Herbal Apothecary & In-House Sungrown Cannabis Line Now Open at The Madrones

by Jim Roberts • photos by Nik Zvolensky

I arrived in the cannabis business somewhat unwillingly when my 90-year-old mother, Rosemary, informed me she didn’t think she could continue working in her cannabis garden. My initial thought was, “Ok, let’s figure out something else we can do in that space.” I soon realized that what Mother meant was that, although she couldn’t work in the garden, she expected the cannabis cultivation to continue, intending for me to take over a tradition she had started years prior.

Of course, I had been involved in the past with harvests, but I already had two properties with multiple businesses that kept me very busy most of the year. Taking on a cannabis business had not been part of my plans. At the time, the market was transitioning to a legal one with the passing of Proposition 64. All the prior cultivation at Sugar Hill Farm had been under a medical use program, as my mom suffers from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Cannabis provided an alternate way for her to deal with pain and inflammation. Rosemary is a lifelong gardener with a gift for nurturing plants into the best versions of themselves, and I believe her cannabis ointment far surpassed other medicinal lines on the market. After much thought, I decided to enter the emerging legal cannabis market, adding farmer to the collection of hats I wear daily and discovering my new passion project.

The name Sugar Hill Farm came from Rosemary’s childhood nickname, “Sugar.” A maverick in spirit, she grew up in a farming family in the Deep South, one of 14 kids who struggled from harvest to harvest to keep the family fed and clothed. At 15, she ran away from home and never looked back. A family in Miami took her in, allowing her to pursue a career in modeling and show business. She headlined in nightclubs, helped open the first television station in Cuba, and ventured to California to compete in the Miss Universe pageant as Miss Florida.

Rosemary met my father while in California. He worked in the restaurant business and, after they married, her attention soon turned to caring for their growing family. I remember as a child her passion for gardening. Any free moment she would be outside, tending to our vegetable garden, composting, and working the grounds of the old home my parents purchased back in the 1960s. She was always game for growing something new—including the cannabis plants that my brother and I urged her to grow when we were just out of high school. Of course, thanks to her talents, they were the biggest plants I have ever seen. Years later, settled in Anderson Valley and at retirement age, Rosemary created Sugar Hill Farm.

The farm is just five acres in the town of Philo, and it sits on a hill overlooking the long sweep of valley that stretches towards the ocean. We have shade gardens with tree-sized rhododendrons, an orchard, over 500 rose bushes, peonies and dahlias, sweeping perennial borders, and a 5,000 square foot state-licensed cannabis garden. My partner, Brian, and I decided to build a home on the property in 2015 so we could be closer to Rosemary as she ages in place. At the time, I was in the process of converting my home and design business of 25 years to what is now The Madrones, a Mediterranean complex with three tasting rooms, a shop, guest quarters, and a restaurant. After designing and opening this public space, I was ready for a new project, a place we could call our forever home.

We took inspiration from salvaged building materials, appreciating their sense of history and integrating them into the construction. I’ve always enjoyed combining the best of old and new in my designs, an approach I used when creating The Madrones and then again at the adjacent Brambles property after Brian purchased it a few years later. At Sugar Hill Farm, we designed and built a stone house with a lookout tower and expansive windows to soak in the views of vineyards, old growth redwoods, and rolling hills. It took five years of building and countless trips in our moving van to pick up windows, doors, appliances, artifacts, and iron rails from various junkyards and salvage companies. This is now home for us, the place where each passing season brings its own routine and list of chores that need tending. For those that live in the country on a ranch or farm, the months and seasons set the markers of your day, motivating you every morning to get up and head outside for another day of work.

After settling in at Sugar Hill Farm, we continued the cultivation of cannabis that Rosemary had started years earlier. We maintained some of her best practices, amending the native soil every year with garden compost, including manure as well as organic supplements and fertilizers. Thankfully I have never needed to spray a crop for pests, and I can remember only one year when we brought in ladybugs to combat an aphid problem. Through trial and error, we have learned which cultivars grow best at our particular location and which to avoid. We prefer growing from seed over planting clones, and we use a jewelers loupe daily during harvest season to check the plants’ trichomes (resin) for ripeness.

The less satisfying work of cannabis farming is navigating state and local regulations. I have never come across anything as difficult and restrictive in all my years of doing business. The state does not classify cannabis cultivation as agriculture—instead it is considered a commercial endeavor with strict environmental oversight and regulations. For our licensing, we have to be reviewed by Fish and Wildlife, register with the state water board to prove our water source and monitor annual usage, and meet CEQA requirements for environmental impacts. No other crop in our state is required to do this. Add to that an unstable market and mind-numbing compliance issues, and the result is that small legacy farmers in our county are struggling for survival. They are also challenged by the rapid vertical integration of large cannabis companies that now cultivate their own plants to supply their product lines. We came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that we needed to rethink our path forward to avoid a possible extinction event.

It took many lengthy discussions, but we ultimately decided that our next venture should be a cannabis retail location at The Madrones. We had a space that was open and, with three wine tasting rooms on the property, we wanted to offer something different to our guests and the community as a whole. We followed a similar format used by many of the small production wineries in Anderson Valley who focus on “Estate Grown Grapes,” wine clubs, and the terroir of a specific appellation. We decided to specialize in local, sungrown flower from our farm as well as other small family farms, provided they follow our best practices and maintain high quality standards. This approach allows us to support other legacy farmers in the area.

By creating our own product line and a retail location, we are able to offer our premium cannabis products locally, as well as in other retail locations throughout California. Our state micro-business license allows us the flexibility of retail sales, packaging, and manufacturing, as well as wholesale distribution. Once the local regulations were wrangled and the business plan in place, we were finally able to get back to working on the fun parts of our new venture.

When thinking through the brand, I pushed past the over-used and utterly expected references to the 1960s and looked further back to the roaring 20s—a time when people were free spirited and unconventional, and the world held hope. The Bohemian Chemist brand was born, inspired by the free thinkers of that time with whom I have always felt a connection. I hired a London-based graphic designer to help us with the Art Deco feel and a package designer out of Southern California to work with me on the design vision. For the retail space, we purchased the vintage interiors of a pharmacy from Hungary that had been in the same family since 1910. We extended this feel of yesteryear into the adjacent hotel gift shop and guest check-in, using old fashioned, polished wood cabinetry purchased at a Philadelphia auction house and adding an ornate brass vintage cash register on top of the check-in counter for the final flourish.

We call The Bohemian Chemist our “herbal apothecary,” and besides our house brand, we carry several other Anderson Valley product lines, including edibles, topicals, and other remedies to soothe what may ail the weary visitor. We also created a treatment room where we offer facials and massages from licensed technicians. Future plans include consultation services from cannabis health practitioners for customers seeking wellness benefits from the plant.

As California, our county, and many other parts of the country wrestle with how to build this newly legal sector, the reality on the ground is, to put it mildly, messy. Creating a new business in any field is a highly demanding undertaking, and when the rats’ nest of regulations are layered on top, it can lead to frustration and, on the worst days, despair. It’s in those moments I take a walk out to the garden as the sun sets over the hills. I think on the footloose love of fun that typified the 20s and hope that our efforts help customers tap into some of that joie de vivre. And I reflect on the courage and tenaciousness that led Sugar to forge her own path, bringing us to this beautiful spot where we can walk among the roses and peonies, the fruit trees and perennials, and the leafy cannabis plants, encouraging them all to grow into the best versions of themselves.

The Bohemian Chemist
Located in The Madrones
9000 Hwy 128, Philo, CA 95466
(707) 895-2955 | TheBohemianChemist.com

Open Thu - Mon, 10am - 7pm & Wed, 11am – 5pm.
Closed Tuesdays.