Black Alpaca, a grower in Southwest Washington, recently came online and started selling some of his marijuana buds in Vancouver’s two stores.

The small company’s next products should be welcome news for those who’ve been waiting for edibles.

The grower, who asked if he could just go by his first name, Bill, because of some concerns about his neighborhood, hopes to introduce both an infused olive oil and food grade glycerin line of products to Vancouver’s stores as early as Monday, Oct. 20.

The olive oil is aimed at those who want to make their own edibles. You can put it on salad, bake it in brownies or use it pretty much any other way that you’d use olive oil. The containers will come with ten 10-gram portions and a pipette to measure them.

The glycerin base can be used in some vaporizer pens and is also food grade for those that want to cook with it, he said.

Bill started out growing medical marijuana for his wife, who had stage 4 breast cancer. She’s now in remission, he said. The couple have a two-acre farm with chickens, ducks, vegetables and two alpacas – hence the name.

He decided to get into I-502 growing as a way to keep his farm going.

“I’m all organic, no pesticides, I cure everything for 10 days, and I’ve gotten my CBD up to 2.25 percent in some of my blackberry Kush,” he said.

He plans to continue to sell flower along with the oils.

For extraction, he uses ethanol, which he evaporates and replaces with the oil or glycerin. Eventually he wants to use CO2, which he says is cleaner, but it’s too expensive right now for him to buy the equipment.

He plans to sell the products under the names Alpaca Oil and Alpaca Punch.

The farm has a tier 2 license, and Bill is working on an outdoor greenhouse area where he will eventually grow a wider selection of strains, especially those with somewhat higher CBD counts.

CBD is a component of marijuana that is said to help with pain and other problems, but doesn’t create the high that THC is known for.

Bill also uses natural fertilizers, including alpaca dung which is very nutrient rich.

“We’re just a little country farm,” Bill said. “We grow vegetables, we have chickens and ducks, and we grow, um, herbs.”

He’s invested everything he has in the I-502 part of his farm, and he’s hoping to make it into the black soon.

“This is one of the few opportunities to make a living all naturally on a small farm,” Bill said. “That’s something we’ve really gotten away from in the last 100 years, but I think this may help to bring it back.”

If you try Bill’s products, let us know what you think! We’d love to hear your comments.

Cheers,
-SueVo (sue.vorenberg@columbian.com)