Thousands of marijuana plants growing under one roof is not a sight you see every day. But, it’s exactly what’s growing and thriving inside a facility in Central Illinois.

WMBD spent the day getting a rare look inside the medical marijuana cultivation center in Delavan suiting up to find out what goes into growing the plant and how it gets in the hands of patients.

“This is not guys growing in their basement this is not this a lot different a lot different than a lot of other states.” Founder & CEO of Revolution Enterprises, Tim McGraw, says.

Revolution Enterprises does it all under one roof, from growing the plants to getting them out to patients. Every step of the process is sophisticated, painstakingly meticulous, and down to a science.

“The program in Illinois is quite literally should be an example to the rest of the country of how a Cannabis program should be.” McGraw explained.

The more than 75,000 square foot facility, which has over 40 employees and growing, says it’s one part ancient and one part modern science.

We hand water everything, all of our growers work very closely with each plant. The sophisticated part of it are the environmental controls in each room…the lighting that’s used in each room to give the plants an optimal environment to create maximum health.” Revolution Enterprises Chief Operating Officer, Dustin Shroyer, said.

The growing process takes 4 to 6 months, with over 4,000 to 6,000 plants inside the facility at any given time.

“Each one of these plants is capable of creating super high quality great medicine but it has to be healthy at all times in its life in order to do so.” Shroyer explained.

The plants are then dried and processed, made into everything from oil to edibles. Every batch of product that leaves revolution is tested. Russel Draffen is the lab manager.

“Down the road when there’s clinical trials and stuff like that we’ll have a lot of data to back up different strain specific ailments we’ll be able to really perfect the medicine for patients.” Draffen explained.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture sets the bar high for cultivators like Revolution Enterprises, with hundreds of pages of regulations from in-house security measures to quality standards.

“I think that was done for a purpose for patients. We’ve got to remember this is a medicine taken by patients with compromised immune systems so our goal was to hold the cultivators to a high standard so that they produce high quality medicine for patients that needed it.” Program Director for Medical Cannabis, Jack Campbell, said.

The mayor says she’s proud that a place helping patients across the state chose to call Delavan home and that the town has embraced it.

“I had one negative phone call and 2 negative emails and this is a small conservative community but they were overwhelmingly supportive.” Mayor Liz Skinner said.

This is only the beginning for the Medical Cannabis program across the state, a seed that Revolution Enterprises hopes will grow and flourish.

“We gotta run before we walk I think eventually we’ll get to adult use.” McGraw said.

Revolution Enterprises has room to grow. The company is only using about 30 percent of its facility right now. They say as more medical conditions join the approved list, they’ll be able to expand the operation and help more patients.

Governor Rauner signed a bill legalizing medical marijuana under a 4-year pilot program in August 2013. There are strict regulations that determine the process for select patients along with which medical conditions qualify. These include Alzheimer’s disease and muscular dystrophy. At least 18 cultivation centers are allowed to grow marijuana. Cultivation centers must pass inspection by the department of agriculture before operating.

This is a medicine and it’s therapeutic for people and as many people that can see a benefit from it should have access to it.” McGraw said.