California Leaf Harvest Special: Motley Terpz

Like the plant itself, Cannabis companies and operators showcase a wide variety of characteristics and growth patterns. Some are determinate. Others stretch and reach for the sky.

Santa Barbara-based Motley Terpz is definitely the latter.

Founder Matt Schneider started his journey in the Cannabis community nearly 25 years ago and has since employed a philosophy of consistent growth and improvement to build a team that’s providing material and finished goods for a vast number of brands in the California market.

Familiar Beginnings

Schneider’s journey has been marked by steady movement.

“When I was younger everything was just about who had the best weed, who had this, who had that,” Schneider said. “It started just slowly buying ounces, breaking ’em out with your buddies and then growing at home.”

By around 2008-09, Schneider had a couple of retail shops, but after they were shut down, he moved to Humboldt to focus on cultivation.

Then, in 2019, he acquired 14 acres in Santa Barbara, and Motley Terpz was born. The plan started to unfold when they began diverting roughly one-third of their output to fresh frozen material.

“It just kind of grew from there, and eventually I was like, ‘I’m just going to do frozen,’”Schneider said. “It’s smooth business.”

Built for the Future

Now, all of their significant production capacity goes to fresh frozen and product manufacturing rather than finished flower. The company has also been focusing on a long-term transformation into a “legitimate company,” as Schneider puts it, with strategic planning, a professional team and solid partnerships.

They start with top-tier genetics from their breeder partners, including Happy Dreams (Motley’s most popular flavor of last season was the Happy Dreams Triangle GMO), Bloom Seed Co., Purple City Genetics and a new collaborator for the 2025 harvest season, Humboldt Seed Company.

“We’re very fortunate that we have this great list of breeders who just have this wide menu that we can put out every season,” Schneider said.

On the production side, they work with a number of solid, known brands in different capacities.

“The list is continuously growing,” Schneider said. “I mean, we work with certain people who procure from us for the sole purpose of fresh frozen. Some people purchase from us to white label. So our portfolio of the things we’re able to offer our clients, it’s pretty big. I would say we work with about 50 manufacturers, and that’s not including white label. That’s not including buyers. Just people who are interested in frozen.”

Schneider sees harvesting for hash as the future of his business, if not the industry as a whole.

“If you think about how easy it is now to consume resin as opposed to how difficult it was before, you had to have this entire setup,” Schneider said. “You had to have a glass rig, you had to have a torch. And courtesy of Puffco and what they’ve done for the hash industry – just making it so easy to be able to consume the product – it has really helped to create the culture around hash … It’s just a beautiful thing to see where the hash industry is going right now.”

Diversity is Key

On its different properties, Motley utilizes different methodologies. It has a large outdoor farm in Santa Barbara, but has greenhouses farther north in Watsonville. It has a total of 16 acres of grow canopy across all its properties (14 outdoor and 2 greenhouse). In the fall, the Santa Barbara harvest takes center stage.

“Outdoor is its own vibe right now,” Schneider said. “We have the harvest, it’s super exciting every year. Such a big part of what we do is, ‘What’s this year’s crop going to look like?’”

Schneider and his team work to continuously improve their outdoor cultivation. It all starts with the location of their farm. “Where our farm in Santa Barbara is, we’re right off the Santa Ynez River, so we’re actually in the floodplain,” Schneider said. “We have this really beautiful soil. I’ve been, for a long time, just growing in the native soil and just really trying to build the soil.”

“At the end of the year,” Schneider continues, “I’ll send in labs to a few places like Kenzie Ag and a few other testing facilities, and they’ll just give you all your recommendations of what you want to put in. And then we’ll plant our cover crop and we’ll really work that in. Throughout the season, we’re always feeding with micronized nutrients and humic and fulvic acids, and just putting in just as much microbiology as we can get. Making sure that we have really well-balanced soil. I feel like that is a huge contributing factor to having really good-tasting, healthy-looking plants.”

Big Harvest Energy

Bringing down 14 acres of canopy is no small feat. Schneider says the energy is electric each fall.

“You get this one big harvest a year and there is a lot of magic to it,” Schneider said. “It’s always the most exciting and stressful time of the year. It’s a whirlwind. I mean, you’re working from dusk to dawn, everyone comes out, there’s a lot of community vibes. It’s exciting, but you got that one shot, then you always deal with, ‘What’s the weather doing?’ You never know, right? I mean, one time we got hit with a lightning storm and three days of rain, then it blew over and the crop was doing well, but had that persisted, that would’ve been pretty dicey. It’s always throwing some curveballs and it’s just part of the harvest experience.”

Schneider is thankful to have a large team and such a dedicated group of collaborative brands and companies that are down to get in on the harvest action. “It’s cool right now,” Schneider said on a call in October. “We have a huge crew and almost every single person from every single department has come to support. We’ve got amazing collaborations with a lot of great partners and they’ve been coming to the farm. It’s really exciting.”

@motleyterpz