The Fight Over a Weed Farm on San Juan Island A 76-acre property on a progressive rural island in Washington State sounds like the perfect place for a grow op, doesn't it? That's not how the neighbors saw it.

FIELDSTONE FARM: The owners of the grow op thought this property was “a dream come true.” San Juan Sun Grown

You would think San Juan County would be a perfect place to start a pot farm. The drizzly climate, the hippies, the geographic isolation, and the history of self-reliance all suggest a hospitable environment for growing and smoking herb. When Washington voters approved Initiative 502 in 2012, legalizing recreational marijuana, San Juan County voted in favor by the largest margin in the state.

One of the weed entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity in I-502 was David Rice, who grew up on San Juan Island. He had been growing medical marijuana in California for 10 years, and following Washington's legalization, he decided to come home and continue doing what he knew best.

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His sister, Jenny Rice, one of San Juan Island's independent farmers and an avid equestrian, had recently purchased a 76-acre property, Fieldstone Farm, that she described as "a dream come true." She had been leasing the land since 2010, breeding horses and giving riding lessons in an effort to make the farm economically viable. But a weed farm offered the prospect of providing more jobs, making a bigger profit, and growing something people wanted, all while maintaining a traditional agrarian lifestyle.

In 2013, David Rice moved back to San Juan Island, planning to open a grow operation on his sister's property. He quickly found that the climate was anything but hospitable.

Growing marijuana sounds easy. It is, after all, a "weed." But even when the state's producer-processors do beat back local opposition and state bureaucracy, many find the business climate skewed in favor of retailers, with high initial overhead to bring facilities in line with state regulations, steep taxes on the consumer, and plummeting retail prices all squeezing margins paper-thin. And that's not even accounting for all the other uncertainties each producer-processor faces.

Brian Smith, of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, confirmed that getting a grow op off the ground is a lengthy, expensive process: "You have to establish proof of residency, demonstrate a source of funds, pass a criminal background check, and make sure the location isn't within 1,000 feet of prohibited areas like schools or playgrounds. We also give the local authorities—like the mayor's office or county executive—the ability to reject the permit."

Statewide, five counties and 79 municipalities have prohibited grow ops. Weed is still illegal at the federal level, too, so there are no business loans available from commercial lending institutions for cannabis producer-processors or retailers. "Even getting a business checking account can be very challenging," explained David Rice.

Further bureaucratic difficulties include "surprise inspections from all regulating bodies" and "the psychology of public relations," said Aarikka Tuss, director of operations for NW Connoisseurs, a grow op on Orcas Island.

Levi Clark of Green Island Growers, a San Juan grow op, told me: "Not only do I not know what I'm supposed to do, but no one can even tell me. I'll call the state and try to get an answer, and I won't really end up with one."

In spite of these difficulties, Rice said he invested $1.5 million of his savings into his cannabis business, which he named San Juan Sun Grown. Much of that investment went to ensuring that, from the outset, San Juan Sun Grown was operating legally and legitimately.

In addition to the state requirements, San Juan Sun Grown had to get a building permit from San Juan County, so Rice hired a wetland biologist to survey the entirety of Fieldstone Farm, though the grow op took up less than one of its 76 acres. Rice also went through an exhaustive checklist mandated by the State Environmental Protection Act, which makes applicants describe their project's impact on "earth, air, water, plants and animals, energy and natural resources" and "environmental health, land and shoreline use, transportation, public services and utilities." San Juan Sun Grown spent $30,000 on studies, and only after the state had issued a determination of non-significance, finding that San Juan Sun Grown would not significantly alter the surrounding environment, did the Rices begin to build the facility.

Through the State of Washington, David Rice had obtained tier-3 producer-processor licensing, which allows for 10,000 to 30,000 square feet of "dedicated plant canopy"—grow space. San Juan Sun Grown's original plans included the construction of nine greenhouses, each 20 by 150 feet, for a total of 27,000 square feet, although only four were ever built.

Once that stage of construction was done, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board came for an inspection. "There have to be cameras everywhere," Jenny Rice explained, and there had to be "a minimum eight-foot fence surrounding the entire facility," in addition to dozens of other structural requirements. San Juan Sun Grown met them all. With that, the Rices at last started growing weed.

There were many reasons the Rices were optimistic about their commercial prospects. David's decade of experience in California was one. The location of Fieldstone Farm was another. The Rices' property sits among forest and pasture, on the rural west side of San Juan Island—an area with a long agricultural tradition.

OPPOSITION: Signs started appearing on the road leading to the property. San Juan Sun Grown

But in May 2014, signs began appearing along the road leading to their property. One sign read: "WE ARE STRONGLY OPPOSED TO THIS PROPOSED MARIJUANA PRODUCTION INDUSTRIAL FACILITY!" Another sign read: "WRONG SETTING FOR SJ SUN GROWN!"

The Rices' neighbors objected to the trucks, the noise, the smell, the construction of greenhouses, and the bright lights installed around the grow op's perimeter (as mandated by I-502). The owners of three neighboring parcels began to threaten legal action, and then made good on their threat, filing a lawsuit in October 2014.

The crux of the plaintiffs' argument was that the Rices were misusing the private road that leads to Fieldstone Farm. The Rices' land was once part of a larger acreage that had been subdivided. When the original property was broken up into eight parcels in 1995, Fieldstone Farm no longer had a public access, so the owner of the property negotiated an easement—a legal covenant allowing the owner of one property access onto another—to allow the construction of a road to pass through the three adjoining parcels.

All three of those parcels are owned by the suit's plaintiffs—Thomas and Deborah Nolan, Mary Lou and Mark Sternitzke, and Larry Pentz. They alleged in San Juan County Superior Court that the easement only allowed for residential purposes, and that using the road for San Juan Sun Grown amounted to trespass. But, according to the Rices and their supporters, the land had been farmed for generations—making an objection to the grow op not only anti-pot and anti-agriculture but also legally untenable.

The idea of legal weed may be popular in Washington, but the reality is that grow ops are vulnerable to opposition from everyone—from hostile neighbors to negligent or overzealous state regulators. For the last two years, the Rice dispute has embroiled much of San Juan Island in a heated debate that's dredged up much broader issues than weed legalization, such as farming, land ownership, housing prices, aesthetics, civil liberties, history, and the rising tide of capital in the Northwest, which affects everyone, on and off the island.

In December 2014, two months after the lawsuit was filed, the plaintiffs amended their legal claims, adding that the Rices had benefited from "unjust enrichment" by using Fieldstone Road for their business. They argued it was "inequitable" for San Juan Sun Grown "to retain such benefit without paying the value of such benefit." They argued that the Rices' "activities are unlawful and have impaired Plaintiff's enjoyment of their respective Parcels and diminished the value of Plaintiff's parcels." They argued that San Juan Sun Grown "constitutes a nuisance" and that the nuisance would "continue to impair the use, enjoyment, and value of the Plaintiff's respective Parcels and Plaintiffs will be irreparably damaged." And they argued that they were entitled to damages for the "loss or diminution in value" of their properties, for the "unreasonable wear and tear on Fieldstone Road," for "out of pocket expenses to abate or respond to this nuisance," and for "emotional distress."

By now, San Juan Sun Grown's legal bills had exceeded $100,000.

As a result of the lawsuit (and the other financial burdens of I-502 regulations), San Juan Sun Grown began to shut down in December 2014, laying off all but three of its employees two weeks before Christmas.

By the beginning of 2015, David Rice was facing potential bankruptcy. Though the Rices were unable to afford an attorney, their legal defense seemed compelling. On one hand, the language of the easement in question, which the whole of the lawsuit depended on, did read: "Said Easement shall be used only to provide access for and utilities to serve one (1) single family residential structure per benefited parcel." On the other hand, the easement's language was open to interpretation: "This easement does not say, 'Restricted to residential use'; it says, 'Restricted to one residential structure per parcel,'" said Lisa Lawrence, a real-estate agent on the island and a supporter of the Rices. This, the Rices argued, did not necessarily restrict nonresidential structures.

The Rices also felt they had history on their side. Fieldstone Farm has been "farmed for 100 years," according to Sandy Strehlou, historic preservation coordinator for the town of Friday Harbor. The property has "been in the county farm and agriculture program since 1974, and was farmed for generations before that," added Jenny Rice. And there was recent precedent for the property being used for those purposes, including Jenny Rice's horse business. The Rices argued this entitled them to a "prescriptive easement," which in Washington allows passersby to use the right-of-way for all activities that have been "continuous and uninterrupted for 10 years."

Fieldstone Farm wasn't the only business on the road, either: Deb Nolan caters, and Tom Nolan has a woodshop and contracting business with several full-time employees—both enterprises unburdened by the easement's language. The Rices, too, said they faced no objections to the commercial use of their road until San Juan Sun Grown commenced operations. How was a grow op any different from what the Rices—and Nolans—had been doing all along?

San Juan Island is a small place, and it just so happened that the judge who normally would have presided over the lawsuit—Don Eaton of the San Juan County Superior Court—was the same official who'd drawn up the easement two decades ago. So Judge Alan Hancock was brought up from Island County to rule instead.

In January 2015, the Rices hired new representation, Skylee Sahlstrom of Seattle. "I told [Jenny] and David that I would only charge them $10K for writing the opposition and associated pleadings, and defending them at the summary judgment hearing," Sahlstrom told me by e-mail. Sahlstrom estimated she spent "over 1,000 hours" on the case.

In February 2015, Judge Hancock delivered a summary judgment on the easement issue.

According to Ken Crawbuck, a local activist, the ruling was given to "a packed room of San Juan Islanders and San Juan County residents," with a sizable group wearing green shirts "in solidarity with Jenny." It made no difference: The judgment, unequivocally, went against the Rices. Hancock prohibited San Juan Sun Grown from using Fieldstone Road. He also forbade Jenny Rice from using Fieldstone Road for anything but residential purposes, endangering her horse business. The easement, in his view, forbade commercial activity.

Longtime agricultural use was no defense, Hancock wrote: "The defendants now have the audacity to assert that they have a prescriptive easement as a matter of law. Nothing could be further from the truth."

The lawsuit made more than passing reference to "trucks" and "noise," as well as "smell," all of which the Rices said the neighbors grossly exaggerated. Distraught by Judge Hancock's ruling, Jenny Rice said, "Life has been hell."

The Rices hadn't been able to afford expensive representation, but the plaintiffs could—and saw no other choice. From the case's beginning, the Nolans, Sternitzkes, and Pence had retained two established attorneys, Douglas Strandberg and Rock Sorensen of Friday Harbor.

In May 2015, three months after Hancock's initial ruling, the Rices attempted to settle the legal claims against them, offering a legal covenant against commercial cannabis and a conservation easement on 55 of Fieldstone Farm's 76 acres, which would restrict the development of any new structures. In return, Jenny Rice asked for permission to resume breeding horses and giving riding lessons.

Instead, the neighbors demanded $80,000 in legal fees. The Rices didn't have the money, so the conflict slogged on.

To defray their sunken investments and legal bills, the Rices started a GoFundMe campaign, which raised a little more than $16,000—short of its $20,000 goal—before it ran out of steam. That was nowhere near enough to pay off the demand of $80,000, let alone cover the rest of the case. Sahlstrom was torn: She wrote that she "didn't want to stop" defending the Rices, but "just couldn't afford to work for free."

SUPPORT: A bumper sticker in favor of the grow op. Rob Hunsaker

When people work for themselves, they depend on one another. On San Juan Island, where the year-round population is roughly 7,000, this is especially true. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone in the community appeared to have a connection to the lawsuit, and conflicts and differences of opinion were impossible to avoid. "Our little island community is being torn apart over the lawsuit," said Juelianna Freeauf, a friend of the Rices. Advocates of both sides said the lawsuit split up long-standing friendships.

Brent Snow, who manages Roche Harbor Resort and who supported the Rices' neighbors, said: "A tendency in our community is toward acrimonious polarization on virtually any topic. We can get ourselves worked up about just about anything."

Scott Bell, a property owner, called San Juan "the island of the molehill."

Mike Carlson, a major local contractor whose company built Fieldstone Road, described the Rices' supporters' behavior as "vicious and vile." For many of those opposed to the weed farm, like Snow, the lawsuit was "just an easement issue."

Carlson also said: "It's not about pot; it's about property rights."

The Rices' supporters agreed that the lawsuit was about property rights, but for them it was the entrenched capital (the neighbors) that was impinging upon the younger business owners and landowners (Jenny and David Rice). Several expressed the opinion that the neighbors' objection to San Juan Sun Grown was chiefly cosmetic, part of the trend of transplants with suburban tastes sculpting San Juan Island into a sanitized ideal of rural life. Sandy Strehlou put it pithily: "They want the farms but not the farming."

Rice supporter Lisa Lawrence said: "We're liberal, but we're very insular and have a fear of the unknown. I'm a Realtor! A lot of the case is about real estate."

Shelle Cropper, the Rices' one-time bookkeeper, said that the case had made some property owners afraid they'd get sued off their land: "It's scared a lot of people on the island... She had a dream, and not only was it taken away, everything else was, too."

Both camps also agreed that an unfavorable outcome would have set a dire precedent. For the Rices, a loss would have dealt yet another blow to independent farming on San Juan Island—a way of life exemplified by Fieldstone Farm for generations. But Jack Cory, on the plaintiffs' side of the dispute, argued a Rice victory would have resulted in endless litigation: "There's not an easement in Washington State that couldn't be challenged" should the ruling get overturned.

As the trial dragged on, a reversal of Judge Hancock's ruling seemed less and less likely; if anything, things were getting worse for the Rices. In September 2015, the neighbors were given permission to again amend their claims: In addition to damages for trespass, nuisance, and unjust enrichment, they sought the right to "conduct further discovery" on Fieldstone Farm, and costs to cover the investigations and all other legal fees.

Throughout the lawsuit, the plaintiffs refused to talk to the press. Repeated attempts to contact the Nolans and Pentz via phone calls and e-mails throughout late 2015 and early 2016 were not returned. Mary Lou Sternitzke picked up the phone and quickly referred me to her attorneys, Strandberg and Sorensen, but calls and e-mails to their offices were not returned. Eventually I traveled to San Juan Island, hoping I would have better luck getting them to talk.

I drove up to San Juan Island in April 2016, 18 months into the lawsuit and more than a year since San Juan Sun Grown had shut down. From October 2014 to March 2015, San Juan Sun Grown produced a total of $252,071 in sales, making it the third largest producer in San Juan County to date, according to state statistics. But that was the last crop they would sell on San Juan Island.

A few miles from Friday Harbor, where the ferry docks, is San Juan Island's sole remaining grow op, Green Island Growers. Levi Clark showed me a huge grow room, an office, and a closet with new plants. Later, we entered a processing room where two employees sat at a table trimming the fresh bud; one of them was Jenny Rice.

Afterward, I drove out to Fieldstone Road. On the right was the driveway to Tom and Deb Nolan's property. I'd hoped to ask the Nolans for comment, but their property was protected with a sign that read "No Trespassing" and a warning that their guard dog was capable of running down intruders within 25 feet. The house was not in sight, and approaching seemed perilous. So we continued down Fieldstone Road, past a McMansion, a line of evergreens, and uncultivated pasture; at some point, we had passed through the plaintiffs' properties, traversing the easement. As we neared the Rices' land, we saw a real-estate sign lying sideways among the brambles: Fieldstone Farm had been on the market since spring 2015.

On the right lay untamed fields and a half-open barn with a few horses grazing in the background. Past that was a larger structure. Abutting the back of that building was a wreckage of rubble and debris, with half-empty greenhouses and stones and dirt everywhere. It was the remains of San Juan Sun Grown.

The scene was one of striking desolation: "Armageddon," Jenny Rice had called it. In the distance, there was an RV and a clothesline with shirts hanging on it. I walked across the ruins of the greenhouses to the larger structure, where I came across an elderly man drilling a board. He introduced himself as Rick Rice, Jenny's father.

"This is all that's left," he said, pointing to the ruins. "It's a minor disaster."

"Why did the neighbors keep suing?" I asked.

"It's just that they wanted it the way it was," said Rick Rice. "When we got here, we were basically told they were happy when there was no one there. We were screw-up poor. That we were able to purchase a property..." His voice trailed off.

He showed me around the back. Next to the expanse of fields and trees, the ruins of the greenhouses seemed small. It was hard to believe the neighbors' claims they could see the grow op. "Jenny lives in that tiny house," said Rick, "and I live in that RV up the road. At this point, the property is raw land. The market value is at bottom, $750,000... it's probably worth twice that. But we would just as soon go. We're hoping to sell, or for a miracle."

"Will you stay on the island?" I asked.

Rick said: "I'd like to go where my family goes."

Over dinner back in Friday Harbor, Jenny Rice told me, "When we got the farm, it was a dream come true. Then we were just bulldozed."

In Jenny's childhood, the "screw-up poor" Rices lived in a bunch of different houses on San Juan Island. "We moved around from rental to rental," said Jenny. Owning property was a distant fantasy.

"Now we're in this terrible period of waiting," Jenny continued, "but life goes on for the neighbors. David spent way more to farm here on the island than he would have somewhere else," she said, citing expensive real estate and prohibitive transportation costs.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was home."

"Why are the neighbors still suing?" I said.

"The neighbors want nothing to happen in the valley, so now I can't even farm... We've had to sell everything—I used to have 20 horses, and now I have three. David sank over $1 million into San Juan Sun Grown, and it's all gone. Laying off everyone was heartbreaking." As she swigged her beer, her eyes welled up with tears.

By the time of my visit, most of the public quarreling had abated, but there were still undercurrents of enmity. Lisa Lawrence told me "people are still really upset and angry about it," and Shelle Cropper confirmed that there was "lots of anger from the younger community." Sandy Strehlou added "the surface animosity is not what it was, but there's still a lot of bad feelings on both sides."

In the meantime, Jenny Rice still owed $400,000 on Fieldstone Farm, due near the end of 2016, as well as legal bills from Chris Brain, her new attorney. Skylee Sahlstrom, the Rices' previous lawyer, said of the neighbors: "They want damages, but how are the Rices going to pay them?" Lawrence said that if the Rices "can find the funds to pay Chris Brain, I think they can take it to the state and appeal the decision and reverse the ruling."

But until the original lawsuit, with all its byzantine claims, was ruled on in totality, Judge Hancock's injunctions could not be appealed.

Jenny Rice told me, "The clock is ticking here in more ways than one." Her choked income and mounting bills gave the plaintiffs a stranglehold on the case: "We have to either sell the farm before the year is up so that we can pay off our loan, or we might be looking at having to default... Nobody is going to buy the farm with the lawsuit. So it seems that, no matter what, I'm going to lose my farm... the question is how I lose it... we don't really allow ourselves too much time to wonder if it's all for naught."

"Did you offer the farm to the neighbors?" I asked.

"I already offered to sell to them," said Jenny, "and they scoffed at my price."

JENNY RICE: Owner of Fieldstone Farm and partner in San Juan Sun Grown. Nate Fihn

For the next four months, nothing happened. And then, in October 2016, I heard that the case had been settled.

When I spoke to Jenny Rice, she confirmed the settlement but was reluctant to discuss the exact terms. All she would say was that the settlement had happened in late August, and that "my brother had to pay them a bunch of money." (David Rice declined to comment.) Jenny declined to disclose a figure, continuing, "The plaintiffs were biding their time, thinking we'd be defaulting." Facing down foreclosure and diminishing possibilities for economic and legal relief, the Rices may have felt they had to settle.

The settlement brought clarity to one issue: There would never again be commercial farming on Fieldstone Farm. "The end-all is that we're just pushing to try to sell the property now, because we can't afford to keep it anymore," Jenny Rice said. "Now we're in a crunch—my dad has been working really hard to get the property looking good." As she awaits an offer on the property, Jenny is still working at Levi Clark's grow op, but the conflict with the neighbors is far from forgotten: "I still have to live right next to these people," she said.

Jenny suggested that, wherever the Rices' future was, it would not be on San Juan Island: "My brother doesn't want to come back here," she said. "My dad's still here, but when the farm sells, I don't know. I've always said when I move off the farm, I'll move off the island and start again somewhere else. I have this feeling I need a new beginning. Everything I poured my energy into as an adult on the island has been snuffed out." A Facebook post from mid-November showed her driving a pedicab to and from a Seahawks game.

Now that the case was over, I called the Nolans once more. Surprisingly, Deb Nolan picked up the phone.

At first, she sounded chipper: "I am great!" she said. "I'm a caterer, and I'm working full-steam ahead." Then the memory of the lawsuit reasserted itself. "I'm very apprehensive" about talking to the press, she added. "We didn't do anything of the media thing. I find it to be so awful, and I think people really are awful and really abused it. We felt thrown under the bus... Jenny was a beautiful and lovely lady. We never went after her, in the media... it wasn't about the personality, it was about the development."

Nolan continued, "My husband and I moved up here 26 years ago. This is our second piece of property. The first piece was closer to Roche Harbor... after living there for 10 years, with traffic increasing, we wanted a bigger piece of land and said, 'Let's build a house with a fireplace.' So we found a piece of property on Fieldstone Road."

When Jenny Rice first started her equestrian business, Nolan said, "We were like, 'Whatever, they're raising their horses, that's fine with us.' Then one day, we found all this activity and all this smoke, saying that they were going to do an agricultural building. So we went down there and we asked, 'What are you doing?' That was the first time we'd heard of it"—San Juan Sun Grown.

"Jenny never talked to anybody," Nolan added. "They put in the development sign late, we hardly had any time to figure out what to do, so my husband immediately took the easement down to them and said, 'You do not have the right to do this.' David Rice looked back at him and said, 'I've spoken to my lawyer, and he said that it's all fine. Get used to it.' We did not get used to it."

Even after the settlement, Nolan was careful not to undermine her case: "It was only residential easements now. We were well-aware [the land] was agricultural; we farm, too... My husband has a woodshop, and we were very conscientious about the restrictions."

EASEMENT FIGHT: It came down to who could use the road (not pictured) and for what. San Juan Sun Grown

Nolan bristled at being characterized as wanting idyllic farms, but without farming: "People said we don't support local business, but my husband has employed people with living-wage jobs for 20 years. I was on the school board; I baked pies for 10 years. I have a special-needs son. Saying that we were these shadow-rich characters was awful. Really what was happening was people were coming up to us at the grocery store and thanking us."

Though the lawsuit was justified, according to Deb Nolan, it also came with a cost: "The easement lawsuit was awful, but we didn't know what else to do. We got together with the neighbors and felt like there was no other choice. The Rices' lawyers were very aggressive, so we had to respond aggressively. The judge even told us that we had an ironclad case, but the Rices just decided to ignore it."

In the end, said Nolan, "We did not make any money on it." She estimated that the case cost "over $250,000 to $300,000 total."

A Pyrrhic victory.

In the end, Nolan continued, "I don't know why [the Rices] were willing to negotiate. They probably got a really good attorney who told them that they wouldn't get anywhere." Blanket statements gave way to smaller grievances: "People should work together. They didn't even come to us. And that's the deal."

The worst part, Nolan said, was the toll it took on Tom Nolan: "They tried to make out my husband to be a little crazy, and, you know, he was a little crazy. It cost him tens of thousands of dollars. He was pissed. But he's not a crazy person."

She concluded, "We were made to look like people who just wanted a piece of the action, but nothing could have been further from the truth... It was ugly, but we lived through it. We have a lot of friends, and we know who they are."

One of the Nolans' closest friends throughout the ordeal was Jack Cory. He was dismissive of the Rices' case: "If you want to go to court and say that the easement is no longer valid," he said, "can you imagine what it would do throughout the state and the county and the whole nation, saying that easements aren't permanent?" Cory drew an analogy: "It'd be like saying, 'It's okay to kill your wife in certain circumstances.'"

Cory drew back: "If you meet [the Rices] at a restaurant or a bar," he said, "they're very nice, very pleasant, always guardedly friendly toward me. But then they'd go off and do what they do."

According to Cory, the Rices' modus operandi was disrespecting property rights and antagonizing the neighbors. This may explain why, even after San Juan Sun Grown had shuttered, the neighbors kept suing: "It wasn't over," said Deb Nolan, referring to the grow op's 2014 closure. "We needed to make sure. We needed to finalize it. We needed to follow through. Had we stopped, further down the line, it wouldn't have been recorded. They stopped it and shut down their business. But they might've started something new."

In fact, David Rice has started something new. Articles from the Wenatchee World and Wenatchee Business Journal from March to September of this year confirm that San Juan Sun Grown has been reincarnated in Wenatchee Heights, the beneficiary of an I-502 statute that allows producer-processor licenses to be transferred between locations. Earlier this year, the company made its first sale since March 2015, grossing $35,093 between August and September. San Juan Sun Grown, now five hours away from San Juan Island, has outlasted the plaintiffs' lawsuit.

"It wore on me," Jenny Rice said, looking back on the lawsuit. "I have PTSD from the whole thing... I'm having to give up my home, give up my dream—I've sold most of my horses, and I am looking at being totally uprooted. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, and I'll have to be here until it happens. Even if we get our asking price, we'll just be breaking even. We won't have any money to start over with, for me and my dad. He can't work, and I have to support him.

"Moving away from the place I was born," said Jenny, pausing again. "I thought I'd live here forever. What the hell will I do?"

Christopher "CML" Morris-Lent is a Seattle-based writer whose work has been featured on Gawker, the Daily Dot, Kotaku, the Seattle Weekly, and numerous other publications. His book, A Brief History of Magic Cards, a collaboration with Moss editor Alex Davis-Lawrence, is available at etsy.com/shop/cmladl. His website is cmlwrites.com and he tweets @CMLisAwesome.