How it started.

I used cannabis occasionally in my school years. I moved out to California shortly after high school to chase my dreams and get out of the small town I was feeling stuck in. Living out there for almost 2 years I learned so much about cannabis and the effects it had medicinally. People in California that needed cannabis actually had semi safe access points to get it. The industry was about 10 years ahead of Michigan at that time. My grandpa Dale, who was my best friend growing up (and still is), had a lot of medical issues and was prescribed 16 different medications. When I moved back to Michigan his health was declining. Michigan had just voted to allow medical cannabis cultivation and consumption. More than anything I wanted to help him, but my family was not supportive of cannabis at that time. I told my parents I wanted to try growing and see if I could help my grandpa. They were against it to say the least… So, like any young adult would do, I did it anyways. I started to do a little growing on the side, at least to see if I liked it. Like everyone else that tries growing, I fell in love with it. I developed my own organic soil mix so I could make sure I was growing cannabis that was worthy enough to be considered “medical” for my grandpa. It’s amazing right? Like how could this plant that people pay money for to get high, actually help people? If this is true, why are people still going to jail for it? This is where I decided I was going ALL IN.

Eventually I opened a grow store so I could get the supplies I needed at a cheaper cost. In the process I met John, and a wonderful group of people called the Michigan Cannabis Cancer Project. John taught me even more about cannabis and the effects it had on cancer. He taught me how to make a cannabis concentrate commonly referred to as Rick Simpson Oil or RSO. It changed my life. It changed my grandpa’s life. When we started my grandpa on medical cannabis, his pharmaceutical medications went from 16 pills a day down to 4 pills a day and he no longer needed insulin injections to regulate his type 2 diabetes. I wanted to help other people too. I started experimenting and making my own RSO and other infused cannabis products, like the popular BLISS Rub, to help with minor pains that RSO was too strong for. I found a group of guys that were down, and we formed the Mountain Town Farmers Alliance with the common goal of assisting cancer patients with the medicine they needed at no cost. As we started to grow and get more members, we ended up opening a non-profit called the Central Michigan Cancer Project so we could reach more people in need. We grew our reach to 11 states and 186 cancer patients nationwide. Over the last decade the alliance has donated tens of thousands of grams of FECO to patients in need across the nation. You can see our web series on Youtube that covers a lot of the outdoor donation gardens we did here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcZuBTZkX6Z5it_4j0LtF4Q/videos ).

Looking forward, with the way the industry was going, we knew the only way to still be able to continue in the cannabis industry was to get state licensed. That might sound easy but let me tell ya, it's not! We put our heads together, wrote a business plan, and over a period of 2 years we crowd funded the money we needed locally by offering equity for a financial investment into Vivid Farms. We built this place with our own hands, literally! Covid had hit and costs were getting high on everything. We did all of the labor that was allowed by the state ourselves to cut costs. All gas and no breaks. Vivid Farms is employee / locally owned and caregiver ran. My grandparents hand trim. Their hard work and love goes into every flower that leaves our facility. We are as close to the roots of this industry as you can get, and we are honored to have the opportunity to be here.

Stay tuned, we are coming to a dispo near you!

By: Tyler Dutcher