Onda Wellness Hemp Harvest at Casad Family Farms, November 2020.

Around 2020, I began researching for a documentary about sustainable cannabis and hemp farms. Initially, I was interested in women-owned operations. However, as is the case with most documentaries, you don’t know where the path to inquiry might lead.

Naturally, the first person I called is the matriarch of three generations of organically farmed, Central California hemp and cannabis. She connected me with Cate Havstad-Casad of Casad Family Farms in Madras, Oregon. Their mission is to provide their community with nutrient-dense foods while improving the ecosystems they steward.

This was all the info I needed to send me off on a trajectory made possible by Onda Wellness’s founder, Stephen Smith, a well-known leader in the wellness industry. Stephen and I quickly bonded over the excitement of this once-a-year harvest. Soon after, he invited me to capture it all with my camera.

Within a week and a half, I was on a pandemic-empty Alaska Airlines flight to Portland with Canon C100 and favorite lenses jammed into my little Pelican case, double-masked, having no idea what I’d be shooting for the next three days. From experience, I knew that it would probably involve very little sleep because I’d want many shots as the sun rose and set in this rural, tight-knit farming community just an hour north of Bend. Due to wildfires, the surrounding sky would be that eerily dreamy, orange-pink. The thought of shooting plants in that light specific light excited me to no end. Of course, this feeling was tempered by all of the wildfires that have impacted my community in California.

A huge thank you, Stephen Smith and Cate Havstad-Casad, for allowing me to embed (literally lying face up in the truck bed while you threw fresh-cut weed on top of me) with your crew during these nonstop 3 days before the rain came. I dream of going back someday to explore more and rekindle the harvest love affair.

And a HUGE thank you to Todd Hannigan for granting me selections from your Grammy Award-winning catalog.