New Episode
Short Summary
Hosts Tom Ritchie and Wesley Bowles discuss the upcoming Cannexpo event and the definition of “craft” cannabis in the legal Canadian market. Prompted by a post from Kush Mountain Craft, they explore whether “craft” should be defined by the physical scale of an operation or the commitment to continuous process improvement and skill refinement. They also discuss a post from Rural Buds showcasing an infused Mac & Cheese product by AstroNutz, highlighting the innovation occurring in the edible space, and share a lighthearted conversation about the new Ghostbusters movie.
The hosts welcome Kevin Varner, Co-Founder and Master Grower of Royal Harvest, based in Westbridge, British Columbia. Kevin shares stories from his 38-year cultivation background, tracing his journey from early gorilla growing on the East Coast in Nova Scotia to establishing his legal facility in BC. Kevin outlines the development of Royal Harvest’s Westbridge facility and emphasizes the importance of partnering with reliable processors and distributors to navigate the complex micro-licensing framework.
Finally, Kevin details the cultivation philosophy that drives Royal Harvest. Sourcing and preserving premium genetics like Frosted Fruit Cake and Gelato, the brand relies on traditional hand-crafted methods, including hang-drying, long cold cures, and hand-trimming. Kevin argues that craft cannabis is defined by the “heart and soul” put into the growing process rather than the raw scale of the facility, advocating for terpene preservation and genetic consistency over chasing raw THC percentages.
Tom Ritchie Says: What’s going on, everyone? Check out what’s coming up this week on Legacies: “It looks like it’s used to inseminate elephants—that’s what that thing looks like!”
Tom Ritchie Says: I couldn’t have done a better plug myself! That snippet is going to live forever. Hey, what’s going on, everyone?
Tom Ritchie Says: Welcome to another week of Legacies. I’m your host, Tom Ritchie, joined by Wesley “The Wizard” Bowles.
Wes Bowles Says: I expect that in the lower third! Thank you, I am not letting go of that.
Tom Ritchie Says: I know you’re not! You’ve got to find some magic or wizard animations.
Tom Ritchie Says: I saw something on LinkedIn where someone had “Wizard” in their profile, and I Slacked it to the team: “Do they realize we have our own wizard here? Let me see their accolades!” Anyways, what’s going on this week? We’ve got quite a bit.
Wes Bowles Says: End of this week, we’re heading over to Cannexpo on Saturday. It runs from Friday till Monday at the Enercare Centre, but I’m going to be there on Saturday. Excited to see everyone, it’s going to be a good show.
Tom Ritchie Says: It’s been a year or two since we’ve been in attendance, but we’re looking forward to connecting and reconnecting with a ton of people and brands. It’s a consumer-directed show, but there’s a lot of brand-to-brand B2B activity as expected.
Wes Bowles Says: It’s worth noting for anyone traveling there this weekend: the GO Train is not stopping at Exhibition station on Friday or Saturday. If you’re traveling there, plan to head to Union Station and catch a streetcar over. Exhibition station is closed.
Tom Ritchie Says: We’re driving in Saturday, hopefully beating traffic. I still get PTSD from all those hours spent driving to Toronto!
Wes Bowles Says: You were doing what, three hours a day one way depending on traffic?
Tom Ritchie Says: It was crazy: I could leave at 7:00 AM and get there for 10:00 AM, or leave at 8:30 AM and still get there for 10:00 AM! Typically I always counted two hours in and two hours back. I was on a liquid diet—tons of coffee and protein shakes all morning—so I knew every pit stop and best bathroom along the 401. But Cannexpo is going to be a great event. High Flyer Media is proud to be a media sponsor, and our friends over at Disciplined Stoners are hosting the Main Stage all weekend!
Tom Ritchie Says: Check this out—you haven’t even noticed or said anything yet! I was trying to surprise you. You did notice and didn’t say anything?
Wes Bowles Says: I specifically didn’t say anything, but yeah, it’s what I’ve been waiting to reveal for a while!
Tom Ritchie Says: At High Flyer, we provide swag for brands, but launching our own Legacy Collection has been in our thoughts for the last year. The intent is to reward and honor the individuals who built the foundation that got us to where we are today.
Wes Bowles Says: It wouldn’t be doing justice to those with real legacy in the industry if I were wearing it… I don’t know if I can wear that!
Tom Ritchie Says: Hold on! You go back to 2018, doing compliance support for brands entering the Cannabis Act. Sometimes I question: are we fucking nuts? We knew all the challenges of working with brands for five or six years, and we decided to start another business venture in cannabis! Cannabis people are notoriously the most non-responsive group to emails. If you’re in my phone, expect a text because I’m not waiting around for emails.
Tom Ritchie Says: Speaking of text, I just messaged Kevin Varner of Royal Harvest—The King! He’s our guest coming up shortly. When we did some tests with him early on, it blew up. Everyone was like, “Kevin’s on!” And then shortly after, his Instagram account got taken down. He’s rebuilding that now.
Wes Bowles Says: I don’t think that’s the first time for him either. He’s had that happen multiple times.
Tom Ritchie Says: Once Meta shuts down an account with cannabis references and a human reviews it, you’re not getting it back. Kevin has some crazy stories very reminiscent of the legacy days, and we want to do justice to what he’s building. We also just got our custom embroidered New Era 59Fifty and snapback hats in from a local embroiderer who’s been sewing for 30-plus years!
Wes Bowles Says: You got them early! Is that the fitted one or the snapback?
Tom Ritchie Says: This is the snapback in black. The fitted ones are grey, but I like black. Now if we have a brand on the show, I can wear our own hat instead of wearing another brand’s hat and looking like a dick! [laughs]
Tom Ritchie Says: One of the things I’m super excited about: the new Ghostbusters movie, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. I know you love Dan Aykroyd.
Wes Bowles Says: I love Dan Aykroyd. I don’t dislike Ghostbusters, but as a kid there were other movies I was into, so it was never imperative for me to go see all the sequels.
Tom Ritchie Says: I saw the first one in theaters when I was nine or ten and it scared the living shit out of me! Back before CGI, it looked so real. Dan Aykroyd is a classic Canadian icon with Crystal Head Vodka, and Jim Belushi has Belushi Farms down in Oregon and across the US. It’d be incredible to have them on Legacies at some point.
Wes Bowles Says: The Blues Brothers specifically is one I grew up on. My dad and I watched that all the time. The band they put together with Donald “Duck” Dunn and Steve Cropper—that was a real band! They were true performers.
Wes Bowles Says: We’re new in the YouTube arena, so we’re just being a little cautious at the moment with what clips we play while we get our feet in the water.
Tom Ritchie Says: There were some interesting posts we caught this week. We love talking about new products. There’s a dispensary out in Manitoba or Alberta cooking up some mac and cheese.
Wes Bowles Says: Rural Buds Cannabis Shops. The product is from Astronauts, a brand under ICA Core.
Tom Ritchie Says: Look at this video: this dispensary is cooking up infused mac and cheese! People talk about Red Bull showing extreme sports without showing cans in shorts, but Red Bull can’t get fined by Health Canada for lifestyle promotion. In cannabis, you can’t show lifestyle, you can’t show consumption, and you can’t do inducements. So what do you do? You get creative! A dispensary mixing up infused mac and cheese gets attention.
Wes Bowles Says: You never see Red Bull TV commercials showing the drink, but they have Mini Coopers with giant cans on the back! It’s everywhere.
Tom Ritchie Says: Astronauts has chips too: ketchup chips, nacho chips, salt and vinegar. Ten milligrams THC per pack. But looking at this video, they’re not putting nearly enough butter in that mac and cheese!
Tom Ritchie Says: When I was a kid, we lived on powdered milk and Kraft Dinner. We’d sneak into the other boxes in the cupboard, steal the extra packet of cheese, and add it in. The next person would go to make a box and there’d be no cheese packet!
Wes Bowles Says: That is a supervillain type of move! [laughs]
Wes Bowles Says: We could definitely break this clip out, though there’s a big red THC warning sign right in the middle of the screen that might trigger the algorithm.
Tom Ritchie Says: Yeah, the algorithms flag the red stop-sign THC symbol, so we have to stay creative to avoid Instagram jail.
Wes Bowles Says: Speaking of coffee after our Kintore Coffee giveaway last week—congratulations to the winner, your stuff is in the mail—I found this ridiculous coffee machine I wanted to show you.
Tom Ritchie Says: I’ve seen this thing! First of all, I’m a coffee geek, but look how fucking big it is! It’s an $8,000 machine. Where do you have the counter space? And it looks like it’s used to inseminate elephants—that’s what that thing looks like! [laughs]
Wes Bowles Says: It makes me laugh the size of the little cup of coffee that comes out of that massive machine!
Tom Ritchie Says: Espresso is all about grind, pressure, and even distribution. I still do old-school stovetop espresso with a Bialetti. The design in the MoMA in New York is over 100 years old, completely simple, and you can throw it on a campfire. This $8,000 machine seems like total overkill.
Wes Bowles Says: They’re going a little Apple design on us with the all-white aesthetic.
Tom Ritchie Says: Kush Mountain Craft had a really good post this morning that we should talk about: what defines craft cannabis?
Wes Bowles Says: For the listeners at home, I’m going to read the post from Kush Mountain: “What makes craft cannabis craft to you? We had a conversation with a member of the BC Craft Farmers Co-op yesterday discussing what defines a true craft grower. Everyone says they’re craft, but the term seems to be losing its meaning. What truly defines craft cannabis to us isn’t the size of your operation, but the practices you employ. Just as there are large craft productions, there are small craft productions that aren’t worthy of the title. To us, craft is about curating our products to perfection, striving for constant improvement at every step, anticipating problems before they happen, and paying attention to aroma, smoothness, stickiness, texture, and burn.”
Tom Ritchie Says: Tyson from Kush Mountain Craft is participating in a panel at the BC Craft Farmers Co-op Summit in Prince George on April 19th to 21st discussing this very topic. When micro-licensing was introduced, people equated micro canopy (200 square meters) with craft. But craft isn’t just about square footage. You can have a micro grower putting out garbage, and you can have a large-scale facility dialed into perfection room by room, like Flour Corporation did with Jason Broom in the Okanagan.
Wes Bowles Says: To me, the word “craft” should be synonymous with artisan and boutique. It represents attention to detail and high quality, regardless of canopy size.
Tom Ritchie Says: In craft beer, people associate craft with smaller regional operations, but we want micros to scale up so they can distribute nationwide. In a 200-square-meter micro, you can’t keep up with nationwide demand across multiple formats. Why should craft growers be confined to 200 square meters?
Tom Ritchie Says: You were mentioning something earlier about someone bringing out pre-rolls with cigarette filters?
Wes Bowles Says: Yeah, a brand was using regular cigarette foam filters. People on Reddit were ripping it apart because inhaling resinous cannabis smoke through a foam cigarette filter causes it to clog after two or three pulls, making it impossible to draw through.
Tom Ritchie Says: A crutch or filter in a joint is not meant to filter out resin or toxins—it’s meant to keep the end from crushing and stop loose flower from getting in your mouth! When Redecan launched Reddees back in 2018/2019 using cigarette machinery, they used rolled paper filters, not foam. Putting foam cigarette filters on resinous craft flower is a recipe for disaster.
Wes Bowles Says: Ten-Zero was the brand name, I believe.
Wes Bowles Says: We’re about 30 minutes in, so let’s take a break and bring in Kevin. We don’t want to keep royalty waiting!
Tom Ritchie Says: Never keep the King waiting! Kevin Varner from Royal Harvest is an OG from the East Coast. Let’s take a break, and when we get back: Kevin Varner!
Tom Ritchie Says: Hey, what’s up, everyone? Have you ever considered medical cannabis? You probably should. Chances are, your insurance benefits will cover that. High Flyer Media has partnered with leading medical cannabis provider Mendo Medical to bring you an exclusive offer: sign up and register using code FLY WITH US to get 15% off your first order! Selection is curated personally by Jay Schwartz to ensure the highest standards. Register today with Mendo Medical using code FLY WITH US.
Tom Ritchie Says: Welcome back, everyone! We’re joined by His Highness Kevin Varner of Royal Harvest. Kevin, how are you doing, man?
Kevin Varner Says: It is such a blessing to be on here with you guys! You reached out a while ago to High Flyer to help guys like us trying to get into the industry find a way to get known. You’re building a platform that allows legacy people to be heard, seen, and celebrated. I’m so proud of what you’re building, and I’m blessed to chop it up with you guys.
Tom Ritchie Says: I couldn’t have done a better plug myself! That snippet will live forever. We appreciate you so much, Kevin. Coming into the legal market as a micro cultivator is a massive journey.
Kevin Varner Says: Coming into a micro knowing nothing about standard processing, licensing, packaging, and who to trust… if you get put in the wrong hands, it makes for an even steeper climb. But if you quit at the first hurdle, you’ll never become who you’re supposed to be. Success only happens when you refuse to give up.
Tom Ritchie Says: Let’s go all the way back to the beginning: where did it all start for Kevin in Nova Scotia?
Kevin Varner Says: I grew up in a hardworking neighborhood where we didn’t have much. In Nova Scotia, money was tight and taxes were high, but everybody’s parents understood weed and the medical side of cannabis. At 10 or 11 years old, I was helping my buddy’s old man in the garden. He taught us the basics: leaves, sun, water, and keeping the program dead simple. He told me: “When you go to grow stores, you’ll hear all this noise. Keep your program simple—cut, clean, fill the room, flip—and you will be successful.”
Kevin Varner Says: At 12 years old, seeing how hard my parents worked and how we still struggled to make ends meet, I cracked my first seeds on my mom’s windowsill. My mom asked, “What are these popping on the window ledge?” From there, I started guerilla growing outdoors. Soon we moved indoors with the older guys. We knew plants loved CO2, so we’d light barbecue propane burners in the room, let them burn, and shut them off—no monitors, no digital controls, just raw instinct! At 13 or 14, I told my parents: “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Tom Ritchie Says: That’s the best advice: keep it simple. A close friend who taught me how to grow under MMAR told me the same thing: “Stop searching Google and just stick to the program!” The first crop we pulled 3.25 pounds per light. When you add too much clutter, you run into problems.
Tom Ritchie Says: When did you leave Nova Scotia for the West Coast?
Kevin Varner Says: Nova Scotia has the second-largest ice-free natural harbor in the world, so cargo comes straight in from overseas, but it’s also a very rough environment. In my mid-twenties, I had to take a hard look at my life. Friends were being killed, I survived home invasions at gunpoint, and our house was firebombed. Guys had to wear bulletproof vests. I don’t even like hurting bugs! I realized money wasn’t worth losing my life or freedom.
Kevin Varner Says: My brother was working in Alberta in the oil patch, so I went out there to work rigs. But the second I touched down, I had grow lights set up in the basement! [laughs] You can’t stop a grower from growing. After a couple of years in Alberta, I made strong connections with BC growers and moved out to British Columbia around 2015.
Tom Ritchie Says: How did you handle the lighting transition from magnetic and digital high-pressure sodium ballasts to full LED?
Kevin Varner Says: I ran 1,000-watt metal halide for veg and high-pressure sodium for flower my whole life. On one of my last medical grows, I tried LEDs and was blown away. The quality was equal or better, and at our new facility under LEDs, the quality is through the roof.
Tom Ritchie Says: In the legacy days, growers would buy undervalued houses, renovate them while growing, and build equity. What was the transition like when you arrived in BC?
Kevin Varner Says: I had no guidance with money. I was balling with huge stacks of cash, but didn’t know how to protect it. A friend fell on hard times and dropped my name. I got set up, kidnapped, beaten, had a shotgun shoved down my throat, and was wrapped in plastic. It left me with severe PTSD—I’d hide under trees in my yard if a car drove down the street.
Kevin Varner Says: After losing everything, I started rebuilding. My ex-girlfriend and I bought a house for $400,000, renovated it completely, and had it appraised for $1.1 million. One morning I woke up and the back of the house was engulfed in flames! I got her kids out, ran back in to save my two dogs, and burned my feet so severely I couldn’t wear shoes for six weeks. The next morning I woke up in a motel room in my boxer shorts with my two dogs and severe burns—with absolutely nothing. But I refused to let that throw me off my path.
Kevin Varner Says: Years earlier, during heavy police heat back east, I flew to Calgary. One morning some friends picked me up to drive to Vancouver. In the passenger seat was a guy passed out drunk with open beers and weed smoke filling the car. As we drove, the guy sobered up, turned around, and said: “I’m an undercover police officer. We think people are shipping weed east, and we think it’s you. But I just got divorced, lost my wife, house, and dog. I just want to party in Vancouver, so relax.”
Kevin Varner Says: We’re flying down the Coquihalla Highway doing 160 km/h, smoking weed and drinking, when an RCMP cruiser steps into the road with a radar gun! As we pull over, my driver—a Black buddy of mine—turns to the undercover cop who looks Caucasian like me and says, “Give me your driver’s license!” Smoke pours out the window, the cop takes the license and insurance, walks back, and returns with a tiny $60 speeding ticket! The guy in the front turned around and smiled: “I told you—he ran my badge, saw I’m on active duty with ‘do not detain,’ and let us go!” We partied in Vancouver and I never saw him again.
Tom Ritchie Says: That is unbelievable! How do you process those near-death experiences and stay positive?
Kevin Varner Says: You don’t cry over losses; you laugh at the lessons. I don’t believe in “bad luck.” People either give up too soon or they’re doing things for the wrong reasons. When I was just chasing money, everything fell apart. The moment I centered my purpose on using cannabis to help heal people, everything changed.
Kevin Varner Says: Years ago, I weighed over 300 pounds. Losing that weight taught me that transformation is completely within your control if you want it bad enough. Manifestation isn’t just wishing—you have to speak it aloud, train your subconscious, and outwork everyone. The trials I survived prepared me to lead with integrity when the big opportunities arrived.
Wes Bowles Says: Tom and I have similar stories. Last year I quit a job where I was earning amazing money, but it was a terrible job. I was on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico when I decided: I can’t go back to work on Monday because the money is great, but I fucking hate it. Reaching back out to Tom where we had the opportunity to build something great together, you have to get your mindset right and know you’re doing this for a different reason now other than money.
Kevin Varner Says: Life is hard—pick your hard! Going to a job you hate every day is hard; taking the leap to build something you love is hard. Pick your hard!
Kevin Varner Says: When I was getting licensed, I partnered with a breeder to build out Royal Harvest. I was driving four hours each way—eight hours of driving every day—while working other jobs to pay bills. I ordered exotic genetics from Los Angeles, shut down a 10-light flower room to run a massive pheno hunt, found an incredible male, and gave him the male to breed with our selected females. He took the seeds and kept 100% of them for himself.
Kevin Varner Says: Then he gave me cuts that had Hop Latent Viroid, resulting in tiny yields. Later, in week five of flower in a remote room running on diesel generators, I asked for the lineage on a cultivar he provided. He told me, “I’d never run that strain in my own rooms!” The next morning I walked into the canopy and the entire room had hermied! It cost me thousands of dollars. When we finally parted ways, he sent angry demands claiming rights to genetics he never paid for. But I hold no hatred. You lead by example, let the cream rise to the top, and stay true to your mission.
Tom Ritchie Says: Where did the name Royal Harvest come from?
Kevin Varner Says: In my early twenties in Nova Scotia, a woman I was deeply in love with died in a car crash. Two years later, I saw an elderly man hitchhiking—something I never do. A voice in my head told me: “Pick this man up.” We started talking, and he told me his daughter had died in a car accident two years earlier. It turned out to be her father! That encounter confirmed to me that something greater is guiding our footsteps.
Kevin Varner Says: Years later, while watering plants in a medical grow, I looked down at my hand tattoo: a cross with a crown that says King of Kings. I looked at it with tears in my eyes and said, “Royal… Royal Harvest.” It’s not about being religious or self-righteous—it’s a tribute to a higher power guiding this journey.
Tom Ritchie Says: That’s beautiful, man. That is incredible.
Tom Ritchie Says: Your original micro facility was completely off-grid. What were the logistics like?
Kevin Varner Says: It was 80 kilometers down remote logging roads in BC. At kilometer 30, telephone poles completely disappeared. We were 100% powered by diesel generators in -40°C winter conditions. Diesel would sludge up, generators would stall in the middle of the night, and I’d work 12-hour shifts keeping plants alive before driving four hours home.
Kevin Varner Says: When scaling into new facilities, many legacy operations get crushed by inherited CRA excise tax debt. The CRA has a tight grip on struggling LPs. While tax reform is necessary, reducing excise taxes alone won’t save poorly run businesses that put out subpar flower. High-quality craft growers who show up every day will always have a lane.
Tom Ritchie Says: Let’s talk about Frosted Fruitcake. That strain has a legendary reputation across Canada.
Kevin Varner Says: My good friend Jim over at Sacred Cuts bred that cultivar, and he knocked it out of the park. The terpene profile, resin density, and smooth burn are unmatched. I’m a connoisseur—if a joint doesn’t taste incredible after two puffs, I put it out. Sacred Cuts gave me original cuts that I registered into our Health Canada seed bank.
Kevin Varner Says: Right now, we are running intensive pheno hunts across 21 new test cultivars, 36 vetted elite mothers, and over a thousand exotic seeds. Pheno hunting is like finding a needle in a haystack: you’re isolating aroma, internodal spacing, pest resistance, and resin quality. Once you find a keeper, you scale it up to ensure it handles intense lighting, nutrients, and CO2 without stressing.
Tom Ritchie Says: How do you define “craft” cannabis?
Kevin Varner Says: Craft is heart and soul. It has nothing to do with whether your room is 200 square meters or 10,000 square feet. I can walk into a 100-light warehouse and grow the exact same top-tier quality if the team follows our canopy discipline: cut, clean, fill, flip.
Kevin Varner Says: One day to a human is a full year to a cannabis plant. If you delay hooking up CO2 or dialing in nutrients by one day, you cost the plant a year of optimal health. Craft is showing up in every room, checking every leaf, and refusing to compromise quality.
Tom Ritchie Says: What’s next for Kevin Varner and Royal Harvest?
Kevin Varner Says: We’re smoothing out the business side, bringing fresh exotic genetics into Ontario and BC, and doing exclusive pre-roll drops before releasing flower. But my ultimate life goal is to build community greenhouses in low-income neighborhoods.
Kevin Varner Says: I want local kids and families to learn agriculture, donate their time, and share fresh organic produce at harvest time. Right now, I’m making huge personal sacrifices—sometimes eating one meal a day—to build Royal Harvest without taking paychecks. But knowing we can use this platform to feed families and inspire the next generation makes every struggle worth it.
Wes Bowles Says: We do the swag for Royal Harvest over on High Flyer, and I’m wondering if we want to give away a T-shirt to a lucky listener?
Tom Ritchie Says: Let’s do that! Everyone loves Royal Harvest, and we see the traffic to Kevin’s brand collection. We’ll let the winner choose color and size. Follow Royal Harvest, follow Legacies, tag a friend, and let’s get Kevin the love he deserves in this industry!
Kevin Varner Says: Thanks, guys! Honestly, from a 12-year-old kid telling his mother this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, to now someone winning a giveaway of our brand gear—that’s fucking awesome! You guys are helping a lot of people be seen and heard.
Tom Ritchie Says: Kevin, you’re an incredible individual. Thank you so much for being on Legacies.
Kevin Varner Says: Thank you, Tom and Wes! Love you guys.
Tom Ritchie Says: What a beacon of light in this industry Kevin is!
Wes Bowles Says: It’s extremely inspiring and motivating to know all that shit he went through—just personal life stuff. All that stuff he’s gone through would make any normal person give up, and he’s still going.
Tom Ritchie Says: Quick reminder: we’ve got Cannexpo this weekend in Toronto on Saturday. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, head to cannexpo.ca. And Wes, what about the giveaway?
Wes Bowles Says: In honor of Kevin and his legacy, we’re giving away a Royal Harvest T-shirt! Follow Legacies, follow Royal Harvest on Instagram, and tag a friend in the comments to enter. And check out brand swag on thehighflyer.ca. See you guys next week!
Jump to 01:28
Jump to 04:12
Jump to 03:35
Founder
Kevin Varner founded Royal Harvest in British Columbia, bringing legacy growing experience from Nova Scotia into the licensed micro-cultivation market and building one of BC's most community-oriented craft cannabis brands.
View Guest Profile ↗
Micro-Cultivator
<div class="brandpage"> <!-- MODULE 0 — breadcrumb --> <nav class="bp-crumbs" aria-label="Breadcrumb"> <a href="/">Home</a><span>›</span><a href="/brands/">Brands</a><span>›</span>Royal Harvest ...
Learn More About Partner ↗Royal Harvest is a micro-cultivator in British Columbia founded by Kevin Varner, producing craft cannabis with roots in Nova Scotia growing traditions.
