Rainforest Farms makes Juneau’s first marijuana harvest ahead of Thanksgiving sales

Black Friday will be green.

Juneau’s first commercial marijuana retail store will open to the general public on Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving.

Giono Barrett, one of the owners of Rainforest Farms — Juneau’s first commercial marijuana cultivator and retailer — announced the date during a tour of his farm Tuesday.

“We’re having a private opening on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving by invite only, then we’re having an opening to the public on Black Friday, assuming that the lab results work out and transferring it works out,” he said.

Tuesday’s tour marked the occasion of Rainforest Farms’ first commercial harvest — another pioneering feat in Juneau for the firm that is expected to become the first off the Alaska road system to actually sell marijuana to customers.

“These are ready to cut,” Barrett explained in a room filled with pungent, multicolored marijuana plants. “I was actually waiting for you guys to get here.”

Barrett leaned down, toward the field of green plants growing from individual black pots. Wielding a pair of shears in one hand, he made a quick cut and lifted the plant, holding it upside-down to let gravity manage its wayward branches.

With unhurried steps, he carried it into another room, the drying room, where clothesline-like strings hung from wall to wall. He set the plant on one pair of strings.

It will rest there for seven to 10 days, he explained, drying in precisely controlled temperature and humidity.

After that, it will be packaged and ready for sale.

That first plant was just one of 80 ready for harvest, and Rainforest Farms’ first crop included a rainbow of colors and scents.

“If you smell each of those flowers, they smell radically different,” Barrett explained.

Anyone leaning in could smell lemons from one plant or a musky, earthy odor from another. Barrett pointed out one that — when dried — gives off the scent of “freshly sanded cedar.”

He reached out to touch another. “This is a Gorilla Glue, which actually kind of smells like Gorilla Glue,” he said. “Isn’t that crazy?”

Since starting Rainforest Farms, Giono and his brother James Barrett have prized the idea of variety, of giving customers options from the day their store opens. They’ve kept that idea even though it has come with some costs.

Between harvest and first sale, Rainforest Farms needs to have its marijuana tested by a state-certified laboratory. The only labs yet certified are in Anchorage (one in Juneau is expected to open early next year), which means an expensive and time-consuming trip to the state’s largest city. Because Rainforest Farms is expecting to offer so many varieties, it must spend as much as $3,000 to test samples from them all.

The trip to Anchorage will be a journey into a legal gray area. While the state has no problems with transporting marijuana, the federal government technically prohibits its shipment by air and water. In Oregon, however, federal officials haven’t been enforcing those prohibitions, and Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office director Cynthia Franklin has repeatedly reminded Alaskans that transportation might be illegal under federal law, but so is growing marijuana and selling it.

Because of that gray area, Barrett said Rainforest Farms is moving cautiously.

“We really want to make sure everything is done correctly; we have a lot riding on it,” he said.

The Barretts and Michael Healy, the third partner behind Rainforest Farms, have spent thousands of dollars to set up their business. They’ve begun hiring employees and have spent years lobbying the Alaska Legislature on regulations.

The marijuana farm’s plants have grown well, Giono Barrett said, and he expects this first harvest to yield between 1.5 ounces and 4 ounces of usable marijuana flower per plant, with the average being 2-3 ounces.

At current retail prices elsewhere in Alaska, Rainforest Farms’ first crop would be worth about $100,000.

If business is as busy for Rainforest Farms as expected, Black Friday will be green in more ways than one.