Akwesasne cannabis grower sustains sovereignty with seed-to-store business

Apr. 19—AKWESASNE — A Native cannabis company is using a self-sustaining process to grow up to 2,000 marijuana plants that yield quality bud, refining part of the harvest into concentrates with 90% or more THC.

Morris Oakes owns and operates Original Cannabis Company in Akwesasne, called OCCO for short. They do everything with marijuana plants from seed all the way to finished products that are sold in his stores, Goodleaf Dispensary and Another Damn Pot Shop, as well as some of the dozens of other unaffiliated pot shops in the Akwesasne Mohawk community.

"I make every cannabis product I possibly can," Mr. Oakes said.

He sees the cannabis business field as an opportunity for greater Native sovereignty.

"It's the only opportunity we have to be sovereign. We're doing our own thing," Mr. Oakes said.

He believes that although tobacco sales have been a longtime economic stimulus for Akwesasne, those businesses rely on outside tobacco growers. This area just isn't good for growing it. Cannabis, however, grows well here in the warm months and can be grown year-round indoors.

"Tobacco is important, but we don't have the land to grow," he said. "With marijuana, people just have to plant."

When New York state legalized adult use and possession of marijuana in March 2021, Native American territories were the first eligible to open legal dispensaries. Licensing and enforcement is left up to the individual tribes.

In Mr. Oakes's case, he's now going through the process of getting the proper licenses from the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe after having opened Good Leaf shortly after pot prohibition ended. Outside of Native communities, the state set up the Office of Cannabis Management to issue operating and grow licenses and handle enforcement of the new laws.

The state has licensed the first 150 dispensaries under a social equity program. Those first licenses were drawn by lottery and given to those with prior marijuana convictions, which can include the former unlawful possession of marijuana violation, which during prohibition was not considered a crime. The majority of the licenses were granted in New York City. The north country region will get four of the 150 licenses. Under the state program, the state loans the money to open the dispensary, and the social equity licensee has 10 years to pay it back.

At OCCO's dispensaries, in addition to growing and selling marijuana flower, the buds growing from the plants that can be smoked or cooked into food, the company also makes the flower into various potent concentrates. Those include hashish, usually referred to as hash and containing about 60% THC, and others like live rosin or hash oils that are sold by the gram or put into vape pens. Those can contain 90% or more THC — tetrahydrocannabinol, which is primarily responsible for the effects of cannabis.

The process starts in what Mr. Oakes calls his "birth center," a building where he is now growing about 40 mother plants. He cuts small portions from those 40 plants and replants them there to become clones. Starting next week, they will mostly be replanted in an outdoor plot, with the top-quality strains grown indoors under lights. The seeds from each harvest are collected, and that's what will start the next year's crop.

"In essence, the mothers will watch over their children," Mr. Oakes said.

Mr. Oakes said that in 2021, he grew about 200 plants. Last year, he harvested 1,000, with the outdoor plants yielding bud with 23 to 24% THC. This year, he intends to plant between 1,500 and 2,000 indoors and outdoors. Most of this year's outdoor crop will be a strain called King of the North, which will be distilled into cannabis oil for vape pens. The rest, including the popular Lemon Poundcake strain, will be sold as bud, as will all of the indoor-grown bud.

After planting, Mr. Oakes uses top soil from the wooded area on his property to make a "tea" that he uses to irrigate the plants, which provides them with more nutrients. He says he can add organic materials to the tea and make the mature bud have a fruity taste.

"I can make pot taste like apples. I can make pot taste like lemon, like oranges, any taste I want, organically," he said. He didn't want to get into further specifics about the process because it's trade secret. He did say everything added is naturally occurring.

Each plant yields about 1 pound of bud. Each pound of bud can yield 80 to 90 grams of concentrates.

After the plants mature and are harvested, they're checked for mold, mildew or parasites. If they're clean, they're put into a cryogenic freezer. Anything that tests positive is put into an irradiator that kills the contaminates while leaving the plant totally intact. It's a medical-grade irradiator that can also be used to sanitize blood. The irradiator doesn't get rid of heavy metals, so the plants are tested off-site for that type of contamination.

After being cryo frozen once, the pot is vacuum-sealed and then put back into the cryo freezer again in temperatures as low as minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit/minus 80 degrees Celsius. Mr. Oakes's business includes a lab where workers make products derived from marijuana flower. Chad A. George, who works in the lab, said the cryo freezer "makes the trichomes pop right out." Trichomes produce the cannabinoids like THC that combine to cause the marijuana high.

After coming out of the freezer, the pot is put through an ice wash, which makes the trichomes, also called kief, fall off. Those are put into a Harvest Right freeze dryer. After 24 hours in there, it becomes live bubble hash, which can contain up to 60% THC. "Live" means refined from plants that go right from harvest to freezer.

That live bubble hash can be smoked or eaten. It can also be further refined into the most potent concentrates. The hash can be placed into a micron filter and pressed into live hash rosin, which is usually smoked with a dab rig. That's a smoking device made specifically for ultra-potent concentrates. It requires a hard flame, like a blowtorch or a handheld butane torch, to generate enough heat to turn the rosin into smoke. With a dab rig, instead of being directly applied to what's being smoked, you heat up what's called a nail and apply the concentrate directly to the heated nail with any kind of small scraper like a fingernail cuticle tool. A spot of live rosin the size of a grain of rice is enough to get high for several hours or more. Mr. Oakes said OCCO also makes other forms of dabs like shatter and crumble.

Rosin can also be pressed at a higher temperature to create solvent-free diamonds, which can be turned into another form of highly potent concentrate commonly smoked with a torch and dab rig.

OCCO also uses unrefined kief to make infused joints. They're pre-rolled and coated on the outside of the paper with marijuana distillate and terpenes, rolled in the loose kief, then left to dry. That makes it more potent than smoking a regular pre-rolled joint. Terpenes are found naturally in marijuana and cause the unique smell and taste that can vary from strain to strain. Mr. Oakes said they're a critical natural ingredient in any cannabis product. Terpenes also form in many other plant species, such as pine trees.

The oil from OCCO's plants can also be distilled and put into vape pens. The pot is packed with ice and then hit with an odorless form of propane. A special distillate machine bakes out all of the propane and then it's ready to go. OCCO's pens do not have artificial flavors added. They just contain the distillate and terpenes to make it taste like the specific strain.

Mr. Oakes recently acquired a new machine to make Rick Simpson oil, or RSO. It's a strong indica oil that's jet black and has a texture almost like silicone. It was originally invented as medicine for cancer patients, aimed at offering pain relief and stimulating an appetite. It is generally applied under the tongue and left to dissolve. A spot a smaller than a BB can bring on a high that lasts 12 hours or more, depending on tolerance.

Mr. Oakes said he learned a lot about the cultivation process from Woodstock Farmacy, based in Maine.

"They really taught us how to grow pot," he said.

He said that company is working on a marijuana strain to honor a Native healer, Molly Ockett, who was born somewhere between 1725 and 1744 and lived in and around Bethel, Maine. She died Aug. 2, 1816. She is reputed has having been the last living member of the Pequawket tribe.