The ATG Story

As we made our way to the first day of school, my older brother asked me if I wanted to skip and go to the beach and blaze with him instead. I agreed, and my life would never be the same after that day. I learned how to smoke out of a pipe, bonded with my brother, and ignited an interest in cannabis in me that would only burn brighter and brighter.

Fast forward through 15 years of smoking and growing my own, and ATG Acres is born in July of 2017 in Sacramento, CA. An idea, a vision, and a partnership blossomed in the backyard of my rented residential home. We were already growing some of the best outdoor flower in our area so it was only natural to drop out of the PhD program I was in and quit my day job as a pharmacy technician to start this company.

My wife, Shannon, named our company after the inspiration she felt from the success we were having. The year was 2017. As I was leaving one morning Shannon asked if she could create a brand name and logo for our vision. When I got home, ATG Acres was written on her laptop screen in a beautiful earthy cowboy font. She said “ATG stands for Aaron The Grower,” and I felt so flattered that I cried.

As a company, we stand for patients. Plain and simple. There’s no reason that everyone in the world shouldn’t have access to clean organic medicine. We believe in the right to grow our own at home and the freedom to educate our children about the plant.

Ultimately, at ATG Acres we stand for quality, sustainability, and community. Which is what our partnership with Skunk Magazine and Purple Caper Seeds is all about. It’s breeding done by actual growers and flower fueled by passion.

Our farm is just south of Binger, Oklahoma. It’s a small family business; Shannon does the books and I grow. We live just six feet from the entrance of the grow that we built ourselves. When we bought our 12 acres in 2019 it was raw land. We spent our life savings on it. Then we spent two and a half years building out the infrastructure while we were living and growing in California. Traveling back and forth to Oklahoma to build out this new property seemed to take a lifetime.

In December of 2021, we moved to our new land in Oklahoma. We got serious about business. We formed an LLC, hired a couple employees, and started building relationships within our new community. We’ve been blessed to connect with some of the best breeders in the world and to acquire some of the most sought after and elite medicinal genetics in the game. Folks like Rab of Seattle Chronic Seeds, Joel from Norstar Genetics, Brandon who owns Bokashi Earthworks, and Frank with Purple Caper Seeds have all hand selected genetics tailored to our specific organic inputs and soil profile. What does that mean?

One of the things we do at ATG is a cannabis focused approach to agronomy. Agronomy is the science of soil management and crop production. We do regular soil tests to determine which organic input would be perfect for a particular imbalance or deficiency. Searching through hundreds of potential inputs can be tedious but making ourselves aware of what’s out there can give us more resources to accomplish more sustainable practices.

We have a flavor focused approach. Funny enough, diversity in flavor actually does lend itself to more diverse medicinal applications. Quite literally, the more cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids that are present the more dynamic the effect. The entourage effect is what we’re after in medical cannabis, or the theory that the full spectrum of molecules present in the cannabis plant work best together. It’s the interaction between these compounds and your body that have the highest efficacy. If you have it in your power to encourage the plant to produce a wider array of compounds (and you do), the finished product will have more desirable attributes. Some people call this crop steering.

We’ve used agronomy as the cornerstone of our quality, but it takes a village to raise a child, and building this business is a lot like raising kids. It doesn’t care about your problems, it just wants your attention. Love and care are what keep it alive. Passion is what brought us together with Skunk and is what nurtures our collaboration. We’ll protect the culture, the community, and the plant with fire.

Together, we are creating new Skunk genetics, remaking old favorites, and bringing the best Skunk strains to the Oklahoma medical market. Oklahoma Skunk will be a new collaborative creation, a mashup of my personal seed line, No Hope Dope, and Purple Caper’s Skunk. We’re hoping to breed robustness and hardiness into the Skunk you’re used to using rigorous genetic selection strategies using a local wild Oklahoma landrace of hemp. What an amazing story the discovery of this hemp field was. I stumbled across it just 10 miles from my house. My next piece will be all about that discovery. Some of the exotic and classic strains from Purple Caper and Skunk that will be grown by our farm you in Oklahoma are Alpha Skunk, Glitter Bomb, GMO Gushmint Cookie, ZkittleZ Cake, ZkittleZ OG, Blue Dream SR71, Wedding Pie, OreoZ, Moroccan Peach, GG4, and of course, Skunk Lady.

The journey has been serendipitous, sure. But the nature of taking your future into your hands births wonderful and aligned outcomes every time. If I had only one voice, one message, it would be this: stay focused on your inner vision. The more you do, the more the fog lifts and the clearer your destiny becomes. Walk confidently into the blind darkness, having faith that the universe will build a step to keep you from falling flat. Quit that job you hate and blaze your own trail. The biggest opportunity of your life is waiting behind that thing you’re afraid to do.

All photos credit: Aaron The Grower