Let’s make weed fun again!

Making Weed Fun Again: A Legacy Grower’s Journey in California’s Regulated Market

By Chiah Rodriques

On this Summer Solstice morning, I woke with a mission as I prep for our community’s Summer Solstice party later this afternoon- Lets tell the people we are making weed fun again!

Let’s get one thing straight: we didn’t get into cannabis for the spreadsheets! Jamie and I adopted my father’s homestead in 1999 after growing our own plants on another property up on the hill up steep trails hiding them in the bushes away from helicopters. Hiking to them was a 10 minute hike , a steep trip, stickers in the socks so bad each time, you were better off throwing those socks away than washing them with the rest of your laundry! We got into it because it was our parents’ lifestyle, we took over the mission-our legacy to hold, our destiny of sorts. We then began growing at my fathers place in the blackberry brambles. Hauling nutrients and plants on metal roofing sheets under the blackberry canopy to hide from helicopters there. Sometimes we used platforms high in trees or just inside the tree line to hide them. Those days were fun, despite the blackberry thorn scratches and the fear of airplanes and choppers.

We come from the hills, a back-to-the-land community west of Redwood Valley. From back-to-the-land families who grew weed like they grew food — organically, in tune with the seasons, and with reverence for the plant. I was remembering the joy of having fun with my neighbor’s kids and my school friends running around the hills of Mendo smoking on some sticky buds I snagged from my dad, laughing uncontrollably, going on fun missions making mischief, swimming in the pond and enjoying life. Those were the days! We built this life on relationships and community. Our farm was not designed for profit margins, somewhat to our own detriment, we shaped it on generations of learning how to work with nature, not against it. Before lab tests and METRC tags, it was starting gifted buds with seeds in them bred by friends and neighbors- when you could revel in the nose and sticky resin that told you what was gonna be good seed stock. We hunted for the best looking female plants, while culling males and hoping you didn’t seed your crop in the meantime! We fell in love with breeding cannabis ourselves in that same way, creating a unique lineage of local genetics.

And now? 7 years into prop 64 we’re still here. We dropped from 3 licenses to 1 this year. We are tired of the stress, the burdensome workload, the regulation nightmare, the over saturation in the marketplace driving prices down, the ever growing list of distributors that don’t pay, the ever evolving chaos of local and state policy. This season we are growing a small amount of sungrown, regeneratively mixed in amongst the veggies, herbs and flowers- some really nice weed for our brand. We’ve had to jump through the burning circus hoops of the bureaucratic bonfire of California’s regulated market just to stay alive in this industry. And somewhere along the way — with all the taxes, testing, and tracking — it feels like a lot of folks forgot why we all fell in love with this plant in the first place.

So, we’re on a mission: to make weed fun again.

Remember the Joy?

Remember laughing so hard you couldn’t breathe? Passing joints around the fire? That electric, earthy smell when someone cracked a fresh bag open? Breaking bud and bread with neighbors and friends through the heart of the plant. That’s the soul of this plant. And that’s what we’re bringing back.

Not gimmicks. Not corporate greenwashing. Just real good weed, grown by real people, with a wink, a smile, and a lot of love.

We’re Not Just a Brand — We’re a Way of Life

We’re proud to be a legacy farm here at River Txai Farms. That means we’ve been doing this long before it was legal. We were here when the helicopters were flying low and the risk was real. We know what it means to grow with intention, joy and fun-not just to maximize THC percentages, but to produce medicine, magic, and community connection.

We entered the regulated market because we wanted to stay safe, protect our family from the hell that is running though the bushes while helicopters circle overhead. We wanted to turn the supplemental nature of our legacy small crops’ profit into something bigger, putting our expertise into building a full time gig that we loved. We wanted to be true to this plant and this culture. And while it’s been anything but easy, we’re here — providing unique genetics, tasty flavor, and the heart and soul of the legacy cannabis community.

On this Summer Solstice day, we will roll joints with our neighbors and party with the old timers at our community ranch house. We will bring good weed, good vibes, and harrowing stories from the licensed space. They will ask “Why are your still doing it? So much stress!”. Well, it is our way of life, it’s hard to let that go and move on, we held on so tight and put everything into it. This is about rooting down and bringing the medicine to the people- it always was. The plants are happier when the humans are happier growing them! The human are happier when the plants are happy.

Weed is Culture, Not Just Commerce

There’s room for everyone in this space — we believe in community over competition- but dang, the competition is making it hard for us! We believe that legacy cultivators should be celebrated, not pushed out. Thanks to networking events like Nor Cal Women in Cannabis, The Mendo Cup, seed swaps, Area 101 events, Reggae on The River, The MCA Marketplaces and so on for keeping the culture alive in the Emerald Triangle. We don’t want to compete with slick corporate brands on their terms. We want to rewrite the terms and get back to when weed was fun. We want cannabis that feels like sunshine and mischief, that heals you, opens your heart, and makes you feel alive.

So here’s our invitation: come roll one with us. Come meet your farmer at the next event. Let’s laugh more. Let’s care less about lab scores and more about the love. Let’s turn the volume back up on what cannabis can be.

Let’s make weed fun again.

Love- Chiah