Harvest Spotlight

A Big Year for Resin Farming

This year we grew a total of 54 strains across 8 farms with a total canopy of over 400,000 sqft. This breaks down to 44 strains cultivated for fresh frozen with the remaining 10 dedicated to biomass. All our cannabis was proudly sun grown in our great state of New York and we only cultivated world-class genetics to ensure the best and highest output of hash when extracted.

Fresh Frozen Harvest

This process is significantly more arduous than harvesting for biomass. When harvesting for frozen you are targeting trichomes which develop at different times depending on the strain and environmental factors. This means that we need to trim or defoliate the flower before we can freeze it. We use commercial harvest equipment and a large crew to trim(defoliate) the plant material before packing it in waxed boxes for storage. Removing the excess plant material reduces the risk of producing stained hash or a bad smelling product. We help the farms identify a harvest schedule based on analyzing the trichome development of specific strains. Once we have a schedule, Naturae will take samples of frozen flower to the lab to do a test wash. There are three things that qualify the strain for solventless. The color of the hash and rosin once it’s been pressed, the yield of hash produced from the wash, and the flavor profile of the rosin. Once we have results for all of the strains, we prioritize harvesting the best performing strains in the field. If we find that a strain has failed all of the qualifying metrics, then that strain will be dried for biomass.

Genetics
This season we’ve collaborated with Kristian Andreassen’s Kounter Kulture for all our Fresh Frozen genetics. As an award-winning cannabis breeder since his early days in the Grass Valley and Sacramento areas as the co-founder of Phinest, Kristian has developed many influential strains including his most recent collabs with Terp Hogz and Preferred Gardens. This partnership marks the first commercial release of Kristian’s genetics in his home state of New York. We obtain the seeds directly from them and personally distribute to the fresh frozen growers. We work with consultants as well as the breeder to select strains that are bred for hash production.

Cultivation Partners

We believe our cultivation partners are a vital part of our success. As we say often, it goes both ways. Our growers need us to be successful in order for them to be successful. We look at it as more of a partnership as opposed to a contract. We offer free consultation throughout the season to our farmers. We are actively visiting the farms offering advice and consulting on cultivation strategy.  Each farm is licensed as a tier 4 cultivator which allows for 50,000sqft of outdoor cultivation.

Our partner farms include:

• Adirondack Hemp Farms LLC – Whitehall, NY
• Richard B. Kingsley LLC – Whitehall, NY
• Kennedys Herbal Solutions LLC – Cambridge, NY
• Brian F Conlon – Schenectady, NY
• Enfield Glenn Hopyard LLC – Ithaca, NY
• Empire Agricultural Services LLC – Rochester, NY
• Rippin’ Ridge Farm LLC – Cazenovia, NY
• Hempchain Farms LLC – Whitehall, NY

RnD

This year we also selected 18 strains for an RnD plot at one of our farms. We grew 50 plants of each strain to perform a test wash. We will use the data generated from the test wash to build our portfolio for next season.

Maxson Freeman
Jaunty’s VP of Agriculture
Max co-founded Naturae in 2017 at the launch of NY’s hemp pilot program.  In 2018, he and his partners grew 20 acres of hemp, built out an extraction lab and started wholesaling CBD crude and distillate across the country. In 2019, they doubled production, growing 40 acres and starting a retail brand to help drive revenue. When NYS announced the launch of the recreational market, Max immediately pivoted his agriculture knowledge and pre-existing community of cultivators into Jaunty’s resin farming network.