Cultivating green spiritual wisdom for small canna-farmers everywhere

 By Keith Hadad 

 

In Upstate New York, two women are preaching the magic of the sacred cannabis plant and making a stand for small canna-farmers everywhere.

 

Toni Perrone and Andi Novick have been blending together regenerative farming methods with green spiritual wisdom at their sunny organic farmland, the suitably named Terra Mater Farma, to cultivate and nurture incredible cannabis plants that yield truly remarkable results.

 

The two business partners and friends came together out of a shared love for cannabis. In 2018, Novick founded NY Small Farma (NY Small Farm Alliance of Cannabis Growers and Supporters) to grow an environmentally regenerative, socially fair, and economically inclusive canna-community and end prohibition. Meanwhile, Perrone met Novick through volunteering and eventually joined the board of NY Small Farma. The two bonded quickly over their passion for the plant, and for educating the public about what high quality cannabis can do for you, and how to grow it yourself.

 

  Toni Perrone and Andi Novick in the garden at Terra Mater Farma.

  

 

Earlier this year, shortly before they held one of their public farm tours, I had the pleasure of speaking to both Novick and Perrone about their farm, the importance of whole plant utilization and rediscovering the true nature of the crone.

 

Heads Lifestyle: How did you two meet and how did Crone Grown begin?

 

Andi Novick: We both have a huge amount of passion for this plant, and we're very connected to it. When I started NY Small Farma six years ago, I was talking about how awesome it would be for New York to have small farming communities everywhere. I had this picture in my mind of my pounds of cannabis laid out in something like a farm store. I felt that it should be done this way. It’s a crop—not a pharmaceutical product to be handled by people with white coats. It got tiring going to Albany and fighting against all the pressure from big canna for their green greed money. I wrote proposed legislation and regulations and Small Farma moved the needle as much or as little as it did. Small Farma is still fighting for a small business cannabis industry, but after prohibition was lifted, I just didn't want to do it anymore. So instead, we practiced what we preached. We are a very small model micro-farm, and that's what we'd like everybody in New York State to have.

 

You can visit our farm; we do tours. We're all about regenerative agriculture, the spirit of the plant and the underground mycorrhizal network that feeds our plants with nutrients and minerals and divine intelligence. So we teach everybody about that. We do workshops; we do consults, and then we give them tinctures or gummies as part of the price they pay for our expertise.

 

Toni Perrone: We want people to be able to get a micro-license based on how they issue a cidery license and a winery license, which is basically letting farms create their own general manufacturing processes (GMP). We want to teach somebody and then let them go out and grow their own, supply their own community. This plant is so generous.

 

 

 

HL: What are your agricultural backgrounds?

 

TP: I have lived in Brooklyn for the last 25 years, and 20 of those years I have been privileged enough to have a backyard. So I have always gardened and grown things. My grandparents on both sides were farmers, and my great-grandparents were farmers. I grew up in North Carolina, and my dad sold commercial fishing supplies. So we fished all the time. I have always been able to produce something that I ate and I took really good pride in it. So once I met Andi, and I found I could grow cannabis, too, I was in heaven. I need to be in the soil.

 

AN: I've grown food and herbs for a long time. I want to say, 15 years ago, maybe 20, one of my most heartfelt activism causes was election integrity. I started with hand-counted paper ballots, but then I learned how extraordinarily the lever voting machines in New York were designed to deal with theft, because theft is just an inherent part of the elections. I came to really love and respect this technology, which would prevent theft much more than anything else, including hand-counted paper ballots. It’s the most transparent system we have. But in the end, after years of fighting for the voting machines, it didn't happen. I was getting followed. It got really creepy, so I dropped out. I decided, well, if I couldn't be a self-governing person, at least I could be sovereign, and I could grow all my own things. So, I really threw myself into farming at that point. I volunteered at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, which has a really great centre.

 

More recently, I've studied with spiritual plant teachers on how to communicate with and be present with your plants. I've been doing this for a while because I feel called to the plant. Both Toni and I, and most people who are really into this plant, have all been called to it. It sounds woo-woo, you know? But it’s quite real to have a calling. And now we both feel like it's our responsibility to share this with the world.

 

 

 

HL: What inspired you to practice regenerative farming methods?

 

AN: When I started, regenerative farming just called to me. There was no way I was going to use toxic chemicals—even ‘organic’ chemicals. What I've come to learn is that underneath the ground everywhere is this extraordinary divine intelligence. The symbiotic relationship between the mushrooms and the plants is powerful. Not only is it supplying the plants with minerals and nutrients and water, but also the intelligence of the earth. I didn't know that in the beginning, but there is an intuitiveness to it all.

 

TP: I guess because I always grew up farming something, there is an intuitiveness that you know, as far as regenerative farming goes. Again, it sounds woo-woo, but there is such intuitiveness to it.

  

AN: Constant tilling up the earth, the way conventional agriculture is done, destroys the fertility of the soil, which then requires you to use pesticides to grow the plant and deal with bugs and disease. Well, that wasn't going to happen. Instead, you have to learn how to create a culture so that the insects and the other plants are working with you.

 

We grow far more beneficial plants in the garden than anything we harvest. The garden is full of other plants that attract the predator bugs, so they can kill off the bad bugs and all that sort of thing. It was just a natural attraction I had for this work and then there was a lot of affirmation going down that route.

 

 

 

TP: Like with the size of these plants. Many of them are going to be at least 10 feet—they're going to be huge!

 

AN: I topped them all this year, but these big ones I topped twice. I lobbed off three and a half feet, and those plants are now eight and a half feet. They're still going to grow until the middle of October.

 

TP: The other difference is the terpene levels. I've grown in Brooklyn too, which doesn't have this wonderful soil. I mean, I've amended my soil and I have lots of beneficial insects, but I don't have the sun and the soil we have here. We do try to lab test at least all our varieties. The difference is on the plants grown here, and I don't know the percentages, but we'll get terpene levels of three and over, and the plants grown in Brooklyn have terpene levels at, like, under one.

 

So we get a lot more terpenes here. I think it's from the beneficial plants and insects, and also in these plants, there's always a lot of CBG. You'll get maybe 18% THC and 2% CBG (CBG is really neuroprotective for your brain as you get older). The plant is kind of giving us what we need in a weird way, but you can see it on the test results, and always the cannabinoids are higher. So I can tell a huge difference, and I grow as much as I can regeneratively in my tiny little backyard in Brooklyn, but there's a huge difference to what Andi's able to do in this garden here, because of the way she treats the soil.

 

AN: It's all the soil. It's really not me.

 

TP: And the sun! When people come to the farm, it literally feels like the plants are like, Hi, hi everybody! It’s like they're so happy to be seen. They're very content here. I think that's all the love we give them, with all of the soil amending, all the stuff we put in the soil, and our use of cover crops.

 

 

 

HL: How does spirituality tie into your growing practice, and how do you strengthen your connections with your plants?

 

TP: I learned so much from the plants, and not just cannabis, but all plants. Cannabis teaches me more as far as cycles. It also makes me stop because I'm so attuned in the beginning [when they sprout]. I spend a lot of time with my plants, but it also allows me to recognize how fast things change. That allows me to not get stuck in my own problems. There are a bunch of life lessons. Like the other day, I was out there thinning and staking, and then I was like, Oh, we all need to make some sacrifices, but also support each other. You can twist it any way you want to, but these are the thoughts that come to me in the garden. They help me realize where I am in my life and how we are all just part of nature and everything is cyclical. So that's my spirituality side. I feel like they're my teachers.

 

AN: Right? They are! I wanted to be the kind of person that plants spoke to, which means I have to slow down. You have to get to their resonance. I've been studying with people like Pam Montgomery, and other teachers, learning how to communicate, to hear my plants.

 

If you believe in the theory that we came out of the ocean hundreds of millions of years ago onto the land, well, plants, according to that theory, came out of the sea 450 million years before animals did. So I figure they got 450 million years of experience over me. They are my elders and my wise teachers.

 

HL: What products do you make with what you harvest and do you have a holistic approach to the harvesting and the creation of your products?

 

TP: We harvest and make all the products ourselves. We make a tincture line. We currently have nine tinctures. We do a lot of CBD. We do a one-to-one. We do a daily dose, but we also do formulas that don't get people as high, which is really nice because a lot of people want the health benefits without getting high, and that is possible. So we try to cater to that.

 

We make two creams and gummies. We have a whole plant approach, which is so much stronger and better for your health. Honestly, if you take a 10 milligram whole plant gummy of ours versus a 10 milligram of some product made from isolates, ours will feel twice as strong, and science has shown whole plants are far better for healing.

 

AN: Everything we do is by our hands. We trim our products, but we don't trim them as much as you see in stores with no leaves left. I think that makes them look neutered, but I know that’s the top shelf look. I'm really opposed to that.

 

We trim plenty, but all of the trichomes—all the medicine is on those sugar leaves right next to the flowers. So we leave those little leaves on. There are artisanal growers in California who call that farm cut. So we call it farm cut. It's more minimally processed, and we're trying to educate people about the value of that.

 

 

 

TP: Our tinctures also contain all the flavonoids and the chlorophyll, [of which you only get] from the whole plant. So you get that benefit too. It is a very holistic approach. We're a little crazy; we make everything ourselves at this point.

 

The whole plant is super, super important to us. Whole plant is everything, you know, and we talk about the entourage effect and I discourage people from isolates, from products that are processed. You don't get the full magic of the plant, and it's not going to heal you. It may make you high, it may make you sleepy, but that’s not what's going to heal your body.

 

HL: Do you host workshops onsite or away from the farm?

 

AN: We do them online now. We started during the lockdown. We have the two Grow Your Own workshops and we have a Make Your Own Medicine one. Then I do a talk about regenerative agriculture, how to dose and how and why this plant heals us. We are starting to do more and more now off Zoom.

 

TP: Which is really nice, because when you do it in person, you can really interact and people get individual attention.

 

AN: So if we can get people to invite us and speak to their people, that's way more fun.

 

TP: I think everybody gets more out of it. We do a workshop probably once every quarter, whether it's about making medicine or growing your own or one of our free community nights.

 

 

 

HL: The label of ‘crone’ has been rightfully reclaimed in recent years, and it's starting to be recognized as a positive term—as it should. Can you describe your relationship with the title and why it was important to weave it into the very foundation of your business?

 

AN: Crones in matriarchal times were the wise women elders of their village. It was their responsibility to share knowledge of the earth and healing. So that's what we do.

 

I had just finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer, and while she doesn't talk about crones by name, she talks about the responsibility of older women in their communities to pass on this knowledge. They're done raising their children, so now it's about the earth, and about healing and making sure everybody knows how to prepare for future generations. So crones are what we are, and we are embracing it wholeheartedly. It's a great thing to be and people really respond to what we have to offer. People want to learn how to support their endocannabinoid system and heal themselves—and the earth.

 

TP: It's really interesting too, because who picks up on the crone? Is not a bad word anymore, right? Then if you come across someone who just thinks of the crone as the witch, it's our opportunity to share what we know.

 

AN: These aren't just any plants; these are female plants. With cannabis, we keep the males around for a while, but we mainly work with the female plants. So we're dealing with female energy and it's very, very powerful!

 

HL: Do you have any advice for other women who want to start their own small, independent cannabis farms?

 

AN: As long as they like to work? [laughs]

 

TP: It's such a great market. Even I get, like, Where is this gonna lead? I don't know. That’s also a lesson to take things day by day and not worry so much. The stuff you have no control over. I encourage people to grow.

 

AN: I would encourage women to start a business who feel called by the plant, who feel some connection, if the plant has helped them in their life. If you just want to go out there because you see cannabis is the next big green thing on the horizon, and you want to cash in, or because it's cool, then don't start a business.

We are very guided by the plant. I mean, if you asked me what I'm doing with my life now, I'm doing exactly what I should be doing. I'm growing lovingly. I'm tending to the soil. This is what we're supposed to be doing. We're growing, we're giving, we're sharing…[laughs] in exchange for money sometimes.

 

 

More about Terra Matter Farma here

Follow Terra Matter Farma on Instagram at: @crone.grown

 

 

About the Author

Keith Hadad is the creator and author of the Record Crates United blog. His work has appeared in The Terrascopædia, Elmore Magazine, TheWaster.com, and a multitude of other web and print publications. He hosts RCU’s webradio show, The Record Crates United Mixtape, on EM-Radio.com every Wednesday evening. You can follow him on Instagram @Recordcratesunited, on Twitter @RecordcratesUTD and on Facebook at @RecordCratesUnited. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Sarah and dog Miles.