“Angelo, you’re going to have to mute yourself. I can’t hear the questions,” Derek Deems half-yells to Angelo Medaglia, who until a minute ago was sitting in the office for our scheduled interview but has since been pulled from his post to quickly solve some pressing issue elsewhere on the farm. “Sorry about that. Back in the day, there was one big harvest, and you really looked forward to that. But now, it’s just kind of crazy all the time.”
Starting in the traditional market, the founders of Green Queen Farm already know the quality benchmark they can hit. Now, they’re focused on achieving that at scale. With five massive greenhouses all needing their attention and no outside investment to keep them afloat if a round or two wasn’t up to snuff, the crew keeps their heads down and steers the ship through boom and bust markets.
It has been a long journey to dial in the greenhouses. Though climate-controlled, they’re still very much affected by the changing environment outside. After spending years making minute adjustments, the crew at Green Queen has perfected the process, producing the kind of flower that brought home a handful of awards last year. “We’ve always aimed to bridge the gap between indoor quality and greenhouse scalability,” says Angelo, just now returning from resolving the issue of the day.
The farm is in a state of perpetual harvest. Every couple of weeks, another round comes down while the last batch is curing and the harvest before that is being trimmed, and so on. Nearly a year of hard work went into the jar of Gush-Mintz in front of me, with hardly any downtime to shift direction. Everything needs to overlap perfectly for this small crew to take the plants down during the ideal window and get them promptly to the market.
Angelo explains the buzz of chasing good weed: “Every run, it seems like our quality just gets a notch higher. And that’s what we’re really aiming for — great quality for a good price.” Derek jumps in to make sure we don’t miss the good part: “Our goal as a farm is to provide quality that doesn’t break the bank. We can come in at a price tier below indoor but have something that smokes like indoor.” Knowing his audience, he adds, “We can get weed connoisseurs excited, and they can still walk out of the dispensary with an ounce.”
When I ask what the crew looks forward to, we get right into their growing strain bank. “We’re always evolving, and a big part of that is keeping a fresh menu of new strains. Right now, I’m making calls to friends around the region, figuring out what we want to add to the stable for next season,” Angelo says.
They’ve locked in some heaters for this next harvest. “Peanut Butter Breath is a farm favorite, so we kept a close eye on it this round,” says Derek. Angelo makes sure to mention, “White Chocolate Chip is new to us this year. Great daytime weed. We’ve done one run of it so far, and it was super frosty with a really unique nose. We all liked it on the first pass. This next round looks even better.”
Even after a short time with the founders of Green Queen, it’s apparent that these guys are all-in on Oregon Cannabis. Representing the legacy of Oregon farms from the Rogue Valley, they are putting in long days of problem-solving to ensure we can all have a generous jar of something dank to roll up and share with our fellow partners in crime.
