"Garcia Hand Picked" Pot from Carolyn and Jerry's Daughters Goes on the Road

The daughters of cannabis queen Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia and their progeny are traveling by trailer around the country with their brand, named "Garcia Hand Picked," featuring images of their famous father (or stepfather), Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. The brand was created by the daughters Carolyn had with Jerry, Trixie and Annabelle, and her daughter Sunshine by another famous pot pioneer, Merry Prankster Ken Kesey. 

Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia
with her daughters

When Kesey was arrested for pot in 1965, Carolyn told news reporters, “I’m not weeping with remorse.” (This was a rather radical statement for the time.) Soon afterwards, she was gifted with four marijuana seeds brought back from Vietnam by a veteran, and grew them so well that the resulting buds were considered too strong by some. Trained in science and interested in the then-unknown field of organic gardening, she began growing several other cannabis strains from seed, again doing so well that she was inundated with requests to share her secrets. 

Garcia decided to write what became a seminal book on marijuana cultivation, Primo Plant:Growing Sinsemilla Marijuana, first published in 1976. The book quickly became a bestseller, selling 50,000 copies in two years’ time and helping to start the trend of quality home-grown, seedless sinsemilla among the back-to-landers of her generation. 

“It has now become like the wine or brandy industry,” Garcia told www.hemp.org in 2014. “There are a lot of very hip, smart, thoughtful people who have gotten into the production.” Among her leadership roles, she served on the advisory board to the Marijuana Policy Project, and helped shape the Women’s Visionary Council, a group that holds events across the country to highlight women’s research in entheogenics. 

According to a story out of Oregon—where Carolyn lives on her organic farm and runs a company called Mountain Girl's Botanica, which markets a tincture made with hemp-derived CBD—the "Garcia Hand Picked" line includes flower tins of various varieties, pre-rolled joints that come boxed in eco-friendly packaging with a monogrammed glass mouthpiece, plus 5 mg THC gummies in the shape of Jerry's guitar picks in blueberry, raspberry and blackberry flavors. (This is a much better gummy shape than the gruesome ear-shaped gummies from Mike Tyson's brand that have grabbed headlines this week.)

(L to R) Carolyn Garcia, Sunshine Kesey,
Trixie Garcia, and Annabelle Garcia

"It's all about trying to make the world like a Grateful Dead concert," Trixie laughingly explained to Weedmaps, referring it seems to the camaraderie of their parking lot scene as much as the shows. She told Esquire, “When it starts to feel like I'm just exploiting Jerry, I remind myself that cannabis is like uplifting humanity, just like the music opened all those minds in the sixties,” she says. “Humans need to be connected to nature. We need to have meaning in our lives. We need to slow down and cherish what is important. And that's what marijuana is all about.”  

"Jerry didn't smoke much weed by himself," Annabelle recalls. "It was a social interaction. A joint became a bridge between him and those around him." Encouraging all to "connect, connect, connect" at a 2019 WVC conference, Carolyn said, "there are a thousand strategies to make a better society, to be a different kind of light, to continue to become better people." Words to live by.

The Garcia clan "comes 'truckin' around the country in an AirStream trailer named Bertha to celebrate stores carrying their products and merch." They recently visited four Portland-area locations and are carried at 30 Oregon dispensaries and in six states. Get on the Bus.