It’s a big weekend for Tom Lauerman, one of Clark County’s most fascinating and prominent marijuana advocates.

Not only is Farmer Tom the subject of a Sunday Business section centerpiece on marijuana tourism (stay tuned for that), he’s also making his first ever appearance speaking on the main stage at Seattle’s Hempfest.

For anyone interested in attending, you can see Farmer Tom there at 2:35 p.m. on Sunday. As far as I’ve heard, his spiel will mostly detail what it’s like to be an organic medical marijuana farmer in the most interesting time in the drug’s history.

Speaking of farming, Farmer Tom is also known for growing a wide array of organic vegetables. This week, he entered a huge bundle of his finest crops in the Clark County Fair. The list includes beets, broccoli, cucumbers, chard, tomatoes, onions and all sorts of other yummy stuff your parents had to force feed you as a kid.

The results? Seventeen blue ribbons and a Judge’s Choice award. Impressive work, Farmer Tom.

On an interesting side note, I also learned this week that Vancouver-based microbrewer Heathen Brewing is preparing to release a beer named in Farmer Tom’s honor sometime this summer or fall. It’ll be called Farmer Tom’s Super Dank IPA, appropriately named, of course.

I don’t have the release date yet, so don’t bother hassling me about it. Just stay tuned.

For a fun little preview, take a look here at the centerpiece of that label. The sides, which presumably will give you a little summary of Farmer Tom’s backstory, aren’t finished yet, so I’ve cropped those out.

Perhaps the most exciting recent news for Farmer Tom, though, happened earlier this week, when he hosted a group of federal safety agents from an branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In case you haven’t heard, Farmer Tom is working on putting together a safety manual for the medical marijuana industry. We’ll have more on that as the process goes along.

For Farmer Tom and his chill band of friends and colleagues, the meeting was a milestone in the industry’s relationship with the federal government. Instead of showing up to enforce the federal ban on marijuana, the agents came to listen and learn about the product and the people behind it.

Josh Miller, an attorney and friend of Farmer Tom’s, was especially stricken by a moment where he found himself teaching the agents how to roll a joint. Now, that was a first.

– Justin Runquist