Trim Table Vibes
Every aspect of the harvesting and curing process requires special care and attention if you want to prepare cannabis correctly for appropriate consumption. After all the months of careful tending and respect put into growing the girls in the garden, when it comes time for them to get the full Beauty Spa treatment in the Trim Room Salon, attention must be paid to every detail.
First and foremost, know your trimmers. I guess there really are growers who pick up the kids you see on the Highway between Willits and Garberville – up here in the heart of the Emerald Triangle. They stick their hands out, making snipping motions, hoping someone will pick them up and take them home to trim. I’m sure most of them are good decent people and they come from every part of the planet, but if possible, I highly recommend again: know your trimmers.
I guess we are lucky, because we have a wide circle of friends and family eager to help out at harvest time. Yet, there have been a few times when the mix hasn’t been quite right in the room. It’s a balancing of personalities over long stretches of time, while you all sit there clipping together. Of course a convivial group is best, but not too rowdy either or nothing gets done. Believe me, I could tell you stories of wild trim scenes straight out of Hunter Thompson.
We encourage our helpers to get good sleep, eat well, stretch their legs and their eyeballs frequently, and feel a part of the household. We share chores such as cleaning and cooking, occasional meals together and movie nights. We also share audio books which is a real treat, especially when everyone is on the same page. A good 20-hour-long book can captivate everyone’s imagination together to the point that we are all itching to get back to work to find out what happens next in The Book. The only problem is that I dream in the accent of the narrator after listening to them for hours every day. Right now it is an Australian reader attempting to sound Italian who I hear in my head.
Swami Select is a very small scale production farm, as we live in Mendocino County which only allows 25 plants per parcel. Hence, our crew is tiny — an average of two or three people at a time. It’s nothing like the HUGE grow ops we hear about in these hills with 25 trimmers at a time speaking everything from Hebrew to Japanese to French. Every year we hear about the tale of the 3-pound-a-day trimmer, but I’ve yet to see one in action. I imagine that if you live just north of us in Humboldt County, where the word is that farmers can grow up to 1000 plants per parcel, you need all those people trimming to make a dent in the work. But I can’t imagine how the trim room can maintain the mellow vibe necessary when it is so crowded.
You can say it’s New Age gobbilygook, but I swear to all the gods that when we are judging for The Emerald Cup, occasionally a particular sample will look good, smell good, even taste good – but there’s something in the high that just isn’t right. It feels as if the vibe that was absorbed into the buds either while growing, or in the trim room, or both, was off. We all know she is perhaps the most psychic plant ever, so naturally she would be highly sensitive to the hands of the person who manicures her. Are they gentle and caring or rough and fast? The Middle Way wins again, a mix of gentle and fast is of course ideal, but the intentional energy put into the manicuring of the bud is equally important.
My high regards to fellow trimmers out there throughout the state. There is a silent sense of solidarity across these hills and valleys, the reassuring knowing that your fellow farmers are out there snipping away too, getting their girls all dolled up for the ball. At least, that’s how I look at it.
