Hopefully you have already read my recap of the tour I went on at Mad Mark Farms. Part of the tour was spent talking in Mad Mark’s living room while smoking various strains of potent cannabis.
Getting Started
RMR: So how long have you been growing i502 weed?
Mad Mark: I started on January 1st, 2015. I put in my application in 2013 when everyone else didn’t want their name on a list. I got raided in 2010 and didn’t have much at that point. Just doing it because that’s what I want to do. I’d be doing this whether it was legal or not. It just so happens that there’s a legal option now.
Mad Mark has a goal and a vision for his product. Right out of high school, cannabis became an integral part of Mad Mark’s life, something that we would continue to learn as the conversation went on and more bowls were smoked. Having worked at restaurants and snowboard resorts, Mad Mark was always around people that smoked weed. Everything he did facilitated meeting more people that smoked weed.
RMR: What are some of your favorite resorts? What are some of your favorite weed activities?
Mad Mark: I consume weed anywhere I go. Any mountain around here. Steven’s has a really big flow park. Snoqaulmie is super fucking close. White pass is fun as fuck.
RMR: What are some other strains you might be experimenting with? What are some that you’ve grown in the past that really stood out to you?
Mad Mark: I’m not really a breeder, so I just get what is super fire from the homies. I see some good ass weed and usually I get it and I’ll grow it a little bit better, more flavor. It’s always just a little bit different. It’s got everything to do with the setup and the nutrients.
RMR: You got the super sauce?
Mad Mark: I got some basic sauce. You can go to a grow store and piece together all the shit I use. Promix straight out of the bag, no amendments or nothing. Just your basic, basic shit.
Even with this simplified approach to growing weed. He has managed to turn out some of the most consistent product I have had the chance to smoke. There is nothing extremely fancy about the set up. He’s got his process completely memorized and treats all of his plants to produce consistently.
Knowing that he will eventually get bigger, one of the biggest battles that he is working on preparing for is still being able to deliver a consistent product. He knows that it takes a super attentive grower to produce the consistently high quality product that he delivers. This will be a huge hurdle when it comes time to expand.
RMR: You do pretty much everything here?
Mad Mark: I hired my friend last 4/20 so she’s been here a year and a few months. 34 days ago she high sided her motorcycle so she’s obviously out of commission. For the first year and a half, I did everything. I was doing the growing, trimming, packaging, cloning, collecting numbers, doing networking trying to meet with retailers to do the sales. Also deal with all this compliance bullshit that I’ve never had to fucking deal with before.
His first job fresh out of high school involved organizing archives at a civil engineering firm down in Sumner. Inside some vaults, he categorized all of these archives spreadsheets. He had his own little office and even though he slept most of the time, he received compliments on how fast he got things done. Easily compared to an Office Space job, that made him realize that he did not want to be stuck in that corporate structured lifestyle. Weed became a way to not be part of the corporate structure of the world.
Challenges
RMR: What’s been one of your toughest challenges?
Mad Mark: When they wrote i502 they wrote it to pass, they did not write it to work. Basically it’s a gutless bill, all of the stuff that is in it about growing and all that stuff, isn’t even relevant to what is going on. It was written by people that didn’t understand what the issues were. They were writing the laws to appease the 44% who failed the vote. Which was me anyways, if I did vote, I would have voted no.
Everything is on film. Every step they take has to be documented for the state. Mad Mark estimates that he spent between 50 and 60 thousand dollars on security cameras in order to be i502 compliant. On top of everything needing to be recorded, video must also be stored for 45 days before it can be deleted. Another problem is waste must also be kept around for three days before it can be disposed of. That means that anything with bugs or mold must be kept around.
RMR: What is your absolute least favorite LCB that you have to deal with?
Mad Mark: Guilty until proven innocent type shit. If I want to open any other business I don’t have to go put cameras up. It’s an assumption of guilt, those cameras aren’t to protect anyone. Those cameras are there to make sure that we are not diverting product. That’s the only reason those cameras are there. They aren’t there to protect us. They don’t prevent crime. It’s just a surveillance state and that’s the biggest issue with it. It’s just more of big brother not trusting us. It’s just assumed that its okay for them to treat us like criminals right off the bat. People just have a huge misconception of what marijuana is.
He also isn’t allowed to sample his own product and is limited to just two grams per strain per month for “quality control” reasons. If he wanted to smoke people out with his product, he would have to buy it from the store like a customer.
Applicants that first applied for the licenses took a huge leap off faith when putting their name on the list. They were allowing the government to know that they could grow weed and expecting the government to trust them, but instead their farms are placed under constant surveillance with strict regulations and expensive security cameras. All of this is under the assumption that they could be audited at any time.
Amnesia is hands down his favorite strain because of the energizing and mind numbing effects with a ten minute refocus feature. Mad Mark takes a more old school approach to weed ignoring the labels and numbers that appear. To him, cannabis is simple and doesn’t need to be paired with any specific activity.
We all acknowledge that this industry has changed the weed buying experience. Future generations won’t know the experience of calling your guy and waiting for them to respond, or calling around to multiple people trying to figure out who had the fire. While the recreational industry we currently have in place may not be ideal, it has provided Mad Mark with the opportunity to eventually purchase that Ferrari he’s been working towards for more then a decade.
