Sisters of the Valley plans to ship 13,000 cannabis seeds to 1,000 customers

Perhaps by fate, The Sisters of the Valley — the nun-like cannabis porters from Central Valley, California — are shipping approximately 13,000 high-CBD cannabis seeds to 1,000 customers as souvenirs as part of a new program designed as a “thank you” to their customers Base.

The sisters are pulling a list of the last 1,000 customers who have bought from them from their store on February 1st, and each of them will receive a thank you note and a packet of cannabis seeds in the mail this spring. They expect to ship 500 in February and another 500 in March.

The Wee Bairn seed variety was “born out of adversity” as the sisters were at risk of having their crop withdrawn due to a sudden local law change that appeared to be affecting their farm. The sisters let the males live, seeded – and ended up with their own CBD-rich seed strain. The seeds are not guaranteed feminized, nor is anything else guaranteed, but customers report decent cannabinoid levels from the seeds.

“For a brief moment — in 2018 to 2019 — they made it illegal to grow on less than 20 acres,” sister Kate told the High Times. “So when they first opened up the hemp laws, they said, ‘Okay, but you have to have 30 acres.’ So here we were, and we’ve been in business for three to four years now, growing a big crop in our backyard every year — an acre farm, so we can’t grow more than an eighth of an acre outside. So there are not many plants.”

Sister Kate had the males planted – thinking they would be torn apart anyway. But their crops never became an issue, and the 20-acre law was dropped.

By this time, the sisters had unplannedly spawned their own proprietary cannabis strain. The Wee Bairn seeds were bred from plants that only had high CBD strains that had been bred with other cannabis strains – Charlotte’s Web, Suzy Q, Cherry Pie and Remedy to be precise.

Hemp and cannabis growers in California are already burdened with regulations and taxes that make doing business all but impossible. Adversity is nothing new to the sisters. For example, in 2016, the sisters fought the city of Merced to continue growing hemp.

The sisters have been giving away seeds with larger bundle purchases of their ointments and tinctures since 2019. Customers who grow the plant and have it tested report going from a THC:CBD ratio of 12:1 to a 1:1 that is as wonderful as it is perfect – what The Higher Path calls “The Golden Ratio”.

Souvenir Cannabis Seed Packets. Photo courtesy of Sisters of the Valley.

“It’s actually very interesting – the person who tested the flower 1:1 perfectly was a Catholic nun!” – Sister Kate

“It’s actually very interesting – the person who tested the flower 1:1 perfectly was a Catholic nun!” Sister Kate laughed. The sisters are of course in no way affiliated with the Catholic Church.

Before becoming Sister Kate, Christine Meeusen (her birth name) followed a doctor’s advice to use cannabis to treat menopausal symptoms.

“We’re not in the seed business,” says Sister Kate. “We never saw fit to sell them for very much but we did sell them for around $3-4/seed and packaged them in bundles. We gave them away in bundles in products. Now we have so many, and with COVID scaring some people, we thought it would be a good idea – just get the seeds out of the house and say thank you to our customers.”

She explained the benefits of high-CBD and high-THC strains, which often need to work together synergistically. “We always look for the 10:1 or 12:1 ratio of CBD to THC as that is best for our products. But neurologists and people dealing with diseases prefer the 1:1 ratio,” Sister Kate said.

To make $1 million in sales in a year, the sisters need a thousand customers spending $100 a year at the Sisters of the Valley store—that’s the model she hopes to use to build other sororities. “This is our thank you to the 1,000 customers who shop with us each year,” she said.

“We don’t ship internationally,” Sister Sophia said, “because firstly there won’t be many of them as our international sales have fallen from 20 percent to three percent during COVID. Second, we don’t want to get anyone in trouble. We will reach out to those international customers and see if they would like us to send them to them before we do that.”

Sister Quinn added, “We have a strong calling to be the Johnny Appleseed of the hemp industry and to share our seeds. If we could sell them we could make a million dollars, but the seeds were a gift from the goddess to us and we have to pass them on to the people.”

Sister Quinn and her other sisters would take seeds with them on bike rides to scatter along the canals and let nature take its course, but she said they never saw plants sprout. “I suspect that the surrounding Mennonite farmers pull them as soon as they are recognizable. Or maybe the dogs will eat them,” Nurse Quinn said. “Sending them out to customers who already appreciate the drug is a safer way of knowing those seeds are being nurtured.”