2021 Cultivation Updates from the Farm
Our Cultivation Team is happily finishing up plant out, the team’s busiest season of the year. This year we will be trialing a few different no-till methods, with the goal of continually improving our relationship with the farm’s ecology.
Entering our seventh cultivation season, our team is beyond excited at the promise of this year's cultivar selection. Here’s a sneak peak at what we’re currently cultivating for your future delight:
Adult Use Canopy
Our adult-use (Oregon-only) acre is full of diversity, with 26 cultivars in production.
Highlights include:
East Fork classics such as Pineapple Jager (2:1), Cherry Blossom, Nice Tsunami, and the 2020 Cultivation Classic winner Takilma Kush
Newcomers including Dragon Hawk (a freshly minted field selection from seed bred by our friends at Yerba Buena) and a new Sour Remedy that was a standout in our field trials last season
THC-dominant varieties including Forbidden Fruit, a colorful plant bursting with tangerine and cherry notes (a cut from our friends at Alter Farms)
Of note: we're excited to be growing four THC-dominant cultivars this season, representing some of the parent lines that have contributed to our house-bred genetics over the years. While East Fork generally focuses on high-CBD cannabis, these Type 1 varieties add more diversity to our offerings.
Hemp Canopy
2021 marks the first season where the vast majority of our nine acres of USDA Organic Certified hemp will be grown from our own seed lines.
We've worked hard to stabilize the genetics for consistent production of East Fork Original favorites such as Sour Pineapple, Pear Blossom, Oregon Guava, Blue Orchid, and Oregon Sweetgum.
Other selections include our stabilized Sour Tsunami (a backbone parent in our breeding work), and White CBG (from the talented folks at Oregon CBD).
As usual, our hemp field will also include a large trial plot where we assess the quality of hemp lines we hope to release in future seasons, both as flower and seed.
Research Projects
In the Breeding realm, 2021 is a very exciting year as for the first time we’re producing 90%+ of our flower from our EFC original genetics. We are also outfitting our greenhouse to be able to produce seed in the earth outdoors in 2021, which will allow us to certify our seed as USDA Organic for the first time.
A special project we have taken on this year is a collaboration with The Understory Initiative, performing an organic seed multiplication to provide a diverse mix of native seeds needed for ecological restoration and pollinator habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California. The native seed project includes mostly perennial plants, and will be a multi-year project.
In addition, we're participating in two separate university field trial studies this season – one with North Carolina State and one through Michigan State – for a total of four sites. We'll also be doing several R&D projects throughout the season, including trial seed multiplications on our farm, and some projects in collaboration with our research partner Infinite Tree. We're field trialing several R&D seed varieties that our breeding team produced, along with a bunch of crosses that Infinite Tree is finishing up in the next couple of weeks.
When considering the road ahead and where we stand, Farm Director Skip Newcomb exclaimed, “It’s exciting to really think about how far we have come over the years!”
The several large rocks piles on the farm – each stone removed from the fields by hand – attest to that.
The farm is an ever-living, ever-growing labor of love.
