Harvest Special 2024: Buddy Boy Farm

Buddy Boy has been operating as an outdoor producer since the beginning of recreational Cannabis in Washington, heading into their 11th year of farming. The sprawling facility has 24 greenhouses holding 6,000 or more plants, all growing in a single-source operation that brings quality flower, prerolls, vape carts and now ice hash at fair prices. We sat down with General Manager Galadriel Walser to discuss the journey and how Buddy Boy’s focus on single source has allowed the company to grow while maintaining high standards and putting the customer first with every product they sell.

What were the early days of Cannabis like?
A little chaotic, because no one had ever grown Cannabis on this scale before. I mean, people in general — there were black market people growing — but when it was illegal, you did a whole bunch of small houses, not one huge place. So there wasn’t any equipment; you had to kinda figure it out. It was a complete learning process.

Did you start out with the big greenhouses?
We started as a full-sun outdoor grow, but by the third year, we were reinvesting and started putting up greenhouses. We needed more weed and to grow more than one season, so we started slowly learning how to grow in greenhouses year-round. Now we are all greenhouses. We don’t do any full-sun outdoor for the last seven years because our greenhouses have lights, dehumidifiers, heaters… everything an indoor grow does. But we can roll back the blackout tarps and use the light and sun. So I think it’s actually better than indoor, because you have both.

So the greenhouses have lights to keep them running year-round?
We started with high-pressure sodium (HPS) lights, but we’ve slowly converted the greenhouses over to LEDs, which has been a four-year process. We are constantly trying to find ways to not only be innovative but to cut costs because you have to in this market right now. You have to be as efficient as possible, so we are constantly finding new ways to do that.

What’s an example of the efficiency process?
Last year we installed a fertigation system! We used to have to mix the nutrients in individual buckets, and the guys would take the buckets to the greenhouse and put them through the Dosatron to get them to the plants. Now in our facility it’s all centralized in big containers. You go to a screen with a menu, select what you want to feed a house and it shoots it out to the greenhouse. It’s way more efficient, and humans always have errors, so when you have a machine, most of the time you get more precise. We also added a nano bubbler that oxygenates the water to get more water to the plant.

How did your family get into farming?
My dad, Steve, is one of the owners, and he’s been an organic farmer for over 40 years. Buddy Boy sits on part of my dad’s 640-acre organic farm, so we are surrounded by acres of organic blueberries. Our water comes from a fresh artisanal spring, and while we aren’t organic, we grow with the most natural methods we can. His farming background led us to do things differently. An example is our dirt machine that’s used in traditional farming, but we’ve had a dirt machine for six years that fills the pots with dirt and sends them on conveyor belts down the line to the greenhouse. It makes this all not such hard work, and then people don’t mind doing it. Why not be more efficient?

How has efficiency played into the quest to grow great weed?
For a long time, we tried to figure out how to grow really good weed instead of branching out into edibles or tons of other products. We stuck to trying to grow the best weed because we always felt that if we tried to take on too many things, we weren’t going to do any of them very well. Once we had a really good grasp on growing consistently good weed, then the question was, now what do we want to do?

What’s something new for the farm?
We wanted to start making ice hash, so we found who we thought was the best hash maker and hired him as a consultant, Michael Mazzola. Our brand is called Ice Queen, and we’re really excited because we get to use the premium flower we are already growing in a new way to make a really clean product. We’re finding that some of the strains that we’ve always grown have turned out to be really good hash strains, like the MAC2D2 or our GMO.

That’s exciting news that Buddy Boy is the newest single-source flower and hash rosin company in WA!
We’ve stuck to making products with our weed and material, so we don’t ever source material from anyone else because we want to know what we are putting out into the market. We are a single-source company. We also know the benefit of focusing on our strength: growing great flower. So we didn’t try to build a lab but [we] send our material to Pur Form as an oil house, who then returns us our carts. I believe that this is super important, so we know what we’re putting out, and we have all the confidence in the world in what we share with our consumers, and it’s not sourced from 10 different farms and thrown together. Anything you buy from us is from a single source.

Has this been a great harvest for the team?
We harvest weekly year-round, so it’s always harvest season at Buddy Boy, which also keeps our flower super fresh. We usually harvest six greenhouses a month. Our favorite strains at this time are actually our classics, with day-one strains like Presidential Kush, Montana Silvertip and God’s Gift. People and retailers love them! We tried new strains, but stores kept calling asking for the classic landrace strains, so we’ve kept growing those!

What do you want Buddy Boy to be known for?
We want to be known as a company that produces a good-quality product at a fair price. We’re not trying to get the highest price but to put out the best single-source product possible. From the beginning, somebody said they didn’t want to be the Budweiser of weed, but we wanted to be the Budweiser of weed. The flower is ours, the oil is ours, and the entire product line comes directly from us. We put out a great single-source product that everyone can afford to try!