

hopefully no pathogens even though

viruses and things can live inside

tissue but so what you do is you start

by taking it

a little tiny cutting

and

first we rinse it in

in soapy water essentially just like a

detergent so you can use anything like

like dawn for example and

we’ll shake all of the little cuttings

inside a

mason jar essentially of detergent

and then the next step

is uh pull them out

kind of dry them off shake them off even

rinse them if you want and then we put

it into a

a second bath that’s a chlorine bath and

we’ll just completely

wipe out anything

that um

might you know sort of challenge the the

rooting

and the continued growth of the plant

and then we’ll just go instead of going

totally into the tissue culture media

we’ll

into a classic

clone scenario but just keep it a lot

airtight and a lot more

you know isolated a lot more that’s cool

use rooting hormone and and that’s been

an amazing

trick it’s kind of like a hybrid tissue

culture in a way

but

when when we’re trying to get something

to go from

full full flower

and

save it and keep

you know preserve the genetic

get it back into veg

we found that that can be helpful

especially you know if if it’s something

that you find uh and it’s outdoor for

example there’s

you know just more like potential for

yeasts and molds and things like that

yeah yeah

and you can’t dig the plant up and put

it back under 24 hour light so

it can be easier if if you’re doing it

if you’re happening

if you’re growing in a pot a lot of

people will just be like oh well i’m

just gonna

take the pot

and

bring the plant back into the

you know the bedroom and

you know a month and a half later

there’s little sprouts coming out that

are our veg

but you know when you’re doing this in a

big field kind of environment you can’t

really do that yeah but

you know the advantages of the big field

is that you can

pick the one

out of 10 000

because you have

that many more to look at uh

so you know there’s advantages and

disadvantages to all of it but

that’s how farmer’s daughter came about

and it’s it was a

it came out of a humble pound cake and

then

it’s always interesting cause people are

always of course the first question is

what’s the cross

and

for us a lot of the time we’re never

like releasing a genetic that’s just

a times b

equals

this litter of mutts we’re we’re

actually trying to make uh

a line you know

your stabilized strain a real strain and

and in seed form that involves

many many um iterations of

of back crossing and

sort of stabilizing and

in that process

you know it may have started

five years ago by just crossing two

random things but

a lot of the time what it ends up being

for us is like

you know m 69 crossed with

m 27

then the next year we chose

you know g number three and crosstalk

with

x number four

like none of them ended up being uh

strains because in as in and of

themselves they were just individuals

that were selected right and

but

but it at the end of the day it it makes

something and it’s sort of hard to like

reference back

what that was but yeah

yeah so pound cake and

i think

the vanilla cream pie was those were

sort of like

basically offshoots of of that

when you’re developing something too

you’re gonna

you know you kind of like set a goal

that

let’s just say you know go back in time

15 years when we were

developing blueberry muffin

or 12 years or whatever it was and um

you know at some point

there may have been like before it’s

entirely stable and everything

it smells exactly like a blueberry

muffin

there could be one that you’re just like

oh my god that smells like

apple pie and

and then all of a sudden like you know

that may be

bbm

number

and and

so you move bbm 36 into a new

lineage and a new new category no and

you’re like okay i love this

individual so much that

i’m now gonna start to move it into like

a new

you know a whole new genetic or a whole

new strain and

and that’s

you know perfectly

normal and and fair um

and you know you so you then of course

someone’s gonna be like well what’s

what’s the cross on apple pie and you’re

just sitting there thinking like i mean

it’s not even really a cross because

you know it was just a fino yeah it’s

just a variant of the of the cultivar or

it’s a very good yeah that’s a good way

of putting it um

but i think you know so many

cannabis breeders are at this stage

where they’re just like

you know

they don’t have the room to like look at

this stuff at a grand scale so they

don’t have

you know

acres to be able to devote to having

breeding

chambers and fields to to run things and

and they don’t uh

you know a lot of it’s happening

indoors so you see a lot of like

all right well if you’re doing breeding

indoor

there the chances of pollen conden

contamination from one

area to another are actually much higher

because you’ve got

like hvac yeah and

you know like literally

i’ve

i’ve bred indoor plenty and

you you got to go in there every time

you change to the next thing you have to

go in with like uh

um pressure washer and like

get the corners and just it’s crazy

because the pollen actually sticks

everywhere

it lives longer and it’ll stay in the

vents and the heating pumps and stuff

and you know you’ll go and you’ll be

there’s no way like the only source of

pollen that i could have you’d like see

a couple seeds in your next batch

and you’re like the only pollen that was

ever in here it was six months ago but

it’ll actually stay

um so it

and amazingly enough it when you’re

outside and you’ve got nature’s sort of

pressure of

of wind and and

dew and all these you know heavy duty

sunlight and stuff like that

um it’s a lot less likely that you’re

going to have

you know like there’s no way no

lingering pollen yeah no pollen is left

yeah

at the at the farm right now you know

aren’t sure but um

so we have a

you know

but when we do breed indoors uh

[Music]

oh you know so i guess i was just saying

so what you see a lot of

with

a lot of seed companies is just

you know like one you’ll take

you know oh the white runs is really

popular so i’m just gonna take the white

runs and i’m going to

have it

pollinate this room and i’m going to put

30 different strains in there

and just

you know

that’s

basically your seed line for the year is

white runts times girl scout white runs

time

gelato white runs styles oh gee white

runs times

blueberry muffin and

and that’s cool if if your customers

just want to like really have a pheno

hunt if they want to

look you know if they’re trying to grow

something that’s going to basically have

you know

a litter of mutts yeah

but the reality is mutts are great dogs

but you know our goal is to

get purebred lines and then do true

hybrid breeding

but

i have to admit it’s it’s not

easy and

even though we’re like putting a bunch

energy and effort towards it

it’s uh

cannabis isn’t is a

keeps you on your toes yeah it sure does

is there a difference between the choice

of strains commercial growers are asking

for is compared to like

small medical people like myself

yeah i mean i don’t want to say that

there’s

necessarily like a difference so we

can’t be like here’s

i mean we actually do

have uh

kind of like a

a sub

set of of our genetics that were

that we endorse for commercial people

much more than

just let’s just say the whole catalog so

yeah

you know this time of year

you know every day

we’re doing what we call genetic

consultations with

farms and

and uh

you know across

california and

definitely

you know almost every conversation

involves

having to be like

oh you know i don’t know if you want to

grow

something like

and and i don’t want to throw these

strains under the bus because they’re

awesome in their own right but

you know i don’t know if you want to

grow

train wreck or

jack herrer or

blue dream kind of stuff

because it’s just really hard to sell

anything or like even our old strains

that we created like

like ppd and

i don’t know it

it just depends but but it’s really so

based on

thc

what like what dispensaries will buy and

unless you have

your own brand

and and unless your brand

specifically speaks to people

that are

above the whole

thc

you know that are smarter than

than

the general population in that they

don’t just go into the store and say

what strain has the highest thc that’s

what i want to buy

so if you have a brand that

that’s doing education and kind of

you know

has your

your

differentiation is that your brand has

like really unique turpins or

you know like and and our blueberry

muffin is a perfect example of it

because

anybody who has ever experienced it

knows that it’s just this incredibly

pleasant

high and

like a wonderful thing to grow it smells

amazing you know oh yeah i have my

freezer is full of bags of

you know various grades and sizes of

your the blueberry muffin

yeah and you show your friends and

they’re just like oh my god that smells

you know it’s seductive it’s like

it was also the densest bud i’ve ever

grown

ever they’re like

rocks

it’s super easy to grow

and so

there’s there are those ones that

and dispensaries ironically

will tell you that like

all anybody wants to buy is really high

thc

except there are a few things that they

go and ask you know some a lot of people

go in and they’re like

you know

well i don’t care what the thc is just

give me that blueberry muffin that’s

what i want

and so there’s some things like that

that will but aside from that

unfortunately we have to tell people

um because we care

a lot about our community and we

know

like the times are really really tough

right now in california because

you know i don’t want to totally blame

it on on

the way that the

new

law has been applied but

there’s an

oversupply of cannabis and it’s

very hard for

some of the you know original small

family farms to survive and yeah we’re

going to talk about that in a few

minutes here but

let me ask you

one or two more questions about

the amazing air

if you had if you were like

stuck on a desert island what three of

your strains would you want to have some

buds of

i wouldn’t want to have buds i’d want to

have seeds

that’s as long as

seeds in them okay

um i’d probably bring

seeds of

uh blueberry muffin

you know to be honest i might bring some

trainwreck seeds

or maybe even freak show

just because it’s like this to fool the

natives

it’s this kind of an uplifting like i’d

really like to pinolin high

the eye that you get from that kind of

tropinolim train wreck smell

but

i would definitely bring something that

was just like a

super high

octane gas you know so

something that would

something that would knock me out help

me sleep

be real ethereal kind of like a pain

so you know along those lines it might

be an og bush it might be

headband a humboldt headband it might be

the all gas og and then

like i said the blueberry muffin and

then the uh

shootout maybe i would bring some

autoflower too because i want to have

i’d want to have

weed like

every fresh weed every month yeah i’m

gonna have to try some of those by the

way

either that or else i’d build like a

palm light depth out of palm

[Laughter]

you know i i follow your instagram page

and um

i get excited

i got really excited i saw you had gone

down to columbia is that right so

and i know you have other

countries you’ve been to so are there

any land race cultivars you’ve been able

to find that you’ve stabilized that

compare favorably with established

strains here in california

um and we did we

you know and and ben was the one who was

down in colombia most recently and

jamaica i was down in jamaica

uh a couple years ago

we did you know of course everybody

always talks about the the lamb spread

in jamaica and

so we kind of went out on a

on a mission to find that

and

the cool thing about them is that

there’s like

there are definitely a lot of

unexplored

uh amazing qualities to be found in

those

varieties

and

the unfortunate thing about them

is you know they often test

at like

between 10 and 15

yeah

you know you bring them back and

sometimes you know we want to hybridize

them and

we did that a little bit with the the

lamb spread and a friend of mine

at full moon farms

actually has

kind of found a really cool

cross that

i think came from something that we

initially crossed and then he

you know really

sifted through the

the population but full moon is in

jamaica

no full moon is actually

humboldt

right halle that’s

that’s it right

full moon farms

nick

yeah

it’s like full moon 707 is the instagram

handle i believe

he’s he’s really cool and he’s been

working on that for a while

so you know give him credit um

but

it’s a challenge because you know for

one thing there’s like the

idea of keeping the land race totally

pure which we

we definitely did that with the uh

the lamb spread we were like we’re not

gonna um

just focus on

on out breeding we’re gonna

continue to keep it

pure and stable and so

you know the

the work involved with that is like

busting it out every four years and

and making sure that you know it’s

either that or putting it in like

cryogenic storage which is possible you

know

but

one sleep once weed is not

ridiculously expensive to grow

in a

you know in a license i think that there

will be

cool

breeding

groups that are just like you know we’re

gonna keep

propagating

heritage strains from different places

and

and just kind of keep

you know because it’s not it’s not

expensive to do

and it’s it’s a little bit of a labor of

love and i think people would want to

to grow those i mean a lot of people ask

us for some of those land race um

like for example those land race uh

lamb spread seeds

we also have lambs land race

ethiopian seeds

from the blue nile river

we have land race colombian seeds that

ben picked up

when he was down there we have

some land race do you know where in

colombia he was um

the

sierra mod or the

sierra nevada actually was a place that

i think that

he had found some seeds actually

i know that that sounds like

it’s a california but there’s also

a mountain range in colombia yeah yeah

yeah

um yeah you remember santa marta gold i

remember yeah completely red colombian

black brown green

but you know that the crazy thing is

like if you look back

i think on our youtube or on our

instagram either one

you’ll see we have

we made a little

video

of our adventures in jamaica

and uh

very cool

it’s just crazy because you go there and

i mean one of the saddest things is

that

we went around and we were immediately

like talking to you know the oldest

rosters that we could find and

and

we’ll learn very quickly that you know

unfortunately

western culture

had

gotten its

you know un like

spoiled a lot of of the real rootsy

culture that had developed around

jamaican ganja by bringing seeds in they

weren’t jamaican

yeah and just by like you know popular

culture being like i mean because we

would go around and we’d

ask a group of of roster growers and and

we weren’t just like i was driving

around the island with bob marley’s

nephew nephew-in-law for example who

who was born and raised and knew

everybody there and

and so it wasn’t like

some random white guy from california

yeah

and

and we’d ask that the guys like you know

where’s

all the good original jamaican seeds at

and they’d be like oh yeah

we’ll be right back we got og cush seeds

we’ll give you

we got sour diesel seeds

did you ever come across somebody

mentioning a strain called the cotton

i do feel like we did because um shia

kor uh

cat corey son of third world

he plays for damian marley’s damien

marley’s bass player but uh we were

having a conversation he goes yeah bob

bob’s favorite strain was something

called the cotton

yeah i definitely

heard about this down there

and

i think what people have to remember and

realize is it’s like

you know

the concept of

strain especially when you’re talking

about

you know stuff that’s propagated by seed

it’s just

there’s such a vast

yeah potential interpretation you know

we’re like

all right well we’re not going to call

something a seed like a strain until

we’ve at least inbred and back crossed

two or three generations

after pheno hunting

and finding a

unique um

whereas

you know

99 of what will we see is just like oh

you know i took

these two random clones that i had and

cross them and

and i’m just going to call that a strain

and it’s like so then but what happens

is then there’s like you have

30 different things that come out of

that that are all

really like

everybody who buys those seeds is just

going to call them all the strange

whatever screen it is and so

you could have a million different

iterations of of something and

and uh

it might

they may not be alike at all and so you

know and it depends like how you

describe it like if you say that it

smells like

um bananas and

and as that’s the strain name um and one

of them doesn’t smell at all like

bananas

then that one may

not end up being called

banana kush or whatever it is which that

helps a little bit and i think that’s

why so many people

you know use

the food references and the food names

in naming strains because

it kind of just helps you give like a

defining a reference yeah yeah exactly

yeah

[Music]

i noticed that thailand

had

become the first country in southeast

asia to make

cannabis legal in some kind of fashion

and they’re

shooting for recreational but

for me

you know when i started smoking i only

smoked land race either bud or hash and

when when finally

like ty weed came around

in the late 70s

it was perhaps the most developed of all

the land race strains in that it was it

was the first

you’d get that was seedless first of all

and it was on sticks and they were also

amazingly spicy and strong

it was probably the strongest weed that

i’d ever had

but it sure would be nice to get some of

that

i don’t know if it still exists you know

what i mean

yeah though

we had some thai

i mean there were definitely

you know and and you never know for sure

unless you go and

pluck it from

from a field in thailand yourself but

there were definitely thai

varieties that that were passed around

and and we experimented with them

and

they were actually really awesome a lot

of them were

very

frosty

and that was something that stood out

for me about the thai varieties is that

they were

kind of like

reminiscent of of uh

some kind of like a haze variety where

the buds were

they weren’t super dense or anything

like that but

but it was incredibly frosty and

yeah

several of them

went really late

so yeah they grow really long

yeah really

almost a sativa type thing

oh definitely yeah i would say sativa

and

good for that more equatorial type

tropical climate because

you know

when you have

the

quicker flowering varieties they just

don’t even have a chance to really grow

very much before

they’re ready to flower and then yeah

yeah yeah especially when on 12 12 hours

of sunlight 12 hours of darkness year

round

at the equator

it’s it’s definitely a whole nother

yeah

the first plants i ever grew were some

humble or excuse me um big sur holy weed

and

thai seeds that we had from the thai

weed

and

the thai finished in january whereas the

big sur holy weed was done in october

you know it was

it was wow

those thai varieties are awesome and

we tested them i remember we did do some

thc testing on it and

it was crazy because like a lot of those

things

did they won’t come up

high for

for thc but

as far as like getting you stoned and

how hard pitching everything i mean it

was just like

you know

a lot of them were just incredibly stony

and

i mean there’s so much that’s yet to be

and

unfortunately we’re

human nature wants to

have things spelled out

you know we want to like

understand

stuff um

before we

can really believe our own instincts

you know one thing that i’ve noticed is

if you

take a

rich

variety and

uh mix it with a

thc

heavy variety and and roll a joint of it

like you may be getting

less

overall thc than if you had just rolled

the joint out of all thc but

but um

it gets you

it just like

totally

gets you blitzed yeah entourage effect

yeah it’s it’s crazy and it’s it’s

almost like i didn’t really it’s not

something that i

wanted to do very often because

it would

like if i wanted

to seriously to just get you know

take a few puffs and just go

straight to bed

go to sleep

um feel no pain kind of situation that’s

that would be

what i would probably do and and you

know these days actually the older i get

the more i think about that i’m like

well maybe i should just have my

nightly ritual and

and smoke some cbd and some thc and just

get zonkered

but uh i have a friend that recommends

that

yeah that’s what i

that’s how it affects me and i don’t

know it could affect other people

differently

but

i mean one thing i just know for sure

without a doubt is that

we know

maybe

five percent of all there is to know

about cannabis

via

lab testing and

our bodies know everything it needs to

know about it

just by

experience and

you know

but experimenting and you know we always

encourage people to

experiment slowly and cautiously like

don’t get super stoned

especially if you have any

responsibilities but

i don’t know like that

worst thing that happened to me with one

of those cbd thc joints was uh

thanksgiving and i

i kind of

didn’t base the turkey because i was

like literally so

stoned i i like

everybody in my family hallie sitting

right next to me

literally asleep for

four hours in the middle of the day when

the turkey was in the oven

they’re shaking me they’re like what

it was a joint of the of willy g’s

uh cbd

and and

i can’t even remember i think it was

like all gas og or something yeah yeah

but um

yeah interesting

it’s

the thai

all of it it’s there’s so much to be

explored yet

well if you ever need anybody to go to

thailand for you i’m volunteering

right i speak thai and i

know where it was supposed to have come

from

die yeah

you know

we i went down to borneo and malaysia

and like indonesia

area for

some of the

activism work that i was doing and

never been to thailand though but i’ve

always wanted to go yeah yeah

it’s an interesting place it’s beautiful

i fell in love with the culture

so well let’s go on to part two here

uh so humboldt seed company was a

sponsor at the emerald cup just last

december

is that right yeah and

you know did you notice then signs of

farmers being affected by the current

taxes and the price crash of cannabis

yeah that was

i mean it sort of started

what would you say hallie like it

started in

july or june or july when we started

seeing

prices just

yeah tank out i mean like a little bit

before that

before it was slow it was like happening

slowly and then it just like dropped

hard

yeah so i mean

that’s your daughter

that’s my daughter hallie she’s over

here shout out to hallie she’s at work

we’re at work too hi hallie i’m vince

some people call me cenzo

but

you know i think there we’ve all seen

these like

pits and peaks and valley or you know

whatever you want to call it of the

prices of cannabis

especially in the last 10 years

and we

have seen it

go as low as like 500 a pound before

in california and then

a year later it was

1400 a pound and um

and we’re talking about outdoor red

for whatever reason indoor tends to

fetch a higher price i think you know

the data shows that it’s really just

based on looks because there’s no

there’s no

higher turpin or higher thc it’s just

like yeah it’s different

but um

and obviously it costs a lot more to

produce indoor flower but

in any case the uh

the rebound that we saw in like 2019

2020

like the spring of 2020 fall of 2019

where it went back up to 1400

that was encouraging for a lot of us

because we were all

sort of expecting

the

the new

um paradigm of growing in california

with recreational cannabis to

to have an effect on prices and

everything like that and

i mean unfortunately it doesn’t really

seem to translate

some people that are

listening might you know go and get

their cannabis at dispensaries and

the bummer is is that

when the prices drop for farmers they

don’t really seem to

get

cheaper at the dispenser it doesn’t

translate to the buyer it almost never

does and i don’t know why the heck well

i do know why that is but you know the

the way that california made the thing

there’s so many links in the chain that

and each link is a business so you’ve

got distributors and people that are

doing packaging and and processing and

and then finally dispensaries and and of

course the labs too and

all of those companies

have to turn a profit or else they’re

not a company anymore

and

so just you know imagine

each one of them

just chipping away at the overall you

know

value of the cannabis

and then um

so then

basically the farmer is the one that’s

sort of like

you know

it’s the

for whatever reason that

you would think that farmers might be

able to get together and and fix the

price and be like you know we’re not

really going any lower than 500 because

when you go any lower than 500 you’re

probably

about just about losing money as a farm

but um

the the problem is is that there

even if we tried that it just wouldn’t

last for one thing it’s not legal

there are laws against price fixing yeah

yeah and then

not specific to cannabis but specific to

agriculture and then for another thing

there

um is always just going to kind of be

like that

scab i guess you know like yeah

the person that’s going to cross the

picket line and and go back to work even

though the prices are not you know

there’s not a living wage

and and i don’t blame some you know

those people it’s not really their fault

it’s just like

it’s a product of what we’ve created

as our society and and a product of

you know

the the laws not really

looking out or benefiting the

small business small family farm

which you know is is nothing new in the

united states and

yeah of course

that

we’ll see how it i think there’s like

some kind of a hope that

the massive consolidation of wealth

that’s happening is just gonna somehow

resolve itself in this country

um i don’t think so

or you know there’s gonna have to be

some kind of an intervention because

you know clearly

um if we keep going on the same

trajectory

there’s gonna be

you know 10 or 15 people that own

everything in the world and the rest of

us are going to

you know essentially live to serve them

in some respect

and uh

power in what do they say absolute power

corrupts absolutely perhaps absolutely

so it’s just yeah or just some like

facts that that would say that this

isn’t going to just be able to work like

this forever so i don’t know like

was it like that guy robert reich he has

that movie that came out he calls it

fixing capitalism

saving capitalism i like robert

and

and i kind of like that because i’m not

you know as i’ve gotten older i’m maybe

a little bit less of a radical but uh

i do believe in some of the principles

of capitalism but there are some things

that are just like

you know

planned

obsolescence of it almost like we yeah

continue anyway in california there were

supposed to be we all voted on this

legalization

template

that

probably one of the biggest

rallying points around it was this like

five-year period of time

where

the existing cannabis people

the people that were doing the medical

stuff the people

you know that were farming

in these rural

areas that are kind of like the napa of

cannabis

so on and so forth those

folks would

they would essentially not allow more

than an acre

to be grown under any one business

to allow

companies

that

you know to

bolster their infrastructure

to be able to then

in competition with

um bigger more

capitalized corporate you know investor

venture capital types

and uh

because it was obvious that they were

coming and

you know

why not why wouldn’t they yeah

it’s a potential moneymaker so they’re

gonna give it a shot and

but then

that rule just vanished and

overnight after

we you know i personally actually did

not

vote on it which was really weird for me

i voted yes the first time are we

talking about the one acre

no we’re talking about just legalizing

recreational candidates oh i’m sorry and

and i actually like learned after

voting yes the first time and it didn’t

didn’t

past that time and then

people

specifically

were doing education on like

what some of the problems with the

the current legislation

were gonna be and so by then i was a

little bit

wiser and i didn’t actually vote

voted no on prop 64. yeah

which was so weird for me to to do that

but

you know i would venture to say that

that was the right

vote because

unfortunately

i mean it would have delayed

people having access to cannabis like

they do it would have delayed it

by another couple years at least so that

we could get something better

but um

yeah it just it seems like

there were a lot of a lot of things

that were hidden in it and or or just

the way that it was um enacted

what was disingenuous to what it was

supposed to be so yeah that’s politics

you know like i mean

how many people get elected on a

platform and then never

actually follow through with their

commitments and it’s too early

64 in california

did it did not follow through on its

commitments at all

and you know is it it’s

not i mean it’s a little bit

affecting humboldt seed company but

but it’s massively affecting the

farms in the emerald triangle yeah and

how are those problems playing out on

the ground with the farms that helps

humbled seed company

i mean

like we service

like we’re not unfortunately we can’t

really

tell the big giant farms that

want to buy our seeds that you know to

go kick rocks because

that’s what we built the company to

serve

the animals and and so

you know

i’m not

maybe i’m maybe i’m a little ashamed to

admit that we sell the seeds to the

farms that come and want to buy a

hundred thousand and

but um

you know the the ones that are local

here that

i mean we kind of

go try to go in above and beyond to

do what we can to help and

you know i think one of the biggest

things is just educating

the consumer that

you know there’s something to

there’s something really good about

small

batch craft cannabis and

people should seek that out and then try

to support it economically yeah the wine

industry is is uh something that seems

comparable and

i mean

very friendly towards small wine

wineries right and yet not the same with

cannabis

well but the problem is is that like i

know now

when i go

you know shop for a bottle of wine i

know

the boone’s farms from the small

winery you know the moon winery that

yeah that is like

you know the local

small batch winery and

when i

want i you’ll never catch me buying

boone’s farm but you know like

i want a nice bottle of wine that i’m

really gonna like enjoy and and think

about it

and and have you know a nice experience

and a dinner or whatever it is

then i will always buy those wines that

i know

story behind it and i trust it and

everything like that

and uh

you know occasionally i might get a

bottle that’s more just like

general

mid-grade wine but

the problem now is that you just can’t

tell like you walk into a dispensary and

there’s no differentiation

boone’s farm cannabis

uh and

the the local real craft small batch

cannabis because you just

it’s such a new thing that

we just don’t know who’s the budweiser

from the

you know lost coast brewery or whatever

yeah

you know miller high life to the uh

sierra nevada or whatever

and and so yeah um

that’s unfortunately

everybody can put craft cannabis on

their jar no matter how

huge their farm is and

and so it’s it’s going to take a while

for that yeah what would you recommend

for the state

to do to save the

small forces

the state needs to like do

actively be

giving

tax rebates and and everybody’s kind of

out there yelling like stop the

campus taxes we need to do it

and and we’re gonna try to combat the

the um

black market whatever you want to call

it the

gray market illicit market and and i

think that’s kind of

michael that’s kind of told me i

couldn’t call it the black market

because it contributes to a racist

you know type of black white thing

but then that’s kind of just ridiculous

i think

cannabis shouldn’t ever be

illicit it should never

and it’s like people should want to buy

it from dispensaries because it’s

convenient

and because it’s tested and because

they know what they’re getting it’s

consistent and safe

not

not because they’re like forced to at

gunpoint so

i don’t think that like

stricter punishments or harsher laws are

the answer at all and and i

do think that um

um i do think that that

people should be the tax rebates should

be going to

small farms that

i mean one of the biggest problems that

i see is like

you have

a certain amount of red tape that’s

involved with running any business at

all and

accounting

it’s permits it’s uh

taxes it’s

red tape it’s like all of that stuff

that

the admin of the business and

one of the issues especially with

cannabis is that there’s this like

level

of of admin and effort that you have to

do it’s kind of like the barriers to

entry or even the the maintenance of

those those permits and and licenses and

and then taxes and and reporting and

accounting

all of that stuff is like

this level here

and if you’re a farm that’s

you know 80 acres

it there’s a little bit more

work associated with that but

you know if you’re

if you’re only 10 000 square feet if

you’re like a really small farm

you basically are doing the same amount

of [ __ ]

that a farm that is

80 acres has to do

um they’re just adding an extra zero

on the end of their

spreadsheet so

you know you may be doing accounting

and

it may be

you know six six-digit

accounting

whereas

you could just all of that stuff is just

the same amount of work uh

if you just add another

zero on the end of it but it just

equates to

infinitely more

more money or potential for profit

and and

my i guess my solution would be

figure out ways to

um either drop down some of the

like generally some of the um barriers

entry for the small businesses or

or the

how hard it is to maintain yourself in

in the industry

because if you’re such a small

business then

you know the opportunities to have the

things that they’re worried about like

robbery or diversion

like the

the risk is lower because there’s

less

you know cannabis to be

stolen or sent sent out the back door or

whatever and so there should be less red

tape but there’s not

and and i think that’s kind of one of

the biggest things that’s killing small

farms

i think um

and

and another thing that i

think that’s ironic is that you know we

touched a little bit on how

for whatever reason indoor cannabis

sells for a lot more money

but

that the tax is

the bit one of the biggest tax i think

the biggest tax is

the the harvest tax which is 161 dollars

a pound and

if you’re an indoor grower you might be

asking somewhere around you know fifteen

hundred dollars to two thousand

dollars per pound and

you know it’s the same exact

you know you might have three percent

turpins and you might have you know 25

percent thc let’s just say

and then another farmer is producing

cannabis

outdoors

that also has three percent turpins and

25 thc

but they’re only

off getting offered you know

uh 500 a pound

but they’re both getting taxed

161

no matter what for that pound so

that works out like if basically the

state is

taxing indoor farmers at eight percent

and taxing the sun grown farmers at 32

percent and so

to me i’m just like that’s so bizarre in

a state like california that’s supposed

to be

you know

green minded and and

so on and so forth that that there

wouldn’t be uh any kind of thought given

to the effect that that’s having because

you know if you’re a smart

business person and you want to

open up a cannabis business

it doesn’t take a genius to know that

you know right now at least it doesn’t

look like opening a

a small farm in

in the emerald triangle is a good idea

because it’s like right everybody’s just

saying like

[ __ ] times are tough

they shouldn’t be because the freaking

butt is just as good

i mean

these guys came in here with some bud

yesterday

and

to me it looks honestly it looks better

than most of the indoor flower that i

see

on the shelves in the stores and i was

just like oh my god like you can

hardly

there’s really

i mean that’s

so frosty and just

this is uh

one straw

organics or

otherwise known as burr’s place

and that’s the the hella jelly strain

these guys are great i just had to

change my batteries on my little board

here

i know i just i talked

so much i got like

my crew is sitting here telling me all

right there’s

stuff happening we gotta deal with but

okay i got one last little thing

the current status of measure s

and what humboldt county supervisors did

to bring temporary relief to the farms

up there

yeah we really appreciate that i mean

and

and that’s like humble looking out for

humble so they got rid of 85 of the

excise tax is that what it is and

85 of the cultivation tax we call it

here

it was always based on your square

footage so if you have um

you know

if you have 10 000 square feet you owed

10 dollars a year

and

if you have twenty thousand yo twenty

thousand actually though

if you have like a mixed light it was

more so there were

different

levels that you could have but yeah they

they essentially now if you have ten

thousand square feet you only owe

um fifteen hundred dollars

yeah

so i mean that was great and

and uh i think it’s humble kind of

seeing that

it needs to invest and support this

industry if it’s gonna

capture the long-term benefits of it and

i think

as we see federal legalization happen

and as we see people

getting getting educated

like the consumers becoming more

educated and not you know just sort of

basing their

their decisions off of you know

misinformation kind of

that

it will be better for places

humboldt mendocino trinity

the cradle of american cannabis so to

speak um

but

for the time being uh

the cards are kind of

stacked against us a little bit or

against

um this community up here which is

well we’re all praying for the community

yeah i mean you know people are

it’s people we’ve seen it we’ve been

watching it coming so

you know the smart folks are

have but the problem was is that like

the bar

to get into the the whole race was so

high i mean a lot of people just spent

their entire life savings because

what happened was

you know it looked simple the

applications for licenses were

you know but then you you started

talking to these other agencies that you

had to get approval from like

you know some of the environmental stuff

was just like

i’ve been an environmentalist my whole

life but i’ll just be the first to admit

that some of it was just

over the top and

like certainly i know humble for example

is the strictest

environmental

loss for any agriculture in the world so

it’s

harder to get a permit to grow cannabis

and humboldt county than it is

to grow anything anywhere in the world

and uh well

maybe that’s the way it should be but

but it’s kind of ironic when you know

it’s it’s there’s not any kind of

environmental well there’s very little

environmental review if you’re trying to

open up

a massive um

indoor operation in a

warehouse in the city

and it’s just like well what’s the

what’s the impact really on

humanity yeah

uh like there may be some impact in like

a small forest ecosystem

way way out in the middle of nowhere but

you know

a lot of these places it’s just like

there’s logging and mining happening all

around it

yeah it’s a

bit of inequity there

and yeah and

and just

yeah the the fact that

you know the sun grown is kind of

having the most

environmental uh oversight compared to

you know indoor and

and stuff like that

which leaves a much bigger carbon

footprint

as we all know

well now i want to thank you very much

for talking to kelly high today

yeah buddy

we went a little bit longer than we

planned but there’s lots of great stuff

here and i thank you

all right

okay so i’m going to be uh let me last

one last question real quick

what’s your favorite autoflower that you

got

you know i’m most excited about the mint

jelly in the caramel cream and we’ll

have to

make sure you get to try some of those

this year okay i’ll grow them i’ll keep

your story going

all right after

well we should talk about it after the

interview we’ll figure out how we can

make that happen all righty

okay so we’ve been talking with nat

pennington here of the humboldt seed

company and you can also find him in

episodes 39 where we talk about the

humboldt river and that’s work

on getting the

the

spring chinook declared

uh endangered

and the dam’s removals

and then episode 23 where we went into

actually how to

feminize a seed and more detail so check

those episodes folks nat once again

thank you

yup thank you very much all right let me

just stop this

ah yes

when you wake up

and you feel like you need a little

upper

or when you’re down and out

and you need to get a little higher

if you feel like you need a blessed

night and you feel a little high today

welcome to the church

you’ve been listening to cali high

episode 54 our special guest this week

is nat pennington owner and ceo of the

humboldt seed company i’m your host chen

zonico nat pennington can be found on

instagram

at the humboldt seed company all one

word and at the humbled seed co

on the web at humboldtseedcompany.com

cali high photographer honey nicoletti

cali ice theme written and recorded by

vince nicoletti jordan webb and namir

blade

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copywritten and the logo is trademarked

cali hi as a chenzonika production stay

safe and be blessed

The Future Cannabis Project Cali High Episode 54: Nat Pennington, Owner, CEO, HSC

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