It’s been several years since the Maryland Leaf last visited the Kind Therapeutics USA facility in Hagerstown, and many updates have occurred in that time. Some of the original strains from Nature’s Heritage, like ONYCD, are still growing at this facility in addition to tons of new ones, including Strawberry Jelly, Larry Bird Mints and Sequoia Strawberry.
The 21 grow rooms make up around 20,000 square feet of flower and canopy space, and they are home to around 14 strains that are constantly in rotation. Additionally, there are 7 to 15 secondary strains that make an appearance on the market from time to time. The dream team at this facility works hard day in and day out to produce hundreds of pounds of flower every week.
Visiting a grow facility during harvest time puts into perspective just how important each step of the process is in order to get an impressive finished product. Kind Therapeutics USA has a 10-day drying process, which involves bringing the humidity down in those first two days. Then, the flower is bucked off the plant and put in cylindrical drums to cure. Putting the bins at an angle creates more surface area for drying and curing, and the team uses “hang time” as a reference for the perfect moment to pull the flower for trimming and packaging.
Cultivation manager Darren Kelly grew up on the East Coast and worked in construction management in Virginia before entering the Cannabis industry. The people he managed would often leave little freebies on his desk, but one of his employees used to leave him some “killer weed,” which stood out to Darren. He eventually asked the employee where he got it and was surprised to learn he grew it himself, and he was willing to share growing tips. This was in the early 2020s, when weed was still largely more taboo to discuss in the open in Virginia.
Darren decided to give growing Cannabis himself a chance and found great joy in this labor of love. During that time, his wife was T-boned by a drunk driver, causing her to need multiple surgeries and a lengthy recovery process. She didn’t want anything to do with the opiates being prescribed to her for pain management. Finding that Cannabis would make her back pain go away furthered the belief that a holistic form of medicine would be better for her in the long run. This sent Darren down the rabbit hole of breeding in an attempt to discover a strain that really resonated with his wife and alleviated her pain. You could hear the passion in Darren’s voice as he discussed such a sensitive topic.
At a family cookout, Darren was chatting with his brother’s girlfriend, who said she worked at a grow facility in Hagerstown. He showed up at the facility and applied for a job, wanting to “go all in” on the Cannabis industry. In seven years, Darren has worked his way from flower room duties to a mom room role to a propagation lead job and all the way to his current position as director of cultivation, where his tasks extend across all departments.
With his background of performing many jobs within the Kind Therapeutics USA facility, he uses his experience to work alongside the people who mutually respect and benefit from each other. “I want to find strains that check boxes of customers’ needs that are also satisfying to grow on a personal level,” Darren said as he looked out at a room full of flowering plants.
