UXBRIDGE, MA — If it wasn't for the dozens of marijuana plants growing in the next room, the bright green walls and the tinge of pot in the air, you could mistake it for the family dinner table. Seated around a table in their Uxbridge marijuana cultivation facility on a recent night, Kimberly, Fred and Joe Gibson — mother, father and son — discuss their nearly three-year journey to become the state's first cannabis microbusiness.

Gibby's Garden got the OK to start operations Jan. 3, and their unique license lets them engage in a range of marijuana operations, from cultivation to manufacturing products — an advantage because most businesses have to apply for separate licenses for those same activities. "It's the state's nod to the little guy," Kimberly Gibson said.

But the process was "brutal." The family started from scratch in 2017 with just the idea and Joe Gibson's knowledge of growing marijuana. Kimberly Gibson's 25 years of experience building data centers helped, but there's no manual for starting a marijuana microbusiness. Everything from town approval to installing a lighting system had to be learned, tested and, in some cases, done all over again. The family's history with marijuana dates back to the 1970s, when Fred and Kimberly Gibson smoked it as youngsters. It was before the War On Drugs in the 1980s and laws beefing up prison time for possession of small amounts of drugs.

Joe, 29, has long been a marijuana user and grower. Like most parents, Kimberly and Fred didn't support their son using the drug. But after Massachusetts decriminalized cannabis in 2008, Joe felt freer to explore cultivation, and he developed a talent for it. "Joe's brother told me he grows the best," Fred Gibson said with a chuckle.

Joe quit his job at the Walpole Rolls-Royce plant in August 2017 to dive head-first into the marijuana industry. One of the first steps was walking into Uxbridge Town Hall to begin the process of getting a host-community agreement. Since then, town officials — including police and selectmen — have toured their facility.

From there, it was a simple matter of getting a license from the state, finding a landlord who would lease them space, designing heating and lighting systems, buying solar panels, sourcing compost, and much more. The family spent about $1 million over the last three years to get to this point. They took out short-term, high-interest loans — access to capital is a problem for marijuana businesses everywhere — and borrowed from friends and family. Fred and Kimberly kept working their full-time jobs.

"If you have a price in mind, double it and double it again," Fred Gibson said of the process. "If you have a time frame, double it and double it again." But now they've turned a corner. They can now sell their product to retailers and producers around the state. They have two rooms full of marijuana plants in various stages of growth. Another room holds big plastic bags of harvested bud. They're at the point where they express genuine joy over things such as a homemade rainwater collection system used to irrigate the plants.