MY INSANE YEAR AS A HEMP FARMER – PART 2

I landed in Medford at 1:30 PM. It was overcast and chilly. Cornelius picked me up in his white Porsche Cayenne outside baggage claim. I opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. 

“What’s up, brotha?” I asked.

“How was the flight?”

“I made it here, so—”

Cornelius hit the gas as soon as I shut the door.  “What do you think of the Porsche-Uh?”

“The what?”

“The Porsche-Uh,” he repeated. “What do you think of it?”

“Why do you keep saying it that way?” I asked. 

Cornelius laughed and turned up The Grateful Dead on the stereo. “The dealership corrected me. Now that I’m officially a Porsche-Uh owner, I need to pronounce the name properly,” he paused. “It’s not Porsche. It’s Porsche-UH.” 

“I know how it’s pronounced, you dork. What are you, fifteen?”

We chuckled a bit. Giving each other shit goes way back. 

“Good to see ya, man!” I said, “Great to be back on the West Coast. This place is beautiful.” 

Medford is the major metropolitan area of the Rogue Valley, a gorgeous area of Southern Oregon famous for its artisanal wines and organic produce and dairy. Its micro-climate and nutrient-dense soils also make for excellent cannabis grows. Small and medium farms are speckled throughout the landscape and influences the local culture. Trato Diablo Farms was located on a narrow strip of land outside Central Point, a small city (pop. 18,000 at the time) five miles northwest of Medford.

“I gotta tell ya, Nate,” Cornelius said, “I made a deal with The Devil.”

“What?” I said. I have a reputation for profundity. 

“I made a deal with The Devil,” he said, turning his head to look at me. “LIKE ROBERT JOHNSON, NATE, I MET THE DEVIL AT THE CROSSROADS!” he shouted.

I laughed through my nose thinking the next thing he was going to do was blast “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors and produce a bottle of Jim Beam from underneath his seat and start swigging and passing. That’s an old ritual between us. But seriously, I had no idea what he was actually talking about and next thing I knew we where driving through Central Point. Cornelius pulled into a drive-thru coffee shop called The Human Bean. I never knew Cornelius to be a coffee drinker, either.

“Hi there, welcome back! Getting your usual?” 

Cornelius leaned out the window, “Yeah, extra-large four-shot vanilla latte with three extra sugars,” he ordered.

“And for you, sir?”

“I’ll take the same,” I said. Little did I know I’d soon become a regular at this place, too. 

Coffees in hand we sped down 99 to one of Cornelius’ favorite marijuana dispensaries. Inside I was dumbstruck by the array of products at this place and before I could even figure out what gummies I wanted to try, Cornelius had maxed out his purchase limit with flower and extracts and was making his way out the door.

Back in the Porsche-Uh, I couldn’t have been happier. I was with my best friend – my BRO – in Oregon, about to check out an opportunity that could potentially make us both rich, and I had over an ounce of legal marijuana products in my lap.  And it was my birthday. Speeding around in a Porsche-Uh didn’t hurt none either. 

Within minutes we were surrounded by rolling hills full of towering pines and in the near distance, shrouded in fog, I could see the looming shadow of what I would soon learn to be Table Rock. Cornelius’ cellphone rang – it had been the same tune for years: Roger Miller’s “Robin Hood and Little John”: