As California’s cannabis industry saw the price per pound crash in recent years in both the legal and traditional markets, Wood Wide High Craft has used its love of the game and awesome pot to push on as one of Mendocino County’s few success stories.
I first linked up with Wood Wide’s co-founder Michael Strupp at Northern Nights Music Festival in Humboldt County last year. The festival was the first ever to have legal onsite sales and then in 2022 became the first to have a dispensary at every stage. Even with all the weed in the heart of the redwoods, Wood Wide’s flowers held up with the weekend’s best. This was especially the case for their Biscotti, which is among the top renditions of the strain in the state.
Strupp and fellow co-founder Ryan Birchard are as much of an Emerald Triangle origin story as it gets. The pair started growing cannabis in the hills when they were 15. After they graduated high school they left the county to spread their wings.
“So after [kindergarten] through [12th grade] I go off to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and get a degree in systematic biology and then Ryan went off to do some schooling too. We ended up back in Mendocino around 2006,” Strupp told High Times.
While Strupp left the area, he was never far from the game. He worked in the wine industry near northern Santa Barbara, but was also moving product from back home. Kids from Mendo are pretty popular everywhere in that regard because it was very hard for outsiders to get direct access to the hill back then.
As soon as he returned to Mendocino County, he had the chance to go in on a 12-lighter grow where he was the third partner. …
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Author: Jimi Devine / High Times
