"Humboldt cannabis has been brought down the state to San Diego for generations," says Scott Vasterling, founder and owner of direct-to-consumer cannabis company Humboldt Family Farms.
He's right. Anyone who has sparked up long enough in this town is well acquainted with the San Diego-Emerald Triangle pipeline, which finds weed grown up there later sold and smoked down here. There was even a documentary about a murder within that subculture, Murder Mountain, which detailed the story of an OB grower and seller in Humboldt County who met a tragic end.
But things have changed, especially since Prop 64 became the effective law of the land in 2018. The weed trail downstate has become more legit. Scott Vasterling, who grew up in San Diego and graduated from Poway High School, had been living in Humboldt since 2001, when he met his now-wife, Alice, who's from a family of second-generation cannabis growers.
The couple eventually opened a coffee and community spot in Trinidad called Beachcomber Café. Soon after, Vasterling ditched his career working for health and wellness companies and became "heavily involved" in the cannabis side of the family business when they married in 2007. Back then, weed was only legal for medical cultivation and sales in California.
Today, he runs the newly operational Humboldt Family Farms, which, true to its name, is a family affair—Alice's brother is their business partner on their small farm, which also supplies food for the café in addition to its just-under-5,000-square-foot cannabis grow. Bucking the storefront retail sales model, the company sells most of its sun-grown weed legally through a delivery service covering most of the state, including San Diego (some dispensaries across California carry the brand, too).
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