The Bohemian Chemist
Herbal Apothecary & In-House Sungrown Cannabis Line Now Open at The Madrones
by Jim Roberts • photos by Nik Zvolensky
published in Word of Mouth magazine, September 1, 2021
I arrived in the cannabis business somewhat unwillingly when my 90-year-old mother, Rosemary, informed me she didn’t think she could continue working in her cannabis garden. My initial thought was, “Ok, let’s figure out something else we can do in that space.” I soon realized that what Mother meant was that, although she couldn’t work in the garden, she expected the cannabis cultivation to continue, intending for me to take over a tradition she had started years prior.
Of course, I had been involved in the past with harvests, but I already had two properties with multiple businesses that kept me very busy most of the year. Taking on a cannabis business had not been part of my plans. At the time, the market was transitioning to a legal one with the passing of Proposition 64. All the prior cultivation at Sugar Hill Farm had been under a medical use program, as my mom suffers from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Cannabis provided an alternate way for her to deal with pain and inflammation. Rosemary is a lifelong gardener with a gift for nurturing plants into the best versions of themselves, and I believe her cannabis ointment far surpassed other medicinal lines on the market. After much thought, I decided to enter the emerging legal cannabis market, adding farmer to the collection of hats I wear daily and discovering my new passion project.
The name Sugar Hill Farm came from Rosemary’s childhood nickname, “Sugar.” A maverick in spirit, she grew up in a farming family in the Deep South, one of 14 kids who struggled from harvest to harvest to keep the family fed and clothed. At 15, she ran away from home and never looked back. A family in Miami took her in, allowing her to pursue a career in modeling and show business. She headlined in nightclubs, helped open the first television station in Cuba, and ventured to California to compete in the Miss Universe pageant as Miss Florida.
