Progress Report: 10.15.21

Grasshopper Family,

Yesterday (October 14, 2021) was the one year anniversary of Grasshopper Farms on our property! That was the first day the tractor started developing the site. One year and look at all we did!! And now...

It's HARVEST time!!

We planned. We prepared. And now we have started this next phase - the incredibly important phase as we transition these beautiful plants from the field to bulk flower for retail.

Our final state inspection for Building 2 was scheduled for Tuesday at noon. We were ready to start immediately after that. However, I received a call on Monday to see if we were prepared to have the inspection a day earlier. Of course we were! So, the inspection started and, before you knew it, we passed! Yes!

So, we got together and planned to start Tuesday morning instead of Tuesday afternoon.

As the day came to a close a significant storm passed through. We finished planning and departed to get some rest before rest would no longer be an option.

We awoke to a power outage at 2:20am and soon found that part of our fence had been knocked down by the storm. The plants...looked incredible. But, we had no power and a fence that needed repair. Both of those things meant we could not start harvest.

But, we are Grasshopper Farms. Setbacks do not deter us. We address them head on. We learn from them. We get better.

So, we set out to get the fence repaired and ordered a generator while waiting for the power to be restored. The lesson (and blessing) was understanding that a power outage after harvest started could be devastating. So, we did not order just any generator. Matt found us a generator that can power a small town and comes with a staged rental rate. A rental rate that becomes insurance. This will ensure any power outage will not impact our drying process. And, of course, the power came on about 30 minutes before it was delivered. Still worth it.

With all inspections and repairs complete, it was now time to start harvest.

We had everyone go to lunch and met to ensure we had everything ready to begin. Everyone came back and we were off to the races.

There are three distinct areas of work in the first phase of harvest. The first is cutting branches off of the plant. The second is a branch shaping and de-leafing step. The last is hanging the branches to dry. Each is critical. Each is technical.

The learning curve was steep but our team crushed it.

We were able to fill half of one of our five dry rooms by the end of the first day...and the end of the day was 11:00pm.

We continued the next three days and the team got more and more efficient. Each minute. Each hour. Each day.

The days did not get shorter.

Do you have any friends or family in the wine industry? I do. I love the Saarloos family. I love their operation. I love what they stand for - personally and professionally. They are in Los Olivos, CA. Check them out. Keith is awesome about sharing how intense harvest is. They start at 3:00am. Then end late at night. This is the labor...of love. We do it because this is what harvest asks of us. We do this because we are grateful. We do this because we have been granted this incredible opportunity.

So, we started before first light and ended well after the sun had gone to bed each day. And we hit our stride.

Harvest is concretely underway!

And the next phases of harvest will come next week.

But, wait. There is more good news.

We received our first lab tests back! We harvested the samples about four weeks ago. We chose the worst of the worst. We needed to know what we were up against. We got the results back Monday afternoon.

We passed. All of them.

This is huge. The reason this is huge is because the first question most people will ask of an outdoor farm is what we will do to remediate the flower when it does not pass...because not many outdoor farm flower passes the state test without remediation. Well, not much flower except ours. You might all remember that we tested Aaron's product from his last season and it passed. With high THC. Well, it passed here too. But, then something somewhat unexpected happened. We are confident in the quality of our plants. But, we harvested well before the flower was finished. This was ok because we were looking for things that might fail us. We were not focused on THC, which does not typically reach potential until the final week or days before harvest. These samples were taken four weeks ago. And they all had THC greater than 21%. In fact, the highest was over 25%! We sent additional samples this past Monday and Tuesday and we are VERY excited to see what happens.

We are in full swing. There is a lot of work going on. Oh, and how about doing it at a farm that was featured on Reddit in the number one position yesterday?! I am excited to share that our marketing partners from Clapp 360 were on site to capture the harvest and posted a beautiful picture that soared to #1! Comments galore and it drove our website traffic through the roof. But seriously...look at that picture. It shows the amazing plants and the harvest team doing their thing. Our partners at Clapp 360 are awesome.

This is it! We are in the home stretch!! HARVEST!

Have a fantastic close to your week and start to your weekend.

We are harvesting. We are excited. We still have amazing sunrises and sunsets.

We are Grasshopper Farms.