Rising high among rocky ridges and subalpine trees are a dozen greenhouses packed full of beautiful green and purple Cannabis cuts, oozing with terpenes and flowering perpetually in all four seasons by capturing the light, heat and cold of each season to produce stunning sun-grown flower and single-source rosin.
Growing year-round Cannabis is hard work, especially in the Spokane region, where 100-degree summers fade into feet of snow and freezing temperatures all winter. With four real seasons, there’s a flow to the flower, and the team at Buddy Boy Farm works hard to go with the seasonal shifts, not to fight nature’s changes.
“There’s different challenges for each season with the greenhouses, but coming into winter weather makes things smoother. Summer is hotter, so it’s definitely easier in winter. But I wouldn’t say it’s easy, so here’s the secret: Fall and spring are the best,” Suzy Michie, clone manager, said passionately. “The cool fall weather, a little frost and terps popping, this is the best time of year for our 4,500 plants.”
With 12 greenhouses running in flower, the farm is in constant motion, with the harvest season hitting every week instead of once a year for full-term outdoor farms. With over 30 cuts in flower, most selected for high resin yields to wash into hash rosin, all of the plants are popping with terps on a sunny but chilly fall afternoon.
“My favorite strain is Moroccan Peaches; the peach, when you exhale, it’s so nice. The flavor is amazing, and the high is really natural, not zinging, but happily stoned,” Michie said. “Right now, we have 1,500 clones going, in a perpetual harvest, so the work never stops. It’s a lot of work, but seeing how the girls turn out and seeing the plant turn into medicine is amazing. I do believe this is medicine, and we grow clean, really good girls.”
Buddy Boy has been growing since 2014, when the farm first hit the market with full-term sun-grown. Over time, the greenhouses and lab were built, and the last few years have seen the farm focus on craft-at-scale flower that washes into top-shelf, affordable rosin. Going from soil to oil carries huge advantages, and with the farm harvesting weekly, there’s always fresh-frozen material in the freezer waiting to be washed.
“We’re looking for strains that wash well, high-resin producers. We brought in Don Rotino, our new head grower, because he’s the terpene master, really knows how to bring out the terps at the end,” DJ, owner/grower, said proudly. “The climate here is great, and I love growing Cannabis for hash. We can freeze it, hang it and process it, so we are always moving! We have Ice Queen, Buddy Boy and Buddy Boy Select, with new rosin vapes and brands coming in the new year, including a relaunch of our flavored rosin Yum Yum brand.”
On a chilly fall afternoon, the air temperature was in the low 40s, but the greenhouses are mid-70s with perfect humidity, even with the doors open. Stepping inside feels like a transformation from a cold afternoon to a tropical jungle that’s bursting with every terpene and Cannabis flavor under the sun.
“We’re all friends and family oriented here, the team is full of really kind people, and I’m excited to produce the highest quality flower for the rosin market, and pushing forward the genetics to find the gems that like this mixed-light, indoor-outdoor path,” Rotino said. “The industry has changed so much over the years, and I think people need to stay focused on that this is medicine, and I hope that when people smoke Buddy Boy, they are feeling better. It’s good for general wellness, mental health, weed is so important and helpful these days.”
Inside the greenhouses, the plants are uniform, frosty and thriving in a clean environment. The labor of love to grow the best is certainly driving the 42 team members at Buddy Boy, where everyone is pulling together from start to finish to grow the best buds possible.
“I’m all about aesthetics; when the garden looks like this, I get off on it,” Rotino said with a chuckle. “It’s a spiritual plant, there’s an energy exchange between growing and smoking it, and I think it can benefit everybody. Cannabis keeps the stress away!”
The passion for the plant as a medicine and safer recreational substance is evident in the team, as are the stoner owner vibes from the top down. DJ began growing in the hills of Spokane in the early medical days, and he still uses Cannabis to slow down and enjoy the moment. While he’s more of a joint man — and Buddy Boy does produce amazing flower and infused joints — the heart of the operation is the rosin lab, where 7,000-8,000 grams go out the door every single week.
“We’re totally in our groove right now,” DJ explained proudly. “We harvest weekly, have hit our right scale, and now, we get to focus on blowing this up.
As an avid outdoorsman who also owns a tree farm for timber, DJ is an owner who is in tune with nature. From managing timber to keep it pristine as a steward of the land to his partner, who owns organic alfalfa and blueberry fields, Buddy Boy is a company where the lifestyle and living all come from the land. Even the water that feeds the plants comes from a natural spring, unfiltered, and in the rosin lab, where it’s treated with reverse osmosis and filtered before washing the hash. From the sun to the water to the changing of seasons, the farm exists with the environment and is even at its mercy.
Looking above the farm to a nearby ridge, the fireline from two years before is evident, when the farm was nearly lost to flames. With a true farmer’s acceptance of the earth and situation, there’s never a doubt or dull moment running a weed farm, and it’s clearly the love of the game and garden that keeps DJ and the team pushing.
“It’s really nice stepping into a greenhouse during the winter, when it’s warm and lush, to get your terpenes and vitamin D,” DJ said passionately. “The base of everything good starts with loving it, and I still love growing weed. I thrive in this environment, just like the plants.”
