Ron Lim is the co-founder and operations manager at Re Up Farms. This Lynnwood, Wash. transfer currently calls Portland home – but he has been overseeing the 13-employee, limited-batch, soil-grown facility in Salem (alongside his company partner) for over eight years. As Lim’s title teases, his role at Re Up is vast. “I enjoy being involved in every part of the business. Cultivation, sales, accounting and compliance, I go where I am needed,” says Lim.
What do your daily duties entail as the grow’s operations manager?
I like to do a full walk-through inspection at least two times per week. If there’s anything that needs to be addressed, I put it on the schedule for our cultivation team. I ensure proper rotation of plants in flower rooms by making all flower room schedules along with plant count and layout. When we harvest a room, the plants that will be filling the room need to be planned at least two months in advance. We fill our flower rooms the day after harvest with new plants for maximum efficiency. I handle all METRC including harvesting plants, tagging plants, and tagging packages that will be distributed to our partner retailers. I also handle the accounting and manage all transactions, payroll, and ordering of any supplies that we need. I keep the company compliant with all OLCC regulations. Every day is something different, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
From seed to sale, what is your favorite part of running an Oregon Cannabis company?
My favorite part is when consumers enjoy our product. It takes months of hard and dedicated work to produce our flower. When people compliment us on our work, it is a great feeling.
Talk to me about your brand’s choice to stick with hand watering/manicuring practices over automated techniques? For the readers not familiar with growing, what benefits do you feel this brings?
We have been hand watering and hand trimming since day one. For hand watering, we initially felt this would allow more time to be spent with the plants. Our cultivation team could spot something while feeding that may be missed during a walk-through inspection. It was good while it lasted, but we are planning to set up auto irrigation systems for our new facility. From a business standpoint, it does not make sense to hand water thousands of plants daily. As for the trimming, our facilities will always manicure by hand. We can’t accept the idea of taking four-plus months to grow a top-shelf product, then tumbling it through a machine and knocking all the trichomes off.
What genetics are you excited about moving into 2022?
There’s a lot to be excited about in 2022. We are currently hunting through a variety of seeds with promising crosses. We carry a lot of well-known and popular strains, but the hype is always changing and can be difficult to keep up with. We are looking for staple genetics for Re Up Farms that can’t be found elsewhere. It has to check a lot of boxes, but I am hopeful we have something coming soon. Stay tuned.
Can you share any details of how Re Up will be expanding “product base and brand” in the new year?
Our goal is to have a variety of products to offer to the market. For 2022, we are looking forward to partnerships in both high quality extracts and edibles. As we move into our new facility, we will have more products to diversify our menu to more than just flowers and pre-rolls.
