Meet The Foxworthy Farms Team
Martin O’Brien, David Bowers, and Barrie Eves established Foxworthy Farms in 2016 on an 82-acre parcel located in the shadow of Diamond Mountain. They planted the first crop to serve members of the Patients Care Collective (PCC) and other medical cannabis patients in the region in 2017. Foxworthy Farms is a part of a nineteen-year effort to cultivate and provide clean, high-quality cannabis, first for patients and then for adult-use consumers. Meet the rest of the team below.
Martin O’Brien
Martin O’Brien is the President and founder of a multi-jurisdictional vertically integrated family of cannabis businesses involved in cultivation, distribution, and retail. He established Patients Care Collective (PCC) in Berkeley in 2001, making it the oldest continuously operating cannabis retailer in the United States. In 2016, he and his team bought an 82-acre estate in Sonoma County and established Foxworthy Farms. That farm now supplies cannabis to some of the biggest and most prestigious retailers in the industry. Mr. O’Brien established California Cannabis Distribution Company (CCDC), the first stand-alone distribution company in Berkeley, in 2017 to act as a reliable and affordable cultivation-to-consumer conduit.
Mr. O’Brien has established a reputation for quality cannabis goods and business integrity in his nineteen years in the industry. His family of businesses are dedicated to providing quality cannabis goods in premium and affordable price classes to medical and adult-use consumers. The family of businesses operates on a consumer-focused model. The needs, desires, and values of the consumer drive breeding, cultivation, and retail operations. Mr. O’Brien has been active in the grassroots campaign for safe access to cannabis in California, providing substantial support to Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and participating in local and statewide implementation efforts. Mr. O’Brien is also a documentary filmmaker, event production specialist, and life-long advocate for social justice issues.
Barry Eves
Barrie Eves is the Chief Financial Officer of the Patients Care Collective (PCC) family of cannabis businesses. He works closely with the other principals to coordinate the activities of PCC, Foxworthy Farms, and California Cannabis Distribution Company (CCDC) related to finances, strategic planning, personnel, and more. Mr. Eves came to the PCC family in 2015 with twenty years of brick and mortar and online retail management experience. He also managed three patient service center laboratories affiliated with John Muir Health, overseeing the day to day processing of 200-300 patients daily. Between 2009-2011, He taught phlebotomy and general lab processes at the Mare Island Veterans Administration facility and gained an early insight into the value of medical cannabis use among veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injuries.
Mr. Eves’ interest in cannabis is not just business. His 22-year old son uses cannabis to treat symptoms of autism. Mr. Eves is the primary caregiver for his son who relies, in large part, on cannabis goods cultivated and provided by the companies for his welfare. Mr. Eves’ multifaceted roles in cannabis – primary caregiver, provider, and business operator – give him a distinct perspective and vision in a company founded for and by medical cannabis patients. This perspective is increasingly important to the consumer-focused business model as the role of cannabis as medicine evolves in tandem with the emerging adult-use and quasi-medical or wellness-oriented markets.
David Bowers
David Bowers is a co-founder and the Chief Compliance Officer for the Patients Care Collective (PCC) family of businesses. He has worked with the team since 2002. He has secured local and state licensing for PCC, Foxworthy Farms, and the California Cannabis Distribution Company (CCDC). He is the principal liaison for state regulatory and licensing agencies. His extensive knowledge of local and state regulations is an essential element in the success of the companies. Mr. Bowers is also experienced in cannabis real estate negotiations for cultivation, distribution, and retail operations. He secured or expanded most of the property occupied by PCC-affiliated businesses today.
Mr. Bowers created the “PCC7” cannabis classification system for the exclusive use of the companies. PCC7 is a unique taxonomy for cannabis plants based on years of research and experience. The system classifies cannabis by its terpene profile, instead of the conventional Indica-Sativa model that combines dissimilar chemovars into broad categories. PCC7 uses a color-coded chart to organize chemovars by terpenes and effects. This model gives consumers, providers, and cultivators a way to talk about cannabis more accurately. The PCC7 is a cornerstone or the consumer-focused business model, in which the needs, desires, and values of the consumer drive business practices.
Mr. Bowers has been a committed participant in community organizing for medical cannabis patients. Working with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), he helped galvanize local opposition among PCC members against federal attacks on California’s medical cannabis system and to raise money for the grassroots campaign for safe access.
Don Duncan
Don Duncan is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Government Affairs for a vertically integrated multi-jurisdictional family of cannabis businesses, including Patients Care Collective (PCC), Foxworthy Farms, and the California Cannabis Distribution Company. He is a twenty-year veteran of the cannabis industry, with extensive experience in business operations, community organizing, lobbying, and regulation at the local and state level. He founded and co-founded cannabis and medical cannabis retail stores in jurisdictions including Sacramento, Berkeley, Oakland, West Hollywood, Palm Springs, and others. These businesses include Berkeley Patients Group, Cannabis Buyers Cooperative of Berkeley, Patients Care Collective, Los Angeles Patients and Caregivers Group, California Patients Group, Desert Organic Solutions Collective, and more.
Mr. Duncan was an early champion of local regulations and licensing for cannabis business, and later worked with a coalition of advocates to promote and adopt the first state licensing bill in 2015. His legislative work included building coalitions with labor, law enforcement, local government, and cannabis stakeholders to break a deadlock on state legislation that persisted for more than a decade. Mr. Duncan continues to work with lawmakers and leadership at state licensing agencies on legislation and administrative regulation for the industry.
Mr. Duncan is an expert at local and state cannabis licensing and compliance, having secured more than thirty licenses for cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, retail, and microbusinesses. Before joining the PCC team in a full-time capacity in 2019, he worked with prominent industry players and celebrities at CannBe (formerly Harborside Management), a boutique cannabis consulting firm in Los Angeles, and as a private contractor.
Mr. Duncan is a founder and legacy member of the Board of Directors of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the nation’s leading medical cannabis patient advocacy organization. He is also a founder and peer-review committee member of ASA’s Patient Focused Certification (PFC) program, which seeks to calibrate the national cannabis industry for excellence. His work at ASA helped to secure important rights for medical cannabis patients and to bring the voice of patients into the national conversation about medical cannabis.
Brian Belendorf
Brian Behlendorf is the Chief Technical Advisor for the Patient Care Collective family of businesses. Brian is the Executive Director of Hyperledger, an open source consortium hosted at the Linux Foundation. He is also on the boards of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. Prior to this, he has served as the Chief Technology Officer for the World Economic Forum, and worked in the Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama White House in 2009 and 2010. Brian started a series of early Internet companies in San Francisco, including CollabNet and Organic, and was an early employee at Wired Magazine, where he simultaneously co-founded the Apache Software Foundation.
Steve Hesh
Master Grower Steve Hesh’s sole responsibility and focus is on the health and maturation of his plants. Steve’s history in cultivating cannabis dates back to Berkeley in the 1970’s. He has cultivated medical cannabis in Sonoma for ten years and is an expert in local microclimates and genetics optimal for the region. Steve has an encyclopedic knowledge of cannabis cultivars and continues his innovative breeding work here at Foxworthy Farms. His unbridled passion for cannabis is evident and obvious by the love and time with which he so mindfully tends to the garden. His ability to guide the growth of the harvest to become healthy aromatic behemoths is second to none.
Shane Ellis
Shane Ellis is the Farm Manager at Foxworthy Farms. His nine years of organic farming experience includes work on sustainable agriculture, a food forest, conventional agriculture, and animal husbandry. Shane’s prior management experience includes a rotational grazing project on irrigated pasture for sheep, cattle, and ducks.
Shane’s diverse agricultural background informs his work with Master Grower Steve Hesch and Owner Martin O’Brien to develop and implement an effective cultivation plan at Foxworthy Farms. His hands-on work on the farm includes irrigation, feeding, planting, quality control, harvesting, and more. Shane supervises the staff in the field and keeps the management up-to-date on progress and challenges. Shane’s priorities are to increase the farm’s efficiency and to realize the project’s goals and dreams – more robust plants, eliminating animal products from the soil, and nurturing the land inside and outside the cultivation area. He is also committed to nurturing the staff and cultivating the skills they need to be outstanding cultivators.
Shane has a long history of volunteering for innovative and sustainable agricultural projects. He spent three years volunteering for off-grid homesteads. He has volunteered and worked on homestead projects on farms across California, including Humboldt County, Yolo County, Madera County, Monterey County, Santa Barbara County, and Sonoma County. He also worked on organic farming projects in Michigan, New Mexico, Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania.