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The modern face of farming in this region is changing. This is the final installment of a four-part series examining the evolution of agriculture and how it is changing rural and urban communities.
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Before the last federal election, the idea of openly growing in the field would have been dismissed as reefer madness – and illegal, too. But the Liberals won that contest, formed government, and their campaign promised to legalize this marijuana came to fruition this month.
The legislation has also been proposed for the first time in the Ottawa Valley.
Mark Spear, a 34-year-old Ottawa native who has worked in the cannabis industry since 2014, wants to convert a 225-acre horse and horse training farm near Burnstown, southeast of Renfrew, into a "canna-tourism" complex that would grow more than 100,000 cannabis plants by 2020, run workshops on how to grow and cook with marijuana, and allow visitors to relax at a pot-friendly spa.
It's an ambitious plan for Spear, who last November founded Burnstown Farms Cannabis Company.
Mark Spear, a 34-year-old Ottawa native who has worked in the cannabis industry since 2014, wants to convert a 225-acre farm near Burnstown into a "canna-tourism" complex that will grow over 100,000 cannabis plants outside by 2020.
Julie Oliver /
Postmedia
In April, $ 2.88 million – 24 million shares at a price of 12 cents per share – to purchase the property and sell it to manufacturers to produce, beverages and vaporizer cartridges, all of which are expected to be used in Canada by next year.
A further round of financing to raise $ 10 million to cover infrastructure and operating expenses will follow this fall.
He was enlisted the help of George Routhier, a Burnstown Farms board member who runs the Mallorytown, Ont., Cannabis consultancy Pipe Dreemz to handle the licensing paperwork.
Health Canada licensing for medical marijuana production will help Burnstown navigate the government's strict requirements, not the least of which involves security. (The farm will be outfitted with 24/7 video surveillance and surrounded by an eight-foot-tall, barbed-wire-covered-chain-link fence, and anyone entering the oil-distillation production area will need to have authorized access.)
Mark Spear, a 34-year-old Ottawa native who has worked in the cannabis industry since 2014, wants to convert a 225-acre farm near Burnstown into a 'canna-tourism' complex that will grow over 100,000 cannabis plants outside by 2020.
Julie Oliver /
Postmedia
Yet Spear says he can not imagine the federal government denying him a license for a farm that will run a green, cost-efficient, and insistent, profitable organic cannabis-oil-producing operation within its first year.
Burnstown Farms will be more environmentally friendly than marijuana growers, according to Spear, who was raised in Kinburn and now lives in the village of Ashton, southwest of Ottawa.
"We calculate that we're going to use 99 percent less electricity than an indoor facility, which is the equivalent of providing 11,000 Canadian homes with power over a year," he explains. "Our operating expenses will be 10 percent of a greenhouse operation, which uses dehumidification exhaust fans and, in some cases, air conditioning, while we will benefit from the sun at no cost."
Burnstown Farms' capital costs will be much lower, too, Spear adds.
"It costs a greenhouse about $ 100 per square foot to construct and $ 300 for an indoor operation," he says, adding that cannabis plants Burnstown Farms plans to grow three times bigger at 300 grams than what greenhouses produce, growing up on the farm.
READ: How to buy a pot in Ontario
A greenhouse will grow a crop; Burnstown will grow only one larger crop.
"We're going to be profitable in our first year," he says. "Currently, a gram of concentrate in the medical market sells for $ 100, and it takes anywhere from five to 10 grams of cannabis to make a gram of oil, so the margins are astoundingly high."
His optimism is based on growing marijuana trends in mature markets, such as in Colorado, where taking into account 2014.
Canadians will literally get a taste of what a different kind of beer will be available.
In August, Molson Coors Brewing Co. of Denver announced that its Canadian unit – Molson Coors Canada – will partner with Hydropothecary Corp. of Gatineau to develop non-alcoholic cannabis-infused beverages for the Canadian market.
Spear believed there will be more liquid-herb variations, along with cannabis you can eat (or hash brownies) or gold inhales through pre-loaded, cannabis-oil vape cartridges as startups producing these consumables begin popping up across Canada over the next 12 to 18 months.
"He wants to be a wholesale producer for some of these things."
Mark Spear, a 34-year-old Ottawa native who has worked in the cannabis industry since 2014, wants to convert a 225-acre farm near Burnstown into a "canna-tourism" complex that will grow over 100,000 cannabis plants outside by 2020.
Julie Oliver /
Postmedia
On that score, Burnstown Farms will be most successful from Canopy Growth Corp. of Smiths Falls, which, as of May, became the first cannabis-producing company on the New York Stock Exchange. Through its Tweed Inc. and its role in the medical-marijuana market, which is to place its product line (which includes cannabis oil) for recreational users.
Spear, who previously served as a gunner with the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery and received an advanced diploma in computer security from Fleming College in Peterborough, Ont., Worked for Tweed in various roles from 2014 to 2016, where he was involved in selecting plants , research-and-development experiments, and monitoring and maintaining growth and drying rooms.
He says that he knew he was back then that he could not do it, but he believes in Burnstown Farms' outdoor-grow approach will allow the company to carve out its own cost-affordable niche a cannabis market set to expand significantly.
And while Tweed opened a visitor center in Smiths Falls in August to highlight the town of Ontario, it has been hired by Hershey closed its plant nine years ago, Burnstown will also welcome guests to the farm.
There are plans to sell products made by manufacturers using Burnstown cannabis oil on the greenhouse. The participants will be able to visit the farm, attend seminars on growing and cooking with cannabis, and stay in the world of what would be Canada's first cannabis mbadage that will be offered mbadages using cannabis-infused oil and ganja yoga where participants draw vaporizer tokes before or during sessions.
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Spear, who is licensed to grow medical marijuana for personal pain management following a 2004 motorcycle accident, plans to hire 80 employees and starts cannabis-oil production as early as next year.
Initially, the goal is to grow 17,000 marijuana plants on 10 of the 60 tillable acres on the farm. But by the summer of 2020, Burnstown Farms plans to use 60 acres to generate more than 100,000 plants.
Other marijuana grow-ops
Canopy Growth, other companies are growing cannabis indoors or in greenhouses in the Ottawa Valley, among them:
• LiveWell Foods Canada Inc. has received 100 acres of greenery from the City of Ottawa.
• In August, Fleurish Cannabis Inc. received a Health Canada license to produce medical cannabis products for women at its 20,000 sq-ft. facility in Kemptville.
• CannabisCo, as a subsidiary of Nestlé coffee plant in Chesterville, located 60 kilometers southeast of Ottawa.
• Carleton Place-based Kolab Project, which is producing and selling marijuana for medical purposes.
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