By Logan B. Anderson

CANTERBURY — Delaware’s first medical marijuana compassion center complete with drive-thru service celebrated its grand opening Monday.

The Farm, a family-owned cannabis company, opened its retail center in Canterbury at 105 Irish Hill Road, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Farm is now open five days a week to qualified customers.

The marijuana compassion center is in the former WSFS Bank building north of Felton. The location provides the center with security and the ability to provide safe and secure drive-thru service for online orders.

When thinking about what to call their venture, the brother and sister co-owners — William Rohrer Jr. and Jennifer Stark — were looking for something tranquil with a connection to their youth.

“We thought about the name for a while and settled on The Farm. We thought that everyone has had a great experience on a farm — if it’s a (Community Supported Agriculture) or visiting a farm or a relative. We wanted to create a good experience here,” Mr. Rohrer said.

The Farm is truly a family operation, Mr. Rohrer and Ms. Stark’s brother David Rohrer works in their growing operations, and their extended family can be found throughout their enterprise. The venture is also funded largely by investments from their family.

“We have a great team and it’s really unique,” Mr. Rohrer said. “They are part of the pool investing in this business. So far, we haven’t had to go outside to ask for outside investor. That gives us a lot of control in our business.

The family recently brought on Rick MacDonald, a family friend, as their director of operations.

“Jenn and I have daughters that are the same age. Jenn’s husband was my daughter’s soccer coach for seven or eight years,” Mr. MacDonald said.

Everyone in The Farm family has a role to play. Mr. Rohrer is one of only two agronomists in the First State — his job is cultivation. Ms. Stark, an engineer, oversees turning their plant product into one of their many products.

The Farm offers a wide variety of goods that they produce themselves.

“We have edibles, vape cartridges, topicals, tincture, capsules, concentrates and flowers,” Ms. Stark said.

The farm has a full line of CBD products too, including dog treats. They also produce and sell products for other cannabis centers.

To open their center, they had to get special permission from the state of Delaware.

“Last year this month, we were biting our nails waiting to hear if we if we were selected. It was December when we were selected. We dropped seeds in February and here we are,” Mr. Rohrer said. “It really feels good. We were fortunate to have some infrastructure in place between cultivation and extraction that allowed us to go into second and third gear pretty quickly.”

Ms. Stark said The Farm works to make products that will help their clients.

“We strive and want to have the highest quality products. It starts at cultivation, with pesticide-free cultivation. We only have natural ingredients,” she said.

Many of their product lines have only a few ingredients.

To purchase medical cannabis, clients must have a doctor’s recommendation.

“Anybody that comes in has to have a (medical marijuana) card,” Mr. MacDonald said.

Ms. Stark suffers from a chronic pain condition; she understands what many of The Farm’s clients deal with.

“For someone like me that doesn’t like to smoke a lot, to have that option for edibles is huge. We are really proud to offer our edibles — they include gummies, brownies, cookies. We probably have 15 different flavors of gummies,” Ms. Stark said.

The list of qualifying conditions in the First State to qualify for a medical marijuana card include, cancer, terminal illness, AIDS, agitation of Alzheimer’s Disease, glaucoma, seizures, PTSD, and others.

“The main goal of our company is to promote wellness,” Ms. Stark said.

The center has been opened with limited hours since August.

“Now is a good time to announce our opening. We are open five days a week. The drive-thru is open. We have online ordering,” Mr. Rohrer said.

For more information, visit here, email admin@thefarmde.com or call 302-469-5470.