As the truck pulls up to the loading bay of a warehouse at a 1,000-acre apple farm in Lafayette, New York, a worker rolls back the door to the loading area, revealing 35 three-foot-tall sacks filled with 5,000 pounds of weed.

Eddie Brennan, the 44-year-old president and CEO of Beak & Skiff Farms, known for its 1911 hard cider brand, and CEO of Ayrloom, the Empire State’s top-selling cannabis company, watches as his employees haul bags of cannabis to the door of the extraction lab. Today’s harvest will be crushed and then put through an ethanol extraction process (the ethanol comes from a nearby distillery) and made into a vape. Entering the legal cannabis industry was a risk, but Brennan’s family business, which has historically depended on seasonal apple sales for 80% of its revenue, needed to expand into the fast-growing sector.

“Every generation thinks they’re going to lose it—the fear is part of the business plan,” says Brennan, a fifth-generation co-owner of the family farm. “Nothing lasts forever and you have to constantly evolve.”

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