Standing amid the Cannabis and sunflowers in the fields of Mendocino Grasslands at Yokayo Ranch, you realize exactly why people sweat and bleed to the edge of insanity in order to live this life.
Co-owner Ian Powell understands this as well as anyone. He’s hustled hard and been through the fire to get here on this property, which is part wedding and event venue with rentable cabins and part licensed pot farm with 32 flavors of full-term and light-dep deliciousness in a setting that would just as easily be home to an award-winning small-batch winery.
Powell, a Swiss Army knife of a man with a firm handshake and easy demeanor, fought for his country, only to be later imprisoned by that same country before arriving here at Yokayo. You can sense it when you’re with him on the farm — the gratitude and dedication he brings to his work with his life partner and COO, Jenn Gray, and their team. He has the character of someone who knows what he has and how easily it could be lost.
A Federal foundation
Powell spent the early 1990s in the Marine Corps, stationed overseas, deploying to various exotic locales on missions. He finished his Military Service Obligation as a disciplined man weathered by experience and returned to Mendocino to work the harvest for Fetzer, a huge wine brand founded by his aunt’s husband, Jim Fetzer. Powell simultaneously started working the Cannabis harvest.
“I was young, I was strong, and I was looking for an opportunity,” Powell said. “I just fell in love with the people and the culture, and the plants themselves were fascinating. Also, there was the allure. Back then it was hide-and-seek. You were an outlaw.”
In the world of guerilla farming, you either have to know how to do something yourself or know someone you can trust who can come do the work for you. It provided an opportunity for someone like Powell.
“You had to know the right guy, who will keep it hush-hush and come out to the farm to do the electrical work or whatever it might be,” Powell said. “Otherwise, you gotta figure out the shit yourself. … You become the jack of all trades.”
Powell became an expert at building out grow rooms and started taking side gigs helping people with their buildouts.
“I ended up with a pretty big Rolodex of people with grows who needed things moved,” he said. “And I started hustling weight.”
He quickly became a fairly significant supplier, until one day one of his drivers got busted with a load in West Texas.
“They had my driver deliver the load anyway, so they could get the people on the other end,” he said.
The Feds had 37 people on the indictment, but no one knocked on Powell’s door. He decided to lay low, waiting. Then, two years later, they came.
“I ended up on the ground on Commercial Street in Willits, being held at gunpoint by DEA agents,” he said.
Powell went for a plea deal in 2010, and within six months, he was in federal prison at Lompoc.
“If you want to play the game, if you get licked, you gotta be able to take the lick,” he said.
By 2014, Powell was out, and by the time his probation period ended in 2016, he came back to Mendocino. His sister was getting married at a sprawling, idyllic ranch, and the owner just happened to have two 99-plant permits but needed help figuring out how to grow and move the weight. Powell agreed to help out, and the rest was history.
By 2019, he and a business partner had purchased Yokayo Ranch, and Mendocino Grasslands was born.
Building real business
The engine beneath the MG’s hood is the partnership between Powell, with his knowledge of cultivation and distribution, and Gray, whose attention to detail keeps the business operating and scaling smartly.
“Being a small farm like this and a small brand on the shelf, competing with these monsters, we have to stay nimble,” Powell said, referring to the industry landscape. “We have full-time employees that are on salary. They get health care. We’re taking this seriously. We’re not in the backwoods anymore. We’re not up in the hills.”
They have roughly an acre of grow canopy, which makes them a larger small farm, but nothing compared to the scale Powell and Gray see on the horizon for the industry.
From wine to weed
Powell and Gray are building Mendocino Grasslands for a future that looks more like the wine industry, which is the other marquee draw of the region.
“We parallel each other so well. It’s the same growing season, it’s the same harvest season,” Powell said. “We’re really doing the same things.”
They see the transition from the wine industry to Cannabis as a natural one, especially with younger generations spending less of their money and their livers on drinking.
“If they do drink, it’s really light, and they pair it with really good Cannabis,” Powell said.
Weed’s evolution to a destination experience is a no-brainer, but it will take legislation and a lot of work.
“Mendocino County has the ability to harness Cannabis, bring tourism to the county, and take advantage of that in some way,” he said. “Why can’t we have a weed tasting room? Come in, you like what you see, we can ship you a case. A lot of people don’t have the access or the knowledge to get themselves to where we’re at. If they could go direct-to-consumer at their farms, it would really help build the community and the economy.”
Powell hopes that the future arrives soon. For the time being, he’s happy living a blessed life at his majestical Mendocino farm.
“There are still people incarcerated for this, right now, as I stand here at my farm, selling legal weed,” he said. “It’s crazy. Whatever I set out to do, this was my journey. It also makes Grasslands a special place.”
