Business partners James Cassidy and Eric Jubeck combine their interests and talents for CBD and vegetable ventures
During their ‘day jobs’, educators Eric Jubeck and James Cassidy work at the School District of Monroe, in Green County Wisconsin. In 2019, they teamed up to learn to grow hemp plants and other garden products they manage on the ten acre plot owned by James and his wife Erin.
“I was doing landscaping work in the summer,” explains James, “and my body was saying ‘you need to be done with that.’” James, a US Army veteran, connected with a fellow veteran who was starting up what would become the South Central Wisconsin Hemp Co-op.
“He’d been out here, and said, ‘hey we’re starting this hemp co-op – you should grow hemp.’ So I was like, sure I’m looking for something new to do. So I got in early on the founding of the co-op, and I mentioned it to Eric, that I was thinking of doing this, and without hesitation, he’s like, ‘I’m in – I want in.’”
Eric agrees, stating, “When [my wife Malika and I] got our house, it has a big enough backyard for a kitchen garden and so every year the goal was to learn two or three new vegetables to grow. Now I’m at the point where there’s not really new ones to grow, so when James came and asked if I was interested, I said, great – let’s try hemp – that’s something that I don’t have any experience with, I’m definitely intrigued.”
“So,” says James, ‘we created our LLC, and this is our fourth year.”
Early encounters and shared interests: from the Caribbean to Wisconsin
It didn’t start with hemp. The collaboration which brought together their varied backgrounds and expertise began years ago when they individually discovered their passions for agriculture and growing plants.
Eric explains, “My background in agriculture is – I always grew up having a garden as a kid. When I was in college, I lived in a cool house where I brought in a bunch of soil and had just a fun backyard garden. When I moved to Phoenix, you can garden and you can farm in Phoenix, but it’s just really different, and I just really didn’t have the setup, so I really missed it.”
Eric later joined the Peace Corps and accepted an assignment in the Caribbean.
“When I moved to the Caribbean, it was perfect. A few things struggle to grow there but the reality of it is you can grow anything you want. And I had a really cool house that I rented, and it had pineapple and mango trees, and pomegranate, and just fun different tropical plants you could grow. So it just really broadened the scale of fruits and vegetables and how growing works compared to the climate that we’re used to.”
“I don’t care what kind of plant it is, it takes two to three seasons to understand the growing of it, and once you get there, you really know what you’re doing.” – Eric Jubeck
Although he didn’t grow up on a farm, James’ parents had been dairy farmers, and both sides of his family had farming backgrounds. As a child he would go and stay with an aunt and uncle on their dairy farm, and later helped intermittently after high school and when he got out of the Army, and during college.
“I love to learn,” he says, “and I always knew that I wanted to farm as a kid.”
James and Eric actually first encountered each other in college, when James sublet a room in a house where Eric was also living. James wasn’t involved in gardening then, but in the backyard of that rental house, he says, “I watched Eric put together his first garden.”
He and Eric eventually both also ended up working at Monroe High School, James as a social studies teacher and Eric as a special education teacher, and became friends at work.
It wasn’t until James and his wife purchased their 10-acre property thirteen years ago that he says, “I finally put some seeds in the ground. The only growing out here before we started growing hemp was just a family garden. I always knew [the property] had the potential to produce, and it was always about providing clean food to family and friends. I decided – if I’m going to grow food, I’m going to grow food that is as clean as possible.”
“I learned a lot from co-op members – it’s all about the health of the soil, good healthy soil. Using nature as it is intended, as our predecessors
did.” – James Cassidy
Eric says, “I bring more of the background of how plants work and how things grow. I think I bring knowledge of what would make sense for our busy schedules, and our timelines in the summer, like what crops we want to grow that would make the most sense. And James, he’s just such a hard worker and has the desire and vision to do things. James has been a huge player in the Co-op. So he has been involved in that process the whole way around.”
The support of South Central Wisconsin Hemp Co-op has been vital to their venture. James shares, “I learned a lot from co-op members – it’s all about the health of the soil, good healthy soil. Using nature as it is intended, as our predecessors did.”
New venture, new possibilities for health benefits
Besides finding a unique plant to grow, both men were intrigued by the possibilities of hemp and the purported therapeutic effects of CBD products.
Eric says, “You can just see the whole alternative medicine side of things really taking off, and just that it was opening up to Wisconsin, it was definitely kind of a cool thing. If you can be in front of something, why not get in on it?”
He adds, “But I will say when it was first getting started, [and we were] looking at how to get a plant processed, it was a lot of work to figure out. It was kind of the wild west at the beginning of legal CBD products in Wisconsin.”
Public opinion was somewhat skeptical and even suspicious at the time Good Earth was becoming established, because CBD hemp does contain THC, a psychoactive chemical. In Wisconsin, however, legal CBD hemp contains a level of THC of only 0.3% or less.
Eric says, “I think it’s evolved. It’s interesting, because even some of the people that were first questioning or commenting or calling it ‘marijuana’ have surprisingly come around. Every day you’re hearing about new studies for what it’s used for. Like a new customer who was not on board initially, he commented that whatever traditional pharmaceutical he was taking was not good for his body, so he was looking for an alternative option. Well, three or four years ago, he would not have been willing to acknowledge that hemp would be good for that, and now he is. Of course it’s not a hundred percent, but it’s cool to see that there are more and more of those ‘converts.’ But I feel that the stigma is mostly gone.”
Eric uses it himself for sleep, and also sees some benefit from relieving inflammation in his knee and hands. He is quick to qualify that, however.
“My inflammation flares up when I have frozen pizza and three bock beers. What that does for the inflammation in me trumps what you’re going to get with CBD. Is CBD a miracle? Of course not, but if you’re making good lifestyle choices, it’s a good assistant for the things we are talking about. But when it comes to sleep, with a good dose of 30-40 milligrams I am more mellow before I go to bed, and then it will also help me stay asleep longer.”
One of their repeat customers takes it for anxiety, pain management, and anti-inflammation, and one of James’ family members takes it for arthritis in her fingers. As an advocate for bringing more awareness to veterans’ mental health challenges and suicide rates, James has known veterans who use it and see some relief from physical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Diving in
James says, “The first year we grew around 250 plants. The second year we grew closer to 500 plants – that turned out to be too many plants to manage with the garage we use for drying. The third year we grew just over 100 plants. We decided to scale back after year two of growing hemp. We scaled back on hemp but started to scale up a bit with veggies.”
Like any gardener or farmer would understand, the battle against the pests that attack crops is constant. As an organic farm, what they are allowed to use in the way of chemical control is limited.
“All plants like to live, but hemp plants are great at living.” – Eric Jubeck
As organic growers, James explains, “We have one OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) certified spray made of natural ingredients that we can use and it helps some.” But, he points out, “There are downsides to that too – if we spray and it rains shortly after, it will need to be repeated, or if it is too sunny, the spray can be degraded in that way too.”
Eric adds, “That first year we probably babied the plants too much, sprayed too much. We had some bugs that took over, and we were like, ‘how can we get rid of these?’ and then this year, yes they’ve been sprayed, but on the other side of the coin, we learned just how strong these plants are, how vibrant they are even if there are some issues with some bugs, they just know how to grow. They’re great growers. All plants like to live, but hemp plants are great at living.”
Learning about and living with some loss
With experience they have learned to let nature run its course and accept that with each crop, there will be some crop loss.
As an example, the hemp borer moth will repeat its assault three times a season. Each time it lands, it lays eggs, the worm burrows into the stems where it matures and turns into a moth, and the process repeats.
“We’ve actually found,” James says, “that the hemp heals itself and keeps going. “Where the worm has burrowed into flowers, the flowers will turn a rotten brown, but there are only 3 or 4 damaged buds and the rest are okay. We’ve learned that we will have a small percentage of loss, but not enough to affect the whole crop.”
“We’re learning how to fight nature with other elements of nature. We till as minimal as possible, and use cover crops like clover and rye to out-compete the weeds.”
The amaranth and sunflowers growing together this year are mostly ornamental, but it is a nod to the partners’ desire to continue to look at plants that are beneficial to their operation.
“We want companion plants that either deter harmful insects or attract beneficial ones,” James says.
Good Earth had just 46 hemp plants this year because of the surplus in product they had from past years. James states, “This is actually our smallest grow because we have so much sitting in storage. We grew this year just to try new things.”
With the South Central Wisconsin Co-op recently launching online sales, the result of a two-year project that is a leap forward for the co-op, James shares, “Our hemp co-op now has a little bit of wind in its sails.”
He adds, “The infrastructure needed for processing of CBD products is expensive, and until recently the co-op had used a plant in Waukesha. As the market became more saturated with products, processing plants began to put limits on their production, so the co-op transferred its processing to a plant near Hayward, Wisconsin. We will always subcontract [the processing] – it’s too expensive for the co-op to do it themselves.”
“The idea of organic is great, because as you learn more and more about plants, you learn how efficient they are at taking [nutrients] out of the soil.
So – wouldn’t you want the soil to be as healthy as possible?” – Eric Jubeck
Because Good Earth’s CBD products are certified organic, James states that they usually cost more than non-organic brands.
“Cheap is not always better when it comes to CBD,” he states. Citing a local convenience store that sells CBD, he points out that their products contain only 100 mg of CBD, where their co-op’s brand sells 1000 and 2000 mg products.
“It’s important to compare products,” he says, “because for about $20 more, the customer gets 900 mg more of CBD product.”
Eric says, “The idea of organic is great, because as you learn more and more about plants, you learn how efficient they are at taking [nutrients] out of the soil. So – wouldn’t you want the soil to be as healthy as possible?”
James adds, “The nutrients the plants use end up in the flowers and leaves of the plant which contain the CBD and other vital cannabinoids. These elements are what you are putting into your body.”
“Traditional agriculture looks at what is most efficient in the short term to get the most production, but in a perfect world, agriculture production would look at long term ramifications of practices and adjust methods to build soil health and reduce chemical uses that can have long-lasting effects in many ways.”
– James Cassidy
“There are opinions of organic food,” says James, “that it is a farce and there isn’t anything solid about it.”
“It’s really because they don’t know any better,” he states. On a personal level, James experienced “gut” issues about two years ago, which lab work revealed to be gluten and dairy intolerances. Once he had eliminated those foods from his diet, he says, “It cleared up about 75% of my problem, and solidified my understanding of getting back to eating clean food.”
On a larger scale, with what he has observed with conventional farming, he states he understands the need to feed the world’s population but advocates responsible practices to preserve resources as much as possible.
“Traditional agriculture looks at what is most efficient in the short term to get the most production, but in a perfect world,” James asserts, “agriculture production would look at long term ramifications of practices and adjust methods to build soil health and reduce chemical uses that can have long-lasting effects in many ways.”
Still, he says, “I’m liking what I see some large farms transitioning to.” An example he gives is a spreader that puts down cover crop seeds as the front of the combine harvests the crop. “It’s building soil – there’s less erosion.”
Eric adds, “And with that, you don’t really need a lot of acres of land to grow a lot of food, and you don’t have to be organic, but you’re doing it in a way that you’re smart with your soil and smart with your spacing and how you deal with weeds.” The Good Earth partners haven’t done any soil testing, but they supplement with composted horse manure.
Referring to the rye and clover that they use to help compete with weeds, Eric says, “So there’s things that are adding nutrients back to the soil, so that every year we just rotate that back in, to maximize the positive things in the soil. Also just basic [crop rotation] – if tomatoes are in a spot this year, then tomatoes won’t be back there for two to three years, so just always being smart about rotating through.
Expanding on to the next steps
Good Earth plans to continue to grow hemp, just on a smaller scale, and to investigate ways to refine how they grow it.
“We’d like to put up a greenhouse,” says James, “to try to grow CBD hemp to help control it from getting pollinated.” He explains that their CBD hemp plants need to be all female plants – if a male plant is present, it will make pollen which will then cause the plants to produce seeds.
Having seeds doesn’t ruin the plant, but he says, “The plants just won’t produce as much CBD.” Another reason, explains James, is that if there are seeds in smokable CBD products, it isn’t always aesthetically pleasing to the customer. “Some people just don’t like to see seeds in their CBD.”
This year, as they ventured into vegetable production on a larger scale, James says, “We also joined a different co-op last year called the Community Kitchen Co-op in Monticello (Wisconsin).”
Similar to other meal subscription services, this co-op’s model is to prepare meals that people can purchase from them.
James explains, “They do the same thing, only it’s from locally grown produce. So it’s getting back into buying local. We harvest our veggies, drive them eight minutes up the road to Monticello, drop them at the kitchen and they have workers that process them and then use them to make weekly meals. Then people buy weekly meal shares, and it’s enough food to feed four or five people. There’s pickup sites and they have a meal delivery option. So that’s what kind of pushed us to grow different kinds of veggies, knowing that they were going to buy most of them and we didn’t have to look for a way to sell them.”
Says Eric, “That’s what I’m kind of excited about expanding on. We’ve talked about the vegetables we want to get into – tomatoes, we did a lot of beets this year, with a fair amount of success – cabbage, cucumbers, squash and zucchini of different types. So that’s where we are with it.”
Eric continues to be intrigued by alternative methods of gardening, and how that can work for their partnership as well as other people, in sustainable and creative ways.
He explains, “There’s some stuff you can grow that takes up a tiny bit of space. Like, lettuce spinach and kale I just planted recently because if you time it right you can get a great fall harvest. And especially kale – if you plant kale now, and we get an early snow, you can take the snow off and still be able to use it and eat it.”
“One thing that I’m kind of interested in, when we were out East this summer, we saw a lot of front yards that had become less grass and more walkways that had indigenous plants and shrubbery that makes sense. Instead of just a sidewalk and path to your house, you’ve got a lot of neat things that are growing that are done in a way to minimize the amount of work you put into it, and you’re also not mowing. When you live out west you have to be thinking of these things because of the drought. As the climate begins to change, we talk about ways we can make small changes – because [a yard] isn’t a big change, not really. But it’s a change in thinking, too.”
For more information on Good Earth CBD Hemp and South Central Wisconsin Hemp Co-op, find them on the links below:
