Aid is on the way for struggling farmers in two of the Emerald Triangle’s three counties, with funding available to help improve drought resilience and licensing compliance.
Cannabis for Conservation (CFC), a Humboldt County, California-based 501(c)(3) environmental nonprofit, announced $2.5 million in grant funds to assist small cannabis farmers through the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program via the Qualified Cultivator Funding Opportunity, according to a Feb. 28 press release.
Small farmers in the Emerald Triangle, an area where the economy is built on cannabis farming, have been “pushed to the brink” due to the impact of legalization, Cal Matters reports. It’s a region with over a quarter million people, and nearly everyone living in the region is either directly or indirectly reliant on cannabis. Cannabis has been the area’s staple crop since the ‘70s, with some farms in operation for generations. The rollout of grant funding couldn’t be more urgent, according to locals.
The two grants that were announced—Implementing Drought Resilience Strategies on Humboldt County Cannabis Farms and Provisional to Annual License Transitions for Trinity County Cultivators—will collectively assist 89 farms across eight priority watersheds with environmental work.
“We see a great opportunity for conservation with this nascent industry, especially given that many farmers own large tracts of land in one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on the planet,” said Jackee Riccio, the co-founder and executive director of CFC.
CFC’s Drought Resilience Program aims to improve sustainable water consumption on some 17 farms. They will do this by installing rainwater catchment systems, increasing water storage capacity, and/or hardening and improving irrigation. This, they believe, will improve on-farm drought resilience and reduce direct impacts to water sources during low-flow periods.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought events” is increasing at rates not seen before.
The point of this isn’t to transform small farms into monopolies, however: CFC stipulates that none of these water improvements will be used to increase cultivation footprints, farm size, or number of licenses, but rather reduce or eliminate extraction from water resources during dry periods and in some cases, convert farms to 100% water storage.
The Provisional to Annual License Program, on the other hand, aims to assist 72 Trinity cultivators in achieving an annual County and Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) license. The grant aims to provide professional help to small farmers to finalize annual licenses, including “completing documentation for California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance and Special-Status Species Mitigation and allow for a Technical Advisory Committee between CDFW, CFC, and the county to quickly resolve licensing obstacles that arise.”
CEQA is a California law dating back to 1970 that requires environmental review of proposed cultivation projects. All annual state cannabis licenses must comply with CEQA. The DCC may only issue an annual license once a project complies with CEQA. In addition, DCC has requirements for standard operating procedures, training employees, and how operations must be set up.
CFC’s applied conservation approach focuses on collaborative, on-farm research, biodiversity enhancements, and environmental education.
The goal is to bring together scientists and farmers to implement peer-reviewed conservation practices, with benefits provided to wildlife, land, and water.
“Working with farmers and transforming monocultures into functional agroecosystems is a priority strategy among conservationists globally and we’re doing our part in that here, in the heart of cannabis country to return to the back-to-the-land values that this industry was born from,” Riccio added.
A sense of fairness and equity is what drove Dennis Hunter and Ned Fussell to launch Farmer and the Felon, a cannabis cultivator and advocacy brand dedicated to social justice. The duo knows all too well how prohibition can drastically alter a life.
“When you’re incarcerated, and even when you’re waiting for sentencing, it seems like an eternity before you’re going to be released—it can feel very, very dark; as if there’s no way out,” Hunter said. The Emerald Triangle native spent more than six years in prison after a federal raid on his illegal cannabis farm in the late 1990s. Upon his release, he connected with fellow cultivator Fussell and the pair went on to launch the influential CannaCraft family of brands, which includes the popular Care By Design and AbsoluteXtracts. The company became a poster child for compliance and saw skyrocketing sales. It was a Cinderella story, almost unfathomable to the vast majority of cannabis offenders.
But despite the incredible turnaround, Hunter and Fussell never forgot where they came from. They knew they wanted to support restorative justice efforts and raise awareness of the plight of those still suffering because of prohibition. But the lightbulb didn’t go off until a fateful dinner meeting with mentor Terry Wheatley, CannaCraft Chairwoman of the Board.
“She said, ‘there’s my farmer and my felon’ as we sat down, and I was just like ‘that’s our new brand!’”Hunter says, laughing at the memory. The name stuck, and thus Farmer and the Felon was born. As CannaCraft’s first flower line, Farmer and the Felon took the company back to its roots while simultaneously staying true to Hunter and Fussell’s desire to educate the cannabis community at large.
The Farmer and the Felon product catalog includes eighths, quarters, ounces and pre-rolls.
“We wanted to be able to tell the story of the company and the founders coming up in cannabis and the injustice that happened,” Hunter said. “And the name truly lent itself to do that. But we’re really seeing the opportunity to use the brand to share information and get the message out—to interject change in the industry and how people look at cannabis.”
With a clear vision, the team got to work. In another stroke of serendipitous fortune, cannabis activist and Harborside founder Steve DeAngelo approached Hunter with a new project that aligned almost too well.
“We were probably a month out from launching when he reached out to me with the idea for the Last Prisoner Project,” Hunter said. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is a great fit—I’m about to launch a brand called Farmer and the Felon.’”
Last Prisoner Project (LPP) is a nonprofit dedicated to freeing individuals incarcerated for nonviolent cannabis crimes and supporting those who have recently been released from custody. The mission was a perfect match. As such, Farmer and the felon agreed to include LPP’s messaging on every one of their products, with a portion of sales benefiting the nonprofit.
As soon as they launched in March 2020, Farmer and the felon resonated with consumers, many of whom loved the opportunity to do a little good every time they re-upped. It also helps that the sun-grown flower is a fantastic bang for your buck.
The Farmer and the Felon cultivars include Orange Creamsicle, Legend OG, Blue Dream and Strawnana.
“We have more than 40 years combined cultivation experience, and we want that to come through in every bag,” Hunter said. “We want to keep this brand as close to the plant as possible.”
The product catalog includes eighths (the company’s best-sellers), quarters, ounces and pre-rolls with cultivars such as Orange Creamsicle, Legend OG, Blue Dream and Strawnana. The brand is also planning a line of solventless rosin cartridges for the near future.
Bringing premium flower at budget-friendly prices to market is the goal of many cannabis brands, but it’s the message behindFarmer and the Felon that matters most to the team.“No matter how dark it seems, there are a lot of beautiful things on the other side,” Hunter says when asked if he had any advice for people still making their way through the criminal justice system.
“I missed out on so much, but now I get to look back at all that I accomplished once I got out. Hang on and get through it—then cherish the opportunities you’re given.”
This story was originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now.
Some of you may remember an ‘80s joke: “Anyone who says they can remember the ‘60s wasn’t there.” I was never so sure about that, because we always talked about “acid flashbacks.” And for sure, my most vivid memories of that time are from the acid trips I took and from when I was super stoned on pot—the everyday psychedelic—which was most of the time.
I was born in the right place at the right time. Granted I was only 12 in 1967, but I was already fascinated by the hippie influx into San Francisco, my hometown. I wrote in my journal at the time about how it was a conscious decision: Would I become a nun or a hippie? Catholic school had instilled in me a spiritual nature. However, when I smoked my first joint at 14 years old in 1969, within a week it was clear: The hippie path won.
Two weeks later, I was buying weed in bulk Mexican blocks and selling it in “lids”—old-fashioned, roll-over plastic sandwich bags with approximately an ounce of weed. Much of the weight was seeds and stems, and I sold them for $10- $12 each. Mostly, I did this to get my own weed for free and to have enough to share. While William (now Swami) was driving around offering joints to hitchhikers, I was a hitchhiker offering joints to those who picked me up—and it often turned into a full day’s adventure.
I almost feel guilty describing the old days, when the pill was a new invention which afforded incredible liberties; when acid was given away at wild, free concerts in Golden Gate Park every weekend; and when huge Victorian flats were populated by lively hippie communes. It was a time of freedom of expression, a time to question authority. And of course, a time to smoke a whole lot of weed.
Swami William in July 1967 (L) and in 1971 (R).
Before Swami Met Nikki
I [Swami] smoked my first joint on the second floor of a house on Dayton Street, in the student ghetto at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in the spring of 1967, listening to “Mysterious Mountain” by Alan Hovhaness. During that Summer of Love, I drove to San Francisco in a 1965 blue Volkswagen 1300 with three friends. We all stayed in a house two blocks from Haight Street and the first thing we did was smoke a joint on Hippie Hill. We’re still friends to this day.
At the end of that infamous summer, we literally tripped down to Big Sur before driving back to Madison for a final year in grad school. I switched from European History to the Art Department. The University was surging with political protests against the Vietnam War, and I was arrested for protesting on Election Day. Strangely enough, the arrest came up 50 years later when I applied for a cannabis cultivation license in California. I had to submit fingerprints to the state and county, and the subsequent FBI search discovered the bust. In the end, the state license people had a good laugh about it.
I started doing light shows, photography and making films at Madison before I dropped out of school and moved to San Francisco the following summer, in 1968. Then, in 1969, I got a job at KQED in the Special Projects Film Department, but after working on films about Fidel Castro, Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe and Krishnamurti, I dropped out again to focus on art and photography.
William (pre-Swami) in Indian Himalayas, 1970. PHOTO David Macmillan
Hippie Daze
Our tribe had a light show in late ’68-’69 called LSD (Light Sound Dimension). We were like a mini commune and shared a house while we did light show gigs. We also functioned as a “Holding Company” for some dealers on the other side of town, which means they left their weed with us for safekeeping. We warehoused up to thirty kilos of Mexican weed at a time. Because the light show had 18 slide projectors in boxes and numerous slide tray boxes, we could load and unload bricks of Mexican in and out of the house without arousing suspicion. At least that’s what we told ourselves.
We never made any money from holding it. We could roll up as many joints as we pleased, which soon got out of hand, so the arrangement didn’t last long. Each morning we’d get in the car and “trip around the city.” That meant driving over to North Beach for a morning cappuccino, then heading out to Big Beach, cruising through the Park, and then maybe bopping over the Golden Gate Bridge to hit a coffee house in Sausalito. All the while we were picking up hitchhikers and getting them stoned as we took them where they wanted to go.
For a brief while we had a studio on Haight Street, where I had a darkroom in the back. We installed the light show in what was left of the Straight Theater, on the corner of Haight and Cole. We performed the show at the Family Dog on the Great Highway and at Fillmore West during rock shows, as well as other groovy venues.
In 1970, a friend from college invited me to be a cameraman for a film called Sunseed that he was making about various spiritual teachers popular at the time with the hippie generation. It was to be the beginning of a long trip, taking us through Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, including encounters with many profound spiritual teachers. I returned in 1971, doing the overland journey from Europe to India, also known as “the hippie trail.”
Nikki in Malvinas in 1971 (L) and in Santa Cruz, 1979 (R).
Paths Collide
It was in late1969 when I (Nikki) first met Swami. We were in Washington Square Park in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Swami was hanging with a group of decidedly cool, older hippies (in their mid-twenties). The guys all wore bell bottoms and beads and sported long hair, and the girls were so beautiful, bedecked in flowing Indian dresses with no bras and flowers in their hair.
I was a young flower child. My eyes were huge and my curiosity was at its peak. I became friends with the group who were all so kind to me, teaching me about their unusual lifestyle and which drugs to take, how to cast an astrology chart, and what the posters on their walls of mysterious Hindu gods and goddesses were all about. Catholic school had not prepared me for any of that!
It wasn’t until 1980, after Swami and I had both traveled separately overland to India on the hippie trail and lived in other parts of the globe, that we became a couple. In 1985, we got married in San Francisco City Hall on Valentine’s Day.
Times had changed significantly by then, and while we held onto our hippie ethics, I spent my days working at the San Francisco Chronicle while Swami continued with his art and also worked construction for extra income.
Of course, we were always slinging lids on the side and some coke and psychedelics too, but pot was always our mainstay. In the 80’s it was mostly cheap Mexican, although some tasty Thai and even some homegrown from Northern California was available when we were lucky.
Nikki at the Kumbha Mela Festival in Hardwar, India, 1998.
Ex-Pats in India and Mendocino
By the end of the ‘80s, the time had come to drop out again. Enough of that straight stuff! Off we went to live in India for several years, exploring and photographing ancient temples and living in small villages, while naturally smoking lots of charras, as they call hashish there.
We spent summers in the Himalayas where cannabis grows like a weed. The seeds are used in cooking for protein, plus the sticky charras is produced. In the winters, we migrated south to the beaches of Goa to join the throngs of ex-pats and smugglers where we rented a large house. We partied and danced to trance music all night under the palm trees, living the “hippie raj” life to the max.
But by the end of 1996, I felt the urge to return to San Francisco. Swami felt called to retreat to the Himalayan cottage for study and meditation. Even after our parting, we remained the best of friends
Back in the City, the whole dealing world had changed significantly by then. No more cheap Mexican—everyone wanted $400 ounces of “the kind” from the Emerald Triangle. It seemed outrageous to me, coming from the land of $10 tolas (10-gram rolled sticks of charras) in India. But people wanted it, so I supplied it, scoring from my new friends up North.
It’s a long story, but that lead me to meeting Tim Blake, the founder of The Emerald Cup. Tim had a piece of funky land right on Hwy 101 where I could throw weekend psychedelic trance parties, like we did in Goa. This venue soon became known as the infamous AREA 101. Before long, I was living in Mendocino, helping Tim with his grows.
Lids in the old days. PHOTO Bob Zorn
Planting Roots in the Emerald Triangle
William was ordained Swami Chaitanya in 1998 at the Kumbha Mela festival in India. His new vows of renunciation as a Swami included celibacy, eating restrictions, giving up earthly possessions and wearing one color. Although our love for one another persevered, those vows would change our relationship forever.
Around 2002, I paid him a visit in India. When we went to see our old spiritual teacher, Swami Chidananda, it became clear that it was time for Swami to move back to California. Swami Chidananda instructed him to “help Nikki” create my dream of a sanctuary in the hills of Northern California. And doing such didn’t mean Swami had to give up his spirituality or vows. In fact, Chidananda encouraged him to pass on the teachings to even more people as an American Swami.
Swami and I were ready to build a future together, while also remaining true to our own authentic selves. It was a beautiful, exciting next step.
Within two months of returning, we discovered our beautiful ranch in the hills of Mendocino, and we began the largest creative project of our lives: being stewards of a sacred piece of land. Along with installing giant stone statues weighing a ton each and building temples and sacred geometry structures, by 2004 we had our first cannabis garden growing on the land.
Nikki and Swami at their ranch in Mendocino, the home of Swami Select.
It’s been a long, strange journey indeed. Here we are, now legal in a business that was illicit for generations. It’s a challenge, after so many years of being the outlaws. We miss connecting directly with our customers—seeing their faces and shooting the shit. We miss enjoying those lazy summer afternoons after hours of working in the garden all day. Now, instead of heading for the hammock or a shady tree, I’m at my desk, working on permits and bills. We miss the luxury of enjoying free time.
But, it’s worth it to get the best medicine in the world out to deserving customers and patients. Meanwhile, we continue to maintain our hippie ethos, and who knows—we may just drop out again soon!
Deep in the heart of the Emerald Triangle, a 40-acre plot of land is the home of a small regenerative farm that serves as a connection between Earth and a community of consumers eager to enjoy the benefits of its natural bounty. Welcome to Moon Made Farms.
The small cannabis cultivation operation is nestled into an oak grove in southern Humboldt County, the hub of California’s legacy marijuana industry. Tina Gordon, the steward of the land and founder of Moon Made Farms, says she realized it was a magical place when she first visited in 2007 to make a documentary film about the property’s previous owner Joani Hannan, a 1950s and ’60s drummer who blazed a trail for mid-twentieth century queer performers. After leaving behind the grit and decay of the big city, the tranquility and interconnectedness of the farm’s natural surroundings spoke to Gordon’s soul and revealed what was missing in her life.
“It shifted my consciousness and opened my eyes to the fact that we’re living on a living planet,” Gordon said. “Being from an urban area — from a city — I didn’t recognize that I was living in captivity.”
Gordon marveled at the abundance of nature she found in her new home: clean air, untreated water, a clearly visible night sky and food harvested fresh from the land. Most importantly, the secluded piece of the Emerald Triangle is where her relationship with cannabis fully blossomed.
“Once I was here, I fell in love with the plant,” she said.
Growing healthy cannabis is only part of the picture.
A New Calling
When she first moved to Humboldt, Gordon had no intention or even interest in becoming a cannabis cultivator. But when she saw the health and vigor expressed by plants grown in healthy soil and natural sunlight, she was inspired to make herself a part of the living process. Before long, she was learning to pay attention to the quality of the soil and how to improve its fertility naturally. She ensured the other plants growing among the cannabis were beneficial companions, providing natural protection from pests and disease. And as she nurtured and developed her garden, Gordon discovered her new passion was spilling into other aspects of her life.
“When I started taking care of these plants, I started taking care of myself better,” Gordon says. “And that’s how I embrace this plant as a living being—as my teacher.”
After Hannan’s death in 2012, ownership of the property passed to Gordon, ushering in the beginnings of Moon Made Farms.
Providing natural medicine remains at the core of Moon Made Farms.
Natural Medicine Grows in the Sun
Now in her 15th year in Humboldt County, Gordon has transformed Moon Made Farms into an undeniably successful space that produces healing medicine from plants grown in natural soil and sunlight. Her cultivation practices surpass those of typical organics, eschewing the use of herbicides and pesticides while incorporating techniques that go beyond substituting inputs and build the health of the soil. And she isn’t alone. With a like-minded supply chain of suppliers, processors and retailers, Gordon works to provide natural medicine that remains at the core of Moon Made Farms.
“The mission of Moon Made Farms is to honor the most powerful plant on the planet that expresses in the female form, and that’s cannabis,” Gordon says. “And by honoring this plant, we’re participating in creating a regenerative supply chain.”
Part of that chain is Jesse Dodd, an Emerald Triangle cannabis breeder who works under the handle Bio Vortex. Dodd’s work with Gordon is a collaboration combining their deep knowledge. After discussing which traits Gordon wishes to maximize in her medicine, Dodd performs crosses likely to produce the desired qualities in the next generation of plants. By working together, they create new varietals that are bred just for Moon Made Farms. Gordon takes over from there, coaxing the new seeds to their lush and productive potential.
A framed photo of former property owner Joani Hannan, a drummer who paved the way for queer artists in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
“I feel very happy that the seeds have a very good home at her farm,” Dodd said. “She shows them off really well. They can come to their full expression and just amazing beauty and quality in both CBD and THC varieties.”
Gordon says her journey building Moon Made Farms is ultimately an expression of her commitment to healthy living. Even before she moved from San Francisco, she had a keen interest in nutrition, exercise and pursuing a more healthful lifestyle. On the farm, that natural tendency could fully express itself. Now integral to her persona, that commitment is expressed in the therapeutic benefits of sungrown cannabis, which Gordon compares to the qualities of organic produce or grass-fed beef. In concert with full-spectrum sunlight, clean water and fresh air, Gordon cultivates healthy plants and clean medicine.
“We want to bring people something that’s pure, that’s healthy, that’s grown to the highest standards, and that’s truly an expression of this place, because we want to make people’s lives better,” Gordon said.
Tina Gordon, founder of Moon Made Farms (L) and life on the farm.
Sustainable Cannabis
Looking ahead, Gordon says that supporting farmers who use sungrown, regenerative practices will not only result in clean cannabis, but also a healthier planet. With climate change bringing ever intensifying fires, floods, and other global catastrophes, farms that nurture our ecosystem rather than exploit it will take on new significance. Gordon envisions a polyculture economy in which small farms produce medicine in addition to food and other agricultural products needed by local markets.
“This is what’s going to support communities,” Gordon said. “This is what’s going to provide the public with the best possible cannabis.”
Growing healthy cannabis is only part of the picture. Cultivating a genuinely sustainable, healthy cannabis economy depends on a community of individuals and families willing to invest in their health as well as the well-being of the environment. Key to that investment, Gordon says, is a marketplace of buyers who educate themselves on the origins of their herb.
“The questions I want consumers to ask are, ‘Where is this cannabis from?’ ‘Who grew this?’ ‘How did they grow it?’” she said. “And, to get visibility into the source.”
With that transparency, all members of the supply chain, from seed producer to end user, can be empowered to cultivate a healthier planet for all.
This story was originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now.
An earthquake rocked Humboldt County on Sunday, shaking California’s famous Emerald Triangle cannabis cultivation region for the second time in two weeks. The earthquake on New Year’s Day, which measured 5.4 on the Richter scale, followed a stronger quake that shook the area on December 20, leading to the death of two people. Sunday’s quake was one of more than 300 aftershocks that have rocked the region since.
“It’s typical to have an aftershock that is about one magnitude unit less than the main shock,” Lori Dengler, a former geology professor and an expert on earthquakes and tsunamis, told local media after Sunday’s temblor. “So this is very typical of most aftershock sequences.”
“Today’s earthquake (was) clearly on a different but related fault,” Dengler added.
Sunday’s quake occurred at 10:35 a.m. local time and was centered about nine miles east of the Rio Dell area of Humboldt County, according to information from the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no reports of casualties or major damage, although California Route 211 through the area was temporarily closed to give inspectors time to check a bridge over the Eel River for potential damage associated with the quake, the California Department of Transportation reported.
Earthquake Results In Power Outage
The temblor caused a power outage in the Rio Dell area, which bore the brunt of the earthquake that shook the area 12 days earlier. Pacific Gas and Electric reported that the outage affected between 500 and 5,000 utility customers, according to media reports.
Gage Dupper was displaced by the December earthquake, which knocked his home off its foundation. He told reporters he has been living as a “nomad” since then.
“Today was another pretty big one,” said Dupper. “Still feels like we are shaking to me. We just can’t catch a break it seems.”
Gage noted that he was working in Fortuna, adjacent to Rio Dell, when Sunday’s quake shook the area again.
“But even just here it felt like the ceiling was going to come down,” Dupper said. “We nearly lost our power here as well. I was in the middle of talking to a resident of the assisted living community I work for and you could just see the panic in their eyes when it started. She was just trying to pay her rent. It certainly tossed us around a bit.”
Sunday’s Quake Follows 6.4 Shaker Last Month
The earthquake that shook the Humboldt County area on December 20 measured 6.4 on the Richter scale and caused significant damage in the region. That quake injured 17 people and was blamed for the deaths of two residents, a 73-year-old and an 83-year-old, who died as “a result of medical emergencies occurring during and/or just following the earthquake,” according to a statement from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s Department of Emergency Services.
The December quake also resulted in a power outage in the Rio Dell area, with more than 72,000 customers affected, and a water main break caused the area to lose water service, as well. Damage from the quake was reported in Ferndale, Rio Dell, and Fortuna, Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said in a press conference in Sacramento. Damage was most extensive in Rio Dell, where at least 15 homes in the community of 3,000 were deemed uninhabitable. Another 18 homes sustained moderate damage, officials reported after a partial assessment of the area.
Rio Dell’s water system was shut down while leaks in the vital infrastructure were repaired. The local firehouse was distributing drinking water, and portable toilets were set up outside City Hall for area residents to use. Local resident Cassondra Stoner said that she was shaken awake by the early morning quake that rocked the area last month.
“It felt like my roof was coming down,” Stoner said. “The only thing I could think about was, ‘Get the freaking kids.’”
California’s famed Emerald Triangle cannabis-growing region was rocked by an earthquake early Tuesday morning, leading to the deaths of two local residents and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity. The earthquake, which registered 6.4 on the Richter scale, also caused about a dozen injuries and damaged homes and businesses in the region.
The ground started shaking at 2:34 a.m., with the temblor centered near the town of Ferndale, a community about 210 miles northwest of San Francisco in Humboldt County. The epicenter of the quake was offshore, about 10 miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
Humboldt County, along with neighboring Trinity and Mendocino Counties, make up California’s infamous Emerald Triangle, where for decades cannabis farmers have grown top-shelf marijuana famous around the world. Johnny Casali of Huckleberry Hills Farm reported that his legacy cannabis operation in southern Humboldt County lost electricity during the power outage but did not suffer any damage from the shaking. Chris Anderson of Redwood Roots said that southern Humboldt County was not hit very hard by the quake, but he had heard reports of broken water mains and homes being knocked off their foundations in the central part of the county.
More Than 70,000 Lose Power
Damage to buildings and infrastructure is still being assessed throughout the region. Approximately 72,000 Pacific Gas and Electric customers reportedly lost power as a result of the earthquake. By late Tuesday, the utility company had restored power to about 40,000 customers and expected electrical service would be restored for the remaining homes and businesses without power within 24 hours. The outage involved a main transmission line into the area and repairs were slowed by rain that prevented a helicopter from assessing damage sustained by the line.
In a news flash, the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services reported that “two individuals have died as a result of medical emergencies occurring during and/or just following the earthquake.” The dead include an 83-year-old and a 72-year-old, according to media reports. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office reported that at least 11 people were injured during the quake. Injuries sustained in the temblor included a hip fracture and a head injury, according to media reports.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Humboldt County on Tuesday evening. Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, noted that two hospitals in the area had lost power but were running on generators. Ferguson also said that damage in the area appeared to be minimal considering the strength of the earthquake.
Residents in the Emerald Triangle are used to the relatively frequent earthquakes. But some said that Tuesday’s shaking was more violent than the rolling motion of many of the region’s tremors.
“You could see the floor and walls shaking,” Araceli Huerta told the Associated Press. “It sounded like a freight train was going through my house.”
Rio Dell Bears Brunt Of Temblor
Damage from the quake was reported in Ferndale, Rio Dell and Fortuna, Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said in a press conference in Sacramento. Damage was most extensive in Rio Dell, where at least 15 homes in the community of 3,000 were deemed uninhabitable. Another 18 homes sustained moderate damage, officials reported after a partial assessment of the area. Approximately 30 people have been displaced by the damage, but officials warned that number could climb to as high as 150 after a full assessment of the impact of the earthquake is completed.
Rio Dell’s water system was shut down and will remain out of operation for up to two days while leaks in the vital infrastructure are repaired. The local firehouse was distributing drinking water, and portable toilets were set up outside City Hall for area residents to use.
Local resident Cassondra Stoner said that she was shaken awake by Tuesday’s quake.
“It felt like my roof was coming down,” Stoner said. “The only thing I could think about was, ‘Get the freaking kids.’”
Other than the emotional shock of the early morning quake, Stoner’s family was not harmed. But when she arrived for work at a local retail store, ceiling tiles had fallen, and shelves had toppled over, strewing merchandise across the floor.
The earthquake occurred in an area known as the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three tectonic plates meet off northern California’s Pacific coast.
“We’re in this moment of geologic time where the most exciting, dynamic area of California happens to be Humboldt County and the adjacent offshore area,” Lori Dengler, professor emeritus of geology at Cal Poly Humboldt, told reporters.
For nearly two decades, the Emerald Cup (EC) has honored the very best of Californian sungrown cannabis. The festival underpins the heritage of small-batch craft cultivators in Northern California, infusing it with the best of music, art and cannabis. The community-focused celebration has evolved from the first event in 2004, held at Area 101 in Laytonville, into a prestigious cannabis awards show and product exposition in Sonoma and, most recently, Los Angeles.
Founder Tim Blake, a self-described “old-school outlaw,” has come to be recognized as a custodian of cannabis culture. His support of small farmers in their time of need is unwavering; his recognition of the need to integrate with the biggest current cannabis players such as Cookies is visionary. And the fact that he’s doing all this while encouraging and engaging in progressive conversation with government departments is a testament to his passion for the plant and his relentless drive for education and innovation.
In the lead-up to this year’s event, Blake spoke to Cannabis Now about the cup’s evolution, lessons learned from previous years and what we can expect from the action-packed 2022 Emerald Cup Harvest Ball.
Celebrating at the Montalbán Theater for the 2022 Emerald Cup Awards. PHOTO Beard Brothers Pharms
The Emerald Cup Awards
One of the core pillars of the Emerald Cup is the recognition of advocates who have campaigned tirelessly for the plant. Previous winners from the community include SweetLeaf Joe, Eric McCauley and Pebbles Trippet. One of Blake’s fondest memories of the cup was in 2013 when Dennis Peron, the father of medical cannabis and legendary activist, agreed to accept his Lifetime Achievement Award on one condition—that he could also be married on the stage. Sadly, Peron died a few years later and Blake remembers it as “the most incredible moment.”
“They called up and said, ‘We’re gonna take your award, but we’d like to do a marriage ceremony on the stage’. I thought, ‘we’re gonna do a gay marriage ceremony on the stage at the Emerald Cup because if Dennis asked, we’re doing it.’ And then we went ahead and did it. What an incredible part of history to say we were part of.”
Blake recalls when he first heard “prominent people such as Cheech” were coming into the industry. When Willie Nelson was nominated, he wanted the award’s title changed to the Willie Nelson Award, which, Blake recalls, “made it much easier to get higher-profile people.” The 2022 recipient, Woody Harrelson, is well-known for his Hollywood hits and cannabis and hemp advocacy.
For this year’s award ceremony, Blake and his team brought the spirit of the Emerald Triangle down to Los Angeles on May 14. The event coincided with the opening of Harrelson’s new West Hollywood-based dispensary, The Woods and they appeared together on the front page of LA Weekly. Blake’s voice reveals all the love and admiration he has for Harrelson as he tells me about the energy and support the actor has shown sungrown farmers.
“The invitation to the dispensary read ‘Woody Harrelson, Tim Blake and the Emerald Cup invite you to the opening of The Woods’and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what an incredible thing for him to do’,” Blake says. “He started by telling us that we could only bring 100 people and we were thinking, “Who can we invite?” We had all of our contestants and all of our sponsors. And then it pushed out from 100 people to 200 people. On opening night, we overran the place. Woody had to pull back to the lounge with all the stars. He left our party early and I thought we’d done something wrong, but it turned out Paul McCartney had called him up and wanted to party with him.”
The following day, Blake says, the NorCal farmers met on the corner of legendary Los Angeles intersection Hollywood and Vine for a press photo-op before “walking en masse to the Montalbán Theater and took a picture with Pebbles Trippet in the middle of them. That was a wonderful moment and our small farmers realized that they, too, belonged in LA.”
Following that, at the awards ceremony, Harrelson was up on the stage to receive the award, and, according to Blake, “he looked over at us and said, ‘You had more friends than I did at the opening last night!’ He was up on that stage doing stand-up for 20 minutes; he made joke, after joke, after joke. It was just amazing. He said, “You know, these are my people. this is my community.” Because he felt it. He’s protested before, he’s humble, he knows the scene. It was really touching. I love Woody forever for that. I can’t thank him enough for doing what he did.”
More love for Woody was in order
“I’m really proud that Woody looked into who we are and realized the Emerald Cup is an integrity-based, community-oriented show for the people, for small farmers, for sungrown cannabis—everything we are fits with him,” Blake says. “He’s evangelizing for sungrown for small farmers; he’s putting his name on the line. He’s the real deal.”
Swami and Tim Blake. PHOTO Kim Sallaway
Small Farms Initiative
At its core, the Emerald Cup celebrates the best sungrown, heritage, small-batch craft flower and its farmers. Sadly, since 2016, a brutal combination of taxation, licensing and market conditions has led Northern California’s cannabis community to an existential crisis. To show their support for the farmer’s plight, Blake, along with Michael Katz of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance; Genine Coleman of Origins Council; Chris Anderson of Redwood Roots Distribution; Nicholas Smilgys of Mendocino Cannabis Distribution; Traci Pellar of the Mendocino Producers Guild and Brandy Moulton of Sovereign 707, created the Small Farms Initiative, which debuted at last year’s event.
“Last year, we ran a lottery system and gave away 23 booths and told people they could share them,” Blake says. “Next thing you know, we had 50 farmers in there, all for free. It was a tremendous success and really highlighted the plight of the small farmers.”
The Harvest Ball is ramping up its support initiatives this year with sponsorship support from Harborside and Urbn Leaf. 200 farmers have been invited to the Harvest Ball to get their products directly in front of buyers in a direct sales “speed selling” environment. Eight booths have also been given to social equity brands from the Bay Area along with the small farmers. A “speed meeting” industry opportunity has also been arranged for small, craft and heirloom farmers to present their very best products to buyers and merchandisers, Blake explains. The Emerald Cup Buyers Club Meet & Greet scheduled on December 9 at the flagship Mercy Wellness’ new consumption lounge space.
The inability to offer direct-to-customers sales significantly impacts local farmers’ income options. Blake compares it to the early days of alcohol prohibition and how it took more than half-a-century before breweries and vineyards could sell direct to consumers at their cellar doors. It’s about giving farmers a chance to survive, he says.
“It’s a big topic of conversation at this year’s Harvest Ball; we have panels on what we need to do to save these small farmers,” he says. “One of the main issues is direct sales.”
Blake acknowledges the historical animosity of the Emerald Triangle farmers who were devastated by the big groups that advocated for taking that cap off the small acreage as outlined in Prop 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized adult-use cannabis in California.
“The bill was specifically written to prohibit anyone from growing more than one acre of cannabis for five years,” he says. “This was done with the knowledge that if large-scale farming was immediately allowed, the small legacy farmers wouldn’t have time to get established or deal with the rapid price decreases that were inevitable. Two months into legalization, Governor Gavin Newsom went back on his promise and allowed large-scale farming, with support and advocacy from larger stakeholders. It created an extinction event for those legacy farmers in the Emerald Triangle and throughout the rest of the state. There’s a lot of anger and bitterness and resentment, which we have to deal with.”
However, he knows there has to be unity and that by coming together, they can make it work.
“We’re doing everything we can to give back to the farmers,” Blake says. “That’s what we’ve always been about.”
PHOTO Gracie O’Malley for Cannabis Now
Working With the DCC
The Department of Cannabis Control caught some heat for its “heavy-handed” actions toward attendees and exhibitors at last year’s Harvest Ball. In true Blake style, instead of “calling them out” as he was encouraged, he chose the path of restoration and unity. Over the last six months, Blake, his team and the DCC have formulated a plan to allow vendor sampling in the Craft Cannabis Marketplace.
“We sat down with them and said, ‘Look, if you want to end events and you don’t want anybody to do events, then continue like this because nobody’s going to feel comfortable coming to the events’.”
This year, the DCC will have a discreet booth at the show so they can “interact with farmers and talk to people and brands.” A panel titled “A conversation with the DCC: How we can work together to make positive change” is also scheduled for Sunday, December 11, from 12-12.45 pm as part of the EC session in the garden annex.
Blake understands that “we need to work with the governor, we need to work with the DCC, we need to work with corporations. Everybody must come together, get around the table, and work it out.”
And it’s not just for the Emerald Cup, but for every event moving forward, Blake says. “Whether it’s a farmer’s market or somebody else’s event, we’re doing the work so that these can go about reasonably so everybody can have a good time.”
If you’re attending this year’s Harvest Ball, be sure to download the new app to learn more about the DCC’s panel. The app also allows you to create your own schedules for the two-day event, so you won’t miss any discussion panels or your favorite artists performing live on stage. The app will also let you curate your favorites list as you navigate your way booth-by-booth through the Craft Cannabis Marketplace—an absolute must to secure the world’s most highly sought-after seeds and clones, as well as the newest cannabis products.
Tim Blake inspects a jar of cannabis for the Emerald Cup Awards. PHOTO Rich Pedroncelli
The New Cannabis Classification System
One factor that makes the Emerald Cup so crucial to California’s cannabis market is its continued strive for excellence and education. For the 2022 awards, Blake and his team modified the judging process to reflect the advances of cultivars and chemovars. According to Blake, Alec Dixon, one of the co-founders of SC Labs, was the driving force behind the creation of the Emerald Cup Cannabis Classification System powered by SC Labs and PhytoFacts.
“Over the years, Alec started telling me, ‘Tim, we got to break up the way the judging gets done because it can’t be done this way’. Mark Lewis had been working on this system for quite some time and so it’s kind of a merger of us coming together. Together we’re trying to reframe the industry.”
One of the bonuses, Blake says, is that it allows for “all these different terpene profiles a chance to be recognized.” The new cannabis classification system separates and judges entries based on terpenes, flavor and effects. For Blake, it’s an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the nuances between different cultivars, encouraging them to learn about terpenes profiles instead of just going to the strain with the highest THC level. Because, says Blake, that factor alone has never won the cup. “That’s not what we’re looking for; it’s got to be something unique. It’s a wonderful learning and educational experience. It’s a wonderful process to recognize all the different varieties and cultivars and let them win. And it’s just been such a wonderful process to teach people about.”
Woody Harrelson accepts the Willie Nelson Award at the 2022 Emerald Cup Awards
The Emerald Cup Today
The Emerald Cup has undergone quite a transformation and is barely recognizable from the inaugural 2004 event that was “completely illegal,” according to its founder. Back then, it was purely a flower contest, with a handful of Emerald Triangle friends and farmers coming down from the mountains to show off their choices picks from that year’s harvest, with many hiding their identities to avoid prosecution.
Without Blake’s knowledge, hash debuted in the cup the following year, in 2005. Back then, hash could land you in jail for up to five years; this was still the Wild West of weed and extracts hadn’t yet entered the fray. In the following years, the cup opened up to seed sales, tinctures and other categories as the market and product offerings continued to increase.
Blake recalls the introduction of concentrates that “come from nowhere; there wasn’t even the word concentrate” that changed the cannabis landscape. He fondly recalls when Frenchy Cannoli, the revered hashish evangelist judged the awards one year and said, “‘That isn’t hashish.” And we said, ‘No Frenchy, it’s concentrates.’ That was a whole learning curve for him, for me, for everybody.”
The cup had no vendors or sponsors in those early days. The first to get onboard was SC Labs, one of the industry’s original testing labs. “People wondered what the heck they were doing there,” Blake says. “The first year the cup tested concentrates, there was a 75% fail. Within two years, we had that down below 5% because people realized they couldn’t get away with that anymore. It was really good that the testing cleaned it all up.”
Today, the cup has more than 40 categories, almost 50 with the inclusion of the awards—a fact that Blake calls “mind-boggling.”
“There have been so many industry changes over the last 20 years, so many different issues that have been dealt with as we’ve gone along the path, it’s really been something to see,” Blake says. “To watch that evolution has been an incredible thing.”
Blake’s daughter Taylor started helping her dad at the Emerald Cup in 2006 and about eight years ago, she started doing it full-time. “Everybody loves her so much and that she’s side by side with me,” Blake beams as he talks about his youngest child. The proud father says that Taylor plans to continue the family business.
“She can handle any part of the show,” he says. “I’m so proud that she stands with me and we do the cup together. And as I get older and retire, she’ll take the reins—the show’s in good hands.”
Taylor and Tim Blake at the 2017 Emerald Cup. PHOTO courtesy of Leafly
The Future of Cannabis
Blake believes that the federal legalization of cannabis will take place over the next couple of years and when it happens, the plant has a bright future—not just in California but worldwide.
“Cannabis was a key aspect in just about every society in the world until it was demonized in the 1900s,” Blake says. “Most countries will soon legalize cannabis as well and we’ll see it in their people’s daily lives in one form or another, creating healthier, more vibrant cultures.”
And even though the farmers are having a very rough time, Blake focuses on the positive angle in a way only he can.
“Watching cannabis go legal across the country so quickly, and across the world and then following that, the plant medicines and all the psychedelic medicines, it’s like, OK, we don’t have people going to jail. We have mainstream media or people embracing this; we got plant medicine coming in. And so the good that it’s done has to outweigh people’s personal needs. Because, at the end of the day, it’s about society and what we need to do for our world to heal it. And with cannabis and plant medicines, we’re healing the world.”
And that’s the world we all should be living in.
2022 Emerald Cup Harvest Ball, Sonoma County Fairground, Santa Rosa, California, on Saturday, December 10 & Sunday, December 11.Learn more about the event.
For nearly two decades, the Emerald Cup (EC) has honored the very best of Californian sungrown cannabis. The festival underpins the heritage of small-batch craft cultivators in Northern California, infusing it with the best of music, art and cannabis. The community-focused celebration has evolved from the first event in 2004, held at Area 101 in Laytonville, into a prestigious cannabis awards show and product exposition in Sonoma and, most recently, Los Angeles.
Founder Tim Blake, a self-described “old-school outlaw,” has become recognized as a custodian of cannabis culture. His support of small farmers in their time of need is unwavering; his recognition of the need to integrate with the biggest current cannabis players such as Cookies is visionary. And the fact that he’s doing all this while encouraging and engaging in progressive conversation with government departments is a testament to his passion for the plant and his relentless drive for education and innovation.
In the lead-up to this year’s Emerald Cup Harvest Ball, which takes placed Dec. 10-11 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California, Blake spoke to Cannabis Now about the cup’s evolution, lessons learned from previous years and what we can expect from the action-packed event.
Celebrating at the Montalbán Theater for the 2022 Emerald Cup Awards. PHOTO Beard Brothers Pharms
The Emerald Cup Awards
One of the Emerald Cup’s core pillars is to recognize advocates who campaign tirelessly for cannabis. Previous winners from the community include SweetLeaf Joe, Eric McCauley and Pebbles Trippet. One of Blake’s fondest memories of the cup was in 2013 when Dennis Peron, the father of medical cannabis and legendary activist, agreed to accept his Lifetime Achievement Award on one condition—that he could also be married on the stage. Blake remembers it as “the most incredible moment.”
“They called up and said, ‘We’re gonna take your award, but we’d like to do a marriage ceremony on the stage,’” Blake said. “I thought, ‘We’re gonna do a gay marriage ceremony on the stage at the Emerald Cup because if Dennis asked, we’re doing it.’ And then we went ahead and did it. What an incredible part of history to say we were part of.”
Blake recalls when he first heard “prominent people such as Cheech” were coming into the industry. When Willie Nelson was nominated, he wanted the award’s title changed to the Willie Nelson Award, which, Blake says, “made it much easier to get higher-profile people.” The 2022 recipient, Woody Harrelson, is well-known for his Hollywood hits and cannabis and hemp advocacy.
For this year’s awards ceremony, Blake and his team brought the spirit of the Emerald Triangle down to Los Angeles on May 14. The event coincided with the opening of Harrelson’s new West Hollywood-based dispensary, The Woods, and they appeared together on the front page of LA Weekly. Blake’s voice reveals all the love and admiration he has for Harrelson as he discusses the energy and support the actor has shown sungrown farmers.
“The invitation to the dispensary read, ‘Woody Harrelson, Tim Blake and the Emerald Cup invite you to the opening of The Woods,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what an incredible thing for him to do’,” Blake says.
“He started by telling us that we could only bring 100 people and we were thinking, ‘Who can we invite?’ We had all of our contestants and all of our sponsors. And then it pushed out from 100 to 200 people. On opening night, we overran the place. Woody had to pull back to the lounge with all the stars. He left our party early and I thought we’d done something wrong, but it turned out Paul McCartney had called him up and wanted to party with him.”
The following day, Blake says, the NorCal farmers met on the corner of legendary Los Angeles intersection Hollywood and Vine for a press photo-op before “walking en masse to the Montalbán Theater and taking a picture with Pebbles Trippet in the middle of them. That was a wonderful moment, and our small farmers realized that they, too, belonged in LA.”
After that, at the awards ceremony, Harrelson was up on the stage to receive the award, and according to Blake, “He looked over at us and said, ‘You had more friends than I did at the opening last night!’
“He was up on that stage doing stand-up for 20 minutes; he made joke, after joke, after joke,” Blake recounts. “It was just amazing. [Woody] said, ‘You know, these are my people. This is my community.’ Because he felt it. He’s protested before, he’s humble, he knows the scene. It was really touching. I love Woody forever for that. I can’t thank him enough for doing what he did.”
More love for Woody was in order.
“I’m really proud that Woody looked into who we are and realized the Emerald Cup is an integrity-based, community-oriented show for the people, for small farmers, for sungrown cannabis—everything we are fits with him,” Blake says. “He’s evangelizing for small farmers; he’s putting his name on the line. He’s the real deal.”
Swami Chaitanya and Tim Blake. PHOTO Kim Sallaway
Small Farms Initiative
At its core, the Emerald Cup celebrates the best sungrown, heritage, small-batch craft flower and its farmers. Sadly, since 2016, a brutal combination of taxation, licensing and market conditions has led Northern California’s cannabis community to an existential crisis. To show their support for the farmer’s plight, Blake, along with Michael Katz of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance; Genine Coleman of Origins Council; Chris Anderson of Redwood Roots Distribution; Nicholas Smilgys of Mendocino Cannabis Distribution; Traci Pellar of the Mendocino Producers Guild; and Brandy Moulton of Sovereign 707, created the Small Farms Initiative, which debuted at last year’s event.
“Last year, we ran a lottery system and gave away 23 booths and told people they could share them,” Blake says. “Next thing you know, we had 50 farmers in there, all for free. It was a tremendous success and really highlighted the plight of the small farmers.”
The Harvest Ball is ramping up its support initiatives this year with sponsorship support from Harborside and Urbn Leaf. 200 farmers have been invited to the Harvest Ball to get their products directly in front of buyers in a direct sales “speed selling” environment. Eight booths have also been given to social equity brands from the Bay Area along with the small farmers. A “speed meeting” industry opportunity has also been arranged for small, craft and heirloom farmers to present their very best products to buyers and merchandisers, Blake explains. The Emerald Cup Buyers Club Meet & Greet is scheduled on December 9 at the flagship Mercy Wellness’ new consumption lounge space.
The inability to offer direct-to-consumer sales significantly impacts local farmers’ income options. Blake compares it to the early days of alcohol prohibition and how it took more than half a century before breweries and vineyards could sell direct to consumers at their cellar doors. It’s about giving farmers a chance to survive, he says.
“It’s a big topic of conversation at this year’s Harvest Ball; we have panels on what we need to do to save these small farmers,” Blake says. “One of the main issues is direct sales.”
Blake acknowledges the historical animosity of the Emerald Triangle farmers who were devastated by the big groups that advocated for taking that cap off the small acreage as outlined in Prop 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized adult-use cannabis in California.
“The bill was specifically written to prohibit anyone from growing more than one acre of cannabis for five years,” he says. “This was done with the knowledge that if large-scale farming was immediately allowed, the small legacy farmers wouldn’t have time to get established or deal with the rapid price decreases that were inevitable. Two months into legalization, Governor Gavin Newsom went back on his promise and allowed large-scale farming, with support and advocacy from larger stakeholders. It created an extinction event for those legacy farmers in the Emerald Triangle and throughout the rest of the state. There’s a lot of anger and bitterness and resentment, which we have to deal with.”
However, he knows there has to be unity and that by coming together, they can make it work.
“We’re doing everything we can to give back to the farmers,” Blake says. “That’s what we’ve always been about.”
PHOTO Gracie O’Malley for Cannabis Now
Working With The DCC
The Department of Cannabis Control caught some heat for its “heavy-handed” actions toward attendees and exhibitors at last year’s Harvest Ball. In true Blake style, instead of “calling them out” as he was encouraged, he chose the path of restoration and unity. Over the past six months, Blake, his team and the DCC have formulated a plan to allow vendor sampling in the Craft Cannabis Marketplace.
“We sat down with them and said, ‘Look, if you want to end events and you don’t want anybody to do events, then continue like this because nobody’s going to feel comfortable coming to the events,’” Blake said.
This year, the DCC will have a discreet booth at the show so they can “interact with farmers and talk to people and brands.” A panel titled “A Conversation With The DCC: How We Can Work Together To Make Positive Change” is also scheduled for Sunday, December 11, from 12-12:45 pm as part of the EC session in the garden annex.
“We need to work with the governor; we need to work with the DCC; we need to work with corporations,” Blake says. “Everybody must come together, get around the table, and work it out.”
And, according to Blake, it’s not just for the Emerald Cup, but for every event moving forward.
“Whether it’s a farmer’s market or somebody else’s event, we’re doing the work so that these can go about reasonably so everybody can have a good time,” he says.
If you’re attending this year’s Harvest Ball, be sure to download the new app to learn more about the DCC’s panel. The app also allows you to create your own schedules for the two-day event, so you won’t miss any discussion panels or your favorite artists performing live on stage. The app will also let you curate your favorites list as you navigate your way booth-by-booth through the Craft Cannabis Marketplace—an absolute must to secure the world’s most highly sought-after seeds and clones, as well as the newest cannabis products.
Tim Blake inspects a jar of cannabis for the Emerald Cup Awards. PHOTO Rich Pedroncelli
The New Cannabis Classification System
One factor that makes the Emerald Cup so crucial to California’s cannabis market is its continued strive for excellence and education. For the 2022 awards, Blake and his team modified the judging process to reflect the advances of cultivars and chemovars. According to Blake, Alec Dixon, one of the co-founders of SC Labs, was the driving force behind the creation of the Emerald Cup Cannabis Classification System powered by SC Labs and PhytoFacts.
“Over the years, Alec started telling me, ‘Tim, we got to break up the way the judging gets done because it can’t be done this way,’” Blake said. “Mark Lewis had been working on this system for quite some time, and so it’s kind of a merger of us coming together. We’re trying to reframe the industry.”
One of the bonuses, Blake says, is that it allows for “all these different terpene profiles a chance to be recognized.” The new cannabis classification system separates and judges entries based on terpenes, flavor and effects. For Blake, it’s an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the nuances between different cultivars, encouraging them to learn about terpenes profiles instead of just going to the strain with the highest THC level. That factor alone has never won the cup.
“That’s not what we’re looking for,” Blake says. “It’s got to be something unique. It’s a wonderful learning and educational experience. It’s a wonderful process to recognize all the different varieties and cultivars and let them win. And it’s just been such a wonderful process to teach people about.”
Woody Harrelson accepts the Willie Nelson Award at the 2022 Emerald Cup Awards.
The Emerald Cup Today
The Emerald Cup has undergone quite a transformation and is barely recognizable from the inaugural 2004 event that was “completely illegal,” according to its founder. Back then, it was purely a flower contest, with a handful of Emerald Triangle friends and farmers coming down from the mountains to show off their choice picks from that year’s harvest, with many hiding their identities to avoid prosecution.
Without Blake’s knowledge, hash debuted in the cup the following year, in 2005. Back then, hash could land you in jail for up to five years; this was still the Wild West of weed and extracts hadn’t yet entered the fray. In the following years, the cup opened up to seed sales, tinctures and other categories as the market and product offerings continued to increase.
Blake recalls the introduction of concentrates that “come from nowhere; there wasn’t even the word concentrate” that changed the cannabis landscape. He fondly remembers when Frenchy Cannoli, the revered hashish evangelist judged the awards one year and said, “‘That isn’t hashish.” And we said, ‘No Frenchy, it’s concentrates.’ That was a whole learning curve for him, for me, for everybody.”
The cup had no vendors or sponsors in those early days. The first to get onboard was SC Labs, one of the industry’s original testing labs. “People wondered what the heck they were doing there,” Blake says. “The first year the cup tested concentrates, there was a 75% fail. Within two years, we had that down below 5% because people realized they couldn’t get away with that anymore. It was really good that the testing cleaned it all up.”
Today, the cup has more than 40 categories, almost 50 with the inclusion of the awards—a fact that Blake calls “mind-boggling.”
“There have been so many industry changes over the last 20 years, so many different issues that have been dealt with as we’ve gone along the path, it’s really been something to see,” Blake says. “To watch that evolution has been an incredible thing.”
Blake’s daughter Taylor started helping her dad at the Emerald Cup in 2006 and about eight years ago, she started doing it full-time. “Everybody loves her so much and that she’s side by side with me,” Blake beams as he talks about his youngest child. The proud father says that Taylor plans to continue the family business.
“She can handle any part of the show,” he says. “I’m so proud that she stands with me and we do the cup together. And as I get older and retire, she’ll take the reins—the show’s in good hands.”
Taylor and Tim Blake at the 2017 Emerald Cup. PHOTO courtesy of Leafly
The Future of Cannabis
Blake believes that the federal legalization of cannabis will take place over the next couple of years and when it happens, the plant has a bright future—not just in California but worldwide.
“Cannabis was a key aspect in just about every society in the world until it was demonized in the 1900s,” Blake says. “Most countries will soon legalize cannabis as well and we’ll see it in their people’s daily lives in one form or another, creating healthier, more vibrant cultures.”
And even though the farmers are having a very rough time, Blake focuses on the positive angle in the way only he can.
“Watching cannabis go legal across the country so quickly, and across the world and then following that, the plant medicines and all the psychedelic medicines, it’s like, OK, we don’t have people going to jail. We have mainstream media or people embracing this; we got plant medicine coming in,” he says. “And so the good that it’s done has to outweigh people’s personal needs. Because, at the end of the day, it’s about society and what we need to do for our world to heal it. And with cannabis and plant medicines, we’re healing the world.”
Los Angeles-based fashion photographer Dorit Thies has made a career of pushing boundaries. So has cannabis journalist and marketer Eric Hiss.
By producing imagery that meshes art with nature, Thies has earned partnerships with the likes of Maye Musk, Kate Mara and Kristin Cavallari, among other familiar Hollywood names during a decades-long career in Tinsel Town. Hiss has written stories around the world for more than 50 major publications.
The duo’s latest passion project has taken them further north in California: “The Farm & The Feminine” chronicles the legacy, creativity and determination of women cannabis farmers in California’s iconic Emerald Triangle. Its four subjects—Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms, Rose Willis of Huckleberry Hill Farms, Katie Jeane of Emerald Spirit Botanicals and Taylor Stein from Briceland Forest Farm—capture the rich gender and ethnic diversity of America’s most fertile region for outdoor cannabis growing.
Kate Jean, Emerald Spirit Botanicals
Hiss came up with the idea for the project out of a passion for the Emerald Triangle, where the pioneers of the cannabis industry have been perfecting genetics and farming top-shelf marijuana for generations. As multi-state operators move into the regulated market and produce at scale, “The Farm & The Feminine” aims to remind consumers how we got here by putting names to the female faces behind the industry’s early success.
“These women are the true pillars of our industry,” Hiss said. “None of this would exist without the craft folks in the Emerald Triangle. I realized we didn’t have any iconic imagery of these people, and felt we needed hero shots. This is a new narrative to portray these cannabis heroes as they should be.”
Rose Moberly, Huckleberry Hill Farms
To create such images required a special photographer, Hiss said, so he called longtime friend and colleague Dorit Thies. Before spending full days on the farms of the four women featured in the project, Thies admitted she had no previous experience with cannabis. It didn’t take long to bond with the farmers, though, thanks to a shared interest for sustainability.
“They’re biologists, they’re scientists and they’re involved with universal energy,” Thies says. “The way they harvest, it’s all about sustainability and doing it the natural way under the sun. I’ve always believed in these principles so it was very easy to connect with them.”
Tina Gordon, Mood Made Farms
Thies, who grew up in rural northern Germany, and Hiss, a fifth-generation Californian, spent a full day on each woman’s farm during peak harvest season late last summer. And unlike for most of her photo shoots, Thies brought only her camera for day-long tours—no tools, no lights and no props. To accentuate the farmers’ natural beauty, Thies kept her photos free of any touch ups.
The duo spent the early September days walking together with the farmers and using only items from their farms as props in the owners’ portraits. Thies adorned Katie Jeane of Emerald Spirit Botanicals with antlers and a colorful wreath to symbolize a type of nemes, the headcloth worn by pharaohs in ancient Egypt to signify high stature. She also took inspiration from legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis, whose work focused on the American West and the Native American people.
“I always used to draw from Greek mythology, too, and the imagery of powerful women,” Thies says. “I wanted to create metaphors in my images of women that represented the Greek goddesses.”
Taylor Stein, Briceland Forest Farms
Hiss said he and Thies considered 20 to 30 more women farmers in the region for portraits in “The Farm & The Feminine,” but time and budget constraints reduced the first season of the project to just four women. The duo said their project is ongoing and could add more subjects in the future.
“I couldn’t wait another harvest cycle for the first few,” Hiss said. “It was a now-or-never situation because these women are doing work that should be elevated and celebrated. I hope that we’re smart enough to realize we can have our (big corporations) and also protect space for our small operators. Just like craft beer folks bring us top-shelf beer and cult wine guys and craft distilleries bringing craft batches of mezcal, gin and tequila, we shouldn’t cut off our roots, man.”
Hi. My name is Patrick Maravelias and I would like to take this opportunity to say as loudly as I can that I, like countless others, have risked my life, my freedom, my reputation, and my livelihood for the sake of being able to smoke and grow cannabis.
I grew up just outside the Emerald Triangle and I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years working on grows, trimming, making hash rosin, growing for myself, and everything in between. I’ve been robbed, threatened, extorted, and nearly killed more times than I can remember. Not ONCE during that time did I ever see any of you pocket-protector-wearing, rule-following weirdos in those hills risking life and limb with the rest of us.
I really need to get this off my chest because this bush league shit has gone too far. A multibillion-dollar industry existed for 60+ years in the shadows because YOU sorry fuckers, or your parents for that matter, insisted that it remain there. Your friends didn’t go to prison for growing a plant, ours did. You didn’t have to risk multiple felony charges every time you got in your car, we did. A lot of growers still do for that matter. Weed has been legal in California since 2018 and I can’t even smoke a joint in my backyard without overhearing my neighbor tell her children that we’re disgusting.
All that hard work, all the high risk for minimal reward, all the helicopters coming in to terrorize actual children in the middle of the night for DECADES was all for nothing because you people swooped in with your war machines (Excel spreadsheets) and left the victims of the drug war out to starve. Still to this day people in the triangle who don’t even grow weed have helicopters circling directly above their backyards every single year. Does that seem normal to anyone? Does it seem fair that the legacy growers, in lieu of compensation or even basic acknowledgement for their work, have received abatement notices and annual police raids instead?
To make matters worse, the rural communities that built the cannabis industry and quietly flourished alongside it had their businesses and livelihoods taken by a bunch of asshole lizard people from Palo Alto. Do you know how many of my favorite hill restaurants closed down in the last 10 years? I’m not even exaggerating when I say it’s at least five. They’re all being bled dry. Even the non-growers who just want to live in the mountains are struggling. Cannabis is the backbone of rural America whether anyone wants it to be or not and rural America is not doing well right now.
Now, all you skim-milk-drinking cretins are going to your respective state legislatures whining all the livelong day about the black market stealing your business. First of all, losing business to someone playing with less than 100 plants when you’re playing with thousands of lights and millions of dollars is pathetic. Second of all, can you even blame the black market? Why would any financially literate person want to throw their hat into legal weed in 2022? Anyone who graduated the third grade can understand what a red downward arrow on a graph means. All the farmers “taking your business” are breaking even at best every year for the same reason I’m writing this article: we simply love cannabis and we don’t want you anywhere near it.
For the sake of efficiency and to be perfectly clear who I’m referring to, if I’m ever be crowned King for the day anyone who makes the following list will be charged with high treason and sent to Madagascar to be used in barbaric, gene-splicing experimentation:
Everyone on LinkedIn. Every last damn one of you.
All you Patrick Bateman-esque suits spending thousands of dollars on booths at every event only to lose money every quarter because all of your products fall on deaf ears.
Weed journalists that have never worked for a cannabis company and barely smoke if they smoke at all.
Anyone who uses the term “scalability” (You also qualify for this if Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” starts playing in your head when you jerk off).
Anyone who has never committed so much as one misdemeanor or petty crime in the name of the cannabis industry.
Marketing vultures who pester cannabis journalists to cover MSO’s. You’re a thieving band of godless Tik-Tokers and I’d rather eat a live hornet’s nest than do your PR for you.
Concentrate makers who continue to make CRC and distillate despite being unloved by God and their own children.
If your name happens to be Chad, I realize this is a “couple of bad eggs” situation but I’m sorry, you all need to go
Every single one of you assholes who made felons out of multiple generations of people only to show up once the risk was gone and say “nice house, we’ll be moving in now.”
Everyone on that list is walking up steps we all built with our bare hands and simultaneously complaining that the steps aren’t up to code. Now we have metric shit tonnes of garbage cannabis that doesn’t sell, events you can’t smoke at, and that headass CEO who won’t let it go that almost nobody wants to drink their weed. I don’t even remember his name.
I don’t remember any of your names for that matter. I don’t remember your knock off strains or your god awful, mold-infused pre-rolls. I don’t remember your renamed Gelatos and I especially don’t remember strains with a Z in the name that don’t taste anything like real Z. I don’t want your business, I don’t want you reading my stories, I frankly just don’t want any of you here at all.
That said, I’m fully aware this is how things are and how they’re going to stay. But to the specific group I’m talking about, let me assure you that your days making a viable income playing this poor man’s game of copycat are numbered. Everyone that we consider “big money” in weed right now sucked in whatever industry they started in so they figured they’d bring their same dazzlingly average business tactics to an industry full of pot-smoking illiterates and clean up nicely. Doesn’t seem to be going too well for most of you does it? It’ll be going even worse for you when federal legalization happens and the real money comes in.
Now to be fair, it’s going well for almost no one right now, but the OG’s who have been out here risking everything every season just to grow the best weed they can will all survive for years to come because they’ve all seen much worse than this and they have a customer base that is loyal to a fault. I’m talking about brands like Alien Labs, Ember Valley, 710 Labs, Jungle Boys, Jelly Wizard, Fidel’s, anyone with access to real cuts of Zkittlez because they earned them, and a bunch of other people I don’t feel like remembering because I just took a gigantic dab and I can’t breathe.
The point is every single company I named has skin in the game. They have a reputation that precedes them which lets me know they deserve to be playing at the level they are. A lot of cannabis journalists don’t even cover companies that produce true quality. I’m not sure why. Maybe they don’t smoke enough, maybe they’re too busy asking the CEO of Tilray to autograph their copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. The world may never know.
There are growers known all over the world who refuse to run more than 10 lights per room because they are that concerned with quality. They’re growing the loudest weed this side of the Mississippi but the only people that know about them are the people who understand what quality is. The real smokers will always pay twice as much to their buddy with a one light tent if the weed is better, and it almost always is. The price of real top shelf pounds from trusted brands is still extremely high and those $1,200 dollar organic ounces you hear about in L.A. are one hundred percent real (even if they are overhyped). You can’t fake the love!
That’s the part about cannabis that these suits don’t seem to understand. They’re trying to rerock weed to appeal to people who don’t smoke it. Rather than reinvent the wheel, just grow some good weed! Market to heavy smokers who want to take half gram dabs to the face from sunup to sundown instead of this weirdo boutique shit where we’re supposed to pretend like we can feel 10 milligrams of dogshit distillate in sparkling water. The only reason the black market is still around is because it’s obviously doing a better job.
I’m not here to be a complete pessimist. I love everyone, man. I even love all you second-rate, online-business-school bunch of Mark Cuban wannabes. I do. I just don’t want you taking jobs and money away from MY people. The ones who are in this because it’s what they love. Anyone who truly does what they love to do does not have the option to seek alternative employment and you all keep taking their damn jobs.
However, if you just happened to show up late to the party, I can’t be upset with you for that. Just show some respect! Hire people who did time on illegal grows or time in prison or both. But don’t show up at our house like a walking, talking version of that Steve Buscemi “Hello fellow kids” meme and expect the people who built the damn house to just bend over for you.
So what should all these paper pushers and chronic bedwetters do to earn their place? Well, leaving promptly would be a good start because you all appear to be hemorrhaging money and I’m sure most of your wives are cheating on you by now so you probably have bigger fish to fry than continuing to drive eighth prices up and pound prices into the dirt. I think I speak for the majority of the heads when I say, we got it from here. As kindly, respectfully, and cordially as I can possibly muster: can you all please just fuck off?
In all seriousness though, this part is going to feel like a kick in the dick: at the end of the day we all need each other. The OG’s can grow some serious fire but living in the shadows for decades means they’re not good at abiding by the structure that the legal market demands. The legacy market needs the legal market to help it step into the light a bit and the legal market needs the legacy market because it has no idea which way is up or down without the experience of people who have been doing this their whole lives.
However, I want to be as clear as possible when I say you all need us more than we need you. We did fine for years without you and we’ll continue to out-perform and undercut you at every turn until you give us a rule book we can live with. That’s all I’m asking for. Release the weed prisoners, give the legacy market a substantial leg up in the legal market, require these big MSO’s to hire felons, vote for direct-to-consumer sales, and stop taxing growers back into the Stone Age so they can afford to feed their families.
If you’d like to skip all that and earn my respect directly, I have a quicker method you can try: take a full-gram dab of some black or brown 2013 BHO style wax on video and email me the footage. I want to see pain in your eyes before I give you a pass.
