I want to share some scenes from the last few months of my life, as my last letter to you of 2023. I will end this letter with a request for you to please, for the New Year, upgrade your subscription to “paying,” if you possibly can.
I don’t like to whine. I try never to show weakness, fatigue or fear in public. That is a point of pride. But it is also strategic, as the bad guys want to see us weak and fearful.
That said, I need to be honest with you about what my daily life can be like. This disclosure matters in our relationship as writer and readers in an intimate community, and I want you to know some of these truths, as we head into 2024.
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Two months ago, I emerged from my hotel room in a Southeastern town, where I had flown to deliver a lecture. I was dressed, and ready to present, and mulling over my lecture notes. I was delivering a new speech, and that act in itself is demanding; it requires a high level of focus.
I was met at the end of the hallway, to my surprise, by two strange men. They introduced themselves as retired NYPD detectives, showed me their IDs, and said that they had been sent by the lecture venue to escort me to the location, as the venue had received a credible threat against the evening’s event.
I called Brian; he spoke to the men, and he let me know that it was OK for me to get into their car. In the back seat of the car, I checked that they were armed, and they confirmed that they were. They explained as calmly as possible that another speaker had received the threat, in response to his op ed about the Middle East in a national paper the day before. That speaker had subsequently called in sick to the event. I don’t blame the speaker; but at the same time, I realized with some dismay that therefore the person who had been targeted was not going to be at the venue — while instead I, alone, would be speaking, and that the threat was still active. This did not comfort me. I tried to stay calm as well though, at least outwardly.
We got to the hotel. The armed security agents escorted me, with my front and back protected, into the rear of the building. As in several famous stories that ended violently, we wove our way past the kitchen areas, past the behind-the-scenes staffers, past the workers leaning against the walls on break. We entered the lecture hall from the rear. The security agents showed me the podium; they showed me the exit door hidden by the curtain at the rear of the stage. They instructed me to get down behind the podium if there was a disturbance in the audience, and to try to reach the exit door if I could. Then they took their places at the back of the hall, to observe the crowd that filed in.
Usually Brian escorts me for my security. This time he couldn’t. As a result, in these circumstances, I was quite frightened.
Nonetheless I got up, gave my speech, and answered questions. I managed to deliver my message, which was about the annihilation of humanity as recorded in the Pfizer documents, which our WarRoom/DailyClout team of researchers has documented. My speech was also a message about fighting for liberty. I got through it all, and the crowd was supportive.
I was escorted at the end of the evening by the security agents, and once again taken into the hotel by the rear entrance. The agents walked me right to the door of my room. I was then alone and unguarded. Brian had taught me how to secure a hotel room door from within, and I did so. But I was not comfortable.
When it was all over, I was glad that I had remained a professional, and I felt proud that I delivered our message to that audience under those conditions. But I cannot say this was an easy night for me.
It took a toll.
But I kept telling the truth for you.
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In Rochester, NY, later that Fall, I was on the podium with a range of distinguished speakers, including my extraordinary COO Amy Kelly, and a moderator, at Shannon Joy’s wonderful freedom event.
I was escorted that time by an active duty local detective, a highly competent woman. She showed me her firearm and assured me that she would be watching over me at all times. She did so.
Nonetheless, while we were onstage, a woman in the audience suddenly stood up. She started shouting at us, and made a fast beeline toward the stage. The excellent security team moved quickly to head her away from us. But the woman approached us faster than they could intercept her, til she was not five feet away from us, and she kept screaming obscenities and insults.
I did not know if she was armed — she was certainly unstable. I looked toward the podium to see if I could get behind it in time if needed.
She was ultimately escorted out by the security team.
I carried on, and we carried on, and it was a highly successful day.
And we kept on telling the truth to you.
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Weekly, I will get threats. Brian has a second full-time job checking them out, evaluating their severity, and engaging in “counter-stalking”, his specialty, to keep me safe. Each time, though, if the threats are serious, I have to hear the threat and process the violence of someone’s bizarre imagination. I am already a survivor of violence; and this process, which is part of normal security best practices for a public figure, is very difficult and traumatic for me — each and every time.
And yet I press on and I keep writing for you.
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I learned this year that the White House had targeted me personally with a “Be On the Lookout” alert to CDC, Twitter, Facebook, DHS and the Department of the Census. The latter, of course, has all of my personal information. I was vertiginous with shock — and fear — when I found this out, but I did not back down.
I escalated my efforts to tell you the truth.
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Two weeks ago I was on a train. A creepy-looking woman, a national of a country that is at war with us, sat down across the aisle from me. I had that intuitive sense in relation to her that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
She asked if I had a phone charger. I lent her my charger, not thinking quickly enough or with enough caution. She tried to chat with me; I responded in monosyllables til she subsided.
After far too long, she returned my charger.
At the weekly security meeting with our high-level cybersecurity team, I confessed that this had happened, thinking that I was being ridiculously paranoid in even mentioning it. Our cybersecurity consultant asked at once, “Was it a standard white charger?” I said yes. He explained that now chargers can be produced — that looklike standard white ones — but that suck all of the data out of your phone; and he told me to get the charger to him to examine.
This really happened.
I was startled and horrified, and felt personally invaded, but I did not back down.
I kept telling you the truth.
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We got bombarded with a hacking attempt. Our superb cybersecurity team caught it and ultimately protected us, but it took us all eight hours of work, on a day when we all had many other commitments, to address this effort to upend our digital structures. Among the alarming aspects of the attack was that someone had physically telephoned a vendor central to our digital life, and pretended to be me. Again, I was startled and appalled, especially when we learned that the attack had originated in St Petersburg, Russia.
But I pressed on in telling you the truth, and so did my heroic team.
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Weekly, if not daily, I have to deal with incoming emails trying to trick or compromise me, in an effort to secure a public embarrassment for us, or legal trouble. The emails may purport to be from someone suffering from a vaccine-induced illness, asking for my medical advice. Of course each time I have to put in writing that I am not a medical doctor so cannot advise, because if I do not create that paper trail, I could get charged with practicing medicine without a license. Others who contact me try to trick us into running something of theirs with an error included it, so that, as once happened, Reuters and AP can immediately jump on the error, and try to create a global scandal. Some who contact me will try to trick me by substituting a real bio with a prank bio at the last minute, as Ken Klippenstein, a young investigative reporter whose work I had, at his boss’ request, consistently championed in the past, did to me during “lockdowns.”
We are now in a world that I do not recognize professionally, in which even reporters such as this one, with jobs at The Nation and The Intercept, lie to their colleagues — colleagues from whom they have sought and accepted professional support – when they are driven by corrupt allegiances. As a result of this kind of infantile harassment, we spend hours every day checking people’s bios.
We receive fake offers to advertise questionable or legally regulated products — offers designed to compromise us if we were to accept them. We spend hours researching the laws regarding various products.
People offer to send us tissue samples to which they do not have legal rights, from what they say are their dead children; we need to word our answers carefully and consult attorneys for the most minute exchange of this kind, so that we cannot be entangled in “lawfare.” This defensive communication with the outside world is literally constant, and is incredibly costly.
At the same time, at the same time, I try to write these essays for you — from the purest, most open place in my heart, and stay not-guarded and not-embittered.
It is very difficult to do both.
As a result of this constant, tiresome, treacherous and childish targeting, we (and I especially) have a full-time second job evading these cynical snares, even while trying to research, write and polish my own essays and reportage here for you; even while facing the rigors of writing and covering breaking news stories that legacy news and opinion sites no longer cover.
It is very hard for a writer to plumb the depth of her own soul, as good writing requires, let alone do the excellent reporting we do, under these conditions of continual harassment.
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A woman who appears to be suffering from a detachment from reality, who used to be a distinguished intellectual, and whose extended family is funded by the vaccine industry, wrote a whole book attacking me. This book confronts me, with its perverse manipulation of an image of my own face on the cover, in every bookstore into which I walk. It contains passages that claim I said things — disturbing things – that I did not say. To my knowledge, I have never met or spoken to this woman. Her book has sections that meditate on the murder of “the doppelganger” — and it is I who am designated as her “doppelganger.” The New York Times ran an op ed including those passages. The Paper of Record also illustrated the piece with an image of an animal that appears to be a wolf, being strangled, and bleeding at the mouth.
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It is one thing to fight the opposition. We know who the Forces of Darkness are now, and while it is difficult to carry on my creative work for you here under their constant harassment and efforts at intimidation, I can do that. I am a patriot, and I am now, willingly or not, a pretty seasoned warrior. I can fight the opposition til the end of my life.
But it is demoralizing to be targeted from within, and the freedom movement itself is going through a time now of fracturing, with bad behavior escalating in a few quarters; and with false suggestions hurled about by a few irresponsible people, including against me, and with random insults leveled; and with nasty, pointless sniping from some quarters at our tireless and often selfless efforts. If I were a member of the “deep state”, one recent baseless epithet, for example, I would not face threats every single week, I must assume.
It is hard to wake up to work long hours every day motivated by love and care not only for you and your families but also for those who are supposed to be on the right side of history with us, at a time when a few of our own compatriots are now behaving in ways so far below the high calling of our cause.
It is hard to face fire from two directions at once.
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The targeting is only going to get more serious — as we continue to help to reveal and topple the evildoers — and sometimes I wonder if I should or can even continue. I was not trained to do this.
I am not a soldier. I wanted to be a professor. I trained for eight years to teach Victorian poetry.
I wanted to be a purely a writer and an academic.
It is tempting to retreat from the fray, to step back from the risk and madness, and to go back forever to the luxury of what I always wanted most; a contemplative, inward-looking intellectual life.
But that means abandoning you, and our kids’ generation, and this collective fight.
I won’t do it.
But I do need your help.
One added stressor to all of the stressors above, is money. As I have written before, being a national if not global target is expensive, in terms of resources and labor. Every threat requires the hours of attention from my in-house security consultant. Every cyberthreat requires a cybersecurity team’s advice. We received lawyers’ bills for $80,000 for the LA-based legal action against Pfizer, and a lawyer’s bill for $25,000 accompanied the drafting of the Election Integrity bill that we will soon bring to statehouses to keep elections clean in 2024. A lawyer’s bill for $10,000 was the price of our Ohio-based lawsuit against Pfizer and the Biden administration. We have a six- figure lawyers’ bill for all the due diligence we do to make sure we are always impeccable – because we have integrity, and also because “lawfare” is one primary way members of the freedom movement get toppled or dragged off course.
Though DailyClout is doing well, thanks to many of you, these are huge burdens, for which it is difficult to plan. When we have to pay our lawyers unexpectedly, or have other immense financial burdens, your financial help by subscribing for money to this Substack makes my work elsewhere, often without pay, possible.
I now have 81,078 subscribers altogether, for which I am very grateful; however, only 3,577 of these are paying subscribers.
As I have said before, I am trying hard not to put up a paywall, because so many of you tell me how meaningful Outspoken is to you, and because I know what it is to be so broke that $70 a year extra, requires a second thought.
But for those of the 77,000-plus free subscribers who can afford to upgrade to becoming my
paying subscribers, please, please do.
You will be taking a huge burden of stress off of my already stressed daily life, in this fight for our children’s future in a free world; and you will allow me to serve my team without facing undue financial conflicts and anxiety.
I also feel that we are a community, and when those of you who can support me, do, it heartens me materially in the struggles ahead.
Forgive me for letting you know what some days are really like.
I will go back to showing no weakness or fear, and at the same time crafting essays for you as beautifully and truly as I can, in 2024.
Back to combat in 2024, I hope with your help. And back to beauty, and love, and joy, and protecting all the things that make up civilization — all the things that demons in human guise are trying to extinguish.
But I do feel that we are friends, and fellow soldiers, so I wanted to be brutally frank with you just this one time, about the real state of the battlefield.
Thank you truly for coming on this journey with me, my beloved brothers and sisters.
Health, happiness, peace and freedom to you, in 2024. And thank you for helping me, if you can, to sail this fragile ship together into the dawn.
Others have asked if they can mail a check. Yes, please do: make sure it is addressed to “Naomi Wolf/Outspoken” and send it to PO Box 24, Millerton NY 12546.
Canadian cannabis production licence revocations and expirations picked up steam in 2023 as some producers threw in the towel, but they were still slightly outpaced by new licence holders entering the arena.
There were 154 new licences issued in 2023, and 133 licences revoked at the request of the licence holders or allowed to expire by the licence holder. There were also two licences suspended.
Of those new production licences, micros outpaced standard licences, with 93 new micros, 57 new standard, and four new cannabis nursery licences.
Of the revocations and expiries, 60 were standard licences, 41 were micros, and 6 were nurseries. Of the 26 licence expiries, 13 were standard, and 13 were micros. Both suspended licences are/were standard licence holders. One was later revoked at the request of the licence holder, while the other remains suspended.
Ontario is home to the most commercial cannabis production licences with 30%, followed closely by BC (25%), and Quebec (21%). Combined, these three provinces represent more than 75% of all licences in Canada. The Yukon is the only of Canada’s three Territories with a federal cannabis production licence, Arctic Pharm.
PEI has the most producers on a per-capita basis, with one for every 22,000 people, followed by BC with one producer for every 24,000, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with one for every 32,000 residents.
Newfoundland had the least number of producers on a per-capita basis, with one for every 77,000 residents followed by Manitoba with one for every 64,000 residents, and Ontario with one for every 55,000 residents. With 951 federal licences and a population of nearly 40.5 million people, Canada has approximately one licence for every 43,000 residents.
As of December 31, 2023, there were 951 federal cannabis production licences in Canada. Of those, 481 are standard licence holders, 407 are micros, another 25 are cannabis nurseries, and 38 are authorized for medical sales only. (Note: Health Canada’s list currently includes nearly 50 revoked, expired, and suspended licences, bringing the total number of licence holders on their list to over 1,000)
Cultivation – 75
Processing – 117
Cultivation/Processing – 289
Micro-Cultivation – 238
Micro-Processing – 45
Micro-Cultivation/Micro-Processing – 124
Nursery – 25
Medical Sales Only – 38
According to Health Canada’s figures, since October 17, 2018, there have been 240 licences revoked at the request of the licence holder, three revoked by Health Canada, and 39 allowed to expire by the licence holder, for a total of 282 inactivated licences (and one currently suspended).
Featured image of Jazz Cabbage, a micro cannabis cultivator and processor in Nova Scotia
It’s been a banner year for Oaksterdam University. With new courses, two books and numerous awards for our partnerships and documentary film, we have been busier than ever in our 16-year history as an official school. That doesn’t even count our alumni, 80,000 strong from more than 110 countries, who are spreading the Oaksterdam love as they advance the cannabis industry across the country and around the world! Read on for some of our top highlights from 2023.
1 | American Pot Story: Oaksterdam Documentary Wins Awards
What other cannabis school has a movie? American Pot Story: Oaksterdam tells the origin story of OU and how we’ve changed the world. The feature-length film swept through the festival circuit from coast to coast in 2023, celebrating an important piece of cannabis history and winning awards all along the way — Tommy Chong introduced one of the screenings! It was an official selection at Dances with Films in Los Angeles and New York City; Slamdance in Salt Lake City, Utah; Kevin Smith’s Smodcastle and Lighthouse International film festivals in New Jersey; Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival; Topanga Film Festival; and Weyauwega in Wisconsin. It even screened at Tokyo’s International Cannabis Film Festival! GreenState Magazine states, “American Pot Story is a story of resilience, depicting a group of Bay Area activists who fought for decades to see the future we’re living in.” It was named Best Documentary by CelebStoner Magazine and a must-watch for every American by Film Threat. “Sure, our empire is powerful and scary, but it can be opposed in a non-violent way and forced to do the right thing. American Pot Story: Oaksterdam brilliantly captures a moment where two people led, inspired, and educated … on the way to regaining some freedom in America!”
2 | Oaksterdam Publishing Releases Two Print Books
As the cannabis industry continues to grow, more people are working with the plant than ever before. In 2023, Oaksterdam issued the downloadable Cannabis Terminology Style Guide to establish common-use definitions of the terms and concepts core to its complexities. In 2023, we expanded the guide and published it as a book! Available as an e-book ($5.99) or pocket guide ($9.99), it’s a must-have for anyone who speaks or writes about the plant. CelebStoner Magazine called it one of the best books of the year. The style guide joins The Budtender’s Guide: A Reference Manual for Cannabis Consumers and Dispensary Professionals in our offerings from Oaksterdam Publishing. The go-to guide for budtenders and consumers who want to be their own budtender also came out as an e-book in 2022 and in print in April, 2023.
3 | Oaksterdam Goes State Specific + More Course Updates
We’re constantly rolling out new programs and staying on the cutting edge of professional cannabis education. In 2023, we launched courses specifically designed to train budtenders and medical cannabis dispensary workers to adhere to regulations in their state. We’ve launched Utah, Mississippi, New Jersey, and California. Stay tuned for Connecticut in the new year, with more states coming. Don’t see yours on the list? Reach out to Bruce Bortle, our director of sales and marketing to have training tailor-made for your company. In addition to our state-specific courses, we completely overhauled our Budtending Certification Course curriculum to keep it the most relevant and current in this swiftly evolving field. We’re testing a subscription model on select courses. Try it out!
4 | Social Equity Programs Expand
Social justice has always been core to OU’s mission, evidenced by the marijuana policy reform battles we fought and won to medicalize, decriminalize, and legalize. We’ve long supported BIPOC-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses, and our work providing technical assistance to social equity programs expanded in 2023.
We continued to work with the City of LA, producing the DCR’s largest event of the year at the historic Mayfair Hotel. We were selected by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority for their Seed Equity Grant Technical Assistance Program. The US Virgin Islands Office of the Governor established a grant for social equity participants to attend OU for professional and workforce development, and we are involved in the University of the Virgin Islands’ CELL Program.
In June, we also hosted the Oakland Equity Supply Chain Mixer with Oakland Equity Collective on the beautiful rooftop at Torch. As we wrap our social equity work in Palm Springs and Monterey, we look forward to serving more programs in the year ahead!
The CT Accelerator Program Graduation.
5 | State of Connecticut Selects OU for Equity
In a huge win for our social equity efforts, Oaksterdam was selected to provide technical assistance to participants in the State of Connecticut Social Equity Council Accelerator Program. We worked alongside reSET, in coalition with The Arcview Group, the International Cannabis Bar Association, and the Minority Cannabis Business Association to address issues and create a long-term sustainable program that meets unique needs of Connecticut social equity entrepreneurs. One of our capstone projects was a Social Equity Business Pitch Day, Graduation Luncheon, Business Showcase & Cannabis Industry Mixer, held Sept. 6 at the Norwalk Inn and Conference Center. The event was a huge success and the pitches were phenomenal. In fact, female-led Soulstar found funding there!
Dale Sky Jones and Jeff Jones attend the Dances with Films NY Screening.
6 | Oaksterdam Presents …. Everything Everywhere All at Once
In addition to the equity-centric events we listed above, Oaksterdam attended movie launch parties, conferences, and panel discussions. Some highlights were CannaCon UCLA with Maha Haq, and our CT Social Equity Council Cannabis Accelerator Program Graduation in Hartford, Conn., and Cannabis Unite LA DCR Event. We also showed up every Friday for our virtual Hort Labs, where students and alumni gather to get grow tips in real time from Oaksterdam experts. Watch for us out and about in 2024!
7 | Offering Accredited Degree Opportunities
Due to cannabis being classified as a Schedule I drug, cannabis colleges can’t get accredited on our own. That’s why we’ve linked up with other colleges and universities to expand opportunities for our students. This year, we launched our partnership with Highland Community College in Illinois. Students enrolling in HCC’s Introduction to Cannabis course have the opportunity to benefit from OU’s expertise in the field, supplemented with The Budtenders Guide textbook. This adds to our partnership with Golden Gate University, where Oaksterdam courses count toward a Bachelor’s Degree. Horticulture, Business of Cannabis, and Extraction & Manufacturing courses count for six credits each, meaning you can transfer 18 credits to GGU!
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8 | Homegrown Seeds Partnership: Grow as you Go!
Oaksterdam University teamed up with Homegrown Cannabis Co to offer free seeds with the purchase of select Oaksterdam courses to grow as they go to class, with help from our Friday Hort Labs! Oaksterdam is America’s first cannabis college, and Homegrown Cannabis Co. is one of the world’s fastest-growing seed banks, offering high-quality, fast-germinating seeds with proven, stabilized genetics. Oaksterdam has long been offering indoor and outdoor horticulture classes for hobbyists and professionals alike, with a cutting-edge curriculum by faculty with a wide variety of hands-on expertise. The partnership brings these two worlds together.
The Clio Cannabis jury voted collectively on the creativity of our work, which is a testament to the dedication of our team in creating high-quality content to educate people on cannabis and help them grow in the industry.
Dale Sky Jones is also affiliated with Bronze Winner “I’m High Right Now” by the Cannabis Media Council, in the Integrated Media Category. Dale was a founder board member of CMC.
Dale Sky Jones appears on WLOX news.
10 | Oaksterdam In the News
As the most trusted source for cannabis training, education, and information, journalists look to our team when they need expert commentary on cannabis-related topics. Oaksterdam was in the news with more than 75 earned media appearances in 2023, from January, with Thrillist calling us the “Harvard of Hemp,” to December, with Sensi recommending The Budtender’s Guide in its December Gift Guide. In between, Dale Sky Jones appeared on TV, radio, podcasts, and in print, talking about everything from social equity, banking, and advocacy in cannabis. We were proud to appear in the pages of High Times and the Sacramento Bee. We even made international news, with a spread in Germany’s THCene Magazine!
Oaksterdam Board of Directors Vice President Diane Goldstein with Reeform founder Weldon Angelos.
11 | Providing Cannabis Scholarships
The Oaksterdam Nonprofit for Education (The ONE) continued to make an impact. This national organization promotes scholarships, raises awareness of effective public health practices, and supports industry standards for educational program accreditation. In 2023, we collaborated with the Last Prisoner Project and CANORML to award scholarships to deserving individuals. We also launched a scholarship program with REEFORM. This premium indoor flower brand, created by social justice activist Weldon Angelos in partnership with Glass House Brands, aims to help rebuild the lives of individuals and families impacted by Cannabis Prohibition and the War on Drugs. We’re humbled to help in their mission.
Oaksterdam Alumni Denisha Moktan, founder of Soulstar.
12 | Oaksterdam Alumni do Great Things
Always and forever, Oaksterdam’s biggest achievement is YOU, our alumni. We want to congratulate Oaksterdam University’s Class of 2023! You have officially joined the ranks with fellow Oaksterdam Gladiators. OU-trained professionals represent the best of the cannabis industry. We can’t wait to hear about all the wonderful things you do. Stay in touch by joining our Oaksterdam Alumni Network!
Dale Sky Jones will continue to pioneer the cannabis industry in 2024, ensuring OU’s education offerings remain on the pulsepoint of state, federal, and realtime developments. Look for her in the latest news stories, sharing her expertise in the industry.
“Doubt is essential. It is the vehicle that transports us from one certainty to another.” ~Eric Weiner
The right question is always more important than the right answer. Why? Because there is a higher probability of getting lost in answers. Also, there is a higher probability of discovering something beyond the “answers” by questioning them.
Answers are more likely to become golden idols. Questions are more likely to melt those golden idols into something more malleable, more open, and more adaptable to change.
As Ken Kesey said, “The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
Accepting answers without questioning them is a problem of certainty. You might think that you want to be certain, but certainty is almost always a hangup. The cure for certainty is curiosity. Don’t believe what you think; be curious about why you think it instead.
2.) Doubt teaches you how to recondition cultural conditioning:
“Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world’s pandemonium.” ~Stefan Zweig
Doubt makes you vulnerable, open, and honest with being a fallible creature. It forces you to confront the raw reality that we’re all just imperfect mammals vainly attempting to pigeonhole godhood into wormwood.
As Ernest Becker said, “The essence of normality is the refusal of reality.”
This is the comfortable burden forced upon you by Mother Culture. But you cannot afford to refuse reality. You must embrace it. Refuse the cultural illusion instead. Doubt the comfort zone.
Employ your mind as a mirror. Reflect the illusion. Receive but do not keep. Absorb but do not cling. Learn but do not dwell. Question but remember to never settle on an answer. Settling for an answer is giving up on your goal of knowing something that has never been known before. Never settle. Even if the answer seems convincing. Question it. Always question it. Especially if it is presented by culture as something you must believe in.
Asking difficult questions and challenging culture will always be more important than receiving simple answers and accepting culture.
3.) Doubt plants mind-opening seeds in the hard ground of blind belief:
“Trust those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it.” ~Andre Gide
Doubt teaches you how to, as Aristotle advised, “entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Blind belief is the epitome of accepting a thought without entertaining it. Whether due to cultural conditioning, religious indoctrination, or political programming, blind belief leads to willful ignorance. And the only remedy for willful ignorance is doubt.
The willful ignorance inherent in blind belief is the bane of any Truth Quest. Doubt reprograms the Truth Quest. And once the Truth Quest is reprogrammed, you are liberated. You are free to always question, to always be open, to always be flexible, and to never again fall into the trap of blind belief.
As the Buddha said, “Doubt everything. Find your own light.”
Doubt keeps all things in perspective. And especially this: The Truth Quest must go on for the sake of Truth itself. Indeed. It is the hallmark of doubt to always keep the Truth Quest ahead of the “truth.”
4.) Doubt expands the self:
“If you would be a real seeker of truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” ~Descartes
Doubt teaches clarity through iteration. The self is an endless ocean. The more you know yourself, the more you realize how much you don’t know. But a clarity comes from this. The waters are still endlessly deep, but you gain better visibility.
You realize that self-knowledge has no end. You realize that it’s not about coming to an identity, or ending up with a personality, or forming an opinion, or coming to a conclusion, or ending up with a belief. Not at all.
It’s about swimming into deeper clarity. You swim through identity, through personality, through opinion, through belief. You do so because the alternative is becoming stuck. The alternative is becoming fixed and conditioned, placated and trapped, bamboozled and brainwashed.
Doubt teaches you how to iterate through the self like a snake sheds its skin. Always moving forward. Always adapting. Always overcoming.
Growth, expansion, and greater clarity are always in the depths of a greater ocean. Swim!
5.) Doubt keeps you ahead of the curve:
“To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Doubt teaches uncertainty and uncertainty teaches aplomb.
Aplomb drops a bomb in the bomb shelter of your certainty. It sees the way out of the trap of certainty from the inside out. It’s embracing the fact that doubt is a crashing wave, but rather than fight against it, you act with aplomb and surf it out.
Acting with aplomb is being proactive despite self-doubt. It’s honoring doubt, detaching from it, and then focusing on what makes you curious and inspired instead. Acting with aplomb takes nerve, nonchalance, and self-confidence. It’s realizing that the ends don’t have to justify the means.
So, the universe is fundamentally uncertain? So be it. Might as well join forces with it. Might as well take that uncertainty and transform it into astonishment and awe. Might as well stay ahead of the curve by not clinging to any aspect of the curve. Let the chips fall where they may.
Stepping into the unknown can be harrowing. Self-doubt is a given. Acting with aplomb is simply accepting it as a gift that keeps on giving you the power to consistently flatten the box, turn the tables, flip the script, and push the envelope of certainty that threatens to envelope you in one-dimensional thinking.
6.) Doubt transforms hubris into humor:
“Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.” ~Ludwig Wittgenstein
There is nothing more powerful than a good sense of humor, not even power. In the throes of good humor, the entire universe is inside you, vibrating through you, howling at all moons, singing a language older than words, and most importantly reminding you that although you are but a speck in the cosmos you are also the entire cosmos within a speck.
When you’re in the throes of good humor, you are in tune with higher frequencies. You’re a fountainhead tapped into the higher order of disordered order. You’re a beacon of hope in a field of despair. You’re a beacon of darkness in the blinding light of cultural conditioning. You’re a devil-may-care cosmonaut in the whirlwind slipping all knots.
Cultivated humor is an inverted mirror that flips the universe. It puts seriousness and pettiness into perspective. It keeps humor ahead of hubris, laughter ahead of longing, Amor Fati ahead of Fate. It puts the ego on a leash.
As Camus said, “The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”
In order to build new knowledge, you must first be able to destroy untruth and stop taking yourself too seriously. Take a leap of courage out of belief and into faith. Be curious, not certain. Be creative, not convinced. Be eccentric, not conformist. Be humorous, not full of hubris.
Doubt! Free yourself to unlearn what you have been deceived into learning.
7.) Doubt teaches you the power of the Middle Way:
“The middle path does not go from here to there. It goes from there to here.” ~Jack Kornfield
Doubt keeps you in alignment with the Great Mystery; what some call God. The more aligned you are with this Mystery, the more disciplined your imagination will be. The more likely you will act with awe and transcendence rather than belief and closemindedness.
You can’t know the future. You can’t control how things will turn out. You can only control how you react to how things turn out. Even then, it’s not about control. It’s about being adaptable. It’s about being flexible and resilient. It’s about being prepared for the worst, even as you hope for the best. It’s about pulling your fragile past toward your antifragile future.
In that speck of hope is all the courage you’ll ever need. A dash of courage trumps an ocean of doubt. Use that courage like a sword. Or, even better, a scythe. Cut through the storm of the unknown. Shred the shroud of not knowing. Slice and dice the thickness of uncertainty. Not for the goal of invulnerability but for the transcendence of absolute vulnerability.
The Middle Way is where absolute vulnerability comes to fruition. The Middle Way is the sword of truth splitting all “truths”. The Middle Way is the scythe of justice breaking all “crowns”.
Cut with your soul. Meet the danger on the road to adventure. Greet Glory in the field. Confront the albatross on the path. Encounter the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Cut! Cut the obstacle until it becomes the path.
And if “God Himself” should stand in your way, cut that bastard down and become one with all things.
Image source: Icarus 3000 by Karborn
About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (7 Reasons Why Doubt Is the Origin of Wisdom) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
This New Year Calls for a Bold New Vision for Mankind
by Julian Rose
We have seen since the latter part of 2023, the horrific repercussions of controlled and uncontrolled mass murder being perpetrated on men, women and children in the Gaza strip.
We have witnessed, in US and European cities, the escalation of deranged individuals shooting dead whoever happens to get in their line of fire.
We see – and increasingly directly experience – a break down in civilised patterns of law and order; responsible governance within and without supranational bodies, national parliaments, educational institutions, national health services and hospitals, transport systems, banking, the media, and indeed, in too many cases within families themselves. Amounting to general disassociation with basic moral values.
We also see how giant corporations and banks continue to swallow-up smaller businesses and turn their workers into less than human robotic slaves, unwittingly and wittingly supporting a world exclusively devoted to self agrandissement through the twin totems of power and money.
We increasingly recognise that a whole generation, growing-up in a soulless era of materialistically driven, selfish and often aggressive behaviour patterns, are in danger of falling easy victims to EMF digitalised communications technologies that offer an escape route into a virtual reality world – having little or no connection with an ‘earthed’, meaningful and genuinely human existence.
Many see all this and much more – and yet feel paralysed from changing direction within their own lives. Feel spellbound by the top-down centralised program that stands behind the relentless degradation of human rights, basic freedoms, privacy and justice.
In spite of much valuable information being available to those who care to search for it, there remains a lack of awareness that we are living in ‘a program’. Within an agenda whose ends are 100% antithetical to sentient, caring human beings and to the vital ecological diversity of the planet.
Continuing to participate in this program while dismissing as ‘conspiracy theories’ information that reveals its origins to be a small cabal of ruthless exponents of a ‘New World Order’ and a ‘Great Reset’, is to be in denial of the gift of basic human intelligence.
For such people, only the arrival on one’s doorstep of a life altering shock, will induce an awakening.
But there are a quite rapidly growing number of decent human beings who are now recognising that the horrors which greet us in each morning’s media scan, add up to more than just arbitrary acts of spontaneous cruelty.
They recognise a line of continuity between the perpetration of one tragedy and another. One deliberate incitement of violence with another. They start to join the dots.
It is within this growing body of the partially aware that the New Year needs to bring with it a shift into taking responsibility for becoming fully aware – and taking the actions that, when enough engage in them, will bring about a crucial tipping point. A decisive shift in the energetic direction of our planet. A point where ‘we the people’ find our true sense of purpose, and follow it.
There are two key elements involved in turning around the existing ‘world order’: having a clear vision of what should replace it, and having the guts to go for it.
Within this is the need to continue to defend those basic values which have somehow endured up till now.
‘The vision’ is critical in order for further positive actions to be brought to life. Without vision driving aspiration, the goal cannot be reached. And the goal must be something which strongly appeals to the collective unconscious of mankind, not just at the conscious level.
What vision is capable of inspiring such a reaction?
It is said that ‘where attention goes energy flows’. So we must start with ourselves. We must each observe where it is that our attention goes – and whether this is genuinely life affirmative or essentially regressive – and then to be able to get control over it and firmly direct it towards truly meaningful ends.
When I use the word ‘ourselves’, it refers to individuals capable of discerning the nature of the reality we live in and also capable of acting on it, responsibly. This includes, where necessary, taking responsible non-egoic leadership.
Shockingly, this rules out a large proportion of the population of our planet; including those who still insist that that which is positively aligned with the search for clarity and truth, is the domain of trouble makers and conspiracy theorists.
So in assessing what element within society is able to adopt a vision capable of shifting daily life in a positive direction, we must conclude that this will be a small percentage of humanity.
However, small as it may be, if sufficiently fired-up, it has the power to bring about the fundamental shift of direction that is called for.
The sickness moving through society today is not just the expression of physical ailments. It is the expression of a profound imbalance manifesting within all aspects of life on earth. A disruption of planetary equilibrium.
This has been brought about, over many decades if not centuries, by placing a false emphasis within the core values of human education and aspiration. An emphasis skewed in favour of external material enrichment – of ‘having’ – rather than on discovering and fulfilling our true potential in body, mind and spirit: of ‘being’.
At the deepest level all humanity longs ‘to be’. Longing also for the sense of security experienced by realising one is under the guidance of an omnipotent and benign power offering unconditional love, regardless of one’s status in this world.
If this longing was recognised, respected and acted upon within the social, political, financial, legal, ecological and spiritual disciplines that form the core concerns of all people, we would solve the problems of humanity and indeed of the world, at one stroke.
It would mean the emphasis of all education would be the realisation of human aspirations set within the context of an overall pursuit of truth, justice and spiritual emancipation.
I have used a newly coined term ‘veritocracy’ (from the Latin ‘veritas’: truth) to describe this new state of existence – that which must replace the thoroughly worn-out socio-political institution called ‘democracy’.
A Veritocracy will embrace the pursuit of truth and justice as the central goal of social, political and economic life. It will mean the end of politics as we know it.
At the core of this vision lies a belief in the realisation of the as yet untapped powers we have inherited as a divine gift of our Creator.
An immeasurably valuable gift that we have failed to acknowledge and have therefore squandered in favour of false trails into unfulfilling realms of compromise and disaster.
I therefore offer the birth of Veritocracy as a vision to get 2024 off to the right start.
A vision that when put into effect will change all our lives from top to bottom, bottom to top. Will fundamentally readdress our sense of direction and set mankind on its true path of destiny.
A path that will ensure the rapid demise of those whose existence is fully devoted to preventing the glorious and unobstructable flowering of mankind.
Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through
Julian Rose is an organic farmer, writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of four books of which the latest ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ is a clarion call to resist the despotic New World Order takeover of our lives. Do visit his website for further information www.julianrose.info
We exist within a holographic projection, primarily exhibiting a two-dimensional perception. This enables the cause and effect of social reality. We make decisions in a paradigm of duality. Our minds are relentlessly stimulated by our selective preoccupations to deceive, delude and distort us, while our primitive instincts imprison us into a dense, vibrational, energetic frequency. We are lost. Artificiality is transmuting our existence into virtuality. Our air, food, water, drugs, devices, behaviors, desires, thoughts and social environments segregate us from our heart, intuition, soul and the universe. Day after day, we acquiesce our souls to a digital labyrinth of artificial simulation.
An Inconvenient Truth
When articles like this are published, the cognitive dissonance, denial and resistance in society triggers reactions of “conspiracy theory!” “fake news!” “lunacy!” and my personal favorite, “truther!” I get it, we do not want to acknowledge any of this. Beyond our collusion, doubt and uproar, we tremble with fear and insecurity because we feel it to be true. Not believing in alternative viewpoints does not make them false. It simply expresses our unwillingness to accept, relate, understand and transform the social reality in which we are enslaved. We receive a pittance of payback from our investment in amusement, money, possession, status and vanity. We are human vortices; devoid of charity, empathy, kindness, love, relativity and understanding.
The Greatest Lie
Social reality is a simulation projected into a three-dimensional construct. Given we often opt for a dualistic perception, we cannot observe the boundaries of our confinement. When the credibility of our reality is challenged, we vehemently defend our enslavement with the institutionalized data of our intelligence. “Facts” originating from the very source that wardens our captivity. We are all incarcerated in an elaborate, perceptual mirage we indolently relate with as reality. Yet, it is not realistic in any sense of the term. In fact, it is not “real.” Reality does not exist. It is an illusion. For us to engage in social reality, we must adopt our personal delusion to interact in the artificiality we enable and interpret as society.
An Era of Epiphany
As I write this, we are in the four-day progression of the Winter Solstice. We are also in the Universal Energetic Shift that has been occurring since 2012. This New Era is an opportunity for us to calm our body, silence our mind, embrace our heart and be empowered by our soul through our intuition. It is a time to flow with the universe in a way we have never experienced, aligning, balancing, centering, grounding and transforming our being. No matter what triviality in society rears its fearsome head to compromise the fulfillment of our experience, the universe is empowering us to manifest our soul purpose. The expression of our universality streams beyond our belief, comprehension, identity, knowledge, perception, profession and reality.
“We alone prohibit our universal progression.”
The Dynamics of Being
All of us are souls. We are universal energy expressing creativity, empowerment, illumination, manifestation, relativity, transcendence and understanding. Our soul empowers our intuition to conduct our universality into the energy centers of our being. Our heart center is a torus revolving omnidimensional energy from the universe, which inspires our mind, body and environment. When we are resonating with universality, we are expressing the fulfillment of our being. Our relatedness with others reflects the communion we have with our soul. When we are out of synch, we are chaotic, dysfunctional, trivial and simply surviving. When we are in synergy with our soul, we are conscious, expressive, present, progressive and truly thriving.
The Lure of Polarity
It does not require a great effort to observe the impact and influence of contemporary duality. Society is rife with pitfalls of polarity in the guise of gender, ideology, race, religion, politics, sports and war. We are pitted against each other in a vicious matrix of competition and survival. Yet, most importantly, we are programmed to turn against ourselves, mired in our instincts and intellect at the cost of our emotionality, intuition and universality. Observing, accepting and understanding the totalitarian engineering of our enslavement is vital in releasing ourselves from the social attachments to which we subscribe. Living is our decision to integrate into artificiality. Being is our choice to become an expression of universality.
The Gravity of Reality
Given our conditioning and the complexities within social reality, our transcendence necessitates an extraordinary shift from mere existence to fulfilled experience. Even the people, things and traditions we hold most dear are ultimately catastrophic to our universal evolution. Social dependence is the soul killer, seizing universality from all who exist in its oblivion. As our desperation, envy, fear, insecurity and misery crave violence, our consciousness evaporates when exposed to the brutality of an egocentric society. The artificial belonging of socialization annihilates our authentic relativity with the universe, our soul, our being and all our relations. There is no other way to say it. We need to pull our heads out of our asses, and that of society!
All That Is True
Nothing is ever as it seems. Every time we enable our dependence on social reality, we are discarding our personal truth. Anyone who professes the arrogance to know another’s truth, either through congregational education, ideology, religion, politics, science or spirituality, is the personification of social tyranny. Aligning, relating and becoming our unique truth is a path we alone must pioneer, empowered by the universe though our soul, intuition and heart. When we shift into our unique energetic flow, we become an expression of its transcendent resonance. We must sever our tether with society and cross the threshold of what we believe or think we know, to become and experience all we are as an expression of universal truth.
The Ties That Blind
Social reality is about achievement, advancement, competition, domination, success and wealth. The universe, spirit, intuition and heart have little to no value in society. They are all interpreted as weaknesses to be exploited for egocentricity. Social reality casts its spell to anchor us into the dense, vibrational frequencies of conflict, cruelty, fear, insecurity, limitation and oppression. Our hopelessness, neglect, oblivion and reluctance build the security bubble of our individualized existence. When we dismiss the empowerment of the universe and our soul, our energy wanes and is transmuted into involuntary projections of our personal malevolence. These are the ties that bind us to social reality, preventing our universal progression.
Universal Progression
Being is a universal movement, the evolution of our energetic resonance. The natural sequence of existence commonly involves the programming of the mind and the toxification of the body. Our universal progression is an experience distinct from mere existence. The relativity of our soul with the universe (universality) emanates an omnidimensional energy, expressed through our intuition, into our energy centers and empowered by our heart. We either subscribe to the social procession of living to survive, or we choose to become a universal progression of being and thrive. The Winter Solstice and the Universal Energetic Shift are opportunities for us to flow with universality. This New Era is the quickening of our universal progression.
The National Post did an in-depth feature on cannabis excise tax, with comments from Barry Katzman, CEO of Peak Processing, Owen Allerton, CEO of cannabis retailer Highland Cannabis, Ari Cohen and Tabitha Fritz of Fritz’s Cannabis Company, Niklas Kouparanis, CEO and co-founder of Bloomwell Group, one of Germany’s largest private cannabis companies, Darwin Fletcher, who is the founder and CEO of CANEXEC, and StratCann’s own David Brown.
Lineage Distribution (formerly Rogue Processing) was featuredin an in-depth piece in the Winnipeg Free Press. The company was recently approved for a distribution agreement with Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation. The article also features comments from Trent Emmel of T8C, a cannabis grower in Saskatchewan, and CJ Cowan from Bud Mountain Aeroponics in Calgary.
The Barrie retail cannabis market is saturated, says Barrie Today, with 25 stores in the city listed as authorized to open and another five applications in progress. The author spoke with local retailers Ryan Grenville of One Plant Retail and Ray Le, manager at Budssmoke.
In November, Ontario announced it would soon increase the limit of cannabis retail store authorizations from 75 to 150 per licensed retail operator and their affiliates. That change comes into effect January 1, 2024.
High Tide will be opening its first Canna Cabana in Mississauga, Ontario. This opening will mark High Tide’s 162nd Canna Cabana branded location in Canada, the 54th in the province of Ontario and the first in Mississauga.
Molecule Holdings Inc., a Canadian cannabis beverage production company with brands like Phresh and Dulces, announced the revocation of the “failure to file” cease trade order issued on October 5, 2023. Trading in the common shares of the company is expected to resume soon.
Cannabis News outlet Green State ran a piece entitled Dabbing culture and the rise of concentrate consumption. It referenced Vancouver’s Boro and Beyond, a company that sets up dab bars to help educate consumers about dabbing and the different tools that go along with it.
An appeal of a conviction relating to charges connected to cannabis production and trafficking at Muileboom Organics was dismissed in Ontario. However, the court found that the sanctions imposed by the trial judge—a fine, forfeiture, conditional sentences, and probation—the inclusion of the electronic monitoring and house arrest for the duration of the conditional sentence orders resulted in a sentence that was demonstrably unfit.
The court deleted the electronic monitoring conditions in both conditional sentence orders and set aside the probation order. Muileboom was operating under personal and/or designated medical production licences.
Numerous hot-button issues emerged in the Canadian cannabis industry in 2023. Among the many topics we covered, we’ve compiled this summary to put these issues at your fingertips.
Here’s some more of StratCann’s coverage of the issue in 2023:
Bankruptcies, lay-offs, and closures
Bankruptcies, closures, and licence revocations have also been a common theme in 2023 as the cannabis industry experiences serious economic challenges along with broader economic challenges not only in Canada but around the globe. Here are a few of those stories as captured by StratCann.
Edible Extracts
Edible or ingestible extracts was also a hugely popular topic in 2023, with Health Canada beginning a long process of pushing back on an array of products in the market that they say are not compliant with federal regulations. We wrote about this so much we had to create it’s own article. You can read all about it here:
Flower still dominates
The cannabis market in Canada continued to evolve as it entered its fourth year in 2023, with new products emerging and consumer trends continuing to shift away from cannabis flower. National and provincial reports consistently show dried flower SKUs beginning to lose some market share to extracts, especially vape pens and infused pre-rolls.
Too much weed! While the surplus of cannabis in the market appears to finally (potenitally) have peaked, it’s still an industry wide challenge, driving prices downward.
A recent study published in the “Endometriosis and Uterine Disorders” Journal has unveiled promising results regarding CBD-infused tampons for alleviating menstrual pain and severe cramps. The study’s authors posit that these CBD-infused tampons may present a more favorable option with fewer side effects compared to traditional anti-inflammatory medications, offering a parallel pain-relieving impact.
The research team, comprised of six researchers, noted the following in their report: “The outcomes suggest that CBD-infused tampons hold potential as an effective solution for managing menstrual pain.” They emphasized the necessity for further exploration and research into the product, asserting its potential contribution to addressing primary dysmenorrhea, a condition characterized by painful muscle cramps and spasms affecting between 50% and 90% of menstruating women.
The study examined the relationship between CBD, CB2 and CB1 receptors, claiming that because these receptors are extensively dispersed throughout uterine tissue, they provide an ideal target for the localized administration of cannabinoids to reduce pain. A randomized, placebo-controlled methodology was used to conduct the study, and participants were not informed whether they were using a regular or CBD-infused tampon. Participants self-reported their pain thresholds and general levels of satisfaction.
The study group carefully investigated a number of factors, such as systemic toxicity, vaginal irritation, material-mediated pyrogenicity, sensitization, and possible risk of toxic shock syndrome. They confirmed that every test was passed with success, demonstrating the safety of tampons infused with CBD.
Regarding pain alleviation, the report indicated a noteworthy percentage change, reaching 100% in the last menstruation days. Additionally, the study demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in discomfort during particular days of the menstrual cycle, two hours after tampon application.
Although fewer than 5% of participants reported experiencing irritation as a result of using CBD-infused tampons, between 37% and 40% reported an improvement in their vaginal dryness. Two patients reported vertigo while using the product; however, the symptoms cleared promptly without the need for medical treatment after removing the tampon.
The study’s lead author, Valentina Milanova, who also serves as CEO of Daye, a gynecological research company that claims to offer the first CBD-infused tampon worldwide, stated that the observed alleviation of primary dysmenorrhea throughout the menstrual cycle supports the potential effectiveness of CBD-infused tampons. All authors have financial ties to Daye’s parent company, Anne’s Day Ltd., based in London.
The authors did note the study’s shortcomings, particularly its small sample size, and urged future research and improvements to the research design, including the use of a crossover design to collect full pain data.
Cannabis research is still relatively in its infancy, but as the years go by, much more is likely to be known about the health and wellness benefits of the marijuana products currently commercialized by entities such as SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDL).
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CSA box subscriptions are a great way to support local growers and provide your family with fresh seasonal produce from spring to fall. Now is the perfect time to start shopping for a CSA because they tend to sell out fast!
What is a CSA subscription?
Before the growing season starts (between December and March), local growers invite the public to invest in their operations through a pre-paid subscription service that guarantees a regular supply of fresh produce throughout the growing season. The grower uses the funds from the subscription to cover the upfront operational costs of growing the produce.
Are there different kinds of subscriptions?
Yes. Many growers will provide small, medium, or large boxes depending on your household size. There’s often flexibility in subscription periods, from an entire growing season of 16-20 weeks to shorter periods of 8-10 weeks during the spring, summer, or fall. Growers will often hold the subscription for you if you are away for a few weeks. Ask about this and if the grower offers a refund policy if the produce delivered isn’t fresh before subscribing.
How much does a subscription cost?
CSA subscriptions often cost less over time than grocery stores, as they cut out the middleman between the farm and your table. A medium-sized box could cost between $15-$25 per week. Shop around, as prices do vary.
Are there payment plans?
Yes. As long as the initial investment covers a percentage of the box subscription, more growers are willing to work with investors on payment.
How is the box delivered?
Some growers will deliver straight to your home on a pre-arranged day of the week, the same way a food service or grocery store would. Others may have designated pick-up places in your area or at the farm gate. Ask for reusable ice packs if the box is delivered to the doorstep. No one wants rotting cabbage sitting by your front door in the hot summer sun.
What’s in a box?
Each box will contain pre-selected produce based on what the grower has in season. A CSA box is not a grocery store, so don’t expect fresh local strawberries in October. Instead, you might receive seasonal berries such as cranberries.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of a CSA?
The best part about a CSA box subscription is knowing where your produce came from and how it’s grown. There are often things in the box that you wouldn’t usually find at the grocery store, such as heirloom purple tomatoes or unusual herbs like borage. A CSA box provides income for the grower and helps in crop planning.
One of the biggest drawbacks is that a CSA box doesn’t provide the investor/customer choice. The box contains pre-selected items chosen by the grower. On the plus side, this might be an excellent opportunity to discover new fruit and veggie varieties!
Not all growers selling CSA boxes are on these resources, so shop around and research. Ask at your local farmer’s market or a school farm that offers subscriptions to raise money for ongoing programs.
What’s not to love about supporting local growers and eating fresh seasonal produce?
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