By James Bridges
I was finally able to make a trip over to witness the portrayal of supertalent and smell the flowers cultivated by Rams Head Cannabis.
Rams Head Cannabis is the brainchild of Richard Yarber and veteran musicians, who are part of the Nu-metal group, Hollywood Undead, Jorel Decker and George Ragan. Rams Head prides itself on cultivating “unique and hard hitting strains that are difficult to find”.
I made my way to one of the facilities. I was finally going to witness the creation of something that has kicked my ass once or twice, as any ram should. I was excited to say the least.
As we entered the building we were greeted by Richard. Richard instantly came across as someone that was well organized and goal oriented. This was not a game for him and his people. This was a truly fantastic facility that was designed and built from the ground up by the people that were utilizing it to create the magic which is Rams Head.
“My partner and I just hit it off instantly.” Richard was describing his relationship. “He’s very clean and OCD like me. We pick up each other’s slack and it’s like, perfect. He has more growing knowledge and education in his background than I do. I come from the construction world. I’ve had a concrete business for 20 years of my life. So I’m the building and he’s the brains on the growing. So us two put together is just, you know, we have it all right there. So it helps out.”
I couldn’t help but notice the cleanliness of the place as we walked down the first hallway. My face must have spilled the beans.
“Anna actually is our general manager here.” Richard spoke quietly, yet with certainty in his eyes and voice. “She creates cleaning schedules too. She makes everything for everybody. So when you walk in this building, something gets done every day. The floors are mopped or swept to pick up as much as possible with as many flowers moving around. But yeah. It has become an everyday activity.”
“Me, myself, I’m pretty OCD. So, I always like everything to be perfect on the spot.”
I compared my reaction to the organization to driving by someones house with an open garage. You kind of get a feel for what kind of person they are just by peaking in. “Just like a garage, you go to my house, it’s the same way.” Richard understood my train of thought. “I want you to walk in and respect the grow. I want you to respect the people who work here, the team. They keep it clean. I believe that if you walk into a clean facility, you’re gonna respect it more.”
“You respect everything about the plant. I understand this too. It’s not just people getting high. This is medicine. Our main focus is medical and that requires a clean facility. So we try to keep it as clean as possible. But it’s hard.
Over the last several months we have all either participated or witnessed, and some have properly navigated through, somewhat of a slow moving market. This has essentially affected everyone in the cannabis industry.
“We see it still moving slowly. It’s moving up a little, I think now with metric in place hopefully by winter, the market will boost back up. It’s still plateauing. A lot of licenses are being taken away. A lot of growers are being sold. So I think I’ll give it four to six months. It’ll be back to normal. We hope it will be.” Richard turned a corner onto the next room.
As we walked Richard talked about things that exposed his high integrity and good intentions. He spoke about Ramshead being extremely conscious of what occurs inside of that building. They know exactly what is going in and out of the doors. He said they use zero “plant growth regulators” or PGR’s. He would even go as far as sacrificing some of the yield in order to stay true to the cleanliness of the plant.
Richard was very happy and proud to talk about their limited use of strains. They are not in this industry to become the “weedmart” of Oklahoma. They are, as they should be, very proud of the hard work and dedication by offering a select few strains and working with only some of the best growers in the world.
One of their most sought after strains, and award winning, is Tokyo Snow. Ramshead has been working on perfecting this strain, which is unique to Ramhead, utilizing 3 years of research and development. Ramshead’s cultivation process of this strain is unique and rare.
The group have decided to ride the positive pathway of which the Tokyo Snow strain has taken them and are currently developing a new and improved, if that were possible, strain called Tokyo Mints. This is a cross between Kush Mints and Tokyo Snow. The team should have this in full rotation sometime in 2023.
“We’re trying to focus on the brand now.” Richard shifted gears. “We wanted to wait until now. You’re seeing good flower. We wanted to wait until we had the right strains, the right setup, then we’ll push the brand. So that’s what we are doing now. So far, that’s a long haul, but it was worth it. It’s smart because there’s so many people that think they need to get the weed out fast. Sometimes it’s necessary because of finances, but if you wait and build slowly there is a good foundation to grow from.”
“It took a while, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of failures, but it made it to what it is today. So it’s perfect. OK. That’s what we want out of it. Yeah.”
Overall I was extremely pleased with my visit. The design of the space was laid out perfectly for good flow from start to finish. I could sense the symbiotic trust flowing from the plant to the cultivation team. It was a well oiled and smooth running machine which savored the integrity of the plant. I was happy.
I asked Richard if he felt the same. “Yeah”. Richard smiled. “This has definitely been a long struggle, a lot of stress, but we’ve stuck in there trying to grow the brand. So everything we’ve got, like, we try to work out every day, but for the long haul, it’ll be worth it in the end. So yeah, definitely. I’m happy.
