Weed nun admits she chose an ‘industry that is messed up’
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Sisters of the Valley/YouTube
In California there's a group called the Sisters of the Valley, an enclave of activist nuns who grow cannabis and make it into products they can sell.
One of the first and most important things they'd like to stress is that they aren't Catholic nuns, so you can get out of the habit of thinking that.
Instead they call themselves 'activist sisters' who want to 'heal the world' through plant-based medicines, and there's one plant in particular they grow plenty of.
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They claim to be following in the tradition of the Beguines, a spiritual religious order that took care of the sick during the past.
Explaining their methods are 'guided by ancient tradition', they want to promote 'care and respect' for the plants across the Earth.
However, it's a pretty tricky life considering the myriad laws about cannabis in the US, and what the nuns are doing is technically illegal.
Using cannabis is legal in California, but the laws on growing it are different from county to county and the sisters have their farm in a spot where it's against the law.
Sister Kate, the leaders of the Sisters of the Valley, told the BBC they were healers, feminists and businesspeople, though she admitted their enclave chose a pretty tricky business to get into.
She said: "I chose an industry that is messed up.
"It's going to probably be messed up and I'm probably going to have to do a lot of dancing and sidestepping."
Sister Kate admitted that the local sheriffs know her group is growing weed and 'there's really no reason' they can let her keep going, but she's got no plans to shut down her operation.
Growing cannabis is illegal in her part of the US, but Sister Kate reckons if the law did try to shut them down the nuns could 'just challenge the law and get it changed'.
She said the law going after the nuns over them growing cannabis 'would be a fight they don't want to undertake', so long story short don't mess with the weed nuns.
All of this cannabis goes into their range of CBD products, which the nuns say is handmade by their members according to lunar cycles.
They set their products when there's a new moon and bottle them up when the full moon is in the sky.
Sister Kate founded her first non-profit cannabis collective back in 2009, making cannabidiol oil for local patients with terminal health conditions.
Settled in California's Central Valley, the nuns would love it if their operation would become legal.