The Farm, pt. 1

Arrival in the Redwoods: Life on a Santa Cruz Pot Farm

For my paid subscribers, I’ll be posting sections of a memoir outlining how my family became part of a doomsday cult in Tucson, Arizona in the 1980s, and how I found myself traveling across the country to seek revenge on the cult’s leader.

These posts will be part of the first draft of a final compilation, so keep in mind that they are a works in progress.

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To start things off, I’m presenting the story of my arrival in Santa Cruz.

When I first arrived in Santa Cruz in 2012, I found myself living on a pot farm. I had just quit my job, traveled across the country, and had agreed to stay with my friend Jesse on a farm he helped run, just outside of Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Jesse was always my most unusual friend. He’s about six and a half feet tall, maybe 300 pounds, often shirtless and sporting some variation of a mullet. We met in Ithaca, and he had moved to Santa Cruz a few years before I made the trek out to him.

Jesse is what I like to call an “outdoor cat.” Even when given the option to sleep inside in a warm bed, you’d be more likely to find him passed out on his own porch. I knew this about him, but it still didn’t prepare me for the living conditions up that mountain.