Coastal Sun Included in Good Times Article: High Season
- Coastal Sun
- May 1
- 3 min read
Thank you to the Good Times Santa Cruz for including us in their recent article, High Times: Santa Cruz embraces small craft cannabis with retail and farm tour pilot program.
"It's cannabis as a verb, as opposed to cannabis as a noun." — Nordahl, Good Times Santa Cruz
You can read more here:
(pages 34, 36, 38, and 40)
Below is a summary of the article:
• Santa Cruz County has launched a Cannabis Farm Retail Licensing Pilot Program, giving select small craft cannabis farms new ways to sell directly to customers.
• The pilot allows approved farms to offer direct on-site sales, educational farm tours, product sampling, and limited on-site consumption, similar to how small wineries can host tastings and sell bottles directly.
• The article centers on Jeff Nordahl of Jade Grove Farm and Wellness Center in Boulder Creek, one of the first cultivators approved for the program.
• Nordahl frames cannabis as more than a product. He sees it as medicine, art, agriculture, culture, and lifestyle, and wants visitors to experience the plant at the source rather than only through packaged retail.
• The county created the program partly because small cannabis farms have struggled under declining tax revenue, heavy regulation, black-market competition, and competition from larger operators.
• Santa Cruz cannabis tax revenue has fallen sharply since 2020, which local officials connect to a broader industry downturn and difficult operating conditions for compliant cultivators.
• The pilot is also positioned as a way for Santa Cruz to compete on experience rather than volume. Local leaders argue the county cannot outproduce larger cannabis regions, but it can offer tourism, education, craft quality, and farm-based experiences.
• Jade Grove’s farm-tour model is built around an immersive visit: guests may walk among rare landrace cannabis plants, learn about regenerative farming, visit a designated consumption area, and potentially buy products directly from the farm.
• A major theme is the preservation of landrace and heirloom cannabis genetics. Nordahl describes these older strains as the foundation of modern cannabis and wants to protect them through seed sales and home-gardener access.
• The article contrasts outdoor, regenerative, craft-grown cannabis with the industry trend toward indoor-grown, high-THC, highly processed products. Nordahl argues that consumers lose something when cannabis becomes disconnected from the farm, the plant, and the grower.
• Coastal Sun Farm in Watsonville is the second farm close to receiving approval. Its focus is organic, regenerative farming, blueberry cultivation, cannabis cultivation, tours, and on-site consumption.
• Coastal Sun’s Shy Ann Kenwood emphasizes soil health, cover crops, grazing animals, beneficial insects, and outdoor cultivation as central to regenerative cannabis farming.
• Both Jade Grove and Coastal Sun see farm tours as a way to educate the public, create transparency, and build appreciation for cannabis as an agricultural crop.
• The economic promise is modest but meaningful: operators are not expecting a massive financial windfall, but they hope direct access to consumers will improve margins, increase awareness, and help small farms survive.
• Local dispensaries initially worried about competition, but the program includes limits and guardrails, including a six-month operating requirement, reservation-based tours, designated driving rules, and restrictions on retail access.
• The article also places Santa Cruz’s local reform in a statewide context. California lawmakers recently passed a bill that could allow certain cannabis microbusinesses to ship medical cannabis directly to patients, though Governor Newsom vetoed a related shipping bill over concerns about complexity and burden.
• The larger takeaway is that Santa Cruz is trying to protect small cannabis farms by treating cannabis more like wine, craft agriculture, and experiential tourism instead of only as a retail product.
• The piece ends on a hopeful but realistic note: the future of small cannabis farms may depend on whether local experiments like Santa Cruz’s pilot can create a viable path around taxes, consolidation, and competition from large corporate cannabis.
