Living the Dream: Roy Arms

*This story was originally published in the October 2017 issue of Marijuana Venture, on sale now at a store near you.

What we did have was dirt, rock and plenty of sunshine. So we spent seven months of 80- to 100-hour weeks building our state-of-the-art greenhouses. Some days, before I was able to quit my full-time job, I would run out to the farm during my lunch break and pour a truckload of concrete footings, get them all leveled out, then head back to work. I will never forget spending 12 hours in the brutal 110-degree sun, picking up 70-pound rocks and tossing them onto our skid steer to try to level off the ground.

Nothing went exactly as we planned, but it sure did feel good to be out there chasing our dreams.

We quickly expanded and assembled the Boggy Boon team out of hard-workers, dreamers, wanderers and adventurers. They put in long hours: start early, stay late, work on days off — whatever it takes — because they are passionate about bringing high-quality cannabis to the recreational market. We have approximately 35 full-time employees and we supplement with an additional 15 temporary/part-time employees at certain times. Our team has now produced more than 3,000 pounds of cannabis for Washington’s regulated market, and we are just now catching our stride.

This year we’ve had a glorious summer in Central Washington. If you are one of the lucky cannabis farmers who get to work in greenhouses you are thankful for the sunshine outside (that provides the ideal natural environment for growth), but also for the escape into the nice, cool, climate-controlled air inside the facility.

It turns out, our plants are thankful for that environment as well. We just finished an experiment with plants in 5-gallon pots. We used identical strains and placed some plants inside our greenhouses and others outside. We hand watered them (as we currently do for all the 10,000-plus plants we have at any given time) and we found approximately 15-20% better vegetative growth on the greenhouse plants. We think this is due to the plant thriving in the stress-free environment inside the greenhouse instead of struggling with the outdoor heat.

With the “race to the bottom” that currently exists for prices in Washington’s cannabis market, we need to implement every competitive edge we can. To help push ourselves — and the industry — forward, we are constantly reassessing workflows for efficiencies, trying to ensure that every variable is optimized to produce the best quality cannabis, at the most affordable price.

Utilizing these efficiencies and the sun-filled summer, we have been able to exceed our anticipated yields by approximately 19% so far this year, and our biggest harvest of the year is just beginning!

It feels good to sit down and reminisce about all the long days, successes, failures and all the people who have come and gone along the way who helped us. It helps fuel the energy to continue chasing the next goal, meeting more amazing people and continuing this crazy adventure.

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