See Omaha Farms' Indoor Cannabis-Growing Facility

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Sunday, October 30, 2016 at 7:20 p.m.

Ray Stern The propagation room: This is where the "mothers" live a life of ease, called on from time to time to provide fresh clippings to keep particular genetic strains as pure as possible. 1/23

Ray Stern Tubes of controlled air and LEP (Light Emitting Plasma) light sources that move slowly on tracks attempt to mimic a natural environment. Using clippings from various desired strains, Omaha Farms plants 850 plants a day that will produce THC-laden buds to process in about eight weeks. 2/23

Ray Stern Employees came up with the name of the farms — but what it means is, for now, a company secret. 3/23

Ray Stern "The girls," as employees call the all-female marijuana plants, begin to flower (bud). 4/23

Ray Stern As marijuana matures, it creates resin-bearing, crystal-like trichomes that contain THC, cannabidiol, and other cannabinoids that give Cannabis sativa its unique psychoactive properties. 5/23

Ray Stern Nearly ready for harvest, trichome-bearing buds become a dominant feature of the mature plant. 6/23

Ray Stern Some of the strains grown at Omaha Farms. 7/23

Ray Stern A few weeks' worth of effort by the "girls" and their caretakers shows big results. 8/23

Ray Stern "Wonder Woman," one of the more highly touted strains at the cultivation facility. 9/23

Ray Stern A worker trims buds with a careful hand. Asked about the goal of the trimming process, a worker replies, "To make it prettier." 10/23

Ray Stern Sitting on mesh screens, buds dry in a room that is monitored to provide the desired moisture content in the finished products. The farms processes moisture-laden "wet" buds to make concentrates for its confection arm, while buds for smoking are finished when they achieve a "stable" moisture content that is too low to encourage mildew or mold in its packaging, but high enough to keep it fresh. 11/23

Ray Stern A bin full of finished buds, ready for shipping. 12/23

Ray Stern Dried, manicured buds ready for shipping to local medical-marijuana dispensaries. 13/23

Ray Stern Each bin of prepared buds weighs about seven pounds. 14/23

Ray Stern Omaha Farms uses a more-expensive CO2-based system, rather than butane-based, to extract the resin in marijuana for concentrates. The machines compress buds at 50,000 psi, separating the trichromes and their resin from the bulk plant matter. Raw hash oil comes out of the valves at bottom of the two large, silver tubes at right. 15/23

Ray Stern Vape cartridges are loaded with hash oil in the facility's kitchen and concentrates-processing room. 16/23

Ray Stern Made with with nothing but marijuana and ice, this batch of hashish is ready for infusion into the company's Kiva chocolate bars. 17/23

Ray Stern Kiva Bar wrappers advertise products with 45 milligrams of active THC. 18/23

Ray Stern The Kiva "Terra" beans, packing coffee and five milligrams of THC into each chocolate pellet. 19/23

Ray Stern Adakai Holdings, the parent company of Omaha Farms and Monarch dispensary, hopes its high-quality brand of marijuana, Huxton, will attract a loyal following. 20/23

Ray Stern Preparing pre-rolled joints in a state-legal, multi-million-dollar medical-marijuana facility. 21/23

Ray Stern The medical-marijuana business isn't just about growing and selling marijuana — marketing and branding of the dispensary and the strains it sells are also important aspects of Omaha Farms. 22/23

Ray Stern Dustin Johnson co-founded Adakai Holdings and Monarch with partners including his father, real-estate professional Mike Johnson, and Mike Smith, owner of the development firms Jokake Companies. 23/23

See Omaha Farms' Indoor Cannabis-Growing Facility

Tucked away in a former warehouse in southeast metro Phoenix, a sophisticated medical-marijuana cultivation and processing center hums along every day with the help of several dozen workers and experts in agriculture and business.

Legal under Arizona law, but illegal under federal law, Omaha Farms plants 850 marijuana plants a day, every day. Every four days, workers harvest finished plants and turn them into cannabis products found at its main outlet, Monarch dispensary in Scottsdale, and 15 other Arizona dispensaries. These products include vape cartridges full of hash oil, Kiva brand infused confections, and of course, pounds of high-quality marijuana buds.

Come on a tour with New Times and learn more about one of the local businesses turning once-forbidden plants into medicine for about 100,000 qualified Arizona patients — and also turning them into money for a group of risk-taking entrepreneurs.

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