Sunshine brightly this early Monday on California’s north coast as we head into a week of supposedly accelerating heat — even here on the shoreline we should be in the category of ‘hot‘ by Friday.
Of course, our ‘hot‘ is ocean-breeze relative.

On this Labor Day, a glance at our local laborers of budtenders, or trimmingrants, the focus of our way-top industry.
Writer Sorcha O’Higgins dramatically reports on the life: ‘“After a few weeks your hands are calloused, your lower back crippled, your wrists ache and all the days merge into a green haze, so much so that the spiky, conifered ridges of the Californian mountains look like lines of untrimmed buds just itching to be snipped. Trim camp consumes you.”‘

Labor at $150 a pound…

(Illustration: ‘Cannabis,’ by Michael Creese, found here).

And the sky’s the limit. Many good trimmers can wack six pounds a day. Even at a couple of pounds a day, the labor can be well worth it. The big drawback is the marijuana type, and how well the job done.

And a wide market, too.
Labor Day marks one of the highest grossing sales days in the cannabis industry
Some financial stats off the labor — via Yahoo Finance last Thursday:

— In 2015, total cannabis retail sales exceeded $32M on Labor Day weekend (Sept 3-6, 2015), which represents a 43 percent daily increase from an average sales day.
This also represents average daily retail sales growth of 23 percent in 2015 over average daily sales for Labor Day weekend 2014 (Sept 4-7, 2015).
— In 2016, we expect Labor Day weekend retail sales (Sept 1-4) to reach $41M.
Sales spikes begin the Thursday before Labor Day with Friday being the highest grossing sales day.
— In 2015, individual cannabis licensed retail locations — dispensaries and delivery services — sold on average $5,694 in retail sales on September 3, $7,266 on September 4, $5,985 on September 5, and $5,100 on September 6 in 2015, the four days of Labor Day weekend.

*Note: One physical cannabis retail location may operate with two individual licenses – medical and recreational.
Same-store cannabis retail customer traffic increased by slightly more than 11% on Labor Day weekend 2015 compared to Labor Day weekend 2014. This year it’s expected to rise even more.

— Customer traffic increased on average by 20 percent during Sept 3-6, 2015 as compared to a non-holiday sales day.
Individual customers spent on average $69.14 per trip Labor Day weekend 2015, a rise of 3 percent compared to customers visiting retail locations on an average day.

Does pot deny motivation?
Maybe, maybe not — from The Conversation last Friday:

Two studies we have been working on have investigated the claim that cannabis leads to reduced motivation.
We found that when you give people the equivalent of one spliff’s worth of cannabis, under controlled conditions in a laboratory, they are less willing to work for money.
In other words, they are not as motivated as usual.
However, we also compared people who are addicted to cannabis with a control group (non-cannabis drug users).
We found that when neither group had used drugs for at least 12 hours, they did not differ in their motivation for money.
Our results suggest that when you have recently smoked cannabis, it reduces your motivation in the short-term.
On the other hand, long-term cannabis use may not impair your motivation, as long as you stop smoking it for at least 12 hours.
…
What do our results mean to the average cannabis user?
After years of being told that getting high makes you lazier, we’ve provided some of the first solid evidence that it’s true.
Importantly though, it doesn’t eradicate your motivation altogether — it makes you slightly, yet significantly, more apathetic.
On the bright side, your long-term cannabis use may not erode your drive like some people claim, so long as you can put your joint down for a while.

Or labor at $150 a pound…