Lucas Kerr typically wonders what his ancestors would consider the bustling hashish operation that he has constructed on the household’s farm in upstate New York. His forebears based Torrwood Farm in 1846, once they have been current Scottish immigrants. At its peak, the farm lined 500 acres within the city of Lumberland, about two-and-a-half hours northwest of New York Metropolis, in a hamlet on the banks of the Delaware River.
Torrwood Farm was stuffed with livestock — horses, cows, goats, chickens, sheep, and extra — and diverse crops. It had a boardinghouse, largely for visitors from New York Metropolis, and provided farm-to-table meals, approach forward of the pattern.
Within the Sixties, Lucas’s grandparents found an artesian spring on the farm by surveying a spot within the woods the place the cows headed throughout droughts. Quickly, corporations with 6,000-gallon tanker vehicles made each day visits to gather the exceptionally pure liquid that bubbled up on the property. The businesses bottled and bought the water, as did the Kerrs starting within the mid-Sixties, theirs in gallon jugs beneath the title Catskill Mountain Spring Water, Inc.
Lucas’s childhood recollections of the farm embrace watching these tankers replenish and attending to function tractors — “I felt like I used to be driving a spaceship.”
Torrwood Farm, which has been household owned and run for seven generations, stopped its water operations in 2005, when Lucas’s grandparents aged out of it, and Lucas’s father, David Kerr, 74, didn’t wish to take the enterprise over.
Nonetheless, the farm remained a particular place for David Kerr, and one which he needed to maintain as a household retreat. So, in 2017, he and his spouse, Mary Ann Kerr, redid the farm’s giant household dwelling, envisioning a haven the place members of the family might reunite for summers, holidays and celebrations, and the place some stayed throughout Covid lockdowns. It additionally gave the couple a brand new place to showcase their treasured rug and vintage collections and their inside design abilities.
By all of it, Lucas Kerr, 44, dreamed of resurrecting the thriving farm days of his youth.
He ultimately did so by capitalizing on New York’s shift to legalization of leisure hashish in 2021. “I’m glad that my grandfather and my father didn’t promote it as a result of now we are able to do one thing new with it,” the youthful Mr. Kerr stated of the farm. “Paradoxically, the hashish goes to make much more cash than the water.”
Lately, merchandise from Torrwood Farm are bought at over 100 dispensaries throughout the state, from Rochester to Albany and the 5 boroughs, Mr. Kerr stated. Weed for New York from New York has an enchantment. “The patrons that we speak to, they wish to purchase native.”
The Homestead
Whereas one a part of the farm is buzzing with the hashish enterprise, one other, the household dwelling and its environment, has preserved its home serenity and familial connections.
An avid antiques collector, David Kerr, who’s primarily based in Florida, relishes the historical past within the dwelling. There’s the 11-foot eating room desk made out of outdated church pews with 10 industrial employees’ swing seats; the outdated oak shelving pewter rack from, he stated, the oldest pub in Edinburgh, Scotland; and the toilet pedestal sinks from Nineteen Thirties Beverly Hills. “You bought to surprise who used to scrub their face in it,” he stated. These classic treasures are largely from collections. “The great things by no means makes it to public sale.”
Thoughtfully curated, the primary stage of the home now consists of flooring from Amish schoolhouses and fireplaces and hearths fabricated from stones as soon as dealt with by their ancestors. “The one factor that the farm grows greater than something is rocks,” Lucas Kerr stated, noting that bluestone from Torrwood Farm and the encircling areas was transported to New York Metropolis for its sidewalks up to now. For a part of the journey south, slabs typically floated alongside the Delaware River by way of the D&H Canal, of which the early Kerrs have been partial homeowners, David Kerr added.
Along with the relics that enhance the primary dwelling, there are over 100 vintage climate vanes that grace the property’s 40-by-60-foot crimson barn, whose terrace overlooks the trout-stocked pond, hovering eagles, and elusive fisher cats, members of the weasel household. David Kerr adorned it with apple-picking ladders to attract guests’ eyes to the particularly tall aspect partitions, 22 ft as a substitute of the everyday 16, he stated.
The hand-hewn barn, with its 37-foot peak, was initially in-built 1858 in one other a part of the state. About six years in the past, he had it disassembled and delivered to Torrwood to be reassembled there. As an antiques aficionado, David Kerr felt new development wasn’t an possibility, however barns have been wanted on the property to present it the specified farm really feel.
This one has already hosted one in every of his son’s weddings and several other budtender conferences.
Vintage rugs are one other of David Kerr’s passions. He has over 1,000, primarily from the Caucasus, and lots of are a whole lot of years outdated. His shut pal and rug-collecting mentor, Alan Varteresian, who died in 2023 and whose framed image welcomes guests, taught him {that a} secret to assessing rugs’ authenticity and high quality is of their really feel. Mr. Varteresian’s grandfather, an Armenian rug vendor, stated his greatest purchaser in Yerevan was a blind man who might inform a rug’s weave, originating tribe and sample from contact alone.
David Kerr stated he loves the farm’s contemporary power from the hashish operation, however he’s considerably torn about this new course. “I’ve by no means smoked in my life — I’m so scared I’d get caught,” he stated. “I assume now it doesn’t matter.”
Rising Hashish
Lucas Kerr began down the trail towards hashish by first rising hemp, intrigued by what he noticed of its therapeutic potential in Iraq, the place he did three excursions from 2005-2007 as a U.S. Military Infantry Officer. That agricultural enterprise didn’t work out, however transitioning from hemp to hashish in 2022 was simple, he stated. “All you’re doing is altering out the seed for one which has THC in it.”
Mr. Kerr turned that preliminary setback right into a head begin. Right this moment, Torrwood has licenses from the Workplace of Hashish Administration for cultivation, processing, and distribution. A seven-day-a-week operation, it processes as much as 9,000 joints and 10,000 gummies a day. Gross sales have grown exponentially, and the crew of 17 now features a grasp grower from California and retired detectives for safety. Nonetheless, the Kerrs are cautious about rising too huge or quick.
“We don’t wish to be the Walmart of weed,” Mr. Kerr’s spouse, Amber Kerr, stated.
Torrwood Farm grows hashish outdoor, whereas additionally utilizing its mixture license to domesticate hashish in a greenhouse with daylight, and, as wanted, rising lights to increase the crops’ days, which ends up in bigger development with elevated yield. The farm additionally has an indoor analysis and growth nursery the place the crew is propagating Torrwood’s personal proprietary genetics. There are rows of “mothers,” crops that can generate 15,000 clones this 12 months.
Different areas home high-tech equipment to course of joints and gummies and check their THC content material. The crew laughed remembering once they have been first formulating recipes for edibles and by accident went too sturdy on some. Style-testing them, and uncertain of their efficiency, they have been inadvertently enjoying a sport of “hashish roulette,” as Shane Pearson, the chef liaison of Torrwood Farm, put it. For customers, the merchandise’ THC content material is totally examined internally and by an OCM-licensed laboratory to make sure the right ranges.
Mr. Kerr and his head of cultivation, Paul Bernal, stated that rising right here has concerned fixed studying. Mr. Bernal, who grew up within the northeast and spent a few years in Humboldt, California’s revered hashish epicenter, stated that cultivation entails fixed problem-solving. “I inform individuals on a regular basis, ‘nature kills issues day by day,’” he stated. “And we’re doing the toughest factor by making an attempt to not have a lot nature in nature.”
Mr. Kerr stated that voles, a rodent he had by no means beforehand heard of, turned an enormous downside, as they have been consuming components of the crops and killing them. Cameras revealed that the small creatures have been availing themselves of the farm’s underground irrigation system for quick transportation.
“They have been utilizing it as a superhighway to get in every single place,” Mr. Kerr stated. He and his crew put up traps and grates however understood, “You battle with nature, you’re by no means going to win; on a regular basis you are able to do a bit little bit of mitigation, however actually you’re alongside for the trip.”
New York doesn’t provide the best situations for rising hashish outdoor — “It’s not California, it’s not Humboldt,” Mr. Kerr stated — however the suitable crew with the suitable expertise can overcome the obstacles. Mr. Bernal’s areas of experience embrace cultivating stay tradition soil and training Korean Pure Farming strategies. He focuses on enriching and balancing the soil in order that the crop can thrive. “The philosophy is you’re not rising the plant, you’re caring for the soil,” he stated.
And Mr. Bernal is protecting of the crops. “To be able to thrive in agriculture, your power is simply as essential as your course of,” he stated. Torrwood solely permits individuals with optimistic outlooks to have a tendency the greenery.
Although Mr. Bernal enjoys his work, he acknowledged that it’s labor intensive. Through the harvest season, he stated, the crew will work a minimal of six days per week, 12-hour days, with some beginning at 3 a.m. and going till sunset. “A pair days off a month within the peak of the season is a luxurious,” he stated.
Mr. Kerr added that enthusiasm for hashish doesn’t at all times translate to stamina to farm it. “Everybody desires to farm till it’s time to really do farming,” he stated. “We’ve had so many individuals are available, ‘I really like hashish,’ however while you’re out in these fields, it’s unforgiving; it’s the warmth of the summer season, what can go unsuitable will go unsuitable.”
The Enterprise of Hashish
The enterprise aspect of hashish has additionally been making an attempt. The 12 months 2023 was a battle, Mr. Kerr stated, however he began to see development in summer season 2024 after injunctions have been lifted, extra dispensaries opened, and authorities shuttered unlicensed retailers.
Kahlil Lozoraitis, the chief government and co-founder of Weekenders Hashish, one in every of Torrwood’s model companions (corporations that use Torrwood’s hashish in their very own choices), noticed that there was quite a lot of confusion quickly after legalization in New York. “After they legalized it with no plan, individuals simply type of took that upon themselves — as entrepreneurs could do — to simply type of open up completely nonregulated retailers and begin promoting,” he stated.
Mr. Lozoraitis, whose model boasts “artisanal small batch hashish,” was drawn to Torrwood’s give attention to craft. And he valued its sun-grown choices, evaluating the distinction in high quality between outdoor- and indoor-grown pot to that of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a mass-produced model. Mr. Lozoraitis famous that Weekenders is one in every of few Black-owned hashish manufacturers in New York, and one in every of even fewer with multistate operations. Although he feels the state’s legalization rollout wasn’t good, he recommended its efforts towards range and serving to these impacted by the warfare on medicine.
Mr. Kerr additionally needed to help those that have come earlier than him within the trade pre-legalization. His different model associate is S.T.A. Exotics, based by John Morrongiello, 47, who grew up in Staten Island and began promoting weed at 11 years outdated.
In 2018, Mr. Morrongiello landed in Rikers Island for possession with the try to distribute concentrated cannabinoid. He empathizes with authorized cultivators, given how a lot they’ve invested into their aboveboard operations, however together with his historical past within the black market, he stated he additionally helps the legacy sector. “I urge them and encourage them to attempt to convert over into the authorized market,” he stated. “That’s the long run, and that’s the best way it’s going to go.”
