The shuttle experience to the Brinkerhoff Household Farm in Parachute, CO, transports us via tree-lined canyons the place foliage graduated from vibrant greens to burnished amber, alongside shallow rivers revealing streambeds painted in blue and purple hues—a dwelling testomony to Colourful Colorado.
The surroundings feels essential when fascinated by how Edun is totally different from many of the state’s different hashish grows. What you see of their cultivation—grass, pepper crops, decomposing leaves, roly poly husks and even geese—is constructed from the very land I occur to be using via. And the wildness and authenticity of their course of is current in dancing leaves, hearty stems, crystallized flowers with neon hues and nil seen stress. In a Colorado market suffering from shuttered dispensaries and questionable operations, Edun is displaying up with a prohibition-era cultivation technique that almost all industrial growers deserted years in the past.
Earlier than getting into the develop facility within the small mountain city of Parachute, located on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains roughly 40 miles east of Grand Junction and 200 miles west of Denver, Edun Founder James (Jimmy) Brinkerhoff highlights the wild grasses shimmering with morning dew across the nondescript buildings. “We’re beginning a brand new backyard over right here the place we’re rising rhubarb, which is able to make fermented plant juice that we feed to our crops each week in a blended tea,” he says.
This isn’t your customary coco-coir-and-bottled-nutrients operation. Edun is a no-till regenerative farm using Korean Pure Farming (KNF), an natural cultivation technique that depends on pure inputs and organic capabilities to create a wholesome biome. The method consists of Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ), a fertilizing system frequent throughout hashish prohibition as a result of it was fully untraceable, renewable and supplied glorious vitamins and illness resistance. The identical fermentation course of is used to make kimchi.
At its core, KNF is useful as a result of it permits crops to develop and thrive as if in nature. Vegetation develop higher resilience to pests and illness as a result of the habitat is influenced by the identical mechanisms as a wild outside backyard. The soil is wealthy, nutrient heavy and sustained via processes requiring little intervention. Consequently, no pesticides, fungicides or chemical substances are used at Edun.
Brinkerhoff describes the gathering of Indigenous Microorganism (IMO) as he factors to the encircling valley. “We go up a pair thousand ft with these bins crammed with rice and holes in them,” he says. “We put them out for 2 or three days. The microbes go inside and begin multiplying within the rice.” These collected microorganisms are then mixed with FPJ and different substances in a brew room earlier than being distributed to the power’s 4 cultivation rooms, the place the actual proof of this technique lives.
Strolling via the doorways, the very first thing you discover is what’s lacking: no coveralls, no shoe slips, no masks. The air isn’t stale or sterile; as a substitute, it’s mild, playful, aromatic. Within the mom plant room, the cultivation beds inform a complete story. The primary few rows present beds outlined with sturdy wooden panels, crammed with dust, leftover roots from earlier harvests and grass. Shifting towards the again rows with lively mom crops, there’s much more: lifeless leaves, peppers, basil, eggplant, aloe, random natural particles—a complete forest ground ecosystem.
“Peppers are for enjoyable,” Brinkerhoff says. “Basil for my home and a few eggplant. The aloe we use for FPJ, we make fermented plant juice out of it. It can also let you know when you have an excessive amount of or too little water.” He then particulars the way to preserve a pure farm thriving: “Moisture is the toughest factor,” he says. “Temperature is simpler as a result of you may really feel it and it’s one room. Moisture, it’s important to examine each mattress.”
Whereas Brinkerhoff gives high-level philosophy, his accomplice in enterprise and life, Michelle Brinkerhoff, breaks down the technical structure. Down on one knee, leaning over the wooden paneling, she signifies totally different layers: “Our idea is to observe Mom Nature’s recipe. Mom Earth is sort of a rock within the center after which she goes sand, silt, clay, compost.” Michelle dives additional into how they’re sourcing domestically and sustainably. There’s Colorado River Rock, she says, and the dust within the beds is six years outdated and has by no means been turned over. Michelle credit the pure processes blended with science as the idea for the dust being really easy to take care of and handle.
Your entire constructing is extraordinarily clear but in addition very messy, in a pure means. It’s a fancy system of managed chaos. There’s even a household of geese that wander from room to room and contribute to the ecosystem offering pest and weed management, together with fertilizer, after all. The crops in these rooms exude pungent candy odors and the leaves wave excitedly as you move, left alone to bask within the day’s solar and dwell a full life. Whereas this cultivation gives a vivacious, wholesome ecosystem, Edun is not a flower firm; fairly, they focus solely on extracts and ancillary merchandise which might be dominating the market proper now.
The exuberance of those crops isn’t simply present and inform. Whereas the bud from Edun’s backyard isn’t polished and sculpted like many customers have change into accustomed to, there are actual outcomes from the KNF follow. Brinkerhoff describes among the challenges with hashish. “Our THC is likely to be 22-24 %, and persons are like, we wish 30 %,” he says. “They don’t notice we now have actually excessive terpenes. And that’s what it’s all about, that complete combination of all of the terps collectively.” He says his crops are repeatedly testing at 4.5-5 % on terpenes, which is effectively above trade requirements. With excessive terpenes comes the next high quality and amount of extracts—a key issue behind Edun’s dwell rosin-focused product line.
Harvest time brings blissful smells filled with heady wafts. However these wafts are risky compounds exploding at that very second and so they have to be reduce, shucked and frozen inside a really small window of 25-Half-hour. The Edun extraction group operates in 40°F rooms throughout the washing and urgent of the product as an extra protocol to protect as many terpenes as attainable. The fashionable extraction blended with the pure backyard is creating among the extra constant and dependable extracts available on the market at this time.
Simply down the highway from Edun is a Tumbleweed Dispensary, a mountain chain that opened in 2016. With an eviction discover on its door, now it’s simply one other casualty in Colorado’s hashish market graveyard. That is the context wherein Edun operates. Whereas legacy operations get locked out of their very own buildings, the Brinkerhoffs are constructing one thing basically totally different. Their unique imaginative and prescient was to accommodate impartial growers and practice them in KNF methodology. “After we began, I used to be going to construct these buildings and lease them to cultivators, totally different ones round Colorado,” Brinkerhoff says. They needed to show younger growers the advantages of utilizing the KNF technique and the way it’s symbiotic with the pure environment.
When the market began dropping, Brinkerhoff noticed no alternative and have become his personal tenant, he says. However in a race-to-bottom market the place operators are reducing each nook to outlive, Edun is now constructing soil—actually and figuratively—that’ll outlast the present trade shake-out. Their technique isn’t nearly rising hashish in another way; it’s about making a regenerative system that improves over time fairly than depleting assets.
Edun’s chaotic forest flooring and companion-planted beds blended with science and information characterize one thing uncommon going into 2026 Colorado hashish: precise modernization rooted in hashish prohibition knowledge.
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Even on a cold morning, when my nostril isn’t working at full capability, I may pull a gram of Edun’s rosin from the fridge and nonetheless get a powerful whiff of the terpenes. Whereas most of Edun’s product line is concentrated on extracts, they do carry 0.5g dwell rosin infused canine walker joints in 2 and 5 packs.
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This story was initially revealed in concern 52 of the print version of Hashish Now.
The submit Edun: Bringing Craft Again To Hashish appeared first on Hashish Now.
