IVERSON FAMILY

My journey began in Minnesota in 1986. 

I grew up on our family farm in Hampton, MN, now called Darkhorse Farms. 

It’s a beautiful place, great for someone who loves animals and the great outdoors. 

From the age of three, I was obsessed with the sport of skiing. 

This obsession became my driving force in life, first as a competitive racer, mogul skier and free skier, and then later as a film skier. 

I won many medals and events, and starred in ski films where I was fortunate to ski places most people could only dream of. 

But with all that skiing came a downside. You crash. 

And may times I was injured. 

In all of my years of skiing, there have been several bad injuries. 

This is one of the main things that brought me to cannabis and hemp. 

I started working with cannabis as a patient and caregiver in Colorado over 20 years ago where I quickly discovered how important it was to have the cleanest herb possible. 

After trying many growing styles that can be used to grow these plants, 

such as soil-grown hydroponics and aeroponics, I decided that I needed to listen to my intuition and go completely organic.

Organic means using only natural ingredients and no harmful chemicals.

This is a good thing, but not all organic practices are as clean as they can be. 

For me, I could not continue to use things like bone meal, bat guano, or fish emulsion anymore. 

I had to remove these products from my production and the negative karma that comes with them. 

After years of working with organic growing and developing a strong knowledge of what it takes to create a premium herb, it was time to take it even further. 

I began to grow entirely vegan or plant-based, which makes the plants I grow even cleaner and more sustainable. 

I took this knowledge and became the the head grow master for South Park Farms and also Haleigh’s Hope several years ago. 

South Park Farms is a recreational wholesale grow operation in Fairplay, Colorado, and Haleigh’s Hope is a CBD hemp company. 

At this job, I was able to see what it was like to deal with hemp plants on a large scale.

It also opened my eyes to how much hemp-derived CBD can help people, including myself. 

For many years I worked on all of the many aspects of these grow facilities. 

It then came time to take all of this experience and knowledge and use it for a new adventure.

I went back to my roots and returned to our family farm in Hampton, Minnesota to grow hemp/CBD. In 2019 we were licensed with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture Hemp Program and we began Darkhorse Hemp Farms.

Al Iverson built the family farm in 1989 and named the road Darkhorse Lane. 

Iverson was born in Fargo, North Dakota then moved to the Twin Cities as a young boy with his family. 

He grew up as a talented athlete and competed in many sports. 

But ideally he wanted to be a cowboy after watching years of Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers.

That passion grew as an adult where he raised and bred race horses and also competed in rodeo events, specifically team roping. 

Amongst his entrepreneurial endeavors,  he spent 3+ decades as Senior VP at Coldwell Banker Burnet. 

As part of his strong interest in health and fitness, he also spent 5 years at Life Time Fitness as President of Athletic Events and Media, America's premier health and fitness company. 

Patti Iverson grew up on a dairy farm in Farmington, Minnesota (5 miles from Darkhorse Farms). 

She was the oldest of 4 girls. They all grew up working on the family farm. But horses and music were her passion. 

She studied both Journalism and Music/Piano at UW-River Falls, then earned a Masters Degree in Music/Piano Pedagogy at the University of St Thomas, where she taught undergraduate piano for several years. She played with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. 

In 1997, she became a realtor for the brokerage she still works for today, Coldwell Banker Realty. 

Both Al and Patti teamed up as the Iverson Realty Group at Coldwell Banker Realty in 2016-present. 

They met at the Chequamegon Fat Tire mountain bike race in 2000, married in 2004, and have competed in cycling races all around the world as a team. 

Together with family, they enjoy being outside on the farm, riding horses, biking, and skiing. 

As professionals and athletes, farmers and animal lovers, they knew starting  Darkhorse Hemp Farms would be a great asset to improving their lives and everyone around them. 

With Jacob as their farmer, chemist and product developer, they could create products that would heal even generations to come.