“Soil is at the beginning and end of all life,” Justin Lee, co-owner and head cultivator of Kusala Care in New Jersey, said. “Once one experiences the unparalleled smoothness of properly grown living-soil flower, it makes one question, ‘What else besides Cannabis have I been combusting into my lungs?”
Enter their Gary Payton, a cut of which was gifted to Lee for an exclusive collaboration with Electric City Hash Company. They’re known as “The Wooks of Scranton” for their award-winning single-source live rosin. You’ve likely smoked Gary Payton; you’ve not yet experienced this Gary Payton. “The terps are very sharp and unique compared to the breeder’s cut,” Jay from Electric City said.
When I crack open the jar, the Snowman lineage is indeed snowing — the payoff from good genetics, organic living soil and water-only feeding during flowering. The pale green flower sparkles with trichomes so densely coated that some spots appear white. The hand trim is art. Preserved trichomes are laced through with intact orange hairs. The buds aren’t sculpted or shaped, but revealed.
When I mill the dense buds, it’s clear why these cannasseurs are so taken with this phenotype. The sticky grind has a super funky, straight-gas nose, with a softer herbal back note that brings out a sweetness when the two aromas meet.
A few Volcano bags in, and I’m blissfully enveloped in a limb-softening, finger-forgetting body effect and a dreamy yet clear-headed mental state. The vaporized terps reveal a yeasty, sweet lean — like a sourdough doughnut.
When smoked, the flower is creamy on the inhale, sour gas on the exhale. Smoking a 2-gram roll put Lee’s assertion of “unparalleled smoothness” to the test, and it passed with the highest marks. The burn — steady with a dripping resin ring — evinces a quality cure.
The team overcame significant obstacles on the journey to this first run. A year of red tape held up the operation, but culminated in “a peaceful protest in front of (a local official’s house), playing reggae and smoking joints.”
Translated from Sanskrit, “Kusala” means “skillful and wholesome,” and this Gary Payton embodies that ethos — a product of intention, obsession and Kusala Care’s deep legacy roots. It’s a gift to the New Jersey market.
kusalacare.com | @kusalacare | @electriccityhashcompany
This article was originally published in the February 2026 issue of Northeast Leaf.
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