Urban Aroma Interview: Meet a Barcelona Grower

Do you know where your weed comes from? If you’re a regular toker living in Barcelona, then chances are Adam has something to do with it. Adam lives just outside of Barcelona and provides the city with some of its juiciest buds. I meet Adam at one of the local weed associations that he supplies his goods to. He lets me in on a little secret — we’re about to smoke some of his exclusive stash that he grows only for own consumption. We light a blunt and get right to it. How did you get started? I had a few business deals with friends fall through, and I was getting really frustrated with having to rely on others to make money. I come from a long line of smokers and I’ve always dabbled in the industry, so I took all my savings, rented a house, bought some equipment, and the rest is history.   Can you tell me a little about your setup and your process? Sure. I live in a big ol’ house on the outskirts of the city and I pretty much only occupy the kitchen, the bedroom and the living room. All the other spaces are designated weed rooms. I have one room for the mother plants that I take cuttings from. Then they spend about two months in a grow [veg] room before I switch them over to a flowering room. Everything is like clockwork, as soon as I pop them into the flowering room, another set of clones goes into the grow room. I used to grow everything with organic fertilizers but since I decided to do this full-time, my main focus is maximizing profits. I switched over to the best non-organic ferts I could find and the yield is definitely higher, which means the profits are higher.  What’s your favorite variety to grow? When I first started out, I was ambitious and wanted to have exclusive strains, genetics from overseas, that kind of stuff. But it was too stressful keeping track of everything. Now I just grow Critical. High yields in minimal time. How does the product make it from your house to the hands of the consumer? When it’s ready to cut down, a couple of my closest friends come up to the house and help me with the harvest. They stick around until it’s time to bring the dried bud down to the city. We’ve got a whole system in place with drivers and checkers, to make sure there aren’t any police controls along our route.  I used to have to deliver everything myself, which was really stressful. But now I’m able to take some of that stress off my shoulders and also help my buddies out, so it’s a win-win situation.  Tell me about the best part of your job. Payday, baby! There’s something special about getting paid with a fat stack of cash. No matter how many times I do it, I still get a rush every time. I have no real boss, no one to answer to, I can make my own hours and after so many years of doing this, the whole process is really streamlined. I’ve got a network of people I can trust and I can even get away for a few days of vacation. And the worst part? It frustrates me that it’s still illegal. The risk of getting caught is pretty low but the whole thing seems very ridiculous to me. A country like Spain could definitely use the extra tax dollars, and it’s practically legal anyways. Forcing it to exist in this legal grey area just gives me grey hairs.  Is it difficult operating in cash only? A: Not really. Luckily we aren’t in some Scandinavian country where cash is becoming obsolete. That would definitely complicate things for me, but for now I don’t have a problem with paying for everything in cash here. I guess we’ll get there eventually but hopefully by then I’ll be doing something else. Something else? What are your plans for the future? Someone once told me: Heinz is the one getting rich off ketchup, not the tomato farmer. I’m still just a farmer when it comes down to it. The plan was always to go legit. I had originally only meant to do this for two years, get out of debt and then take the money and invest it elsewhere. I wanted to open a restaurant. But two years quickly turned into six and now with all this COVID stuff the restaurant plan kind of went out the window. The price of weed also shot up during the lockdown so I signed on for another two years in my house. That’s the limit I’ve set for myself, after that it’ll be decision time.  What’s some advice you would give Adam from six years ago? Definitely that you need to have money to make money. I was really ambitious and wild when I started out and I didn’t think enough about the hidden costs. My electricity bills are insane, my car is cursed, equipment breaks... there’s always something that needs to be bought or replaced.