KCRA celebrated adult use going live in our neighboring state of Ohio by visiting Standard Farms' facility just outside of Cleveland. There, the SF Ohio team crafts culinary-inspired edibles with a focus on high-quality, all-natural ingredients. We caught up with Standard Farms Director of Operations Chef Eric Major to learn how his culinary background influences their recipes, the importance of using high-quality ingredients, and the process of producing edibles the team can be proud of as Ohio patients themselves. Watch the video below to get a look inside the kitchen and keep reading to learn more about Standard Farms Ohio. Standard Farms Ohio Facility Snapshot The Standard Farms facility opened in 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio. It is 11,000 square feet and has a fully functional commercial kitchen and an ethanol and CO2 extraction lab. There is no cultivation on-site. Standard Farms is owned and operated by TILT Holdings. They employ 20 people in Ohio and offer a complete portfolio of processed goods from vapes utilizing Jupiter Research hardware, packaged flower sourced from licensed Ohio cultivation facilities, and infused edibles made in-house. Chocolate bars, gummies, cookies, chocolate drops, peanut butter, vegan peanut butter cups—the Standard Farms menu of infused options for Ohio consumers is extensive. With that many offerings, it’s easy to picture an assembly-line kitchen mass-producing infused gummies and chocolate bars, but Standard Farms takes the opposite approach by crafting small-batch edibles with inspiration, love, passion, flavor, and high-quality ingredients. The SF kitchen leans heavily on the background of classically trained chef and Standard Farms Director of Operations Eric Major. Before joining the SF Ohio team, Eric’s resume included experience training at a five-star resort in Colorado and time spent under a James Beard award-winning chef in Philadelphia. Pictured from Left to Right: Jerri Massey, Eric Major, Joe Chalupa He brings his expertise to introduce culinary concepts like mise en place (French for “everything in its place”) to the kitchen and curate a menu built around the philosophy of producing culinary-inspired, tasty edibles that use the highest-quality ingredients. The result is a menu that marries static offerings like the SF line of premium chocolate bars made with different varieties of Valrhona chocolate and gummies like the daytime green tea gummies crafted with culinary-grade stone ground Oku Midori matcha alongside rotating seasonal options that use fresh, in-season ingredients. The seasonal edible approach lets Standard Farms consistently bring new products to the market for patients and consumers to try by introducing a new edible lineup for winter, spring, summer, and fall. This year’s fall seasonal edibles feature a sugar-coated, chewy molasses cookie, apple cider gummies that taste like the leaves are falling, brown sugar butterscotch chocolate drops made from rich, sweet-flavored Valrhona Blond chocolate, and a chocolate chip cookie—a classic treat that the team is proud to be the first to offer in Ohio. “The seasonal approach not only lets us bring new products to the market for patients and consumers to try but also leans into our core philosophy of using the highest-quality ingredients by ensuring that we’re using ingredients in their freshest state.” Chef Eric Major—Standard Farms Director of Operations Developing new recipes to bring different edibles to market for each season comes with challenges, but Chef Eric leans on his background and the team in the kitchen to bring new ideas to life that appeal to what Ohio consumers want. Eric is quick to point out that the team behind the scenes is what makes the kitchen go. That team includes Kitchen technicians Jerri Massey and Joe Chalupa. Joe and Jerri work to put passion and care into every step of the process. They focus on every detail—from getting the proper temper on the chocolate to hand-coating every gummy in vegan sugar to ensure the product is one they would consume as patients themselves. Chef Eric said he views the team being patients in the Ohio program as an essential part of their process: “We have an investment in what’s out there for us. We’re in a unique position to make what we want to see as patients and put products we are interested in and passionate about into the market for others to enjoy.” That spirit is behind Standard Farms' refusal to follow a cookie-cutter, mass-produced approach to their edibles. Instead, they use their insight to bring the market what it wants—like being the first to offer a chocolate chip cookie perfected from a recipe Jerri had—or craft something unique for Ohio, like the Standard Farms ube coconut crunch chocolate bar. “The idea for the ube bar was inspired by a really talented chef I worked with who introduced me to Filipino cuisine and pallet and just how beautiful those ingredients could be.” The ube bar showcases the range of ingredients that can make up an SF edible. It blends all-natural ube extract, purple sweet potato powder, toasted cashews for a textured contrast, and Valrhona white chocolate to create a unique, tasty experience of white chocolate and accented coconut flavors with the beautiful visual of the light purple color ube has become popular for. Developing the recipes is the start, but to bring out the flavors, Chef Eric leans on his past experience to source only the finest ingredients. As he told us, “ We get a great final product when we put good stuff into it,”  and everything in the SF kitchen begins with only using the good stuff. The list of ingredients includes pectin as the gelling agent in the gummies. "It’s plant-based, so we use it instead of gelatin to stay all-natural everywhere we can.” Amoretti for all-natural flavoring, “They lead the way with all-natural extracts.”   French brand Les Vergers Boiron as the fruit purees used in the SF gummies, “100% a puree of the fruit, no additives or anything,”  and for the chocolate according to Chef Eric there was only one choice, "Amongst the best chocolatiers I know, Valrhona is considered the premier brand.” Valrhona is a French premium chocolate manufacturer focused on creating high-grade luxury chocolate. It holds the status of one of the world's premier producers of gastronomic chocolate. All its chocolate is fair-trade and sustainably sourced from Cocoa beans that can be traced straight back to the producer. “Valrhona has a diverse portfolio of varieties, and you get a consistent, high-quality product that melts nicely, tempers nicely, and most importantly, tastes great.” All these ingredients play their part in getting your taste buds involved to create a full-spectrum experience, but a clean, quality cannabis distillate oil is the essential ingredient, and as Chef Eric told us, “It’s not just food, it is cannabis-infused edibles, so I’d be remiss to not talk about our lab and how clean and wonderful the product that they produce in the lab that allows us to make good edibles.”  SF partners with Ohio cultivators to source flower to create the distillate in-house and the lab team maintains a high standard for the oil they produce. They focus on consistently producing a clean end product for infusion and to fill Standard Farms vape offerings. Standard Farms partners with Jupiter Research to utilize their industry-leading, patented CCELL technology to offer devices like the Infinity All-In-One, the Palm Battery, and Luster Pods in both strain-inspired and flavored vapes. Meet Chef Eric and the Standard Farms Ohio team, and you quickly pick up on the passion and care that goes into the product. It’s not about melting down Haribo gummy bears in bulk and infusing them with distillate to mass-produce gummies for dispensary shelves. These are culinary-inspired edibles pumped full of passion, not preservatives, with a menu that can provide something for everyone and every pallet.   There are no corners cut—only high-quality ingredients go in, and every detail counts towards crafting quality in the kitchen. These are edibles made by Ohio patients, for Ohio patients and consumers. “Standard Farms edibles are made by patients themselves. We are experiencing the products we’re putting into the market, and we want our products to be high-quality, tasty, and not pumped full of preservatives. High-quality ingredients go into the product, and we get a high-quality product as a result.” Chef Eric Major—Standard Farms Director of Operations

Have you ever wondered why certain strains have a number at the end of the name? Those numbers—like in Standard Farms Stay Puft #8, Blue Slushie #1, or Pink Certz #4—are used as indicators of different phenotypes for each strain, left by cultivation when looking for the best version of a strain grown from seeds. That process—known as pheno-hunting—plays an essential role in the genetics that Standard Farms brings to patients in PA, and we sat down with the SF team to learn more about how they pheno-hunt and what it takes to be a keeper in their greenhouses. When the SF growers source a seed pack from a breeder, they can come with anywhere from 5-20 seeds of a single strain. Each of those seeds is a different genetic expression—or pheno—of that strain. To find the best one, they have to pheno-hunt by growing each seed out in search of the version that checks all the boxes and works best in their environment.  Pheno-hunting is a huge part of the Standard Farms greenhouses. Every strain Standard Farms puts in flower goes through a lengthy R&D process before it can go into production. This dedicates a portion of their canopy just to searching for new genetics and finding keepers to bring to patients. The goal is simple, but the process is time-consuming. No detail can be left unchecked—every pheno flowered, harvested, cured, ran through a quick test wash (shaken up in a mason jar of ice water to see the trichome yield), lab-tested, and then finally jarred up and put out for the team to analyze it all and make their decision from the lineup. But what makes a keeper? What boxes have to be checked? The first is how it grows in the greenhouse. The team keeps an eye on each pheno through every step of cultivation, examining plant health and vigor and how it grows from start to finish. Because while all seed packs are sourced from reputable breeders who do their best to ensure quality genetics, there is never a guarantee. Phenos can herm out and need to be killed off right away or just be too finicky to last in the greenhouse. This can make for easy decisions, like with the Sundae Driver x Toaster Strudel (the name is always subject to change), where eight seeds that got popped hermed out, leaving only the #2 jarred up as finished flower. But for a strain like Cadillac Margarita, where ten phenos made it onto the table and only one or two can survive, the next test is the nose. The team comes with notes and test results—but to be a real winner, a pheno needs to bring potent aromas. To find out, each jar will get opened, and they will take turns getting a whiff to find the one with the best profile that fills up the room and packs a punch out of the jar.   If it has the nose, the next check is the bag appeal. Here, the team studies each nug—looking for trichome coverage, healthy nug structure, good size, and the color variation between phenos. If the pheno passes the eye test, has the nose, grows well in the greenhouse, and nails the test wash, the only box left to check before getting to production is passing the lab test. Standard Farms puts each pheno through sample testing to gauge its potential cannabinoid and terpene profile. While all the boxes are necessary to check off, the test results are typically the deciding factor. The reality is that in the PA program—and a lot of markets across the country—potency is king, and as Standard Farms Director of Cultivation Mike Oster told us, “There’s plenty of times where the one we like the most ends up being the one that tests at 14% THCA in the lab results.”  If you removed the test results from the equation and selected purely off looks, smell, and vigor, you might end up with different decisions, but the testing still serves as a roadmap to show quality and help make the final call—  “if we’re between two phenos and one tests at 29% and the other at 17%, we will go for the higher tester.” The true keeper is the one that has it all: bag appeal, nose, cannabinoid and terpene profile, health, and yield on the wash. For Standard Farms, finding the keeper takes patience and a willingness to explore what you end up with—but most importantly, it takes time.   Because that’s the thing, you can’t speed up nature. With their R&D process, Standard Farms has to stay nearly a year ahead of what will end up on the shelf. By the time their R&D selection goes into production and hits packaging, the team is far into looking through the next set of genetics popped. It never stops—one pheno-hunt leads into the next, but Standard Farms takes their time, prioritizing the hunt for quality over pace and taking solace in finding the best flower they can bring to patients in PA.

We recently took a trip to White Haven to tour the Standard Farms facility and learn more about their process in cultivating medical marijuana for PA patients and the story behind the brand. Once there, we were welcomed with open arms by the SF family and discovered a team of local people who are all working together to dial in and reach a new standard. Standard Farms is a licensed PA medical marijuana grower/processor that operates an 8-nexus hybrid greenhouse with 32,000 square feet of cultivation space and 30,000 square feet for processing in White Haven, PA. One of the original license holders in the PA Medical Program, Standard Farms has been operational since 2018 and was acquired from the original owners in 2019 by  TILT Holdings —a Phoenix based holdings company that owns Standard Farms in PA and Ohio, Commonwealth Alternative Care in Massachusetts, and Jupiter Research. In Pennsylvania, Standard Farms employs about 80 people from White Haven and the 570 area. Start to meet the team and you’ll find people that have been there since the start. To them, six years has felt like a lifetime as the program has evolved and they experienced the growing pains of starting a cultivation facility and adjusting to their environment. Since 2018, different grow techniques have come and gone for SF but the challenge of cultivating in the Poconos climate remained. The mountains in Northeastern Pennsylvania aren’t exactly a pristine environment to cultivate cannabis. It takes time to adjust to hot, humid summers that heat up the greenhouses to over 90 degrees and cold winters that shift the climate in every room as the seasons change. The Standard Farms team have used that time to figure out what works best for the plants in their rooms. Their cultivation team is made up of locals who began as entry level harvest techs. People who took a job at the new business in town and six years later are running the rooms. The SF team has learned every step of the way—taking lessons from the past and steering their way into a recipe tailored to their greenhouses. Whether it’s living soil, synthetics, hydroponics, or Athena and rockwool, every cultivator has their medium for trying to grow the best weed they can. For Standard Farms, their journey has led them to focus on simplifying the process and cultivating healthy plants in a clean environment. From the greenhouses in full flower to mom/prop/veg to harvest and trim, the Standard Farms facility is spotless. They have a commitment to cleanliness driven by understanding their environmentals and the stresses of cultivating cannabis at scale. The plants are grown under the sun in hybrid greenhouses with HPS lights to supplement the gray weather days in Pennsylvania. They go single stalk—one plant in each pre-filled bio365 grow bag to keep eyes on every flower in the room. Their fertilizer is made by a Lehigh Valley based family company whose manufacturing facility is located in Allentown, PA with experience making water-soluble fertilizers for the horticulture and specialty agriculture markets that dates back to 1947. To support the feed schedule, Standard Farms has also started using substrate sensors to give a snapshot of what’s happening with the plants and the climate and allows the team to back growing by feel with precise measurements that give a more complete picture of the room.  Every flower cultivated in Standard Farms’ greenhouses is pheno-hunted. Packs from Raw Genetics, Equilibrium, Symbiotic, Inhouse Genetics, Compound Genetics, and more have been pheno-hunted in house to find the keepers they bring to patients. Staples in their lineup like Georgia Pie from Raw Genetics and GG#4 feature alongside new selections like Modified Apples & Bananas from Symbiotic and Blue Slushie from Raw. The team identifies winning pheno’s through their looks, nose, structure, yield, and vigor before finalizing R&D with lab results to solidify the choice.  But after a pheno gets picked and is flowered out there’s one more test it has to go through before it can last in the Standard Farms greenhouse—how well it washes. The cold room where Standard Farms crafts their rosin is focused on producing live rosin in PA with the right consistency, texture, and flavor for patients.  From the wash to the press, to the cure, the process is all about preserving the integrity of the plant—keeping the trichomes and the terps intact by going small-batch and starting with fresh, frozen flower that’s harvested only ten plants at a time for the wash.  The process begins by taking the fresh, frozen flower directly out of a negative 45-degree freezer and putting it into the machine for its spin cycle in reverse osmosis ice water. The resulting ice hash is flushed into wash bags ranging from largest micron size to smallest to discard all excess plant material but the trichomes. It’s then scraped from the bag to a tray where it’s freeze dried overnight to be pressed into rosin. After it’s pressed the rosin gets cured and then whipped into its final form—ready to be packaged for patients.  If you’re not into taking dabs or you just want the rosin on the go, Standard Farms rosin is also available in their new All-In-One Rosin Vape. To nail the viscosity for the vape they take pressed, cured rosin, and place it into a convection oven to decarb the oil before it goes into the Jupiter Voca Pro Device. The Voca Pro is built to ensure smooth draws and consistent deliveries of high terpene extracts. For KCRA’s money it’s the best solventless vape option in the program and keeps the vaping experience true to the flavor profile of the rosin.  Solventless is the focus, but to give patients options Standard Farms produces other products in the lab like tinctures, terpene syringes, suppositories, salves, and full-spectrum CO2 oil disposable vapes in the Jupiter FLEX device. All products are crafted with the same attention to detail as the starting material as the team dials in with each harvest and each batch. Even with a guided tour, our experience walking through the Standard Farms grow still feels like entering a maze. You can quickly lose track of the hours of the day as you walk the halls in PPE and get transported into a new world—and a different step in the process—behind each greenhouse door. Our day was spent going through the entire life cycle of a Standard Farms strain. We started in the humidity of propagation where we were greeted by the clones, and the most recent SF employee of the month, and ended in a greenhouse with rows of Georgia Pie, Blue Dream, and Biscotti Pie in full flower. Just days away from being harvested, we got stuck admiring the eye-popping colors of their Blue Dream BX as Director of Cultivation, Mike Oster meditated under the calm of the plants blowing in the breeze of the fans on how far SF has come in recent years. He said that to get to where they are now on the journey, everyone had to play a role. From cultivation, to extraction, to IPM, to facilities, the team leveling up comes from an openness to learn and never be satisfied in where you’re at—committing to the hard work it takes to get the most out of the plants in your rooms. For Standard Farms this is the backbone of their grow. Local people working together to set a new standard of quality for their products and taking pride in what they are providing PA medical patients straight from their home in White Haven, Pennsylvania.

Perspective is everything. The way we perceive our reality shapes our understanding of everything around us. That understanding is influenced by what we are taught and what we see in an increasingly digital world. People trapped in their own perspective stay quick to judge and slow to change their minds—hardened in their opinions and the stigmas attached to their beliefs. For their perspective to shift there has to be a spark capable of challenging them to reevaluate what they thought they understood. This is especially true for cannabis. Even as most of the country moves forward with legalization, the stigma attached to the plant from decades of prohibition and miseducation remains strong. Just look around as a cannabis consumer and you can be reminded that you’re not welcome. In places where the laws haven’t caught up, you could still end up in jail for using herb as medicine—but even in legal markets you can find the more subtle reminders of how far we have to go to normalize cannabis use in society. While we may never be able to rid the world completely of the lazy stoner stereotype, what is the best way to challenge society’s perspective of cannabis? The easiest way might be to just hand somebody a joint, but for the uninitiated who are keeping the stigma alive maybe you can break down the barrier by showcasing cannabis through a different lens first. That’s the goal of photographer Chris “Kandid Kush” Romaine—to help rid the stigma through the beauty of his photography. Changing the perception of cannabis by putting the beauty of the plant on display and representing the experience of herb across different cultures—from the farmer to the trichome head. His work stays true to nature—capturing living plants in a moment that can never be shot again. Images that provide a new depth of understanding to farmers who have had their hands in the soil for decades by exposing the world to the wonder of the cannabis plant beyond what the naked eye can see. Chris has been developing his artistry for years and his journey towards photographing cannabis professionally was anything but straightforward. Before he was helping introduce the world to the cannabis micro-verse, he started by just carrying a camera. Back then it was a disposable point and shoot, taking pictures at punk rock shows and house parties in high school to capture moments in time. The gear has changed a little bit since then, but that principle remains central to his work. The camera has never left his side, from first learning to shoot on film in high school, to his days shooting model photography after buying his first DSLR while he worked in nightclubs in Las Vegas, to street photography in the Bay Area, to a 20x stack of a trichome head taken with a microscopic objective lens.  Chris’ story is of a life well-traveled, recognizing opportunity when it presents itself and being unafraid to step outside of his comfort zone to find a path worth exploring. He always wanted that path to be centered around photography but struggled for years to find his niche. That discovery came when he left Las Vegas and moved to San Diego in 2015, where weed was medically legal under Prop 215. He got his medical card from HelloMD (in a full-circle moment, Chris would later go on to photograph HelloMD co-founder Pamela Hadfield in 2019 for his first magazine cover for Dope Magazine) and went on to Weedmaps to get some bud. When he checked out the menu, he saw images closer to looking like bugs than high-grade medical cannabis, “I knew at that exact moment there was a huge opportunity waiting for me. I was a weed smoking photographer for nearly a decade prior to this moment. I’d been searching for my niche and there it was, right in front of me in the form of an awful Weedmaps menu.” His discovery of a niche also meant the discovery of a new subject. Cannabis had been a part of Chris’ life since his early 20’s and photography had been his passion for over a decade, but he never combined the two. Since it was best to avoid incriminating yourself with photographic evidence in the legacy market, most people only had access to the view of the nugs they got in their hand. Once you put it under the lens of a camera, you can start to get a closer look, but the depth of field creates a challenge to get everything in focus. That’s exactly what Chris saw his first time attempting to take weed pics, “I had this hundred millimeter lens that I used for portraiture, but it said macro on it, and I had Studio lighting and so I just put the nugs on a table and was trying to get pictures of it, but I couldn't quite get it all in focus and I didn't really understand what the issues were with the depth of field or have the technical knowledge of what focus stacking was.” Used in astrophotography, insect photography, landscapes or any other scene that has limitations in depth of field, focus stacking is an essential tool to taking professional quality images of cannabis and fully capturing the essence of the plant. To put it simply, focus stacking is a technique where the photographer takes an individual frame at different focal lengths and then combines the frames together to create a single image in complete focus. Chris described the technique as, “precisely capturing different focal points in a linear sense,” and while other photographers’ definition of the word precision may vary to his, so will their results. Chris takes the trichome stacks you see now on a mechanical rail that allows him to move the camera at one tenth of a micron to capture each frame—for reference, the average human hair is a hundred microns thick. Depending on the plant, the finished photographs can range anywhere from a stack of 200 individual frames to a stack of 1200 frames all captured at different focal points.  Getting the technique of capturing the image down is just the start though. With the stacked compositions, hours of studio time create even longer hours in the editing room to get the right image. Nail both sides and the technical expertise and precision will leave the observer wondering what they are looking at and how the artist captured something so far beyond what we can see. Chris now has that process dialed in but all that did not happen overnight.  Years before his photographs were featured on the cover of High Times, Chris had to dive into learning focus stacking and honing his craft with the goal of simply getting a nug in full focus—let alone trying to capture a trichome. When he started in San Diego, he took inspiration from photos taken by Erik “Nugshots” Christiansen in Green: A Field Guide to Marijuana   (the two are now friends and it turns out they lived one mile away from each other in San Diego) and insect photography. Eight years on and some obstacles later his hustle and commitment hasn’t wavered, yielding the results you see now.  A year into the journey, Chris was frustrated by only getting paid in free bud and constantly being told that the weed sells itself from prospective clients in San Diego when he had a profound experience that caused him to lean all the way into pursuing cannabis photography and take off for the Bay Area. “I participated in a Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru and when I got back in a matter of five days, I was evicted, suspended from work, lost my health insurance, tested positive for Salmonella poisoning, and had my car totaled by an uninsured motorist. I had a mental breakdown like, ‘what am I going to do’? The next day I was walking barefoot to a secluded beach in the Sunset Cliffs area, and I was cursing aloud like, ‘what next?' and I kicked a rock and broke my toe. I was like okay, I guess I'm going to stop questioning things. I have a good feeling about the weed photography. I think it’s going to leave a large impact, and the Bay Area seemed to be the mecca of cannabis at the time, so I moved to Oakland on a whim a few weeks later.” In Oakland, Chris hit the grind. He had worked in food and beverage for over a decade, so he got a job at a nightclub and as a bartender at a brewery to help stay afloat financially in the bay before he eventually landed a part time menu photographer position at a dispensary called Garden of Eden. “It took about three or four different interviews for the job, and then for the final test they tossed me a bunch of Sherbinskis weed. It was in the orange container with the writing and at that time I had never really even seen brands before, and they're like, ‘we want to see trichome pictures.’ And I was like, yeah, I could do that. But in reality, I had no idea how. I was pretty lost, but I ended up researching insect photography and renting a Canon 65 MPE [he uses the same kind of lens today] and using the manual focus stacking rail I had. I got it to look good enough for them and they were pumped, and I got hired.” Chris went on to work at Garden of Eden for over three years while the California rec market was coming online. During his time there he rose from part-time menu photographer to the Director of Photography overlooking all of the brands, menu photography, corporate portraiture, and marketing campaigns for the vertically integrated operation.  Through those years he hustled on the side, shooting part-time for Weedmaps and getting opportunities for freelance work with Dope Magazine after winning a photo contest. His photography continued to open doors and allow him to develop relationships with legacy California brands moving into the rec market like Fig Farms, Pistol Point, IC Collective, 710 Labs, Sherbinskis, and Gold Seal. On paper, this position looks like an artist’s dream. A six-figure salary, part of a creative team, and stability with consistent work as a full-time professional cannabis photographer but Chris said that after three years in the role, something was missing. “It seemed like all I was doing was working and I was losing the passion for photography because of that, and I struggled with that feeling. This is the goal, right? This is what creatives or artists strive to be so what is this conflict within me? But ultimately it was that I wasn't creating for myself. I had trouble receiving criticism in certain ways, sitting at a board table with 12 other people and hearing that the work sucks without any reason. I wasn’t at the point in my creative journey where I could just hear that, I was too attached to the work, and being attached to the work you are creating for someone else is a slippery slope. So, I decided to spearhead Kandid Kush photography on my own.” So, in late 2018 he gave 30 days' notice and moved on to the next challenge—opening a photography studio in West Oakland with a fellow photographer. They worked together for roughly a year, getting retainer clients, and shot the 2019 harvest season in Mendocino and Humboldt. In late 2019, Chris got invited to do a photo exhibit in Barcelona and traveled Europe for a month. Shortly after he returned the two decided to part ways. Chris kept the studio going on his own from there before 2020 came and the pandemic hit. Burdened by the cost of living in the Bay Area— “my breakeven point was $7,000 a month” —and feeling cooped up with no work during the lockdown, he pivoted again and took the studio remote. He’s been living a nomadic life in his decked-out Dodge ProMaster van since then, traveling the country and the world to shoot different cannabis farms and anything else that catches his eye. He keeps the camera ready, documenting his travels and showcasing life from his own perspective, grounding the micro world back into our reality by juxtaposing studio macro and micro cannabis imagery with his film photography, street photography, or landscape photographs. All subjects seemingly mimicking one another.  The result is an expression that highlights a shared connection with the plant, influenced by nature and the world as its captured through his lens, “My ability to share my photography with people is visually how I express myself and that's how I am able to communicate where maybe I can’t find the words to say certain things. But I know this picture can and maybe it's the macro photography, or maybe it was some of my film work or my street photography but building that collection of images together where I try to say something is my outlet and my expression.” As Chris’ artistry has evolved, so has the cannabis industry. He got his start shooting dried flower but has made the switch to almost exclusively capturing live plants at the farm. Taking photographs at pheno-hunts deep in the hills of Humboldt or capturing images for a book in a remote jungle in Jamaica would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago. These locations present their own challenges from a logistical standpoint—imagine trudging through the jungle with all that photography equipment on your back—but as cannabis comes out of the shadows more farmers continue to emerge, ready to tell their story and let others get up close and personal with the plants they dedicate their lives to. Chris documents farms with a mix of editorial style field photographs and the macro and micro studio work. The field work humanizes the cannabis farmer by showcasing the entire experience from seed to cultivation, before Chris selects the live plant that will get the studio treatment.   The first step in getting that stunning trichome image is picking the right subject. That takes an eye to pick the right plant out of the crowd, and once chosen, it gets packed up in the van and transported back to wherever Chris has set up his on-site studio at the farm for its close up. “When you look at things up close or you get up close and personal with something, the fear can be taken away. So many people are afraid of weed for whatever propaganda they've been brainwashed with, and then you look at it up close and you realize that this is such an insanely beautiful thing.” Show the final image to anyone that has never seen a trichome up close and it will draw them in only to leave them guessing what exactly they are looking at—even if it feels familiar. Tell them it’s cannabis and you might see their perspective shift in real time, challenging something they thought they understood. That moment is what drives Chris to show his work. He publishes images through his Instagram but has faced a never-ending struggle of getting lost in the algorithm, trying to display photographs on a platform that only wants to censor him. It’s been a frustrating saga that anyone in the cannabis industry can relate to.  The future remains online, but to counter the censorship, Chris takes things outside of the digital realm to connect on a different level. He’s always loved displaying his work through print media and gallery exhibits. This includes limited-edition prints, magazine features, book projects in collaboration with PhD scientists, and a recently launched permanent exhibition inside The House of Cannabis (THC) in New York City   titled The Microverse. The exhibit stands as a testament to his work and years of devotion to capturing the plant. You can see the 12-foot-high wallpaper that adorns his photographs in the museum’s Mezzanine from the corner of Broadway in Soho, then get the chance to admire the complexity and raw beauty of Kandid Kush once you make your way through the museum and enter his exhibit.  On the opening day of the museum, Chris snuck in fresh off a flight from working in Jamaica to experience it with the crowd. He went in without any expectations, just hoping to catch a glimpse of how people reacted when they saw the plant the way he sees it for the first time.  “Everything in life is about perspective. Photography is about perspective, and I love challenging people's perspectives. You don't have to agree with me. You don't have to like it, and in reality, I'd rather have you be uncomfortable about it because when you're uncomfortable and your perspective is changing, you're going to have questions and conversations that wouldn't have been there otherwise, and that's how progress is made.” Follow Chris' Journey and see his work @kandidkush on Instagram and purchase a limited-edition Kandid Kush print, printed by Chris himself here.

Regulations in Pennsylvania require medical marijuana growers to get Department of Health approval for the name of every strain they cultivate for patients. Since Pennsylvania is still medical only, the name can’t be anything the DOH deems too recreational. This keeps some strains from holding on to their real name in PA—like the strain Fatso—which Parea Biosciences sticks to calling by its lineage. Fatso, or GMO x Legend OG, is a cross between GMO Cookies (Girl Scout Cookies x Chemdawg) and Legend OG, a presumed OG Kush phenotype. The strain was originally bred by Cannarado genetics—a Colorado based legacy breeder with over 20 years of experience bringing quality strains like Sundae Driver and Grape Pie to the public in seed form. Cannarado has a long list of genetics  and Parea cultivates a few others like Party Foul and Garanimals along with the GMO x Legend OG. The Party Foul was grown from seed, but both the Garanimals and the GMO x Legend OG are cultivated from clones sourced from Oregon Licensed Grower and Hash Maker B.A. Botanicals. The strains are a part of the Parea x B.A. Botanicals collab that makes verified cuts of legacy genetics like OG Kush, Sour Diesel, and The Z available to PA Patients. Look for the B.A. Botanicals sticker on the Parea bag to find the other genetics in the collab. Even though Parea had to lose the original name for GMO x Legend OG, their cultivation team said you can see where the name comes from with the big buds it produces in flower. Parea keeps their GMO x Legend OG on the smaller side, where they find it grows and yields the best. The current batch was grown in Parea’s Terp Barn—a small scale room where Parea incorporates old school cultivation methods and experiments with new ideas to help consistently produce high quality, high terpene testing flower.   CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW CREATED BY PAREA TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THEIR TERP BARN “The buds were a really good size on this batch. Nice big buds with a strong garlicky smell when it was growing. We’ve noticed it likes to be a smaller plant and it stretches a lot in flower, so we experimented with flowering some in two-quart pots between bigger plants on this batch. Except for the structure, the buds look a lot like GMO with how white the pistils stay through flowering. Patrick Sprout—Parea Director of Cultivation Open a bag of GMO x Legend OG from Parea and you’ll find dense, green buds dotted with orange stigmas that naturally taper into a slightly fox tailed spade-like shape. Hand-trimmed by Parea to preserve its quality, this strain lives up to its reputation as a great yielder for hash with heavy trichome coverage and a frosty look. It has a classic garlicky, diesel smell to it with a gassy, savory flavor to match. Known as a heavy hitter, this batch clocked in at 32% THC and 2.9% Terpenes on the COA and is best reserved for more experienced patients. It’s no creeper—hitting you right away with a calming, full bodied rush that delivers a wave of euphoric relaxation. Its potent effects can ease pain and serve as a sedative to help unwind with a blissful state of mind and probably some munchies. Check the COA below and look out for the GMO x Legend OG by Parea on select dispensary shelves in Pennsylvania, along with the rest of the strains from the Parea x B.A. Botanicals collab. PAREA GMO X LEGEND OG COA INFORMATION

Medical marijuana plants go through an entire cultivation process before they reach the patient as finished flower. Each step is crucial for growing high quality product, but the trim can often get overlooked. After the flower gets harvested and goes through dry cure it needs to be trimmed—the excess stems and leaves shaped off the nug before it goes into the package. Trimming is typically the last step for growers, and if done all by hand one of the most tedious and labor-intensive jobs in the grow. Some growers choose to cut out the trim room—opting for a machine to do the work to speed up the process and save time and money. For Parea Biosciences, doing it by hand is the only way. Every Parea strain—no matter the weight it’s packaged in—gets hand-trimmed at the grow facility in Shamokin, Pennsylvania before it goes to PA patients. Video Courtesy of Parea Biosciences The Parea trim room prides itself on preserving the essence of the flower that cultivation provides. Trimming with care to maintain the structure of the bud and deliver undisturbed flower to patients. Each nug gets the individual attention it deserves from trimmers—paying close attention to the characteristics of the strain in their bin. At Parea, the plant is assessed and given what it needs through all the steps of the process and that includes trim. Every batch of every strain is different. Instead of dictating the rules to the plant, Parea is guided by what the plant needs. The biggest rule is striving to deliver quality, medical grade product on a consistent basis. “Quality and consistency are the pillars of the trim department. Take quality product and be consistent with it.” Liz Boylan—Trim/Packaging Manager To get medical grade quality, the other pillar has to be cleanliness. Parea strives for sincere cleanliness in the trim room to give the flower the integrity it deserves as a medical grade product. Their flower is handled with a level of care and an attention to detail through every step, and hand-trimming and hand-packaging each flower unit lets Parea get one last QC before it's out of their hands and to the patient. Every bud gets an extra set of eyes on it while on the trim table and then another look when it’s packaged by hand in their window mylar bags—dropping at least one big bud in each bag. Open a bag of Parea flower and you might start to notice the difference between hand-trimmed and machine-trimmed flower. Even as trim machines evolve, they would destroy the structure on some of Parea’s genetics and the automated blade can never match the beauty of a well-manicured bud from a skilled trimmer. The reality is anybody can trim weed—all it takes is trim scissors and a lot of time—but not everyone is cut out for the work and not everyone is willing to pay someone to do it. In Parea’s trim room you need to be quick enough to get through upwards of 800 grams in a day depending on the strain, and meticulously shape each bud to produce consistent results that highlight the unique qualities of each genetic.   It’s monotonous work, but it’s also an entry-level job in the grow. Any cultivator out there has trimmed weed at some point and might have got their start on a farm doing just that. This holds true for Parea. Members of their trim team have gone on to be in cultivation and extraction in the Shamokin facility. The biggest requirement is being passionate about the plant and the goal of delivering consistent, quality product for patients in Pennsylvania. Whether that’s an eighth of OG Kush, a quarter of GMO x Legend OG, or a half of ICC x Kush Mintz—at Parea it’s always hand-trimmed with love. “This product is such a craft, it’s hard for me to be proud of automating or skipping on any step in the process. The care that has to go into each step is all extra quality control and it’s just a different level of care when you are hand-trimming the bud and hand-packaging it to make sure there is a good size bud in each bag for patients.” Patrick Sprout—Director of Cultivation

Patients have come to know Standard Farms for producing top-quality rosin in PA. Only a year after their first wash, SF crafts small-batch style rosin from plants harvested ten at a time with a love for the process and attention to detail at the center of their work. We sat down with Standard Farms operations manager Brittney Zelinsky to learn more about how SF became one of the first growers in PA to go solventless, their step-by-step process, and the team behind it all. Since the start of the PA medical program, patients who preferred concentrates have only had access to solvent-based extracts known as butane hash oil—or BHO for short. These concentrates come in a variety of textures like sugars or sauces and are produced through a closed-loop extraction process that uses a solvent gas to remove the trichomes from the plant material for a more potent, concentrated end product. But while BHO has filled the concentrate category in PA, solventless concentrates like rosin have become the preferred dab in many legal markets across the country. Rosin—or hash rosin—gets the solventless tag from replacing the butane with ice water to separate the trichomes and the closed-loop system with heat and pressure to create the oil. It’s sought after for offering a full-flavored experience that stays true to the profile of the starting flower and for years patients in PA have been left asking where’s all the rosin?  In 2022, Standard Farms asked themselves the same question. Their greenhouses were dialing in, and they were looking to expand the lab from solely producing CO2 extracts when the idea to bring rosin to the market clicked. With limited to no patient access and a menu oversaturated with BHO, it became easy to opt for building a cold room instead of a full extraction lab and become one of the first grower/processors in PA to bring rosin to the market.   The team, led by Brittney Zelinsky with Henry Messinger and Matt Freund on the wash and press, dove in headfirst to learn the process and had their first wash almost a year later, in April 2023. They kept it bare bones at the start—handwashing in 20-gallon cans and pressing in their manual rosin press to get a feel for the work and how to produce quality. Nearly a year into learning the craft, they’ve since ditched the cans for an Osprey wash machine and upgraded to a Lowtemp press while dialing in the methods to produce quality rosin with care and attention to detail through every step of the process. “If we wanted to have the best product possible, we had to handle it correctly from the start and through every step of the process—quality over quantity.” Brittney Zelinsky—Standard Farms Operations Manager Making hash rosin is conceptually a simple process. All you have to do is agitate the flower in a bath of ice water to knock off all the trichomes, freeze-dry the trichomes from the wash, and then apply heat and pressure to extract the oil. Nothing being that simple, there are way more steps and variables to producing quality rosin that hash heads pore over—but the path to quality relies heavily on a few simple things—the starting material (fire in, fire out), handling the plant with care at every step to keep the trichomes intact, and keeping it cold the whole way. For Standard Farms, those principles guide their process with an understanding that every step counts towards making good rosin—from searching out strains that wash best to hand-portioning each rosin jar in the cold room to only harvesting ten plants at a time to keep the starting material as fresh as possible. “We cut down 10 plants at a time to keep everything as fresh as possible in the time it takes to make it into the freezer. If we’re aiming for 25,000 grams [of flower] and it’s going to take us 65 plants to reach that—if we cut down all 65 plants at one time by the time you get to that 65th plant, it’s already dried out compared to the first plant you trimmed.” Brittney Zelinsky—Standard Farms Operations Manager Once the ten plants are cut down for harvest, the plant is carefully manicured to remove everything that is not a bud or a sugar leaf. It’s all hand-trimmed to keep the trichomes intact and then immediately frozen. When the flower is ready to wash, it will come out of the freezer, get pre-soaked, and then go through the wash cycle using reverse osmosis ice water. At the end of the wash, the water empties into press club bags to catch the hash. The bags vary in micron size and are stacked with the largest holes on the top and the smallest on the bottom to trap the bubble hash from the machine and leave all the excess material out. It’s then rinsed with water and scooped out with a cold spoon onto a tray before entering the freezer. “The top bag is usually a 190-micron to capture any plant material or trim, the bag below is the 160-micron which we call edible quality hash, then we have the 73-micron bag which is the one we press, and a 25-micron last that is back to edible quality hash.” Brittney Zelinsky—Standard Farms Operations Manager The trays sit overnight in a freeze dryer to undergo a freezing and heating cycle, creating the bubble hash that gets dry sifted twice before being vacuum sealed in a rosin bag using a technique known as Clear Tek or Vacuum Bag Tek. A newer innovation in solventless production, Clear Tek removes all the air pockets in the rosin bag to pre-grease the hash for a no-heat pre-press. This reduces the risk of blowouts and produces rosin that is crystal clear once it goes under the press. Because while all these steps play a role in the end product, it's all to prepare for the moment heat and pressure are applied. The press is the money shot. That beautiful view of clear, golden oil dripping down the paper gives you the essence of the flower and makes you feel ready for a dab, but for Matt—the man behind the Standard Farms press—it looks a lot different. He goes low and slow, keeping the temperature as low as possible and relying on timing and instinct to get the most out of every strain. It’s an artisanal touch based on visual cues in the oil to pull the best yield and not burn off any terps. “Pressing rosin is an art that takes technique and skill. There are many different variables. Every strain is different and can take some dialing in. It is an artistic craft that combines knowledge, hands-on experience, and love for the plant and its properties." Matthew Freund—Standard Farms Extraction Technician Once it’s off the press, it’s all about keeping it cold and fresh before it reaches the patient. Nobody likes to open their jar of rosin to find a dried-out little ball, and Standard Farms avoids that with attention to detail from when the plant gets harvested until the rosin is cured and packaged for the patient.  They cure the rosin in a jar with proper headspace away from light, and once cured, it’s whipped to be re-homogenized and sent back to the refrigerator. The final step is hand-portioning each jar in the cold room. To package, the team blows out each jar with compressed air to keep it clean and gives the rosin one more quick whip to mix the terps and create a flat surface area in the jar before it’s ready to hit the dispensary for patients.  “Luckily, we have a team that didn’t run out of the door when they realized the amount of work involved in the process. Matt [Freund] and Henry [Messinger] have been in the cold room since day one and they are dedicated to the process. They aren’t just in here for something to do, they love what they are doing.” Brittney Zelinsky—Standard Farms Operations Manager Step into the Standard Farms cold room, and you will find a total team effort driven by passion and pride in the product. The team continues to learn, but only a year after the first wash, Matt, Henry, and the SF team consistently produce a quality product that’s handled with care every step of the way. Pressed from plants only harvested ten at a time, there is a dedication to quality over quantity that’s refreshing in the program and a commitment to the process that shows in the end product. Whether it’s a single gram of Georgia Pie or a 3.5-gram baller jar of Rainbow Belts 3.0, find it where you can because PA patients have been waiting a long time for good rosin.