Conservative, in a Good Way

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024). 

February 19, 2022

Mainers are conservative, in the old school, practical definition, by design. We reuse bits of lumber scraps for shelving or hodgepodge pieces of furniture. Cut ends whittled down to little pieces make for good kindling in the wood stove or maybe even a birdhouse or boot scraper. We already reduce and reuse.

Beyond that basic practicality, many of us also wonder, What will cause the least amount of damage? We love our lands. Plus, it's a legitimate question to ask for many an endeavor in the twenty-first century. It's a question that is not unlike the Hippocratic Oath's proclamation to do no harm. All of us share this earth, air, and water. Doing no harm would do us all a favor.

It turns out that hemp plants can sequester the PFAS chemicals found in Maine's soil and waterways. According to research being conducted with the Aroostook Band of Micmac and Upland Grassroots, hemp plants are capable of sequestering toxins lodged in soils. As with the nutrients they take in, the plants can draw chemicals from the soil and store them away in the heavier fibers of the plants' stalks.

While many of the plant's medicinal uses have been touted lately, this added layer of soil cleansing provides further evidence that Cannabis sativa needs to be a staple agricultural product in North America. The uses take off from there. One of the most tangible products, one that most Mainers have a stake in, is lumber.

Used in composite flooring, layered timbers, and even as the fiber in "hempcrete," there are all manner of applications for this amazing plant. Maine still has a thriving timber industry, employing nearly 1 in 25 working adults, but that has been on a gradual decline for decades. Why not give a boost to our builders and wood product manufacturers by expanding this industry right here in Maine? As the fourth coldest state in the nation, we could even be brainstorming ways to make biomass pellets for our stoves!

None of this technology is new, per se. Their production, however, is the result of a shift in mindset. If we can keep that shift going, give it light and air, we could see new growth in these industries. As the pandemic has shown, there is no end to the demand for homes in Maine. Lumber isn't getting any cheaper, either, and we definitely need alternatives for heating our homes. Why not go all in on hemp?

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, coal was the primary source for heating homes, either in stoves or boilers. We couldn't imagine walking around a river valley town under a weather inversion packed with coal smoke now. Perhaps some day, we won't be able to imagine chimneys belching out effluents from non-renewable resources. Perhaps, some day, the smoke would issue from something a bit sweeter.

A familiar New England scene.

We're only one small piece of the puzzle here at Island Oasis, but the picture is coming together.

Prohibition Fears: When Will They Subside?

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024).

January 24, 2022

Maine has had a medical marijuana program for 22 years now. The state has enjoyed legal, recreational marijuana since the close vote on Question 1 in 2016. While that measure only passed with .6% of the vote (a difference of some 4,000 votes), it was enough to seal the deal. In 2012, when Martin Lee published Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana–Medical, Recreational, and Scientific, it was stunning to many Americans that both Washington and Colorado voters pulled for total legalization. Now, ten years later, only 14 states remain where both medical and recreational marijuana are illegal.

Reading Lee's book ten years after publication, it's amazing to consider how much ground medical and recreational marijuana efforts have gained. Already, in three of those 14 prohibition states mentioned above, marijuana possession has been decriminalized, a step toward a humane treatment of cannabis users. People of a certain generation can be forgiven for being absolutely flabbergasted by walking into a store and hearing the spiel of a seasoned budtender. It's a sea change. But one thing that Lee documents which is difficult to forgive? The years U.S. law enforcement agencies spent ignoring science at the highest level. 

Lee makes the war against marijuana seem clearly ill-considered.

Lee's project draws the reader in with a great rendering of Louis Armstrong's life as a dedicated jazz performer and "viper" (1920s slang for someone who puffed). Satchmo's story is compelling no matter what, but what makes this angle work here is that Armstrong smoked gauge his whole life without suffering ill effects. His personal physician, Dr. Jerry Zucker, publicly signed off on the trumpeter's good health, and Armstrong took to calling his daily doob his "medicine." Having grown up with tonics made from dandelion greens and tinctures of nettles, this other plant medicine made sense within the pantheon of home remedies.

“It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics. . . . It’s a thousand times better than whiskey – it’s an assistant – a friend,” Louis Armstong.

One of the more disappointing threads leading to outright prohibition following the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is the issue of race in America. Pushed onto Congress by Harry Anslinger, the zealous leader of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), the 1937 act set a tax rate so high on the creation and sale of medical or recreational marijuana products that no one could rightly produce this medicine without being afoul of federal law. In addition, by this time, 24 states had passed prohibitions of their own and temperance wasn't the only thing on their minds. 

These state's prohibitions followed in the footsteps of El Paso, TX, "which passed the first city ordinance banning the sale and possession of cannabis in 1914." The city had seen an influx of Mexicans following the Revolution of 1910, people in search of steady work and a quieter, safer life. They followed a long-standing tradition of cannabis consumption in the New World: laborers seeking a break from the tedium of their lives at the end of the day. However, in the context of early-20th century America, anti-marijuana and "vagrancy statutes, in addition to legally sanctioned segregation in housing, restaurants, and parks, comprised what [UCSD historian Curtis Marez] described as 'a web of social controls' that were 'mobilized to police Mexicans.' "

Meanwhile, the fact that marijuana and its derivatives had been used as a home remedy for centuries was willfully ignored. As early as 1860, an Ohio State Medical Society cataloged the various maladies cannabis helped patients manage and made recommendations to physicians accordingly. These maladies include, but are not limited to, bronchitis, rheumatism, postpartum depression, migraine headaches, nausea, menstrual cramps and insomnia. And yet, the federal government relied primarily on the testimony of FBN chief Harry Anslinger, who "fed titillating tidbits [of depraved pot crimes] to reporters, who wrote articles that the FBN chief would then cite in making the case that society was in imminent danger of moral collapse because of marijuana." Mostly, Anslinger was afraid of the FBN losing funding, and fear of racial mixing in the Jazz Era was an easy card for him to play.

Harry Anslinger inspecting a big haul.

The only authority in Congress back in 1936 who challenged Anslinger's fear mongering of miscegenation and deviance, was a doctor. "Dr. William Woodward, the legislative counsel for the American Medical Association (AMA), . . . challenged Anslinger's claim that cannabis was a dangerous drug with no therapeutic value." Thus begins a 70-year-cycle during which the federal government repeatedly ignored, suppressed, and even buried the very studies that they, themselves, had commissioned. The continual pattern throughout this period is that when the feds would commission a study that would purportedly make weed look bad, and when the medical community and scientists would offer evidence to the contrary, law enforcement and members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch would ignore said study.

Here are a few examples:

In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine published a report commissioned by then mayor of NYC Fiorello La Guardia studying what, if any, threat cannabis use posed to New York City. The report found that not only did cannabis not pose a threat, but instead "Americans had been needlessly frightened about marijuana's supposed dangers." Moreover, the report noted that "marijuana is not addictive and it does not cause insanity, sexual deviance, violence, or criminal misconduct." 

As a result of the La Guardia commission's report, Anslinger tailored his marijuana narrative to meet the needs of Cold War fear mongering about communism. In 1948, he testified that " 'Marijuana leads to pacifism and Communist brainwashing.' " This came some nine years after he had testified that marijuana was " 'the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.' " Not satisfied with that assertion alone, Anslinger went on to beat the drum of the "gateway drug" theory–pot smoking leads to the injection of heroin or cocaine in a few simple steps–a theory that the La Guardia commission had handily debunked.

In 1951, Congress passed the Boggs Amendment which raised the stakes on the casual user. Dealers, users, opiates, cannabis, no distinctions were made. All drugs (except for alcohol and tobacco, naturally) were painted with the same broad brush, and anti-American, international communists were to blame. All this despite the fact that America's #1 anti-communist, Sen. Joseph McCarthey, was himself a morphine addict. By the time the Kennedy administration commissioned yet another study of drug abuse in 1963, "the White House Conference on Narcotics and Drug Abuse concluded that the hazards of smoking marijuana were 'exaggerated.' "

The social upheaval of the 1960s led to an even sterner federal approach to marijuana. J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon sought to rein in any social dissent through the prosecution of narcotics. Marijuana was an easy target. So, as part of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971, the federal government initiated "a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse . . . to establish the dangers of cannabis." Much to Nixon's chagrin, the "Shafer Commission," as it came to be known, "found no evidence that marijuana causes physical or psychological harm or any tortuous withdrawal symptoms following the sudden cessation of chronic, heavy use–no brain damage or birth defects, no compulsion to use hard drugs, and no evidence that a single human fatality has resulted solely from marijuana intoxication." Nixon never even read the commission and forged ahead with stepping up federal law enforcement. He enlisted the benzodiazepine and opiate addicted Elvis to be his pop-culture icon to boot!

Despite Jimmy Carter's attempt to backpedal on the federal law enforcement approach to marijuana, Reagan fired up the war on drugs, taking federal interdiction to a whole new level. In an effort to eradicate cannabis cultivation throughout the nation, "Reagan broke with long-standing legal tradition, which forbade the U.S. military from engaging in domestic law enforcement." In keeping with many of his predecessors, Reagan also ignored the findings of the National Academy of Sciences six-year study "which found 'no convincing evidence' that marijuana damages the brain or nervous system or decreases fertility." This did not stop SWAT and CAMP teams from terrorizing rural landowners from Maine to California every fall.

Dennis Peron, pioneer of the California Buyers Club and promoter of Brownie Mary’s healing edibles.

When, in 1988, the DEA's chief law judge pronounced that there is no reason why marijuana should remain a Schedule I substance, he was ignored. After having commissioned a rescheduling hearing on the matter, and after hearing testimony from cancer, HIV, and epilepsy patients, the Reagan-Bush team ignored the findings of their own study. George H.W. Bush also ceased the Compassionate IND program (the federal government's initial foray into medical cannabis with 8 patients), favoring instead the potential uses of the recently patented pharmaceutical Marinol (a THC pill).

From here on out, Lee's exhaustively researched history follows two lines. The first documents the rise in marijuana use for medical purposes through Buyer's Clubs and finally California's Proposition 215, which effectively legalized medical use. The other documents the federal government (often in secret collaborations with local law enforcement agencies) arresting, harassing, and targeting medical cannabis users and caregivers. We have come a long way.

The long shadow of this era of demonization, though, is still with us. It is reflected in the fact that Maine's vote to legalize came down to less than 1% of the vote. It is reflected in the fact that in many towns and counties, opposition to legalization constituted more than two-thirds of the vote. The anti-marijuana tactics of fear mongering, ingrained into several generations of Americans, will take time to overcome. 

In this manner, maybe then Maine's slow roll-out of legal, recreational cannabis is a good thing. Mainers may begin to recognize that this is not a demon in their midst, but perhaps a new opportunity to develop better relationships with our own scientific community.

Climate and Change

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024).

August 20, 2021

In February of 1977, the United States was facing an energy crisis spurned by a cold winter, wasteful habits, and dependence on foreign oil. Then President Jimmy Carter suggested that "[a]ll of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas." This was not a popular sentiment. He then pledged that by 2000, 20% of all US energy would be from renewables.

Market complexity and pricing issues aside, one of President Ronald Reagan's first energy policy changes was to deregulate the fossil fuel industry and to roll back EPA enforcement. The free market would weed out inefficiencies. True to form, that administration immediately cut research and development funding for alternative energy by as much as 85%. R&D for wind was all but eliminated. After all, in regards to the California Redwoods, this was the guy who famously said "you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?"

Policy-wise, we are a nation that has been teetering between these two, polar-opposite approaches to environmental concerns ever since. One administration implements strict CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards; the next administration cuts them. This has been our dance for quite some time. However, the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is striking. Climate change is real; and humans' love for all things carbon is largely to blame. What is an American to do? More specifically, how can Maine's entrepreneurs adapt to a rapidly changing future?

Katahdin obscured by wildfire smoke from the West (August 2021).

One thing Downeast Mainers know to be true is that increasing temperatures to our south (combined with COVID cabin fever) has ratcheted up interest in the Acadia region. To meet the demand, more locals are adopting innovative ways to capitalize on this increase via AirBnB, VRBO, and HipCamp. There is a more subtle force that continues to draw people to our region, though, and Island Oasis Farm believes that it is this: Americans crave small-scale authenticity and a healthy environment. And our region has no shortage of locally sourced food, spirits, and crafts, not to mention the experience of unplugging in a quieter corner of our busy country.

The connection to climate change may not be all too obvious at first glance. However, as we continue to witness the effects of heat, drought, and fire out West, excessive flooding and heat in the Southeast, we cannot help but question what is and what is not sustainable. According to the USDA, 70% of the 76 million acres of the US soybean crop was used for the livestock industry. Without even examining the farming methods used for such output, it is safe to say that this is not an industry focused on slowing the process of climate change. The acreage involved is mind-boggling. But what if there was a 30% reduction in meat consumption meant that much of that acreage could be devoted to small-scale, local produce for human consumption? What would that look like?

Looking west toward Number Four, Lily Bay and Prong Pond Mountains with wildfire smoke (August 2021).

Here in Hancock County Maine, we have a pretty good idea. On a given summer day, residents of MDI, alone, have several local farms to choose from for sourcing their food. Whether one opts in to a CSA (community supported agriculture) share from the Bar Harbor Farm or purchases brisket for the barbecue from Brown Family Farm, that consumer choice cuts a lot of transportation out of the equation. Yes, some of these farm organizations are non-profits or dependent on financial backers, but aren't big agribusinesses (not to mention the trucking industry via federal highways) also subsidized? We have to start somewhere.

Locally, our small-scale farmers, often certified and supported by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), provide an incredible bounty. Hancock County boasts farmers' markets in almost every substantial town with a central gathering place: Blue Hill, Bar Harbor, Ellsworth, etc. They are a great place to make CSA connections, too. Most people bring their own produce bags, and large-scale models of trucking and distribution are all but eliminated. This is not a panacea, of course, but it is a step down the road of changing the way we think about production, consumption. and emissions.

The scale of American agribusiness is staggering. Is this the only model? (Rural Indiana, August 2021.)

While cannabis production on a large-scale can often involve questionable practices, especially regarding CO2, on the small-scale significant changes are possible. Adding solar to run lights, exploring regenerative soil practices, using hoop house methods, composting hemp stalks, eliminating the need for large-scale transport (aka "food miles") are but a few possibilities. Closing the loop on waste is a start. It is the local farmers and fishermen of our region who have provided the steadiest examples of how buying local is possible. Now, even Fogtown Brewing is providing a model of reducing food miles and supporting locals by sourcing ingredients from Maine.

Could any of this mirror Jimmy Carter's adage about lowering thermostats? We believe it does. Island Oasis is just beginning this journey, and we are committed to maintaining high standards for quality, locally sourced medicine for our patients.

Community

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024).

May 25, 2021

Community is something that has been lacking these 14 long COVID months. It’s a subtle thing, too, community. It takes time to grow, and like aging, one hardly notices it happening until it has arrived or there are drastic changes. The absence of community can creep in the same way. Once COVID began to settle in, and we adjusted our lifestyles to being more solitary, that became the norm. Now that we are gradually returning to making more face to face contact, we can experience what had been missing.

Island solitude

Just recently, folks were gathering for a night of glass blowing at Ken and Linda Perrin's Atlantic Art Glass in the heart of Ellsworth, Maine. They live the example of building community from the ground up, gradually, over time. Their studio had long been home of an annual winter solstice fire gathering and a variety of other art glass events. Little by little, they built a thread of community where like-minded folks can gather to appreciate the craft of glass blowing and art, in general. Their love of the art emanated outward, drawing in others with similar passions. In turn, their studio became a cross-roads that seeded inspiration and ideas for newer, blossoming projects like the Fogtown brewery below, another place where the like-minded gather. In Belfast, the Three Tides has been reawakening in similar fashion.

Our first live music since March 6, 2020 at the Three Tides in Belfast.

Building community is part of what such projects are all about. Likewise, Island Oasis Farm is not just a grow operation distributing “weed.” This is not a business driven by profit or market share or "crushing the competition." This is a small operation devoted to a type of quality that weaves like-minded folks together in a larger fabric of common pathways. Medical cannabis is a product, yes, but it is more than that. It is reaching out and making deliveries to patients during a pandemic. It is taking the time to talk shop and compare notes with other farmers. It is the hub of one wheel within a community of many wheels, overlapping and Venn diagramming.

Many Americans lack the town square or open air marketplace that so many cultures around the world enjoy on the regular. We are car culture, rural Americans anyway, and we are dispersed. COVID made that clear for many of us, and it is a welcome change for things to start opening again. We thrive on that connection, even if it's non-verbal. Isn't that why many of us are drawn toward farmers' markets? We can connect produce with the actual farmer, and there is a closed loop. There, we can bump into other folks who share a similar mindset seeking small-scale, organic, products from the heart.

Obviously, not everything in our lives can operate this way in our modern society. However, COVID showed us that the absence of such community leaves a gaping hole in people's lives. This is why there is such a high demand to return to live music in America: it is a place of gathering. Restaurants and pubs, too, are a part of that fabric. It is deeply wired into our DNA, a piece of what makes us human. Scurrying through the grocery aisles, grabbing products in a hurry, scanning them and checking out is not the same community experience. It never will be.

We choose to inhabit these spaces; and we rely on our friends.

While Island Oasis Farms may not have begun as community builder, we can now see that it actually is. Derrick's values about growing a superior product, regardless of the extra time and effort and detail, attracts patients who expect the same. His passion for doing it right is what keeps a steady roster of patients returning. The alternative, the transactional grocery store version of massive scale cannabis sales through large dispensaries is more akin to the grocery store transaction. The patients, here, want to know their farmer, to know their product, and to have that deeply personal connection. That is community.

Some months ago, this webmaster shared the Island Oasis blog with some acquaintances online for feedback. One critic wrote, “There should just be pictures of the buds with prices, and then show me how to buy it. Period. This website looks like an ad for a lifestyle or something.” 

While we would never act on this criticism, in part, we agree. It is about lifestyle, and that lifestyle is all about building a strong fabric of community.

No man is an island. We may inhabit them, we may need them, but we are not islands.

Let's Keep it Local

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024).

January 24, 2020

A new year and a new decade is upon us. What will the future bring? Of course, we're always hoping for great things, but there are always bumps in the road, too. 2020 was no slouch when it came to dealing everyone tough blows, and 2021 started on a few sour notes for some of us. No one among us can say that the Presidential transition was anything but usual. In the long run, most Americans want to know that we can continue pursuing our lines of work and creativity without anything more than the natural disruptions in our path. They are plenty. But, enter Maine's Office of Marijuana Policy (OMP).

Toward the end of the 2020 calendar year, OMP dropped a possible new set of regulations on the laps of Maine's marijuana caregivers. The onerous 80-some pages of legalese are no picnic to wade through, and these pages raise some concerning questions. Chief among them is this. If the US Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy reports that in 2019, 99.2% of Maine businesses are classified as small businesses, shouldn't we all be working tirelessly to maintain this diverse and vibrant economic ecosystem? Why would we want to make being a medical cannabis caregiver so onerous that the average Mom and Pop shop cannot survive? 

This is at the core of farmer Derrick's ethos, too (as covered in the August posting, "Know Your Farmer"). Island Oasis Farms is a small operation providing the highest quality organic product possible to patients, and it's local. From seed to cured flower, patients can know exactly what is in their medicine, not to mention the soils it grew from and who raised it. This is a healthy, reliable, and trusted way to keep patients in touch with a small community of like-minded souls. In our far-flung rural areas, these sorts of communities are an essential part of who we are, part of our fellowship and trust.

Why, then, would we want to open our medical market to larger, out-of-state forces who can set up and operate at a scale that Maine's homegrown industries will have a difficult time competing against? This is counter intuitive. Recent news that Massachusetts-based Nova Farms is buying up a 170-acre parcel in Thorndike might be welcome news to some, particularly to landowners and farmers looking to retire through land sales. However, this is a vertically integrated farm-to-retail industry that will siphon the majority of the profits to out-of-state owners. The product might be good, but that isn't necessarily supporting an independent, Maine economy knit together with small businesses.

A large, vertically integrated out-of-state business does have it's advantages. This means that a company controls everything from the seed to the packaged product. However, a cursory glance at their product line reveals a lot of packaging: prerolls inside cartons like cigs, pre-packed, disposable pipes and vapes, and every manner of edible imaginable. Power to them (provided all this packing doesn't end up on my lawn alongside the Fireball bottles, COVID masks, and food wrappers). Still, it is difficult to ignore the return address to headquarters: Attleboro, MA. All those profits will be heading out of state. In the aggregate, what does Maine gain in this new equation with recreational sales?

Island Oasis is not here to rail against business. Rather, we aim to encourage smart growth that is sustainable for our local communities. Much the way Maine is proud of its burgeoning beer industry, we hope for something that starts and ends in Maine. The lobster industry is another parallel. Ambitious entrepreneurs can strike out on their own, here, on the coast. The money they earn stays in our communities in the form of home improvement, land stewardship, boat building and marine services, not to mention spending in our local restaurants and pubs. Businesses that begin in Maine, powered by Mainers, invest in Maine.