hi my name is nate owner of growers house one of the top suppliers of cultivation equipment in the world I help growers source equipment and put together some of the largest most advanced cannabis growing operations I am constantly looking for the top products and methods needed to grow the best cannabis join me on a tour where I get inside access to the industry's leading cannabis grow-ops this my friends is canna crews it's Nate with cannon cribs episode 4 at Los Suenos farms right outside of Pueblo Colorado this farm is literally 36 acres with 36,000 plants potentially the largest cannabis farm in the world maybe the universe I'm about to go meet up with their staff and we're gonna see how they run such a significant operation let's go get started I'm here in the middle of this 36 acre farm with Jared the sales manager of Los Suenos farms and we're about to peel back the layers of this onion to really figure out how this operation came to be and how they helped manage it Jared thank you so much for having us here welcome to our field of dreams I'm glad you're here I mean I did not know this prior to coming to Pueblo but it is a little bit of an agricultural area you hold it what was the term again the banana belt banana belt the biggest thing here is the peppers peppers tomatoes there's watermelons and cantaloupe and rocky 4 just down the valley so Puebla really is an agricultural focused area yeah I used to be a huge huge area for steel back in from all the ways from the 20s to the to the 80s and then the steel industry kind of fell apart and Pueblo and reals really kind of been a stable a stable kind of story of Pueblo has been the agriculture yeah so really with cannabis I mean it really just fits right into what Pueblo has been doing here for I would say over a century tell me about this this property and how its laid out because I understand it's not just one license no it's not so on the farm here there's four total licenses across those 36 acres each plot each license takes up about seven acres of those the 36 total all of them are separate interesting businesses all separate farms all run independently of one another but collectively we make up lost when Yoos farms okay Field of Dreams how do you guys fit into the Colorado marketplace you know as many different aspects it's an ever-changing landscape as anything is so we've started off and used to sell more to dispensaries and I would say about 64 your product mix of flour and trim with the majority heading towards dispensaries in those 60% flower 40% trim exactly okay yep and so now we've made that transition to where we're almost a 90/10 so 90 percent trim 10% flower Wow so that is 100% due to the market change in Colorado with the ever-increasing concentrate market coming online yeah that's that's a crazy shift in a small amount of time in a very small amount of time three years Jared thank you so much for giving us that deep dive we learned a lot about your farm and a lot about this industry so I think tomorrow morning early I'm gonna meet up with dr. Matt dr. Matt's the man he's gonna fill you guys in on the science of it cool well Jared thanks again I can't wait to be here tomorrow morning yes first greenhouse of the day I'm excited dr. Matt where are we we're in greenhouse three we've got three Bay's here we have our mother plant population and this is where we do all of our plant propagation I mean that's pretty awesome and I understand they don't call you dr. Matt for nothing you have a PhD what is what is that PhD in it's in plant genetics and primarily plant abiotic stress responses so having that background has really helped me adapt to growing cannabis outdoors in Colorado where the climates so harsh yeah well I would love to go over to this area and talk genetics and propagation with a scientist so can we let's take a sec how's the geneticist I wanted to ask you what is one thing that like maybe most cannabis growers out there don't know about cannabis genetics sure most of the varieties that are consumed today were bred for indoor growing you know so we're taking those indoor grown varieties and growing them and a very harsh climate outdoors regularly during the summers here we get 90 to 100 mile an hour winds we have humidity in between 10 and 15 percent up to a 50 degree temperature swing and a 24-hour period so so we really put the plants to the test as far as their ability to withstand abiotic stresses outdoors I mean what's your philosophy and products we used for propagation to make sure you can get you know we're talking 40,000 plants off in one month basically right right yes so we we use a tried-and-true method we use a regular trays with hoods we use jiffy Performa pellets that come pre wrapped at the right humidity for us and we use clone x jo which has you know really a good history of working well for everybody I've known that's used it and it's worked really well for Los Suenos we regularly get 95 to 100 percent moving in our trays well and you know all of the routing occurring within just a few days in a single tray yeah so we're really happy with clone eggs that's awesome it's good to have consistency when you're doing that many clones does even a few percent difference can be big dollars when you talk to yes it'll be huge [Music] dr. Matt so what exactly is this this structure with no walls yes this is a hybrid Agrotech insulator hybrid hoop house greenhouse we peeled the walls because it's been way too hot this spring and we just needed to get a little natural air movement well why don't we head inside and check out some of these veggie and school maybe I'll break the fourth wall you know we were just in the propagation and we were chatting about pro forma plugs for your clones going into the clone X but we're you know going into veg I want to know how do you guys transplant from a propagated cube into veg yes sure so we use a lot of pro mix products mm-hmm right off the bat we use Pro mix mycorrhizae we dip our rooted cuttings into the micro Zee mix and we do that regardless of whether we're growing in the greenhouse in Pro mix and seven gallon containers or going into three gallon containers like we have here in this hoop house we like the pro mix mycorrhizae because they stimulate the plants natural pathogenesis response and that's been particularly important for us here in Southern Colorado where we have Fu's areum in the soil and we're absolutely certain that the mycorrhizae that we've been ocular with have helped protect the plants from attack by this Fusarium fungus so dr. Matt I understand Ryan your farm manager is pretty well-versed on the three vegetative environments you have on here facility yes he really is why don't I go grab him for you that would be great thank you so much dog Thank You Nate so Ryan you're the farm manager here at Los Suenos that is correct I was brought on board on day one after the Department of Revenue issued the cultivation licenses for Los Suenos yeah so dr. Matt told me you have an intimate the veg cycle and all three aspects or areas where you have it here on the farm we do so we have a couple different vegetative tracks for the plants the first one would be for the field operation so the clones are started in the Agrotech greenhouses and once they have blown roots we move them into this insulator greenhouse that we're sitting in now in order to harden the plants off before we transition them out into the field the second path is the plants that remain in the greenhouse for their entire growing cycle those plants then go through light deprivation system and allow us to flip them or flower them during the summer months we had several items that we were looking for when selecting a manufacturer for our project out here the first one was is we want to make sure we were able to control any sort of condensation coming off the structure which Agrotech was able to do with their solar light structure here the second thing is is we need to be able to have active and passive ventilation systems as you well know more moisture likes to rise and when we're trying to dry or fall harvest we need to let that air out in order to drive the product and the third item was is that we needed to be able to have a light deprivation system in there so we can shorten the day length and get a flowering crop during the longer days of summer when we received our plans from Agrotech there was an engineering stamp on the drawings so we didn't have to go through any local review we walked down to the regional building department and had it permit within three days what are you guys using for lighting environmental controls things like that so we're used in a system it's called link 4 to make all our environmental decisions and what we liked about the system was as adaptivity to what we were trying to accomplish as a farm out here every one of these greenhouses and every one of these insulators that were sitting in right now have a link for system inside of them these link fours are making decisions every 15 seconds on average on what is the best decision to be made for the environment we're trying to achieve an example would be all we need to do Phi the greenhouse so let's open the roof vent but if it's raining outside it's probably not a good idea to open that roof the other aspect was is the remote monitoring so we can monitor these systems from our phones or on vacation perhaps and then the alarm notification that it sends out a text message when something's not within parameters that we've established out here with the lighting you know we we poked our heads in and I think I saw you guys are using some Gavita lights so Kavita was able to design a lighting design that fits our green house needs and helped us achieve the ideal lighting levels for the canopy of the crop we rely on the Sun most of the day but we needed to add some light in the morning and we definitely did add some lighting in the evening in order to get the day length and we need it depending on the crop cycle Ryan you know I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of your vegetative process here at Los Suenos I really I feel like this 28 acres of you know cannabis flowering field is beckoning us can we go take a look absolute least go look at some plants that are flowering now [Music] you know you guys are doing a different kind of agriculture than I've seen for cannabis do you guys call it plastic culture that is correct you'll see plastic culture in these fields here and that's used primarily in what we call high-value agriculture mainly in vegetable production strawberry fields in California tomato crops down in Florida what the plastic culture allows us is a couple of things first of all in the springtime allows us to warm the soil up second of all it provides a barrier from the plants touching moist moist soil either from irrigation or from natural rainfall and then also it helps us conserve moisture so Nate I just wanted to show you that underneath this plastic culture we have two rows of drip irrigation there are approximately two inches underneath the bed level so here's one drip tape okay there's another drip tape right here just like this one huh that's correct there's an emitter every 12 inches yeah each emitter provides point nine gallons per hour of water okay so that's exactly how you make oh sure it's all pressure compensated throughout the acreage you gather that is correct all the pressure compensation is done through the emitters in the netizen tape how do you get all of the nutrients out into the field I understand Netafim you know has these drip lines through your you know what was it called plastic culture yeah so the drip irrigation system can also deliver the nutrients yeah we use a dosatron injection system to put the nutrients in the irrigation water dependent upon what our goals are we can adjust the dosatron one to one hundred one to sixty four whatever the desire rate may be in order to get the desired PPM's out on the crop but another very valuable item is is we use drones to fly these fields and those drones have a couple different lenses on them and we're able then just look at respiration rate of plants we're able to look for insect and disease we're also able to look at plants that are maybe struggling for whatever reason let's say due to over water under watering so that drone is just another tool that we have in order to effectively manage a facility of this size so another thing that we do in order to keep an eye on everything is tissue sampling oftentimes a tissue sample can tell us what the needs of this plane and are well before the growers eyes can tell us any sort of deficiency needs of the plant we'll take that information then along with you know our our visual observations and then formulate whatever a Newton or nutrient plan will be for that week or for that month one of the things that I'm really trying to map or wrap my head around is just the volume of product that hits you guys all at once at harvest time because so many other growing operations I'm on that they're through greenhouse they're indoors perpetual harvest and for you guys you said four to five weeks doing this 16 hours a day and that's for just the flower which is a minority of everything that you sell that is correct so because of that large harvest we're talking tons not pounds of product so that forces us into a dry trim scenario for all that field product we try to take 10% of our best colas our best bud product out of the field and we will run them through the twisters that you see behind us as a dry trim product so the other 90% will all go into a trim form sent out for extractions got it you guys are doing wet trim right now but you do dry trim for the outdoor part is correct okay so you're gonna be running you said four twisters to tandems yes they're going all out you betcha so what you see behind us is a double tandem unit and what you see then is we have two complete units here at the farm so we have four twisters or two Kanda Muniz okay got it looks like you have the conveyors I think it's a feed conveyor twister t2 twister t2 QC conveyor Quality Control conveyor and then to trim savers that's correct what is the the lifecycle the process of a but it's harvested through this room so the product enters the barn here through these rubber totes from there these rubber totes that have our stripped-down product make it over to the [ __ ] [ __ ] then allows us to strip the product off of the stalks of the stems of the plants yeah it allows it to be entered down the feed conveyor for the twister machine okay so comes out of the [ __ ] looking like this and with this impressive twister setup you have here you're able to take this and basically turn it into top-shelf but you got it this conveyor belt really sits the pace for harvest and processing to keep this machine running most efficiently is we need a constant flow of product running into that and that's achieved through a couple different ways one we can control the feed rate of the conveyor and then the second thing is we can control the pitch of the trommel's themself off of this base unit that they're mounted to and by having two of them together you're able to really like trim it so that it almost needs no human intervention right that is correct so you can see the process and maybe see the bud inside of here getting more refined or more trimmed up until we get to the end here so here you see meisa working on the quality control conveyor and what is she what she's looking for is any little crow's feet or any little stems that you know the twister didn't catch on the base that fight you have there is trim pretty tightly coming out of this machine so from here we head over to curium okay the curium is right next door right correct let's head that way okay I'll follow you [Music] walking through one of our drying rooms and this white device in front of us is one of the environmental sensors for the link for system so every 10 seconds we're taking information from this room and it's making a decision on what equipment to run to maintain the environment in here it's got it okay so what kind of environmental conditions are you really looking for in your curing room because everyone's a little bit different hearing is definitely one of the more important processes in paint cannabis production we can buy the best seed the best fertilizing the best nutrients available but it all it comes down to now right now we're trying to maintain a humidity level of 45 percent in here and every day we'll shave a few more points off of that humidity level okay our goal is to have this product dry and ready for packaging in seven to ten days and then you guys are using these drying racks which you know let's see if quite a few near you know many yeah so there's 32 racks in here each one is three feet in diameter and there's eight tiers in each rack and then we can actually invert the whole rack on itself to save time and labor as far as rotating buds so we don't get flat spots temperature we try to maintain around 64 degrees in here so nice cool relaxing environment for the product to dry and yeah that's beautiful so once you have in those environmental conditions there's probably some indicator from the plants and when you're done right well absolutely so we try to aim for a moisture level somewhere around twelve to fifteen percent after that the product is taken out and it's a vacuum packed in nitrogen seal so I'm here with Casey the inventory manager for those sueños and we're in barn number four for because you guys have the four licenses on premises or on site so I mean to me I look they look like barrels of wine I feel like I'm gonna vineyard but instead it's cannabis mm-hmm yeah and they're all about 35 gallon barrels outside is hard we use them for shipping as well as storing the inside of the barrel as a wax label that is food safe that we sanitize after each use after products but in the barrel so we can reuse the barrel it seems like you guys have so many of them I mean obviously I see number two 70-year what kind of numbers are we talking about a 40,000 pounds this year coming across our four licenses Wow 40,000 pounds of biomass and that it's you said as a mixture of trim and bud correct yeah right so Casey I understand that all of these barrels have actually these like packages that you are putting on your cannabis in which are really heavy-duty I mean these things are like some of the thickest mylar I've felt yeah so we've gone through a lot of different bad companies and we finally settled on one that we love called cannabis cargo thing what we like about them the most is in this window here it doesn't let UV light through so they're customers when they're deciding if they want the product are to reject the product they can look at the bag without having to open it up having to do anything worried about losing anything when the bags open they can decide whether or not they like it send it back our way and then it's also very water resistant and the fact that water does not escape the bag so we don't lose moisture weight I would love to be able to bag and tag some cannabis in here in your packaging yeah let's do it we got some 10-pound bags to weaken us with yeah okay I'll follow you already so casey here's the 10-pound bag that you were kind of talking about and looks like a how's your branding on it yeah a nice big and proud on there another thing that cannabis cargo got us for us is the custom label anything wherever we want it if we want it down here they'd do that for us but this is where we decided right in the middle of the bag this one tie it on there yeah all you do is press the pedal that's the nitrogen bond and there you go there's our seal a sealed bag good to go let me see the nitrogen full I'm here at Mesa organics a processing facility and a retail front dispensary that has a very unique relationship with Los Suenos farms let's go inside and find out more [Music] so I'm here with Jim and he owns actually two licenses here in Colorado one is mace organics the retail dispensary and the second one is purple bees which is your processing extraction facility with Los Suenos tell me about your relationship with them it's very unique it is solo sueños they're the largest outdoor retail cultivation in the world in Los Suenos whose owner Bob Gabriel Bob asked me said hey can you extract for us you were growing 40,000 pounds a year at the time I had two small extractors a little five liter by apex and a little you know twenty five liter 5000 it's like well I can do about a kilo a day I said how much do you have to go seven thousand pounds it's a pot that's gonna take like nine years they were supplying a large amount of volume to the industry for extraction and so we ended up investing in a high production system from apex we use it with great success and then we added another and another and another and now we see ginormica behind us which is the largest one they make we just put this in service investing ginormica is that a name that you affectionately gave it or apex so we named our systems here we have the beast Big Mama El Jefe and the latest member of the family's ginormica ginormica and that was actually named by the owner of apex Andy Joseph yeah he chose the name and we actually liked it we've got a subcritical extractor over there a double 20 a 20 and 40 and a double 40 so there's really nothing we can't do Wow that's amazing so you guys chose supercritical co2 over maybe like hydrocarbon some other forms of extraction and why is that there are statutory thresholds that hydrocarbon extractors have to be under but any hydrocarbons that are burned over 900 degrees convert to benzene which is toxic lethal yes I don't want to be part of that game so we're pure co2 we know anybody that works with this knows what's not in the extract so it was a it was a business decision to stay as pure as we could and we didn't think we could do better than co2 do you think hydrocarbons and maybe other forms of extract are gonna run into problems in the future they already are they already are there are many municipalities in California that will not allow hydrocarbon systems because of the occupational risks to the communities so Jim walk me through some of the equipment used in processing so we start here in extraction we're basically taking the plant material and then making this raw crude extract and then from here we're gonna take it into a drying and a curing process where we're based gonna dehydrate it to get the water out you can't have any water in your your extract nobody wants that and then once we actually have cured it then we take into oil processing you know when we're actually curing it we're putting it in you know a variety of we're heating and cooling things so we use a lot of ovens and a lot of chillers we use a lot of other equipment that we've designed and developed here a lot of it's proprietary but I can certainly show you the rotovap so it's a very common piece of lava equipment you have to have that basically is we're fractionating this we've already pulled the terpenes out I then need to pull out the waxes and I have to pull out the lipids and I'm breaking things apart in the wrote about certain important instrument and then once we get the final product of oil processing which is an oil free from the waxes then we'll take it into our distillation lab and there we use some wipe thin film molecular stills we use pope scientific and then that's will actually will fraction eight the final part taking a lot of the real dark material you'll see on the final fractions the chlorophyll the Salus etc pull it apart where you're just stuff with the cannabinoids we call that distillate and that's going to be your THC your CVC your CB and your CBD or CBG and then your overall potency of cannabinoids a Bissell it's going to be somewhere between 95 and 99 percent Los Suenos is an outstanding cultivator they know how to grow we're very good at extraction and processing and our customers are very good at marketing branding and distribution and ultimately the by a partnership between our portfolio of companies in our group it works really well this is the future of cannabis yeah I really do think it is I mean this was an amazing tour through your facility I think I'm gonna go meet up with Pam your wife in the mace organic dispensary fantastic let's go okay hey Pam are you doing I'm doing really well I just got done going through the processing facility with Jim and we had an amazing time yeah so after a long day with my crew I think I would like to purchase an ounce and maybe relax for the night sure well I think I can help you out there okay what do you prefer what do you like you know I think we're gonna go with Pam's choice okay and this is the Tahoe alien that's amazing hmm you know what maybe we'll go at the Tahoe alien I like the way it's it's hitting the nose that's good man I'm your ID please oh of course thank you sir thanks mate Thank You Pam time for me to go enjoys with my team after a long day of filming another amazing episode of canna Cribs under our belt episode 4 los sueños farms that's a blunt rat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]