Growers & Showers

Up in Mendicino County, California, there’s a hella-lush farm where all kinds of yummy varieties of bud can be found. Photographer Whit Forrester went there to see the workings of the farm, and to document the connection between medicinal cannabis and the queer community that has coalesced around the art and science of growing since the opening of the first San Francisco buyers club in 1992.

Unlike what you may think, it’s not all improvised apple bong breaks and chilling — working the farm takes dedication, intensive labor and mad horticultural skills. It would be an understatement to say head grower Chris has a green thumb. All the plants are organic, of course, and fertilized biodynamically with chicken manure. In a good season, a single plant can yield as much as six pounds of green bud for a patient in need.

Although the U.S. Congress and Obama stealthily ended the federal ban on medical marijuana cultivation and sale — the provision tucked safely inside a 1,603-page federal spending measure passed just last week — it’s still easy to take that bowl for granted. The criminalization of pleasure is never very far removed from queer memory, is it?