Sol Ventless

Small businesses around the country are facing extinction under the big box banner of Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon, and if this trend has slipped past your attention, it is no less a concern in the cannabis industry. While you may have sat on the sidelines until it became legal, if you were partaking during these last 50 years, it’s likely that you engaged in a criminal act that you understood was actually safe, healthy, and should be your right as an American. Well, NOW IT IS, but keep your eyes peeled, because you, as a consumer, have a choice.

Despite lip service by the California Blue Ribbon Panel on Cannabis’ stated intention, to “Ensure that small and mid-size entities, especially responsible actors in the current market, have access to the new licensed market, and that the industry and regulatory system are not dominated by large, corporate interests,” the rapid succession of changes in the law have been an architectural masterpiece, a completely hijacking thru Prop 64, paid legislation by deep pocketed businesses who have not a whit of knowledge or love for the plant, and have paid none of the social cost that earned them the right to sell you overpriced and overtaxed dreck, nor concern for your health or state of mind. You, as a consumer, have a choice. Buy cheap mass produced schwag, from slick advertisers who pay to know how you line up as a target demographic, or seek out small independent brands, who were here supplying you throughout the medical era and before. FullyMelted brings such heritage, care and craft to their cannabis, make it yours. Get FullyMelted.

Humboldt County, home of Giant Redwoods, mighty rivers, remote, inaccessible geography, and killer weed.  As an outpost for the back tot land hippie movement of the 70s, its cheap parcels, previously ravaged and denuded by logging, were reconditioned in an attempt to leave the pollution and social decay of the cities behind. The rugged individualism and counter culture morphed into community creation, and against this backdrop, the freedom afforded created a wild west. The seeds left from old lids of Michoacan, and Thai Sticks did well even in the poor soil, and with a little reading and a bag of chicken shit, the sinsemillan revolution began.

Originally a small crop that supported family farmers (and the renegades who had thought they had escaped straight life, corporate greed, superfund sites, Vietnam, and other woes we still see today), the quickly realized market commodity drove a capitalist culture of its own. Alongside a deep ethos of environmentalism and community, Cannabis built an underground economy, which flourished for years, despite posse commitatus violations. By the second generation, though, it outgrew its community roots.

We’re now at the tail of a decade of greenrushing megagrows, seeking to extract wealth with no concern for their environmental impact. Against this backdrop, while politicians pretended to deliver a policy choice that would allow generational farmers and cannabis businesspeople to move into a legal construct, the theft of the market through Prop 64, and deliverance to heavily capitalized big business in the mid-state and desert regions, have left the vaunted Humboldt Farmers bereft. Those who made it through the hoops to regulation, while vilified by their neighbors whom the state has recriminalized, still seek to grow legendary badass Humboldt weed. At FullyMelted, we use only craft, family, independent cannabis, for you, the cannaseur,
No mids, no mega – Get Humboldt – Get FullyMelted.

What is a Craft Farmer?

The old joke in Humboldt is, how much weed is too much to grow?
Whatever my neighbor is growing, cuz that’s gonna get ME busted!

When we look at craft growing, however, the line comes down around the fact that YOU yourself can manage your own crop. When your farm exceeds the range of 2-3 helpers, the ability of even a seasoned grower to manage all of the plant care, in changing conditions, is next to impossible. Small family farms, which cannot be corporatized, due to the fact that they are homesteads, are often incapable of handling more than 2500 feet, a 50 x 50 garden. An eighth of an acre, 5500 feet, or a quarter acre at 11,000, is quite a bit of work.

At FullyMelted, our choice is to stay true to our Humboldt root, and work with small, independent, family farms. The folks who built the industry are incapable of becoming big businesses, but are committed to ecologically sustainable growing of the finest cannabis in the world.

Politically speaking.. The initial law proposed by the legislators stated that no one would be able to grow more than one acre of cannabis, or hold multiple licenses to more than that limit. The fact is, a mere 150 acres would supply the state with all it needs, but here in 2019, there are 1152 permitted acres. The vast majority of these are not in the traditional cannabis area, the Emerald Triangle, but in Salinas, Santa Barbara, and out in the desert. Who decided that was a good idea?

In a state that already grew 7x what it smoked, all for export, we have forced the producing counties to stay in the black market, while allowing big business to come in and … grow another  8x what we need. But don’t expect it to be quality, or for them to drop the price much