Dispensaries are set to open in Rosendale and Ellenville, but one of the longest journeys has been in Marbletown. Will Leibee’s Back Home Farm dispensary is now expected to open on September 7, in the building also holding a veterinarian that stands at the juncture of Routes 209 and 213.

Leibee, who has been a licensed grower of both hemp and cannabis since it was legalized in New York in 2022, spent the past few months waiting for the OCM in Albany to upgrade his license to a “microbusiness” license. That license, new to the state this year, would allow him to grow, process and sell cannabis and cannabis products to the public.

Back Home Farm is situated on the Lucas Turnpike at the old Boice dairy farm. In addition to cannabis, Back Home grows vegetables which it sells to restaurants and at Manhattan’s weekly Union Square farmer’s market.

Back Home Farm has been growing and processing hemp and cannabis since it became legal in NYS in 2021. The farm now regularly provides cannabis product to dispensaries across NYS.

On the first day of legal recreational cannabis sales in the state in 2022, Back Home Farm products were among the first to be sold in the city’s first recreational cannabis dispensary – by the nonprofit Housing Works in lower Manhattan, who assisted with the Rosendale dispensary. Their influence also extends to Leibee’s farm.

The Housing Works people are experts, Leibee said. The charity is advising Back Home Farm on what security companies to hire to set up their electronic security and pricing systems, and on how to establish their dispensary.

The selling of cannabis is not seen as an extension of agricultural retailing but as a new developing industry. Most New York stores could be described as mini-boutique establishments, similar in layout and technique to those that sell exquisite whiskeys and other liquors.

While Leibee was awaiting his OCM microbusiness license, the Town of Marbletown approved Back Home Farm establishing a dispensary in the building at the corner of routes 209 and 213 in Stone Ridge. In that period, Back Home Farm also built a new retail building in Accord at the corner of Route 209 and the Lucas Turnpike. The building, which according to Leibee, will “not be open to the public for several years,” will store and, in the future, sell vegetables and cannabis products.

Then, at the start of August, after several months of unexpected delays, Leibee got his OCM microbusiness license and the move to the dispensary got underway.

Leibee began constructing the dispensary. Last week he had the surveillance system installed.

If all goes well, Leibee hopes for a friends and family opening at the Back Home Farm dispensary in the middle of September, with a public opening following two weeks after that.