East Fork Cultivars is proud to announce the addition of Tricia Chin and Anna Symonds to its leadership team. Tricia joins the team as a Co-Owner, carrying on the legacy and vision of her late husband Joel Fischer, East Fork Cultivars' Ambassador of Happiness. Anna has been named East Fork’s Chief Communications Officer, a recognition of the additional responsibilities she’s already been managing beyond the scope of her previous title as Director of Education.

Joel Matthew Fischer, a guiding force behind East Fork Cultivars, passed away three weeks ago on January 8, 2021.

As our Ambassador of Happiness and one of East Fork’s ownership team of four, he was as much our brother as our biological brothers. He is deeply missed.

In 2020, East Fork launched a commercial-scale tissue culture offering for our hemp genetics through our partnership with Vibrant Hemp Cultures. In the wrap up to the 2020 harvest, feedback from farmers has been outstanding.

The "peppery / musky / funky" smell of caryophyllene isn't far away from “smoky” in the olfactory universe

As we’ve begun to receive the test results for this year's harvest, a trend is apparent: a prevalence of the terpene beta-caryophyllene.

Every single cultivar that we've tested to date shows caryophyllene in its top three terpenes.

The purity and safety of East Fork’s flower is of utmost importance to us. After surviving the widespread wildfires in our region and bringing in our 2020 harvest, we undertook additional testing on our flower to determine whether the smoke and ash had created any potential health hazards.

The East Fork team found ourselves facing new and truly daunting challenges coming into the Fall 2020 harvest season.

Harvest is always a huge lift and very time-sensitive, but this year we were starting with less preparation than ever — immediately after narrowly surviving the devastating wildfires in our region. Our team, who had mostly been evacuated from their homes for a couple of weeks, had to leap into action immediately upon their return.

In July we launched an innovative pilot fundraising campaign with our friends and partners at Steward, the world’s first CrowdFarming platform. As a first for businesses in the United States, anyone in the country was able to invest in our organization directly and earn their money back plus a 10% return in 3 years.

Takilma and the farm are safe. Everyone in our team is safe. Though the Slater Fire reached to within a mile of the farm, the fire lines held for the most part, and firefighting has saved most of the inner valley. On October 1, all evacuation orders were lifted for the Illinois Valley, sending our spirits soaring, and gave us the opportunity to regroup and reflect on the important lessons during this scare.

It's natural that many folks are curious, or have quality concerns, regarding our hemp and cannabis being so close to wildfires this year.

In terms of the actual crop and flower, consumers and patients don’t need to be too concerned. We have a number of efforts underway to mitigate any potential impacts on the flower and ensure quality. Here's the general outline.

As part of East Fork Cultivars' Farm Exchange Program, we invite farms from around the world to stay at our farm and exchange cultivation practices. Black Earth Farms visited the East Fork ranch from East Bay, California and interviewed with Ryan Hartman about their experiences.

June, #pridemonth , is about celebrating our freedom of expression and the inherent beauty in our natural ways of being that have been unfairly stigmatized for so long. But for the cannabis community it is also a sorely needed opportunity to recognize and honor the gay community's crucial role in pioneering medical marijuana programs in response to the AIDS crisis, to which we all owe a deep debt of gratitude.⁣⁣⁣

It has been five years since we first planted on the East Fork Ranch and it has us reminiscing on how far we’ve come in that time. A lot has changed, while more has remained the same. We remain committed to environmental responsibility, science-based education, and social justice. We will continue to develop and preserve sustainable, sun-grown farming methods in order to produce high-quality, genetically diverse, CBD-rich cultivars.

At East Fork, we are committed to offering our customers the highest quality cannabis flower. As breeders, we aim to create resinous, terpenoid- and cannabinoid-rich cultivars. We want to continuously breed plants for traits like pest resistance, novel chemical profiles (or chemotypes), and plant morphology in order to explore the potential of the cannabis plant and maximize its ability to provide relief for a wide variety of people. Simultaneously, we want to create a productive crop that is as easy to cultivate and process as possible.

Learn how to grow your own hemp / cannabis at home, in your own backyard! In Oregon, people are allowed to grow 4 personal plants at home. This allowance exists in other states as well but the plant limit differs state-to-state. This summer, we’re encouraging people to try their hand at growing their own plants. It’s not too hard. And it’s exceedingly fun.

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.

Although just about everyone at East Fork takes part in the myriad of daily tasks, Skip Newcomb is the one with the dirtiest hands and greenest thumbs. His knowledge of all facets of plant growing, from cloning to feeding to planting to harvesting to genetics and seed production, is astronomical.

In the summer of 2018 we partnered up with Steward, the world’s first Crowdfarming platform for sustainably minded farms, and acquired 24 gorgeous acres adjacent to the original East Fork Ranch. This ranch expansion paved the way for our inaugural Farm Bill-compliant craft hemp harvest.