The first thing you notice when you roll up on a big old pot farm is usually, well, the pot.
At Emerald Queen Farms, the first thing you notice is the skate ramp.
“We bought the spot, and in the center of the field, there’s this huge green building they use for horses,” said Riley Morrison, who co-owns Emerald Queen with his partner, Hannah Whyte. “The previous owner would dry in there, and we had the ramp built inside with a bowl pocket, and it was covered. At that point, we were really nervous the county was going to make us rip it out. But for two or three years, it was a covered skate ramp. We would just throw ragers. The Halloween parties were wild. … No one died. I didn’t get sued. The stories are out there.”
They informally dubbed it the Emerald Queen Recreation Center, and as Riley tells its history while shredding on his board on the (now open-air) ramp, the spirit of the farm begins to reveal itself.
Emerald Queen runs on community. The concept continues to unfold as we walk the rows of towering full-term sungrown plants, and Morrison talks about how Whyte is searching for a new executive director for the Humboldt County Growers’ Association, for which she serves as the board chair and acting director.
“Trying to keep it intact means a lot to her,” Morrison said. “It’s with hopes to hold a trade organization through this that is cultivator-led. It’s not consultants. It’s roots. They work with Origins Council, they work with Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, all the orgs, Nevada County. We’re all homies. We all do the work together, but HCGA is a fucking powerhouse, and it always has been.”
The pride with which Morrison and Whyte discuss the cultivator community carries over to their crop. As we pass between columns of cultivars, he rattles off the origins of each flavor we pass.
He points out a number of cultivars from frequent collaborator Kristian Andreassen, the founder and owner of Kounter Kulture. He names an up-and-coming breeder out of Michigan he recently started working with. It’s a who’s who of cultivation and genetics.
“The Berry Fizz, the Red Lemons, the Piegasm, the Juicy Cubez all come from this breeder in Michigan who we’ve been working with called Terp Fountain,” Morrison said. “All his genetics are fuego. I connected with him through a crew from Maine.”
Out in the field, Morrison smiles through his beard like a jolly elf in a candy shop, encouraging us to “get in there” and experience the cornucopia of aromas.
“Here’s the Banana Punch,” he said. “This is a clone we got from 710 when we did a grow with them, and we’ve been blessed enough to be able to keep it. This is like the GOAT of banana resin and the coolest thing.”
Emerald Queen decided to go for 100% full term this year because of shifting market realities and increased overhead of maintaining light-dep houses. There’s also Morrison’s predisposition to growing huge, towering trees.
“He’s like, ‘They’re not big enough,’” Whyte said. “And then he’s like, ‘Well, now they’re out of the greenhouse. They’re taller than the greenhouse.’”
The plants are indeed tall — well past the limits of where the greenhouse covers would drape.
“Each greenhouse is like a half varietal,” Morrison said, gesturing to the different sections. “The majority of this native soil will all go to hash. The majority of these steel frames are for flower. Like a 60-40 of hash to flower is what we do here.”
They work with a few different hash makers, among them the Bryantist, as well as a long-time collaborator, Punch Extracts. Emerald Queen also recently joined fellow Humboldt cultivators Huckleberry Hill Farms and Mattole Valley Sungrown in a three-flavor collab hash drop called Taste of Humboldt, featuring Queen’s Chem alongside Huckleberry’s Whitethorn Rose as well as Mattole-cultivated Paradise Rose. Morrison says they look for a combination of consistency and ingenuity when it comes to genetics.
“In the nursery, there’s over 200 individual cultivars that most of them we don’t even run, but we just have them kept either for breeding or to rotate,” he said, naming Phinest and Pacific Roots as a couple of breeders in their library. “We’ve been running the same kind of hash genetics for three seasons, and this year we basically did all new-hunt varietals for the market, and all the folks we got contracts with are super stoked just to get something fresh and new in there.”
This year, they’ll pull down about 1,500 pounds of A-grade for flower and fresh frozen from 33,000 square feet of canopy. But in true Emerald Queen form, it’s not all about work. Morrison gestures toward the drone flying around the compound, being piloted by Keith.
“He lives on-site, and he does productions,” Morrison said. “They’re filming some kind of trance-techno thing here tomorrow. … We’re still having fun. I feel really fortunate.”
