Rooted in Fire -The Rise of Fire Mountain Farms

Rooted in Fire – The Rise of Fire Mountain Farms
By James Bridges | Herbage Magazine

It’s easy to mistake Fire Mountain Farms for just another grow tucked away in the Oklahoma countryside. Rows of cannabis under the steady hum of fans. A team moving in quiet rhythm. But the truth is messier, richer, and more relatable than you might think.

They started the way most great things start, in someone’s backyard. No million-dollar investors. No shiny lab coats. Just a few Oklahomans chasing a business venture they didn’t fully understand yet, and a willingness to learn the hard way. The outdoor grow was their baptism by fire. Midnight spraying runs to battle caterpillars and grasshoppers. Killing bugs by hand. Swearing at the wind.

“I used to catch grasshoppers and toss ’em outside,” Jana Stagner, Fire Mountain’s general manager, admits with a smirk. “Now I’m stepping on them and cussing ’em.” That’s farming for you. It doesn’t care about your sensibilities, only your persistence.

When they moved indoors, it was like stepping into a different world. Gravel floors, lights hung too far apart, plants spaced so sparsely they could’ve hosted a church service between them. “We really didn’t know much,” they say. “We just learned from mistakes, partnered with people who actually knew their stuff, and kept pushing forward.”

Now, the place hums with purpose. Five flower rooms. A front veg space. Cloning stations. In-house pheno hunts. Each plant tagged and tracked with a code system that only makes sense if you’ve lived it. The yields speak for themselves, 180-185 pounds a room on a good run. But they’ve learned not to get comfortable. Strains come and go. Chasing the market’s taste for purple buds or new terp profiles is a game of patience and timing. Drop a strain too soon and you regret it. Keep it too long and your buyers lose interest.

“We hang on until we know, really know, we’re ready to cut it loose,” they say. “It’s small-batch thinking on a larger scale.”

Fire Mountain doesn’t sell to customers directly. Their products are on shelves stocked in dispensaries, with brand names you recognize, but rarely the growers’ faces. That’s where the people skills come in. Blake Hoye is the expert representing Fire Mountain while talking to budtenders, doing stealth “secret shopper” visits, making sure stores have what their customers are looking for. Sometimes that means helping dispensaries with signage, promos, or even coupons. The goal is loyalty and not just to Fire Mountain, but between the store and its patients.

That patient connection shapes everything, down to the packaging. Their flower is sealed in nitrogen-flushed, childproof bags with clear backs so buyers can actually see what they’re getting. “I opened a two-month-old bag at a popup and the buds were still fresh,” Blake motioned. “People were shocked.”
Running the new high-tech packaging machine wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, it was an expensive exercise in patience. “The first couple of weeks were brutal,” they laugh. “Changing bags, cleaning between strains, recalibrating every little thing. But now it’s starting to feel worth it.”

For all the tech and planning, there’s still a farmer’s heartbeat here. Walking the rooms, you see the work in stages. There’s an abundance of seedlings symmetrical and full of promise, flowering plants heavy with trichomes, drying racks lined with fresh harvest. The air is thick with scent, cantaloupe from one room, gassy funk from another, purple hues bleeding into the buds as they finish. Names like Fire on the Mountain, Biscotti, Rainbow Sherbet, and Lemon Cherry Gelato hang in the air like poetry.

The crew has fought off spider mites, russet mites, and the mental grind that makes even the most dedicated growers wonder if it’s worth it. “I’ve thought about quitting a million times,” Jana admits with a laugh. “People think you just throw a seed in dirt and it grows. It’s not like that. It’s complicated. It’s exhausting. But it’s also… very rewarding.”

There’s no rockstar image here… There’s no half-baked Instagram persona. Just regular folks who grow cannabis and take their kids to volleyball practice. And maybe that’s what makes them dangerous, the authenticity. They’re not chasing hype. They’re building something real, one grow cycle at a time.

The future? More of the same, but better. More dispensary connections. Better medicine. Expanding the footprint. Always improving. Always learning.

“If you ever think you’ve got it all figured out in cannabis,” they say, “you’ve still got a lot to learn.”

And here’s the thing… that’s not a complaint. That’s a promise.

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