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Guerilla Farming in the Deep South Woods

Dr. (Ms.) Michael S. Whitt

    For nine years Amanda Rosaleigh Blake and her soul mate, Michael Demian Randolph, grew marijuana in the Alabama countryside. Occasionally they grew a few plants in their backyard garden after they were large enough to conceal them. The tomato plants are thick, and it was an advantage that the tomato plants looked a bit like the reefer plants. The Marijuana Grower’s Guide showed them that the two crops need almost identical soil requirements.
    Michael and Amanda were not habitual law breakers. They were progressives in their life styles and world views. Like many socially oriented progressives, e.g., Ghandi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, they readily committed civil disobedience if a law, contract, or other policy was unjust. They did not take this lightly. Like others who had the courage to commit civil disobedience, they expected to pay the penalty if they were caught. They knew that getting caught growing or possessing marijuana could mean jail.
    Amanda and Demian felt strongly that the laws banning pot were unjust and unintelligent. They hoped they did not get caught growing or possessing; their growing activities helped many people in the university town in which they lived. Three of their friends had cancer and one had AIDS. Marijuana helps with the nausea that the people with these diseases often have, and eases less serious stomach upsets. Others suffered chronic pain which was helped by this sacred plant, a gift from Mother Earth. Marijuana provides pain relief for several conditions. A few examples are menstrual cramps, paraplegics’ pain, post-surgical pain, and headaches. The use of reefer for pain is especially dramatic for paraplegics who are in college. The narcotics that ease their pain make them “goofy;” they cannot study. Marijuana is non-narcotic. It allows them to control their pain and to study.
    They needed to grow the re-creational plant since the dash in recreation implies that recreation as play is not the only way reefer can help one re-create. It can help one break self defeating habits and come up with new ideas when one become stuck in his or her creative activities. When Michael and Amanda first began writing for publication, they could work for three or four hours. Then they often got stuck on where to go on the article or book. If they smoked before bed, it would breakdown the stuck structures. The two could sleep easily knowing where to begin the next time they wrote.
    They grew their plants a few miles from where they taught at Central Alabama University as Associate Professors. Amanda was thirty; Demian was thirty-one when they began their project in l979. They ended it in l988. During this time, Michael and Amanda had adventures which make good short stories. The two had lean years and others that were abundant in terms of their harvest of sweet sensimillia flowers, including one year where they harvested more than eleven pounds The difference between “sense” and imported reefer is that only a few seeds are allowed to form on the locally grown sense. This gives the plants a higher quality in two ways, potency and pleasant, intense odor.
    Eleven pounds is a large harvest when one has to go guerilla. This method has several disadvantages. It is hard to find places where the plants adequate sun light and water when drought came. These difficulties also include three kinds of poisonous snakes. There are millions of chiggers which burrow under one’s skin and leave itchy places that make mosquito bites look anemic. The itching is so intense it takes a will of iron not to scratch them and prolong the agony. Moreover, briars of many kinds are everywhere. They can tear the skin and cause bleeding. Guerilla farming in the Alabama woods is no easy task.
    Michael and Amanda had adventures which make good short stories. Some of them were potentially tragic. They were never seriously harmed but they did lose a lot of plants to theft and some to drought. Still others of their experiences were humorous. The accounts in this story happened in the spring, summer, and early fall 1986.
    Then both Amanda and Michael had been associate professors at CSU since 1976. Amanda took sick leave the fall, winter and spring quarters of the 1985-86 school year. She was feeling burned out, and feared for her physical and even mental aspects of her overall well being. The Reagan-Bush policies were doing terrible things to universities. Academic freedom was viciously and relentlessly assaulted. At times they felt as though they were going around in a state of shock or unreality. It was all quite nightmarish.
    By March of that year Amanda was rested and her burn out was gone. However, the therapist she was required to see as a condition of her sick leave wanted her to take the Spring Quarter off as well. She had been bumped off of the graduate faculty on some insane grounds. The requirements for continuation here were the frequent teaching of graduate courses which she did; serving on a number of graduate committees which she did, thirty-three in all; and extensive publications which she had many more than she needed. However, her progressive educational practices and politics threatened the reactionaries who controlled the upper administration and Education School.
    Amanda thought her therapist’s suggestion provided an opportunity for her to experiment on ways of stopping the thieves. She decided to conduct her experiment in the area where they had the most trouble with theft. This place was in and around a small village called Loachapoka about seven miles from their home. In the Loachapoka area they had bought twelve acres of rural farm land. Prior to Amanda’s experiment the two lovers had always used their Chevrolet Van to plant and care for the plants. After a while it had become a dead giveaway. Amanda decided she would take an old ford sedan they had to begin her project. She wore a hat under which she hid her long hair.
    She required an auto because she needed some large tools such as a hoe, a shovel, garden and leaf rakes, two kinds of fertilizer and some lime. Around her spot grew several huge wild azaleas. The flowers were fragrant and a lovely shade of pink. That year the flowers were abundant and in full bloom when she first began digging her sites. She stopped every now and then and admired the plants. Their fragrance pervaded the air and gave her a wonderful natural high.
    Amanda’s sites were near a branch creek which filled with water during the winter and spring rains before hot weather set in either in June or July. This creek which provided water for the young plants came from a larger one. This served as a cooling off spot each time Amanda tended the plants until it became too hot and infested with cotton mouth moccasins. It was never deep enough to swim in, but there were spots in which one could immerse one’s body.
    After the heavy work was done, Amanda began to ride her motorcycle, a black and gold 1974 Hondo 350 Four. Her hypothesis that no one would suspect that a person on a motorcycle was tending marijuana was proven correct. To further confuse things, she parked the bike in a clump of trees and walked a quarter of a mile farther in the woods. She checked the plants every week or two. Amanda planted ten plants in the area. Two of her plants died because she planted them too close to large trees. Their extensive root systems prevented the plants from getting enough water to survive a drought.
    One of Amanda’s near tragic experience happened in early July. That day when Amanda left her sites she felt a little ‘woozy.’ When she arrived in town she was feeling dangerously weak and drained. As she reached the middle of town, she pulled over to the side of the street, Glenn Avenue and laid the bike down. She asked the filling station owner, a gas station they frequented often, for help. The owner invited her to use his phone to call Michael.
    When he answered, Amanda began, “Michael, this is Amanda. I’m in a bit of trouble. Don’t panic I haven’t been arrested. I’m at on Glenn Avenue close to College Street. I’m too weak from the heat to ride the bike all of the way home.”
    Michael replied, “I’ll be right there. Get in the shade and stay quiet and calm. You sound as though you are close to a heat stroke. Be easy and this time I’m not joking. You have me worried. I love you.”
    Amanda said “I love you too, sweetness and don’t worry. I’m taking it quite easy.”
    After Michael found a strong board to use to roll the bike into the van, He went to where Amanda was waiting. As he drew close to her location, he could see her sitting on the curb in the shade of an oak tree. She was pale and appeared as though she could collapse any moment.
    “Hi lover,” Michael greeted her. “Are you alright?”
    “No, but I’m better now that you are here.”
    “Good, now let’s see if we can roll the bike into the van using the board.” His board worked beautifully. Soon the two left for their house about a mile away.
    When Michael and his damsel in distress reached their house, Amanda exclaimed, “Whew! I’m glad that’s over. I’m feeling better..”
    “Wonderful,” Michael said “I was scared there for a while. It’s an awful day with a heat index of one hundred and ten degrees F.”
    That night they snuggled in bed with their much beloved Feline Woody named after one of Michael and Amanda’s heroes, Woody Guthrie. The two lovers listened to music and made love. At nine o’clock one of their best friends, Alexander White, came over to watch Dr. Who, a science fiction series that aired on Alabama public television every Saturday night. This was a weekly custom in which the four engaged.
    Alex taught physical education a rural school. He was a graduate of CAU at both the bachelors and masters levels. He was appalled when he found that Amanda almost had a heat stroke. “On Girl!” he exclaimed. “Please be careful. We don’t want to lose you.”
    “Okay,” Amanda promised. “I’m good now and I don’t ever intend to go there again.”
    Two weeks later a humorous set of events occurred when Amanda went to tend her plants. When she arrived at the turn off into the woods, she put the bike in low gear and rode on dirt ruts for about a mile. When she was on their property she hid the bike in hard to see places. This time she was careless using a clump of trees that were close to the ruts and near their property line.
    When she returned from the sites and reached the place where she had left the bike, it was gone. Amanda was in a panic. She thought did I leave it somewhere else and forget where? This is truly insane. Then, she looked ahead. There were two young black guys stealing the Honda. The boys were probably rolling the bike to a housing development which was to the right of where one turned onto the ruts.
    Amanda yelled loudly, “Put that bike down, you brats.”
    The young men laid the bike down gently and fled. Amanda ran at full speed toward the motorcycle. She was thinking don’t let the engine flood. She knew the longer it stayed down the more likely it was to flood. When she reached the bike her adrenalin was pumping hard enough that she picked up the bike with one hand. Ordinarily, she would have had to strain to pick it up with both hands. She held her breath as she tried to start the bike. The bike fired up. She sighed with relief, amazed that it did not flood at all.
    After Amanda finished telling the story through which they laughed many times. Michael said, “That is one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard.”
    “It happened so quickly I didn’t get a chance to process it conceptually until I was riding home. As I thought about it I decided with respect to the near motorcycle theft, I would not have changed anything about the way I handled it. It was done without thought in the traditional sense. It was happening right there with me in it. I had to do something or be in big trouble.”
    “You did well,” Michael assured her.
    A few weeks later, Amanda took Michael to her sites. The plants were ready to harvest. Amanda ended with five female plants after the others exhibited male flowers. They harvested the plants with some hand clippers and put the plump and resinous buds in some paper bags. That night the two cleaned the buds of extraneous leaves and hung them. After they dried Michael weighed them. Amanda had harvested a pound plus; not bad for five plants under less than ideal conditions.
    Amanda told Michael after the weigh, “I’m proud of this.’
    “You should be, Sweetness.”
    Michael had some plants growing at and near their other rural property. These sites were near a small village ten miles from CAU. There was a creek down the road from the town where Michael put some plants. There were several spots on their 22 acre that were hidden enough to set plants out. He got the ten pounds plus some that year from his plants it was a good year.
    Amanda said “Now that you’ve harvested your plants, we’ll give away some to our three friends who have cancer and one who has AIDS, to Rita in the psychology department who has horrible menstrual periods, to our pal who is cripple, and other persons with medical needs or who are stuck in their creative activities. We’ll give our best friends a half ounce. Some of the rest of it we will keep for our medical, re-creational, and recreational needs. The rest we we’ll sell to the undeserving for one hundred twenty dollars an ounce.
    Harvesting sweet sensimellia is, with respect to the visual, tactile, and olfactory, an intensely sensuous experience. There is a definite erotic element about the harvested plant. It made love making even sweeter and more frequent for the couple when fresh ‘sense’ buds were available. All of this does not alter the fact that it is a sin and a shame that marijuana is illegal in our society. We are making progress legalizing medical marijuana in some states and in some cases, re-creational and recreational reefer. We have a long way to go before we get Cannabis Sativa fully de-criminalized. There are thousands of people who are rotting in jail for minor pot offenses. This needs to stop. When it does, Mother Earth does not mind our getting some revenue for social services out of her gift to us.

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