Bald Peak Farm is an Oregon-based cultivation company that’s been growing Cannabis since 2016. Established within the Chehalem Mountains in the Willamette Valley, the facility sits at a soaring 1,600 feet above sea level.
Given their status as the in-house producer for over 10 different Chalice dispensary locations, Bald Peak Farm maintains three greenhouses, including a 10,000-square-foot canopy for flowering plants. With the capacity to run around 3,000 living cultivars at the same time, the main greenhouse is organized into subsections set up in three-week intervals. The gradation in flora lifespan allows the staff to harvest manageable portions of the bay at a time. No small task, the output is estimated somewhere around 200 pounds every three weeks.
Highly lauded in terms of accolades, the farm has been awarded for their entries into a multitude of competitions over the years, including the Oregon Leaf Bowl, High Times’ Cannabis Cup, and the Oregon Growers Cup. It begs the question: How does such a massive producer consistently put out so many award-winning products?
“We pretty much have to grow how the facility wants us to,” Derek Rayhorn, director of cultivation, explained. “Because I have Mother Nature helping me out at certain times of the year and maybe not so much at other times, some processes have to be decided on the fly.”
While growing within a greenhouse can help protect vegetation to a large degree, the fluctuation in outdoor conditions across the seasons can greatly impact the Cannabis produced at Bald Peak Farm. By utilizing a tailored approach in terms of plant placement within the space, individualized hand watering and even specific strain selection for each run (depending on environmental climate), the crew sets each variety up for success as much as possible.
Every cultivar on site is grown in a natural soil medium with mixed light assistance in the form of LEDs. A considerable and intentional effort is made to keep the flower space as clean and pest-free as possible. “I’m not an indoor grower. It’s hard for me to regulate my environment up here. It’s one of the reasons I specifically breed and select for pest and pathogen resistance,” Derek said.
To that end, a defining characteristic of Bald Peak Farm is the amount of breeding, seed-popping and phenohunting that they do. From the plethora of varieties cultivated on site, only four of the strains came from clones outside of the company. The rest of the selections have been bred in-house or grown from a seed and hunted for preferential phenotypic expression. The result is an extremely diverse and exclusive lineup, including hitters like their Maui Melon Bubble Gum (Hawaiian Durban Pie x Strawberry Guava), Funk Gravy (Georgia Pie x Kombucha) and Silver Pine (Silver Hawk x Pineapple Express).
It’s important to mention that Bald Peak Farm puts a large effort into producing 1:1 THC:CBD and other mixed-ratio flower. Out of the 21 strains that have been bred on the farm by Derek, six of them are 1:1s. The focus on palliative, medicinal options is something that sets the business apart, bringing customers from far and wide to seek their products. Cultivars like Mayra’s Medicine (Silverhawk x Blue Dragon Desert Frost), Sweet Tonic (Sweet Tooth x Cannatonic) and their most awarded selection, Strawberry Remedy (Strawberry Fields x Blue Dragon Desert Frost), represent significant efforts put into bringing viable alternative cannabinoids to market.
The Tannins and Terpenes issue is all about bringing things together so that the sum is greater than its parts. In that way, Bald Peak Farm has brought together a powerhouse of a team along with a top-notch facility, a meticulous standard operating procedure and a diversified stable of genetics. The result is a colossus of a Cannabis farm that produces both consistently and efficiently.
