The Ecology of Good Weed
In high school, Daniel Stein built a solar-powered car and drove it across the country. “I got to see the possibility of doing something with my own hands and seeing the success of taking action for what you believe in,” he says, some 30 years later. It’s a slow winter day on the farm as a bearded Stein prepares seeds for the planting season. Soon he will be donning a straw hat, a clean shave, and a T-shirt, most likely swag from his or neighboring farms, as he works the land.
Today Stein and his wife Taylor Thornton operate an award-winning homestead called Briceland Forest Farm. The couple and their two young sons live in southern Humboldt—one of a triad of counties, alongside Mendocino and Trinity, that comprise the Emerald Triangle. This Northern California sprawl of coast, cliffs, and woods is world famous for its cannabis.
Indeed, cannabis is Stein’s main cash crop, enabling him to diversify Briceland’s output, growing a variety of vegetables for local restaurants and farmers’ markets. The farm is grounded in the values of “regenerative farming”—“no till,” “living soil”—which lay the foundation for Stein’s mission: to remediate the Earth and sustainably grow food, medicine, and a good high.
Like many in the Triangle, Stein is a second-generation farmer, tending a 5,000-square-foot plot inherited from his parents—hippies who bought the
