b'daughters, Julia and Grace, were both intrigued and supportive of their mothers business idea.Once her family came around, Donovan started taking courses at Mount Royal University (MRU) about cannabis branding and production. She also read the Cannabis Act in order to fully understand the government regulations.After federal legalization took full affect, Vulcan County had to amend their municipal Land Use Bylaw and started its own research into the cannabis industry to decide whether or not to allow production in their county. Donovan lent her newfound cannabis industry expertise to the discussion, which helped the council decide to allow production in their county. When she applied herself to grow, she recused herself as a councillor from the discussion and decision to avoid any conflict of interest.For the most part, it was very positive. The community has welcomed my application and my facility. And so that was very good not to get pushback from the community, because if you cant get support and approval at the municipal level, you cant get it off the ground, Donovan says.Planning Out the New BusinessAs part of Donovans coursework at MRU she started developing a business plan and deciding on how she would grow cannabis. She quickly decided she wanted to use a grow system within her facility where she would be able to separate and segregate her crops in order to limit losses from wide-spread crop failures.Donovan first looked at buying a grow system made from retrofitted shipping containers from a California company. However, it was going to cost way too much with the exchange rate and shipping to bring them to Alberta.She also looked into buying a system from Switch Grow Solutions in Calgary, who had production pods and are known for their LED lighting systems. However, their production pods were still being developed.Someone then mentioned Winnipeg, Man.-based Delta 9 to her. The cannabis company, which originally started as a medicinal producer in 2013 and then expanded into the recreational market in 2018, was starting to sell its trademarked grow pods to entrepreneurs.We saw this as our kind of opportunity to build a turnkey platform for the cannabis industryentrepreneurs that are wanting to get in on the cultivation side of the business particularly, John Arbuthnot, CEO of Delta 9, says in a phone interview.Delta 9s grow pods are retrofitted shipping containers installed with customized wall panels, lighting, HVAC and security. As part of their turnkey platform, Delta 9 sells the grow pods to entrepreneurs, assists with facility design and layout, sanitation program, standard operating procedures, and buys back cannabis produced by the entrepreneurs to sell in Delta9 stores under the Delta 9 craft cannabis brand or with the growers companys name on it.Plants growing in a grow pod at Delta 9s production facility in Winnipeg, Man.The proprietary grow method allows growers to really PHOTO: DELTA 9 leverage everything that weve done here successfully in our 42seed.ab.ca'