F.A.Q.

Midori's Garden is an Outdoor Tier 1-2 cannabis cultivation and manufacturing company located in Great Barrington, MA.

Midori's Garden is a Social Equity business (as defined by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission). It is also a disability-, minority- and woman-owned business. 

Gathered Waters is what we call our family farm and homestead. It is a 17-acre active farm and year-round residence. Midori's garden will operate from there on a small ½ acre subplot.

Midori's Garden and Gathered Waters are located in Great Barrington, MA. 

Midori's Garden intends to sell wholesale smokeable flower, herbal tinctures and clones to licensed dispensaries. 

Midori's Garden products will be available for retail purchase at Divine in Egremont, MA. 

Mickey Maki is the sole owner of Midori's Garden.  

Her experience with cannabis includes commercial cultivation as a seasonal employee for a local cannabis cultivation company as well as indoor and outdoor home growing. She is also a beginning farmer for her family farm, Gathered Waters.

Other relevant education and experience include an undergraduate Accounting degree, an MBA from Harvard Business School, a few years working in management consulting, and general management and operations experience in the nonprofit sector. 

Mickey is also a member of the Black community, which has been incredibly harmed by unjust cannabis policies, yet continues to be excluded from the legal cannabis industry.

Mickey's life partner, Joe is a Western Massachusetts native. 

We are raising our family here.

The dimensions of the fence-in area are 230' x 93'.  This is ~1/2 acre. 

All business operations occur within this site.

The Gathered Waters property is 17-acres. The Midori's Garden site within the Gathered Waters property is over 500 feet away from Route 7 and ~400 feet from the closest abutter. 

Due to tree coverage and positioning of our house and other structure, the site is not visible from the road or abutters.

Yes. The existing driveway and site has adequate vehicle access.

There are no permanent/permitted structures needed.

The current site plan includes two high tunnels (30' x 96') for cultivation, a 10' x 12' Processing Shed, a 10' x 12' Bathroom/Office Shed, a 20' storage container, a 20' container freezer, and a 40' drying container.

Cultivation occurs inside the high tunnels. 

The outdoor growing season is May - October.  Midori's Garden has opted for a single growing season to have the lowest environmental impact possible. By only growing during the natural growing season, it avoids the huge amount of energy needed to provide heat and light during the winter months.

Yes. 

No supplementing lighting will be used past twilight. The site itself is not visible from other properties or the road.

Based on the plant life cycle, there is a maximum of 20-25 days per year where there is potential for odor to reach neighboring properties. Within this time frame, the odor will likely only be a concern during the warm, sunny parts of the day and if the wind is blowing eastward. Any odor that escapes high tunnels would have to travel several hundred feet, around multiple windbreaks to reach anyone outside our property. As a result, odor-related disturbances to our abutters should be extremely minimal.

If you'd like to learn more about Midori's Garden's odor mitigation strategy, feel free to contact Mickey at info@midorisgarden.com. 

Small batch processing occurs in an insulated 20' x 8' container. 

Processing for tinctures involves freezing the harvested plant, then processing it into Full Extract Cannabis Oil using a tabletop extraction device, before further mixing it with other ingredients to produce the end product, then packaging. The smokeable process involves drying, curing the harvested plant, trimming, and packaging. 

Of course, laboratory testing occurs when appropriate to comply with all applicable regulations.

The property has a 32kW solar system which will allow Midori's Garden to be 100% sun and solar powered. 

Mickey has communicated with the Great Barrington Water Department to ensure that potential water consumption does not exceed any limits.

The Midori's Garden irrigation approach will significantly reduce city water consumption by harvesting rainwater from the structures. This has the added benefit of offsetting any water displacement caused by high tunnels.

Yes. The property is zoned as Light Industry, the most suitable zoning for cannabis cultivation.

The Midori's Garden site plan meets all Special Permit requirements (pending review and approval by the Selectboard and the Board of Health). The site meets all buffer requirements, including setbacks from property lines, wetlands buffer, distance from schools, etc.

Security plans comply with local and state requirements; it is also a discreet site.

The goal is to be licensed in time for the May 2024 growing cycle.

When operations commence, Mickey will be the only full-time worker, with the potential for seasonal assistance. 

At full scale, Midori's Garden will employ five full-time workers.

Mickey plans to add a second high tunnel in Spring 2025. At this time, Midori's Garden will be considered a Tier 2 cultivation company due to the increase in growing space. Employees will be hired to take on this additional work.

Mickey feels very strongly about equity and living our values. As a Black Woman-owned company based in the hometown of visionary W.E.B. DuBois, she felt it is important to practice equity, not just talk about it.  She observed that DuBois was correct about the inequity that happens within all industries under capitalism, including the cannabis industry. 

Mickey is of the opinion that "equity for me, but not for we" is pointless. Sure, it's great to have more diverse capitalists, but if we continue to exploit workers just the same, is that really equity? Our family certainly doesn't think so.  As liberated Black people, we cannot forget the pain and harm that occurs when capitalism doesn't serve us.  When we have our chance, we must do better, for "I am because we are." 

This business is designed without external investors, silent owners, or costly facilities that could make treating and paying people equitably more difficult. We have no interest in exploiting as we feel we have been exploited. Our aim is to do good by being good to people. 

Here are the goals of our Positive Impact Plan (aka The Worker Empowered Business Plan or W.E.B. Plan):

1. Living wages are the minimum: Based on the MIT Living Wage Calculator, $28.73 per hour is the living wage for Berkshire County for a family of two working adults with two children. We must pay people a living wage so they can afford to live and work here. This is ~$10/hour more than the current market rate for cultivation workers. 

2. Labor Peace Agreement: We are currently in touch with the United Food and Commerical Workers Labor Union to ensure a Labor Peace Agreement is in place for the first employee. We believe we are collectively better off with unions. 

3. Worker-Owned Cooperative Incubation: Upon a successful business, which means we are Tier 2 with five employees and profits, we will scale our equitable success by incubating a worker-owned cooperative. This means we will use our business model to form a sister business that is structured as a worker-owned cooperative. 

Midori's Garden is eager to be a model for equity in the cannabis industry!