Case Studies

Epic Family Farms, located in Talent, Oregon, started in 2016 as a 48 plant medical grow. The following spring we began building EFF out of the bare ground. There was only a field and large pond containing 4 acre feet of water, filled by the oldest water rights on Wagner Creek. We chose the site for this reason. In an area that is prone to drought, we could grow for 3 or 4 seasons with just the water from the pond. 

 

The farm was only a mile away from our existing retail location, and a mile and a half from I-5, the main federal highway in the state. Where a good number of farms were located very remotely, we were just outside the urban boundary. 

 

Our landlords agreed to build us a processing building we designed. We designed the layout of the farm, and got permits for 3 greenhouses, that we built out over time. We also designed our irrigation system, which we installed ourselves, with our crew. Last, we brought in high quality soil to build our beds. 

 

At the end of June of that second year, we received our recreational production license, and just in time! We had set up our veg scene at an offsite location, where 900 plants were growing too big for both the pots and the hoop house they were enclosed in. Roots were coming out the bottom of the plants and into the soil below. We scraped up sections of soil, so as not to disturb the roots too much, and packed them all into a 21ft uhaul to transport them to the farm. It took 6 of us a week to get the entire field planted. 

 

One of the biggest mistakes we made was installing an overhead watering system; sprinkler poles that could water a large portion of the field at one time. I was dead set against it. I thought it was inefficient and a waste of money. Turns out I was right. For starters, our field was rectangular and the sprinklers only threw water in circles. So we had edges of our beds that were not getting watered. The weight of the water was breaking branches. We ended up doing a lot of hand watering that year. We had a very successful harvest, but the OH watering system got very little use thereafter. 

 

Some investments however really paid off; a revamped drying system for example. It cost more than I was comfortable spending at the time, and it was worth every penny. It saved us dozens of hours of labor and reduced the time, the stress, and overall complications of harvest. The DriFlower hang system was an excellent investment. 

 

The fall of that second year, I saw my first $700 pound. I was aghast. While the price had been coming down, when we started our medical garden prices were $1,600 per pound. Our business plan “conservatively” was based on a price of $1,000 per pound. $700 was punch in the gut. Quickly after that, the bottom fell out. Prices quickly plummeted to $500 per pound. We were forced to lay off our entire crew, except for our manager who refused to go. 

 

We went from owners with a crew of 6, to just me, my business partner and manager doing the trimming in a matter of 2 months. I was never good at trimming. it is an extremely specialized skillset. I became good at trimming very quickly. It was a dark, cold winter. With at least some sales happening through our own dispensary, where we were able to charge ourselves higher than market prices, we were able to hire back one person within 6 weeks, and a full time trimmer after a few more weeks. And the whole time we still had to clone our genetics and keep grandmother veg plants alive.

 

I am not a natural salesman, again, that is a specialized skillset. However it fell to me to make us some money. I strived to keep prices high. I believed they should be, and I was hoping to create some implied value by holding to what I believed the product was worth. In hindsight, a debatable strategy. We did debate it at the time too. I won that argument, but ultimately in order to actually sell some flower, we came down to more attractive prices. 

 

Luckily, my partner also managed to secure several large bulk sales to the busiest store in Oregon. No, not in Portland, but in Huntington Oregon, which was on the complete other side of the state and a drive longer than 10 hours. Huntington was a little over an hour from Boise, Idaho, where cannabis remained illegal. So it was basically servicing the entire southern portion of the state of Idaho, as well as whatever small towns exist out there in the high desert. They were crushing it to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in sales on the daily. It was definitely a coup.

 

A Portland distributor whose intention was to only sell indoor, responded to what was happening in the market and began to dedicate some efforts to selling some outdoor. My partner and I worked on this one together, struck up a good rapport, and ultimately due to the fact that our flower was very high quality, they agreed to represent us and try to move some pounds. 

 

They did and these were the sales that got us through. We limped along through spring, until I was able to secure a bulk sale of a majority of our remaining flower to a wholesale distributor; Pharmer’s Market. I respect these guys because even though they opened a dispensary in the next town over and were direct retail competitors, they were always cool. They were respectful, always willing to work together and support our farm, and they had perspectives on what the Industry could look like that I liked. They bought the product outright at a higher price than most others were offering at the time, as he correctly projected the price would come back up by the end of the summer. He was correct and, as I said earlier, due to the fact that the flower was quality, he was able to make his money, and saved our ass.