How would you feel if you sold your home and used your father’s retirement savings to start a business, only to lose it all after years of grueling work?
For Rebecca and Bjorn Hartman, the co-owners of a legal weed farm in Yelm, the answer is: ecstatic.
“The first few days after we decided we were done, we were just giddy, just happy to not be a slave to it anymore,” Rebecca Hartman said.
That’s the reality facing a growing number of small weed farm owners in Washington. They lined up by the thousands to get the coveted licenses to legally grow weed, but four years into Washington’s “green rush,” they’re finding it might be nearly impossible to actually turn a profit. Faced with the plummeting price of pot, the huge burden of complying with state regulations, and the competition with big farms that sell the majority of the state’s pot, small farms are starting to give up.
