Dispatches From the Funky Butte Ranch

 

The Dispatches From the Funky Butte Ranch Newsletter is free. However, if you’d like to support Doug’s powerful worldwide reportage, click here to make a suggested $1 to $10 annual contribution — much appreciated!”  

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AMERICAN HEMP FARMER Wins!
Doug Fine Doug Fine

AMERICAN HEMP FARMER Wins!

Doug Fine’s Debut Feature Film, AMERICAN HEMP FARMER, wins Best New Mexico Feature Documentary at the 24th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival

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The Bear Attack That Made Me A Hemp Farmer
Doug Fine Doug Fine

The Bear Attack That Made Me A Hemp Farmer

Six years ago, a bear fleeing a wildfire in our New Mexico backyard killed nearly all of my family’s goats in front of our eyes. It wasn’t the bear’s fault: he was a climate refugee. It was June of 2013, and drought had weakened the ponderosa pines and Douglas fir surrounding our remote Funky Butte Ranch. Beetles took advantage, and all of southern New Mexico was a tinderbox. Ho hum, just another climate event that until recently would have been called a “millennial” fire.

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True Homeowners Insurance
Doug Fine Doug Fine

True Homeowners Insurance

Just before equinox in 2011, I wrote the Dispatch From the Funky Butte Ranch that follows with tongue, I thought, pretty solidly in cheek. I mean, it was ripped from the personal headlines. I really had been denied homeowner’s insurance for like the fourth time in as many months, but mostly I was just joking around about the insane illusion of “insurance” in an vast, multi-dimensional universe.

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Hemp Ninja Training
Doug Fine Doug Fine

Hemp Ninja Training

When you go from consumer to producer (of anything), your units of measure change. I spent much of the past three years investigating the reemergence of hemp agriculture from Oregon to Slovenia.

But in 2016, I became a hemp farmer too.

Which meant my shopping list grew from sixteen ounce bottles of Nutiva hemp seed oil to rodent-proof storage bins for two tons of hemp seeds.

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Calling All Artisans
Doug Fine Doug Fine

Calling All Artisans

Here’s the deal: Hemp commerce is exploding. Cultivated acreage is increasing tenfold in the U.S. for the third straight year, and the worldwide hemp boom is on. This is, of course, wonderful, a sooner-than-expected realization of the blueprint put forth in Hemp Bound.

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We Won. Now Every Decision Comes Down to Climate
Doug Fine Doug Fine

We Won. Now Every Decision Comes Down to Climate

This Dispatch comes in the form of the guest column I was asked to write for the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD)’s summer newsletter. This venerable and august group comprises the folks from twenty-three countries who brought me across the Pond last year to deliver a United Nations address we had collaboratively crafted.

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Seven Hemp Farms. Two Continents. One Revived Industry
Doug Fine Doug Fine

Seven Hemp Farms. Two Continents. One Revived Industry

First Legal Hemp Harvest Update American Hemp Is On Its Way to Your Car Battery And Your Bookstore The first digital age domestic hemp crop is being harvested as I write. The subtle decrease in seismic activity currently puzzling Virginia geologists can be traced to Thomas Jefferson ceasing to spin in his grave for the first time in 77 years….

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HEMP BOUND Live
Doug Fine Doug Fine

HEMP BOUND Live

Thomas Jefferson’s Favorite Crop Is Back in American Soil — Today Read All About It “Hemp Bound is the best book of the year…Doug Fine has created a blueprint for the America of the future.” –Willie Nelson Since Hemp Bound was published just three weeks ago, four more states have legalized hemp cultivation. And not just those you might call…

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The Great Hemp Head Scratcher
Doug Fine Doug Fine

The Great Hemp Head Scratcher

AMERICAN HEMP SEEDS ARE GROWING, BUT…

Nothing like holding the Dutch hemp fiber that goes into Mercedes door panels (fresh off the factory floor, [above], they were silky soft yet stronger than steel) to make an investigative-minded fellow not just smile goofily but also wonder, “Why is the DEA seizing the seeds that will allow the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the world’s billion-dollar hemp industry?”

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Wait. Hemp is Legal?
Doug Fine Doug Fine

Wait. Hemp is Legal?

Thomas Jefferson’s Favorite Crop Is Back in American Soil — Today Read All About It “Hemp Bound is the best book of the year…Doug Fine has created a blueprint for the America of the future.” –Willie Nelson Since Hemp Bound was published just three weeks ago, four more states have legalized hemp cultivation. And not just those you might call…

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Hemp Returns To Humanity
Doug Fine Doug Fine

Hemp Returns To Humanity

I’m writing these words ten minutes after President Obama has legalized hemp. (If you’re not yet among the throngs pausing for collective pinching of self and recitation of, “God Bless America,” you will be, pretty soon.) He did this by signing the 2014 Farm Bill, which included a tucked-in bi-partisan amendment that allows university research of the crop. I’m happy…

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The Doug Fine TEDxTalk: The Return of the Indigenous Gene
Doug Fine Doug Fine

The Doug Fine TEDxTalk: The Return of the Indigenous Gene

I’m probably one of only a handful of TED fans (let alone speakers) who has slept outside with his goats to protect them from coyotes like some kind of crunchy Elmer Fudd. And that in fact is the theme of my recent TEDxABQ talk, The Return of the Indigenous Gene: Why We Need Goatherding in the Digital Age. I was…

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The Drug Peace Bumblebee Column Debuts
Doug Fine Doug Fine

The Drug Peace Bumblebee Column Debuts

Best-selling author Doug Fine spreads his Drug Peace ideals each week via the Drug Peace Bumblebee. (Photo by Michael Bowman) I’m delighted to announce a new weekly column I’m writing for the National Cannabis Coalition which is being syndicated by Alternet. Here’s the premise, as reflected in the column bio. I welcome column suggestions from anywhere on the planet: About…

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Subscribe to the Dispatches From the Funky Butte Ranch

 The Dispatches From the Funky Butte Ranch Newsletter is free. However, if you’d like to support Doug’s powerful worldwide reportage, click here to make a suggested $1 to $10 annual contribution — much appreciated!”

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