Chemistry Visits: Moon Made Farms

In the coming weeks we’ll be telling the story of each craft cultivator we work with to produce our full-spectrum vapes, tinctures and crystallines. Chemistry’s mission is to Stay True to the Plant™. We achieve this by preserving the nuance of each strain, from flavor to effect via our super fancy extraction and refinement techniques. But the story really begins with our farms and their amazing sun grown cannabis.

Tucked away in the mountains of Southern Humboldt County lies Moon Made Farms, a fiercely independent farm dedicated to producing high-quality craft cannabis under the California sun… and moon. Moon Made and its founder Tina Gordon cherish not just the plant, but also the land on which it grows. And when this type of ecocentric commitment is married with the sacred task of cannabis cultivation, beautiful things bloom.

Moon Made Farms in Humboldt County

Moon Made Farms is a steward of its land. Tina and her team are hyper-focused on practicing sustainable methods that strike a balance between the farm and neighboring habitats. They also grow some damn fine weed.

And that’s why we love them so.

Human interaction with the land that now plays host to Moon Made Farms has a rich history, beginning with the Native communities who once lived there. Communities were not made up of tribes, but rather families that grew to reach as many as 25-50 people and thrived off of the land’s ample resources. Today, the still resource-rich land surrounding Moon Made Farms, referred to now as the Emerald Triangle, has become well-known for its excellent cannabis cultivation conditions.

Moon Made lies in the heart of the Emerald Triangle, where the latitude and longitude allow for full sun cultivation. The land has long been maintained by a succession of badass women: previously Joani and now Tina. Joani — a true trailblazer of her generation — was an openly queer and successful musician, which during the 1950s was a heck of a combination to achieve. She also operated the cannabis farm before it fell under Tina’s care in 2007 and thus became Moon Made Farms.

Tina (producer, musician, filmmaker) moved away from the chaos of urban life and mellowed out in Humboldt County where she began experiencing the therapeutic value of working with the land while, fittingly, producing a plant that heals.

“I started recognizing how much the environment and habitat affect this plant and learned through reflection how much our environments and the stimulus that surround us affect our lives,” Tina said. “I started applying this care and conscientiousness to myself and became inspired to help facilitate this process for others.”

Coexisting with the cannabis is an entire ecosystem thriving within the farm itself. Grasshoppers, beetles, bumblebees, lizards and frogs have all found a home here. Many of them chill out in the cannabis leaves or indulge in the non-THC rich flowers. It was after reading The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka that Tina began to fully understand the huge role that biodiversity and no-till, or living soil, play in the cannabis growing process.

“The longer I live on the land the more in touch I've become with its health and the parts that need attention or remediation,” she reflected. “Learning and growing with the land has helped me to understand how interconnected we humans are with the land and how the health of both is inseparable.”

The surrounding habitat of the farm inevitably affects the farm’s cannabis plants, and this can especially be observed through the soil. Moon Made’s goal is to incorporate the native soil and surrounding biology through onsite composting. This way the genetics, and ultimately the epigenetics, of the plant can fully express itself in a way that is intimately tied to this unique environment.

In addition to integrating the unique environment into their cultivation methods, Moon Made has developed farming practices that strike a balance between old and new by upholding their motto: “Respect those who walked before you and those who will be next in line.”

This they achieve through an integration of ancient techniques with contemporary practices such as automatic drip irrigation, laboratory testing, microscope use and sensor controls. Despite these new approaches, keeping the surrounding nature intact and observing its intricacies and cycles remain extremely integral to the cultivation process as well. “The concept is that this garden could've been built thousands of years ago or thousands of years in the future,” said Tina, proudly.

One of the ancient techniques they utilise, and the namesake of Moon Made Farms, is called “lunar farming.” Lunar farming is the practice of using lunar rhythms to guide all of the intricacies within the planting and harvesting periods. Biological processes such as plant growth are deeply affected by the lunar cycles. During the first two phases of the moon, for example, tides are high due to the lunar gravitation's force on water. This force creates a more fertile and wet environment that encourages seed germination.

Basically, it's the perfect environment for the tenuous beginnings of a young plant's life.

As the cycles of the moon continue on, they affect the maturing plants in varying ways, which is why it is so integral to be aware not only of the sun’s effects on the plants, but the moon’s as well.

Much in the way that the sun and the moon work together to produce these dope plants, we partner with highly conscientious craft farms to make our full-spectrum vapes, tinctures and crystallines that Stay True to the Plant™. With their comprehensive observational tactics, lunar farming and sustainable methods, Moon Made is everything we want and more.

Sun grown, moon made. We'll vape to that.