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These California 'nuns' are making a living selling pot products on the internet

The Sisters of the Valley netted roughly $750,000 in sales of cannabis-infused products in 2016.

The Sisters of the Valley.

Business Insider visited the Sisters of the Valley in March 2016. Take a look inside the most pot-friendly abbey in America.

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In a California ranch house, the seven members of the Sisters of the Valley wear white blouses, long denim skirts, and habits made from old pillowcases.

They might look the part, but the Sisters of the Valley are hardly the convent types.

The sisters make a line of salves, tinctures, and oils derived from hemp, a type of cannabis plant that contains only trace amounts of the psychoactive ingredient in weed.

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The sisters claim their products provide relief from pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and debilitating diseases. However, the medicinal value of hemp oil is hotly debated.

The sisters grow a strain of cannabis — hemp — that they say is rich in CBD, responsible for many of the drug's therapeutic effects.

The sisters sold their products on Etsy until the e-commerce site gave them the boot in 2016 for violating their drug policy. Now the Sisters of the Valley have their own website.

The sisters claim their products are legal to ship across state lines under a 2004 court ruling that freed hemp from DEA regulation. Some experts call it a legal gray area.

Sources: and

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The sisters grow 12 hemp plants — the maximum allowed under county law — in a garage-turned-greenhouse. Their bud looks typical, but the medicine-making process is not.

The sisters say they infuse their products with healing powers through a series of rituals. For starters, they only manufacture from the new moon to the full moon.

On the first day of the cycle, they hold a ceremony under the stars to bless their work table. They give thanks to Creator God and Mother Goddess for calling them to this profession.

Last year, I visited the sisters on a day when they were preparing a tincture. Darcy Johnson, who was part of the group from 2015 to 2016, sliced open a bag of ground hemp so big that she needed two hands to lift it. Green particles fell in clumps like snow.

Johnson weighed out the appropriate dosage of hemp and scooped it into small brown jars. She consulted a YouTube video to double-check her measurements.

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Meanwhile, Sister Kate lit a a bundle of sage and swept it over the supplies, which included a high-proof alcohol used to dissolve the bud. She muttered some incantations.

It may seem easy to write off these rituals as a marketing ploy. However, Sister Kate started dressing like a nun long before she began growing pot.

"When people say, 'Well, they're not real nuns,' my answer is there are no nuns. They're going extinct in this country," Sister Kate said. Her sisters take a different kind of vow.

The Sisters of the Valley netted $60,000 in sales in 2015, their first year. These days, the online store rakes in about that much revenue monthly, Sister Kate tells Business Insider.

Despite their commercial success, the company is not profitable. Sister Kate said that as much as $150,000 is currently tied up in credit card processing and banking.

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"B

The cost of security and repairs on the property also eats up their profit, she said. The compound has an armed guard and a newly constructed

Plus, the sisters' livelihood faces constant threats from local and federal governments. In 2015, the group was living in Merced, California, when the city council banned the cultivation and sale of cannabis within city limits. (It was later overturned.)

Source:

Fortunately, the sisters were already in the process of buying a foreclosed home in Merced County. Local law there permits residents to cultivate 12 cannabis plants per land parcel.

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"This is the Wild West," one sister told me during my visit. "We're not growing dandelions."

Despite the risks, Sister Kate has big plans for expansion. She hopes to start chapters, which will be called "abbeys," from coast to coast over the next five years.

The sisters also have an eye on the booming legal weed market in Canada, Sister Kate told Reuters in April. The country is expected to legalize the drug outright in spring 2018.

Sisters of the Valley hopes to create jobs for like-minded, cannabis-loving women.

"We would like it to be such that wherever you saw women in their blue jean skirts, white blouses, and hats, [you knew] those women know about cannabis," Sister Kate said.

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