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Hudson Valley Jane, a cannabis farm and micro-dispensary, is dedicated to bringing farm-to-main street cannabis to Hudson Valley communities. The farm itself is located off of Route 82 in Ancram, NY, and the Hudson Valley Jane dispensary will open its doors on Main Street in Beacon, NY, on June 7. 

Co-founders Stacey Shurgin and Ben Weiner both have vast experience in the real estate and construction sectors. Stacey is the president of Leeds Associates, a real estate management firm in New York City, and Ben has worked as a contractor and builder for decades. In fact, this is not the first time that Stacey and Ben have worked together. They originally met years ago while working on a building project together and later established a close friendship. 

Additionally, Ben was a legacy grower in Brooklyn, meaning that he has been growing cannabis for a very long time – even before it was legalized in the state of New York. 

“We became friends along the way through our work, and then when cannabis was legalized here, all of the sudden we realized that we had the perfect combination – a contractor who was well-versed in growing and a real estate professional,” Ben said. “That’s the reason that our facility got built so quickly. We both have a lot of knowledge of building and we didn’t have anybody in the middle.”

Emphasizing sustainability and creating as little waste as possible 

Stacey purchased the property that would become the farm just before the pandemic. She had been planning to do some type of farming on the land, but wasn’t exactly sure what that would look like. Enter Ben.

“He had this idea to create a cannabis farm, and I thought, ‘Well, that is farming, too!’ And it all just fell into place,” Stacey recalls. Indeed, Stacey and Ben are bringing a lot more than just cannabis back to the agriculture of the land they farm on. They’re growing wildflower fields to provide essential food sources for pollinators (Stacey has had a bee apiary on the property for the last three years), planting fruits and vegetables, and soon, they hope to have chicken and sheep on the land as well. 

Nothing goes to waste at Hudson Valley Jane, either. The soil that is leftover from the cannabis plants is getting reused in the vegetable garden, the stems and stalks from the cannabis plants are used to create beautiful dried wreaths, and any part of the plant that cannot be reused in some fashion is getting composted. 

Hudson Valley Jane had subterranean geothermal loops installed on the farm, which borrow the steady temperature of the Earth to heat and cool the greenhouse. The greenhouse roof catches rainwater, which is reused in the flushing process, and its concrete floors are fitted with radiant heat to reduce the need for costly humidifiers. Lighting-wise, the greenhouse relies on sunlight as much as possible, only using supplemental LED lights when absolutely necessary for ideal indoor conditions. 

“That sustainability aspect is really important to us,” Ben notes. 

Sustainability is also a core part of the NYS Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), which regulates how cannabis farms can operate in New York State. OCM supports an environmentally sustainable cannabis sector in New York. 

Their initiatives include: energy use standards and emissions management, which requires licensees to maintain and submit plans to OCM related to monitoring and managing resource consumption and control emissions of carbon to minimize adverse environmental impacts; waste minimization, which focuses on waste generated through cultivation, processing, and consumer packaging; protection of air, water, and land, which requires all licensees to engage in resource tracking and reporting to develop a benchmark of their energy, water, and associated emissions use; and promoting social and economic equity, in which sustainability regulations were developed with consideration to legacy growers and less capitalized licensees.

“This kind of stuff is boring to the non-builder or the casual smoker, but it’s an interesting part of our story because it’s how we utilized whatever we could to make this an efficient place,” Stacey says. 

Hudson Valley Jane is operating under a micro-license, which provides them with the unique seed-to-sale ability to engage in the full range of cannabis business activities, from cultivation to processing to wholesale distribution and retail sales. Most of all, however, this allows Stacey, Ben, and their team to be as hands-on as possible throughout the entire process. 

Growers have options on the grows they choose to create. Ben and Stacey felt that a greenhouse with supplemental lighting would be the best choice for their farm. Controlling energy costs through sustainable choices allows them to grow year-round in an efficient manner. 

“It’s more efficient this way. Most people when they look at the license probably thought that you can’t grow with a greenhouse license like you can indoors, but that’s not exactly true,” Ben explains. 

Touring the greenhouse 

On a tour through the greenhouse, you’ll first see the mother plants. From the mothers, clones (or seedlings) are taken; this process is done similarly to the way regular houseplants are propagated – by snipping part of the plant, cleaning it up, and sticking it in water or dirt to allow it to re-root and grow a new plant. Those seedlings go into a tray, and once they get big enough, they get planted into six-inch pots. 

“It’s the same as every other plant, except the biggest difference with cannabis is that it’s a photo-carrying plant. So in order to keep these from flowering – because the flower is what you actually smoke or consume – you have to keep them at 18 hours of sunlight,” Ben explains. 

Along the perimeter of the room, Ben has blackout curtains to ensure that the light from the mother room doesn’t bleed into the next room and affect the flowering plants, which need to be at 12 hours of sunlight. 

“This is not cannabis. These plants are basically hemp. To make this turn into cannabis, we have to photoperiod the plants down to 12 hours of sunlight, which then causes the plants to produce flowers,” he says. 

Heading over to the full, licensed legal canopy, you’ll find all of the flowering cannabis plants, which take approximately eight weeks to finish flowering before you can harvest. In an ideal world, the temperature in the canopy would be 75 degrees at all times. Naturally, temperatures fluctuate, and on the day I visited the site, the thermostats were reading a range between 75 and 100 degrees. Not to fret though, Ben says that the cannabis plants are hardy enough to handle higher temperatures, it’s just not ideal for a lengthy period of time. Ben uses these thermostat readers to make the proper adjustments. 

Additionally, all of the workers at Hudson Valley Jane change into scrubs when they get to work in the morning. Why, you ask? Ben explains that it’s all about eliminating variables and preventing things like bugs and fungus, which can travel on clothing. 

“In an ideal world, I’d love to use living soil where you allow bugs and everything in, but managing means worrying about a thousand different variables. We’re trying to do all of these things at once – finish building out the farm, open the dispensary, learn our space – so I can’t have a thousand variables with just the soil. Everything along the way is about trying to eliminate variables so that we can first find out how to work with our space.” 

While many other growers have tried talking Ben into implementing automatic irrigation in the greenhouse, he is reluctant to do so. “Everyone tells me that hand-watering is going to kill me, but you lose touch with the plants if you’re not in there every day. If you’re not touching everything every day, you lose that connection.” 

Currently, Hudson Valley Jane is growing multiple different strains of cannabis. Cannabis strains are named varieties of the plant that are categorized as indica, sativa, or hybrid – each of which provides distinct effects. Indica strains are known for their relaxing effects, while sativa strains tend to be more energizing and uplifting. Hybrid strains, as the name suggests, are a combination of both indica and sativa. 

“Each strain has a different flower time,” Ben explains. “You have to know what you’re growing, so we’re figuring out what the best strains to grow in New York are. We want to be more discerning to ensure that we can produce the most with our limited canopy space.”

Knowing your dose 

A big part of Hudson Valley Jane’s work is education. Ben and Stacey plan to have their cultivators on the farm visit the store in Beacon regularly so that they can talk to customers about the entire cultivation process. In-store education will largely center around the importance of understanding your endocannabinoid system – a group of messengers and binding sites located throughout the body that help regulate appetite, memory, sleep cycle, and the immune system – and why that plays a key role in choosing the right strains and proper dosage. This natural system plays a big factor in how different strains and doses affect each person differently. 

Additionally, Hudson Valley Jane has a livestream of the greenhouse playing in the store on Main Street in Beacon. “We want you to be able to see where it comes from. On any given day, you might be able to meet the cultivator, too. You can interact with us in a way that you can’t in other dispensaries. We really want to foster that feeling of community in the store.” 

Because of the specific license that Hudson Valley Jane has, they cannot bring in any other products that are not directly produced by them or put under their label. To mitigate this, they’re working to grow different strains and create many different products, all of which will be branded under different labels so that there’s some diversity. 

Boujee Ben – an ironic name, as Ben describes himself as the furthest thing from “boujee” – is obviously Ben’s brand. There is the regular version, as well as BB, which is the premium version. What’s the difference? The Boujee Ben, which is the non-premium version, is sometimes sungrown. To save energy in the summer months, they will be growing mostly from the sun. The BB, on the other hand, is always grown indoors in the greenhouse. Additionally, the BB has smaller buds. 

Stacey’s brand, also called Valley Jane, was named as an ode to her mother, Jane, who passed away when she was young. The name of the farm and of Stacey’s brand is a tribute to her mother’s “vivaciousness and wild personality.” Stacey’s brand is mainly edibles, and because Stacey herself isn’t really a smoker, the brand was designed to be approachable for the average person. 

“It’s all about knowing your dose. This is life-changing to all of the people like me who have kind of steered away from cannabis because they found it unpredictable,” she says. “I didn’t want anything unpredictable. Knowing my dose changed everything, and that became my tagline. You need to know how to dose, and I want to teach you.” 

Hudson Valley Jane may also end up having its own cannabis brand as well going forward, but right now, it serves as a lifestyle brand. There are branded hats, tote bags, calming CBD candles, and other lifestyle products. Also on the shelves, Hudson Valley Jane has pressed oils that can be used for cooking, pain, or stress relief. When heated, through a process known as decarboxylation, the THC in the oils becomes activated. Hudson Valley Jane will also carry small kits for customers to decarboxylate at home, too. 

“It’s about finding what you like. You have to look at the cannabinoids, the THC levels, and we’re here to help you with all of that. It’s all about discovering, learning, and then knowing your dose.” 

Undoubtedly, creating the Hudson Valley Jane brand has been a huge, exciting undertaking for both Ben and Stacey. For Ben, this project represents the “culmination” of his “bifurcated life of construction and growing.” 

“Putting 30 years of combined knowledge into one bucket – and thanks to our partnership, being able to fulfill that – how could I not be fulfilled?” he muses. “This is my life coming to its best use.” 

For Stacey, who didn’t have much knowledge of cannabis prior to creating Hudson Valley Jane, the most rewarding part has been continuing to learn about something. “Learning and being surrounded by people I care about and building something sustainable – what’s better than that? Getting to do all of this with them feels really satisfying.”

To learn more about Hudson Valley Jane, visit them online at hudsonvalleyjane.com, on Instagram @hudsonvalleyjane, or in their store at 544 Main Street, Beacon, NY 12508.