Sustainable Cultivation Efforts and Progressive Business Practices
The East Fork Ranch is located in the small town of Takilma in Southern Oregon, tucked between the pristine waters of the East Fork of the Illinois River and the Siskiyou Wilderness — the heart of one of the world’s best environments for sun-grown cannabis. Living, working, or even just driving through the Illinois Valley it's obvious that this bioregion needs to be preserved and protected. At East Fork, we take this responsibility very seriously.
The goal of every member of the EFC crew is to grow superior CBD-rich cannabis in a way that is sustainable to not only the 34-acres that are part of the farm, but also the larger environment and community.
Since November of 2018, the craft hemp arm of East Fork has been certified USDA Organic. We were one of the first hemp farms in the U.S. to receive certification. In order to achieve this certification we had to demonstrate that we were protecting natural resources, conserving biodiversity, and using only approved substances. Multiple inspections were conducted, historical property research was done, and our vendors were scrutinized. After the rigorous process, we were certified.
A large portion of the land we are located on has been kept in its native state of oak savanna, with natural wetlands being among that. If you spend some time on the farm you'll see deer, cougars, coyotes, bears, birds of all types, frogs, turtles, lizards, jackrabbits, skunks, and squirrels, among many other forms of life. We're also participating in a four-year wildlife study of cannabis farms in Josephine County, done by a grad student from UC Berkeley. Our participation involves the placing of cameras throughout our cultivation sites, cameras which have so far captured footage of jackrabbits, skunks, and other wildlife within our cultivation canopies.
The farm crew, along with a few community locals, like to enjoy the small vegetable garden and the three pond-like sources of surface water, which greatly encourage biodiversity. We also plant a lot of pollinator-friendly flowers in order to maintain our healthy pollinator populations, with tons of bees and a diverse array of butterflies among our favorites.
In 2019, as part of an ambitious natural pest control program we mixed in a potato crop with our cannabis. This had the primary purpose of discouraging symphylans in the soil, and the wonderful bonus purpose of helping to feed our community. We planted 12,000 pounds of potatoes across our entire farm, and donated the subsequent crop to local food banks through the Spiral Living Center’s Illinois Valley Gleaning Project.
Growing directly in our native soil not only eliminates the need to import soil mediums, but also allows a unique expression of terroir — the characteristic experience, taste, and flavor imparted to a flower cultivar by the environment in which it is produced — in our cannabis. The unique soil qualities found in the Illinois River Valley are partly responsible for creating some of the most amazing collections of cannabis plants in the world.
By choosing to grow in native soil we reduce our environmental impact and deepen our connection with our terroir, which helps to create chemically complex cultivars. We also know that terpene profiles are influenced by growing environment, and soil is a big part of that. By skipping out on what native soil has to offer you also skip out on the terroir: the complete natural environment—including soil, topography, and climate — in which a particular flower is produced.
Time-tested sungrown cultivation methods have shown that nature offers everything we need to grow this remarkable plant, but there is a tendency to want to artificially recreate what nature already offers. The practice of trucking in soil, made up of components from all over the world, necessitates a heavy nutrient-feeding regimen that’s very unsustainable when applied at the scale this industry is growing towards.
Another important part of caring for the soil is planting a cover crop between production cycles. That's why in the fall, before and during the harvest of our cannabis crop, we put winter rye, vetch, and crimson clover seeds in the ground. These plants cover the ground during the winter season and provide many benefits to the soil, such as fixing nutrients, improving soil structure, preventing erosion, adding organic matter, suppressing weeds, and increasing biodiversity. The benefit of planting pre-harvest ensures that the soil and its inhabitants will be without vegetation for the least amount of time possible.
In the spring, we test our soils to determine which nutrients may need supplementation. We then spread our Organic Certified, locally sourced dry amendments using a rotary spader to incorporate the amendments and cover crop, which is a less-invasive alternative to a traditional tiller. We also collect and culture indigenous microorganisms (IMO) from healthy local forests on non-gmo wheat middlings to greatly improve our soil micro biosphere, which in turn improves soil loaminess, tilth, structure, earthworm habitat. We spread this inoculum at a rate of 1,200 lbs. per acre and hand rake it into our beds. We pair the IMO with the biochar we prepare from the previous year's cannabis stalks. This provides the IMO with a habitat, with the added benefits of adding carbon to the soil, recycling nutrients, reducing leaching of nutrients, improving water quality, and reducing acidity.
We also supply our plants with nutrients, minerals, and beneficial microorganisms using anaerobic ferments that we create on-site, following the processes described in the Korean Natural Farming and JADAM natural farming methods. The plant material necessary for these inputs are sourced only from our property. The inputs are applied either by foliar spray or drip irrigation. During the growing season we use a minimal pruning technique, which allows the cannabis plants to "self-prune" or allow their inner foliage to die back and fall to the ground. This not only provides the soil with mulch, it also recycles the nutrients back into the soil. Any material that is pruned, or any plants that are culled due to undesirable expression are used in a liquid ferment, further recycling nutrients back into the crop. We focus on feeding the soil, which is what feeds our plants.
Water is another important part of growing any outdoor crop. We share agricultural water rights from a tributary of the Illinois River with a few neighbors. This water is gravity fed into our three holding ponds, which we pump out of to feed the drip irrigation systems for our crops. This drip system is a way to minimize waste, while preventing weeds from taking hold, by slowly watering only the necessary areas. For our hemp, we bring the water to each field by two-inch flexible hose. This hose feeds our two-inch headers, which supply each four-foot row of plants with a single drip line. On our adult-use cannabis farm we have a similar set up, though our supply lines and headers are buried underground, and the 10 foot rows of plants are supplied by six drip lines each. The liquid fertilizers we create on site are fed through an injection system to eliminate the need for any reservoir other than our holding ponds.
One of the challenging things about the farm having such an abundance of life is figuring out how to all live together. We practice Integrated Pest Management. The first step in IPM is to define what constitutes a pest at our farm. Once we have set a pest threshold, we can begin building a healthy, balanced ecosystem. We plant insectary plants, companion plants, and utilize a banker plant system to encourage native predatory insects to move in and reproduce. As mentioned above, this year we began co-planting potatoes with cannabis in hopes of naturally combating a persistent soil pest, symphylans. We do regular releases of a variety of beneficial insects to help prevent our most prevalent pests.
We perform routine pest scouting and microscopic analysis of our plants at all stages throughout the year to monitor our pest pressure levels, which vary over time. With the data gathered through scouting and scoping, we can then decide how to proceed. If we end up with a hot spot that is beyond our control with our preventative, natural methods, we will spot spray with something we make onsite, or a spray that is permitted with our Sun+Earth and USDA Organic certifications. We use this as a last resort and we do not spray our entire field. We only spot treat areas of heavy pest pressure, allowing the rest of the field to remain untreated. Last year, we only sprayed in our field one time. By using healthy, vigorous, pest resistant genetics we promote an overall healthy cultivation area.
Our definition of sustainability doesn't just include the soil, plants, wild animals, and insects, though. It includes the people. Our team here at East Fork is everything. We try to instill a fun and safe working environment that promotes growth, security, and overall well-being for all of our team members.
This organization aspires to have a strong, close-knit core crew that is employed year-round and makes a living wage. No one makes less than $20 per hour and almost everyone is employed full time for a 40 hour work week with paid time off each year. We were recently able to add employee health benefits as well, with East Fork paying half the premium of each plan. This helps particularly with our rural farm team living in generationally impoverished Josephine County in Southern Oregon, where jobs paying over minimum wage are hard to come by.
We also do workshops with our team to learn and implement continual improvement philosophies into our workplace. This helps everyone feel more involved in the organization overall and allows for our small crew to tackle a lot of work in a very strategic way, thus limiting our need for temporary employees. Members of our core crew are able to change processes, start new projects, and generally shape the way the business is run as a whole, with everyone's input being taken into consideration. Everyone who works with us on our farm dedicates a large portion of their lives to giving our plants the tender loving care that is showcased in the finished product. We believe that on top of being paid fairly, the reward for a job well done should be a sense of fulfillment and belonging. A feeling that what you do everyday matters.
