“There’s just something you don’t get indoors,” says Blaise LaFlamme, co-founder of NW Kind. “It blows you away when you plant a one-foot clone in July, and by the end of the season, it’s nine or 10 feet tall. There’s something really special about that.”
Blaise recently walked us through their farm, a lush space filled with the scent of every Cannabis strain you can imagine. As we traverse the tight rows, he explains how they’ll decide if each cultivar is destined for cold-water or hydrocarbon extraction. “It’s pretty amazing how much data you can get from 20 to 30 grams of fresh frozen in a mason jar with some water and ice. This doesn’t guarantee that a cultivar is going to wash well at scale, but it gives us enough info to mark it a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a large run.”
Washing hash is as much an art as it is a science, and not every cultivar makes the cut. The fact is, most won’t wash well at all, and it will be months of work before they know if they have a winner on their hands. Even with clones, it’s a game of patience. Months of planning, testing and careful consideration go into deciding if a specific cut is worthy of making it into rotation. It’s a labor of love, but a necessary one, to ensure only the best material ends up in the final wash.
“We love all the new-school strains,” Blaise says. “my dad, David, and our partner Rico are really into the old-school sativas, so we keep classics like Pineapple Express, Blue Dream and Jack Herer.” When asked if they grow more sativa-leaning strains than most other farms, Blaise confirms that it’s been a big part of their lineup. “We do run a lot of old-school cultivars that don’t wash very well but make for incredible hydrocarbon products. We will still test wash most everything that comes in. Sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised by strains you wouldn’t typically think of as a hash strain.”
When asked if the low-yielders are worth keeping, he adds, “We really focus on terpene production, as well. If you spend all the time on a hunt, put something in rotation, then it doesn’t wash how you’d like… If the terps are worthy, we still keep it around. That’s the beauty of growing for hash; you really have to have a passion for it.”
As our tour winds down, we find ourselves in front of one of the most stunning plants in the garden: the award-winning Sunset MAC, a pheno they hunted from seed. With its stunning fall colors and a thick coat of trichomes glowing in the setting sun, I’m not sure if Blaise planned this as our final stop or if we just gravitated over unintentionally. The scent of OG and Sunset funk hangs in the air as Blaise wraps up our conversation with a sentiment we all share: “We’ve had one of the best Octobers the farm has ever seen, and we can’t wait to taste the results of all this hard work.”
