Greenery Life Archives | Page 6 of 9 | The Grand Junction Greenery

Posted on December 2, 2017 - 9:00 am

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This week’s post is just gunna be a quick-and-dirty alphabetical listing of all the cannabis concentrates out there on the market, because one of the top-ten questions I hear as a budtender is “what’s the difference?” So, I wanted to write something short and simple you could use as a reference, if you needed to. As to the list itself, it’s important to remember that some concentrates can be dabbed, because they’re “full-burn” or “full-melt,” but some cannot (these work best as “bowl-toppers,” or concentrates you sprinkle on top of pot to kick things up a notch); I’ll make sure to tell you which ones are which. And here we go…

1.) Badder or Budder. This is exactly why things are so confusing when it comes to marijuana concentrates—the terms “badder” or “budder” deal with the consistency of a concentrate, not the concentrate itself. Cannabis oil can be whipped and heated into a consistency reminiscent of cake “batter” or room temperature “butter,” and that’s where the names come from (stoners replaced the t’s with d’s because that’s what you do when you’ve got bud on the brain).

2.) Bubble Hash. There’s no difference between “bubble hash” and “ice-water hash,” so the two terms are interchangeable. We make this concentrate at The Greenery Hash Factory by submerging marijuana in ice water and agitating it. The cold water freezes the trichomes on the surface of the plant matter, and the agitation breaks them free—once this is complete, we drain the slurry and run it through a series of filters. Then we collect, compact, and freeze the hash, before weighing it out and selling it to you for $40 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, so the best way to enjoy it is to sprinkle it on top of a bowl, or to mix some in with your flower when you roll a joint.

3.) Caviar. Caviar isn’t dabbable (did I just make up a word?) either, but it’s some of the best stuff on earth: a trifecta of potency, as we call it. This is another product we make in-house, and we do so by taking premium marijuana flower, painting it with oil, and then battering it in kief. You simply put it in your pipe and smoke it, and then forget about things for a while… all things. For a long while.

4.) Crumble. This is another one of those consistency-only concentrates: crumble is nothing more than wax with a different, honeycomb-like consistency.

5.) Crystalline. Quite plainly, this is the world’s strongest cannabis concentrate. Crystalline is a purified resin (which I’ll tell you about in number nine) consisting of 99.99% pure THC. Frankly, it’s like marijuana crack (but without the addiction and associated murder rate).

6.) Distillate. This concentrate is made by refining cannabis oil, but for it to be considered a true distillate, a still needs to be used (yes, just like the ones they use in the Ozarks to make moonshine). However, solvents can also be used in some instances. Distilling the oil purifies the concentrate, and makes it more potent. It can be dabbed or vaporized, but this concentrate is also used in many of the edibles on the market.

7.) Isolate. This concentrate is made by using chemicals to “isolate” the THC or CBD from marijuana plant matter. It can be smoked in a number of ways, but since isolates are most commonly white, powdery substances that dissolve instantly in water, this concentrate shows up in infused beverages more often than not.

8.) Kief, or Kief Brick. Kief is sometimes referred to as “dry-sift” because that’s the way it’s made. We make this one as well, and we do so by tumbling marijuana in a filter drum. Then we collect the kief (trichomes) and compress it into a brick which we sell for $30 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, but since all the marijuana terpenes live in the trichomes, kief is by far the most flavorful concentrate.

9.) Live Resin. This concentrate is made by flash-freezing an entire, living marijuana plant, and then by using a chilled solvent (butane) in the extraction process. I’m not going to get too deep into purge times or extraction techniques because your eyes would glaze over, but basically, frozen pot is stuffed into a huge metal tube through which cold butane is pumped. They open it up and scrape up the live resin, which once dried, looks like little crystals mixed with honey. Sometimes, you’ll hear people talk about marijuana “sugar,” but that’s just a form of live resin that has the consistency of granulated sugar. All live resin is full-burn.

10.) Moroccan Hash. This concentrate is made by decarboxylating (heating) kief, and kneading it with a little water. The final product is a darkened ball of awesomeness that’s enjoyed best on top of a bowl (you can’t dab it because it’s not full-burn). This one is my personal favorite, so much so that I wrote an entire piece about it you can read here.

11.) Oil. You’ll see many types of oil on the market, and they’re separated via the differing chemicals used during the extraction process; CO2 and Butane extracted oils are the most common. And you’ll hear a bunch of other names for marijuana oil like “CO2 oil,” “BHO,” which stands for “butane hash oil,” “hash oil,” “dragon tears,” which is just a proprietary name, or “dragon balls,” which is just a unit of measure (given that a dragon ball is a ten-thousand-dollar glass ball filled with 3,000 grams of high-THC oil, I doubt that you’ll get it mixed up with the other concentrates). Oil can be dabbed just like all the other full-burn extracts, but it can get pretty messy, so most people prefer to use a marijuana vape pen when smoking cannabis oil.

12.) Resin. This is the black stuff that accumulates inside your pipe that you scrape out and smoke with shame when you’re too broke to buy pot. We’ve all been there.

13.) Rosin. This stuff is way better than the last one, and it’s one of the only full-burn concentrates on the market that’s made without solvents. We make this one in our factory by compressing cannabis flower between two heated metal plates. The heat and pressure work in concert to squeeze out all the cannabinoid-rich “rosin,” which looks like light-brown tar. This one is dabbable (I’ve decided officially that “dabbable” is a word), and we always have rosin on our menu.

14.) Sap. This one is just oil with a thicker consistency—this stuff has the viscosity of tree sap, and that’s where the name comes from. Totally dabbable.

15.) Shatter. This concentrate is made in a tube or a vacuum purge oven just like live resin, but the temperatures are different. Butane is used when extracting this concentrate, and the final product is an amber, translucent sheet that looks like hard candy. And it’s easy to break, which is where the term “shatter” comes from. Also, totally dabbable.

16.) Wax. Wax looks and feels like wax, and it’s extracted just like shatter. Different temperatures in the purge stage produce differing consistencies, and wax is just shatter that was produced at a temperature leading to a fluffier, wax-like product. Technically, both “wax” and “shatter” are consistency-based names, and both concentrates are actually subsumed under the “BHO,” or “butane hash oil” category. But yes, you can dab wax all day long.

That’s it! I guess the list didn’t end up as “short and simple” as I planned, but worse things have happened. And as always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to give us a call at (970) 403-3710, or come in and see us at 208 Parker Avenue, right here in Durango, Colorado. We’re Your Best Buds, and we’ll tell you all you need to know about the differences between cannabis concentrates; all you need to do is ask.

moroccan hash, hash, durango, concentrates, The Greenery, dispensaries, dispensary — Moroccan Hash by The Greenery Hash Factory

Kief, kief brick, hash, marijuana hash, The Greenery, dispensary, Durango — Kief Brick by The Greenery Hash Factory

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November’s Best Bud of the Month

Posted on November 18, 2017 - 9:00 am

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Zach Goldsmith
Production Assistant

About your Best Bud:

If you’ve purchased flower from The Greenery, chances are, Zach held it before you did. He most likely looked at it under the huge, lighted magnifying glass that’s mounted to the stainless-steel table in our pre-weigh room. He most likely held it gingerly with those blue rubber gloves that stay on his hands always while he’s handling our flower. And then he most likely set it on one of our scientifically calibrated scales, making sure the weight was within one-fiftieth of a gram from where it needed to be, before putting it in one of our air-tight bottles, just for you.

Isn’t that odd? Someone you’ve most likely never met spent his day making sure the flower you smoked was perfect, but he did it behind the scene, kind of like that wizard at the end of his yellow-brick road. It’s true that Zach will occasionally come out to help customers when we’re busy, so there’s a chance you’ve seen his blue gloves and easy-going smile, but for the most part, Zach is the man who keeps our business cranking by cutting stems and putting buds in bottles and stocking our shelves with the best marijuana in Durango. He does it all behind closed doors in a room he keeps clean enough for surgery—this guy really does go further than most to make sure your pot is perfect—so this week, we decided you should meet him:

Q. When did you start working for The Greenery?
Zach. “May of this year. Actually, November first was my six-month anniversary.”

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Zach. “I love our caviar. Seriously. Caviar and the bong; that’s how I do.”

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Zach. “I like chilling in the hammock.”

Q. Tell us about your pet.
Zach. “Sadie is a fourteen-years-old Rhodesian/Ridgeback mix. She’s a descendant from the dogs bread by Dutch settlers in Africa by crossing Great Danes with local, wild dogs to fight lions. But Sadie is tiny (there might be some terrier in the mix), so a lion would probably win.”

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Zach. “You know I’m listening to those seventies hits all day.”

Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Zach. “I love that we’re a team. It’s awesome to be a part of this. We’re always communicating and having meetings, and we all work perfectly together: teamwork makes the dream work.”

Sure, Zach has only been with us for six months, but The Greenery just doesn’t feel like The Greenery when he’s not there. When he is, the seventies music he loves so much barely covers up the sound he and Savanna make by bickering like children who’re begging for a time out; one of the many sounds that makes The Greenery feel like home when you work here. And he’s going to be around for quite some time. He’s one of the lucky young members of this newest generation who’s settling in on the ground floor of this burgeoning industry, and he takes his job seriously, always making sure that the only thing rivaling his attention to detail in the pre-weigh room is his excellent customer service. Zach is simply a good human being with an awesome sense of humor, he’s a big part of the reason the team he loves so much works so well, and he dedicates his time to ensuring that our quality and compliance surpass the other places in town. Because of all of this, Zach Goldsmith is Your Best Bud for November. Thank you, Zach!

The Greenery Grow

Posted on November 4, 2017 - 9:00 am

I was a teenager the first time I saw a marijuana plant. It was a sickly thing, growing stunted and slightly brown in an Alaskan basement, but it was still wonderful.

My friend had modified his chest-of-drawers. He’d taken the fronts off each drawer, and then he’d nailed them back onto the front of his bureau. And then he’d hinged the entire front face of his chest-of-drawers so it would open, like some sort of secret enclave. He’d drilled a hole in the back and wired it for electricity, and then he’d lined the inside with tinfoil to make it reflective. A single grow light had been hung in the top, and a fan was attached right below it. In the dark of night, glowing light escaped from the cracks in my friend’s modified bureau and the whole thing hummed with the fan’s white noise—my friend’s chest-of-drawers looked and sounded haunted, as if a porthole to another dimension were contained inside instead of a growing plant. It was downright Narnian.

And it really was mystical the first time I saw my friend’s contraption. He took me down into his basement—we told his parents we were doing homework—and he stood in front of his chest-of-drawers with a wide smile, looking like a gameshow host about to do a big reveal. He unlatched the front of his bureau and then he swung it open while singing out a single note, as if what he was showing me were holy: the inside of my friend’s invention was gleaming golden with a little green plant right in the middle, and it blew my mind. My friend was MacGyver! How the hell had he figured out a way to grow marijuana in his parent’s house without them noticing? How’d they overlooked the fact that my friend had stopped putting away his clothes because he’d turned his chest-of-drawers into a grow room? I was dumfounded, and twenty years later, I still shake my head in awe when I think back to that moment.

But the first time I saw a growing pot plant was nothing like the most recent time: our head grower gave me a tour of The Greenery’s Grow, and the experience was so striking that I simply had to write about it. For the record, marijuana is a weed, plain and simple. If you walked by a ditch and threw in a few pot seeds like a cooler version of Johnny Appleseed, they’d eventually sprout and grow into flowering marijuana. But ditch-weed is a far cry from the flower that a master grower can produce, and the product that comes from our grow is simply the best in town because our cultivation team takes the art seriously:

Before walking into our facility, Mike had me step into a shallow rubber tray containing a mild solution of bleach and water. And before walking further, I had to step on a huge mat of sticky paper (kind of like flypaper for humans) to remove all the unwanted particulates from the outside world that might’ve hitched a ride on my shoes. Once inside, it felt like I was standing in a laboratory. There were professionally labeled metallic tents everywhere, looking like they came straight from NASA. There was a huge bottle of CO2 secured to the outside of the building; it pumped in regimented amounts of the gas pot-plants like to eat. There was a maze of custom air conditioning ductwork webbing across the ceiling; there were light-emitting ceramic lights humming above the plants like artificial suns; there were professionally constructed trellises around the plants and mounted fans to give the plants healthy stress. And the plants themselves were beautiful: huge colas of crystalline flower bowing their stems with weight, perfuming the air with an intoxicating smell. Everything was perfect, and the amount of thought and effort and science that went into our grow facility made me proud to be a part of this company, if I’m being honest, because this sort of thing matters. And I’ll tell you why.

Every so often, someone will come into our dispensary looking for a specific strain, and last Friday, one such man came in looking for True Berry. No kidding, he said it was the “best strain for meditative flute playing.” I smiled, told the man he was in luck, and then I let him smell a sample of our Greenery-grown True Berry. And as soon as I did, I could see via his expression that that he’d found something unexpected. His eyes got wide and he looked up, saying with his face that this was the best pot he’d ever smelled. So, I told him all about it, and I told him about our grow. I told him how we use living soil instead of hydroponics, and I told him that we use predatorial bugs instead of insecticides. I told him that we grow it in small batches, just like distilling fine whiskey, and I told him that he wouldn’t find a better True Berry flower anywhere else in the world. And because of the effort put in by our growers, I wasn’t lying.

So please, if you’d like to experience what it’s like to smoke something grown with true skill in a real grow facility (or if you’re looking for the best meditative-flute-playing marijuana in the world), just check out our menu to see if we’re selling Greenery-grown True Berry. And then come in so one of our budtenders can show you exactly what I’m talking about. You’ll see that we really do have the best pot in town, and you’ll see why we say We’re Your Best Buds!

Colorado Marijuana Laws

Posted on October 28, 2017 - 9:00 am

Every so often, after I’ve sold someone marijuana in our dispensary and handed over his or her order, he or she will look at me as if they’ve been left holding the bag (quite literally). He or she will hold their pot like it might bite, and then he or she will confess: “Um… this is my first time buying marijuana legally… what’re the rules?”

Honestly, I’ve had to assure customers in the past that they wouldn’t be arrested as soon as they left—as if our store were nothing more than a trap rigged by the man—and I understand; one hundred years’ worth of nonsensical marijuana laws are bound to make the first-time shopper a little nervous. So, when I encounter the “now what?” type of question, I always do my best to assuage the fears associated with purchasing marijuana, and I give those first-time shoppers a little legal lecture that goes something like this:

“Here at The Greenery, we always staple your bag shut with the receipt on the outside—as soon as we do this, your purchase becomes a ‘closed container,’ and so long as you keep it that way and out of the driver’s reach, you’re good-to-go regarding traffic stops.” At this point, I usually staple the bag for emphasis, and then I continue…

“And it’s perfectly legal to possess the amount I’ve sold you. But in case you were wondering, in Colorado, you can legally possess a maximum of either one ounce of marijuana flower, eight-hundred milligrams of edibles, eight grams of concentrate, or any combination thereof that does not exceed the ‘marijuana equivalency rules.’ For example, you’re allowed to have on your person a half-ounce of flower, two grams of concentrate, and two-hundred milligrams of edibles. But you don’t need to worry about that when you shop here because we will never sell you more in a single transaction than you’re allowed to possess.” This is usually when my fearful first-timer will start to relax…

“Also, you must be 21 or over with a valid ID proving as much to purchase or possess marijuana, but you already knew that because I carded you when you walked in the door. And it’s important to remember that it’s a felony to give or sell marijuana to a minor.”

For the record, this is one of the longstanding marijuana laws that I agree with wholeheartedly. I have a teenaged daughter, and another one who isn’t far behind, so I have strong opinions when it comes to children and marijuana. And just like with alcohol, kids will walk around “tapping shoulders,” as they call it, asking grownups to go to the dispensary for them. It’s important for first-timers and regulars alike to know that saying “yes” is a federal offence, and at The Greenery, we simply will not sell to a customer who we suspect might’ve had his or her shoulder tapped. Anyway, moving on…

“When it comes to driving, it’s important to remember that it’s illegal for a driver or passenger to consume or use marijuana in a vehicle, and just like with alcohol, it’s illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana. The legal limit is five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, and it’s very easy to get to this limit, so please don’t smoke and drive.”

At this point, the first-timer is usually completely at ease, but they might have a follow up question or two, like, “well, if I can’t smoke in my car, where can I smoke?”

“Well,” I say, “it’s illegal to consume marijuana in public. You’re only allowed to smoke or consume marijuana on private property with the property owner’s permission. If you’re staying at a hotel, just ask someone at the front desk if it’s okay, because plenty of the establishments in Durango are 420 friendly.”

And that’s about it. I’ll ask if there are any other questions, I’ll answer them if there are, and then the first-timer and I will part ways, usually with a handshake. Today, I simply wanted to be proactive and write about Colorado’s marijuana rules and regulations because you might be a potential first-timer, and this is stuff you need to know. But if it’s still a little foggy, just check out Good to Know for more information. Or, if you’d prefer, just stop by our dispensary; we have flyers in our store you can take for free that sum up everything you just read. And as always, please don’t ever be afraid to come in and ask one of our affable budtenders about the rules and regulations. We’ll make sure your first-timer frown turns upside-down, because We’re Your Best Buds, and that’s what we do.

Caviar Marijuana

Posted on October 21, 2017 - 9:00 am

People get pretty pretentious when it comes to fish eggs. Think about it: the only true “caviar” comes from the critically endangered beluga sturgeon—a monstrous fish that swam alongside dinosaurs—and it sells for $290 an ounce. It’s salty and black and usually enjoyed by people who wear suits and snobby expressions, like James Bond. I’ve only eaten it a couple times, and I didn’t understand the hype; it didn’t taste any better than the fish eggs you get at sushi restaurants for a fraction of the price. But that sushi stuff is just called “roe,” and to some people, that matters, I guess. And to these people, it’s annoying when the rest of us refer to garden-variety roe as “caviar,” but really, we only do so because it’s a crap-ton easier than saying “salt-cured fish eggs that come from a species outside the acipenseridae family of fish.” Know what I mean?

And in a way, it’s ironic, because just as “caviar” has become a blanket-term for fish eggs, so too has it become a blanket-term for infused cannabis flower. But then again, people get pretty pretentious when it comes to pot as well. Technically, the only true caviar marijuana is made by soaking a bud of Grape God in Grape Rhino hash oil, and then coating it with Grape Rhino kief. If a different flower, oil, or kief is used, the end product is just an unnamed variety of “infused flower.” But the confusion doesn’t stop there: instead of “caviar,” some people (usually from the west coast) use the term “moon rocks,” or they think that moon rocks are buds coated with cannabis wax. But that’s not accurate either—true moon rocks are made by soaking buds of Girl Scout Cookies in an oil made from the same strain, before coating it in more GSC kief. So, thanks to all the vagaries and confusion, the three terms have become somewhat synonymous, and frankly, here at The Greenery, we don’t have a problem with that: “moon rocks” is just the Californian way of saying “caviar,” which is just the Coloradan way of saying “infused flower.” At the end of the day, none of it matters because caviar marijuana is ludicrously awesome and it gets you high as hell, so who cares what it’s called?

Anyway, at The Greenery, we’ve always sold caviar, and our customers love it so much that we’ve started making it ourselves. For our first batch, we used Dark Star flower from our own grow, but instead of dipping it in hash oil that’d been thinned with alcohol like most places use, we painstakingly painted each bud (yes, with an actual paintbrush) with pure hash oil that’s just as thick and golden as the gooey-goodness in Winnie the Pooh’s honeypot. And then we battered each sticky bud in our own kief, just like fried chicken, before letting it dry. The result was wonderful: our caviar came in at over 55% THC, which is mind-blowing, but the best part was the texture. Most caviar is oversaturated with oil, and when you try to grind it, it clogs up your grinder and makes a hot mess. But our caviar crumbles perfectly and it’s easy to handle or roll into joints: it’s the perfect trifecta of potency, and just a little bit goes a long way. The high is quick and potent, the flavor is rich and decadent, and the best part is that you don’t need to be James Bond to afford it: before tax, our caviar sells for only $25 per gram, or $20 for a one-gram, pre-rolled joint, and we always have plenty in stock.

So please, come into our dispensary at 208 Parker Avenue and come see this stuff. Come ask one of our budtenders to show you a sample or let you smell it, and we swear that you’ll understand the hype (unlike with those snobby fish eggs), because We’re Your Best Buds!

Best Bud of the Month

Posted on October 14, 2017 - 9:00 am

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Savanna Bristol
Assistant Compliance Manager & Flower Purchaser

About your Best Bud:

Savanna Bristol is a wee bit clumsy; running into things is a hobby of hers. Actually, I’ve seen her come close to death three times in a single shift. And she definitely needs to stay away from sharp objects. The last time we worked together, she got a metal splinter stuck in her finger (you know, “somehow”), and then when she walked by the couch, it “bit her leg” and she started bleeding. And her affliction goes beyond the workplace as well: this one time, Savanna decided to stand on top of Baker’s Bridge, and it didn’t go too well. Her friend didn’t want to jump, so Savanna may, or may not, have pushed him off. And then when she jumped after, she landed in a sitting position, and it broke her back—two of her vertebrae went “poof,” as she says it, but Savanna still looks back with a laugh when she tells the story.

However, her clumsiness doesn’t matter because Savanna has brains—she’s our assistant compliance manager, and it’s her job to steer our dispensary through all the weird, esoteric little regulations the state throws at us. She checks potency profiles and child-resistant packaging and font sizes, and she dedicates 100% of her attention to making sure we’re compliant (maybe that’s why she’s so clumsy). But here’s the rest of her story:

Q: When did you start working for The Greenery?
Savanna: “March of 2016.”

Q: What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Savanna: “I love dabbing—it’s one hit, one high. And right now, I love the rosin we’re making. Seriously. The flavor is awesome, and the high is perfect!”

Q: What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Savanna: “I love tubing the river or paddle-boarding the lake with my dog.”

Q: Tell us about your pet.
Savanna: “Nala is a seventy-five-pound Pitbull, but she’s a baby. She just has too much love to give.”

Q: Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Savanna: “Whichever one suits my mood, but it’s usually Die Antwoord or Disney music… I love Disney music.”

Q: What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Savanna: “I love my coworkers and my customers. It doesn’t matter who you are; when you come into The Greenery, you’re in a good mood.”

Well, that’s Savanna. In a way, she’s our dispensary diva. She likes things her way, and if she doesn’t get it, she’s likely to throw a big bag of pot at your face (and fall down in the process). But frankly, there’s nothing wrong with her way, because she knows this industry inside and out, and it’s due to her efforts that we run a completely compliant dispensary. And she has good taste in pot, which is important—Savanna’s second duty is to order all the flower on our menu, and thanks to her, we’re able to offer ten premium strains of boutique flower to Durango each and every day. For her steadfast dedication to compliance, and for keeping our shelves stocked, The Greenery is in Savanna’s debt, and because of that, she is Your Best Bud for October! Thank you, Savanna!

420 Friendly in Durango, Colorado

Posted on October 7, 2017 - 9:00 am

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Just about everybody knows that “420” has something to do with pot, and just about everybody knows that “420 friendly” has something to do with businesses that support recreational marijuana use. But do you know where “420” comes from?

As it turns out, some kids in California coined the term, but I didn’t know that when I was a college freshman. At the time, I lived in Eugene, Oregon. My balcony overlooked Pine Street, and I remember watching from my lawn chair as all the other college kids went to class, exercised on the streets, did all the things college kids were supposed to do. I remember the taste of that west coast weed, I remember the deep bass bleeding from our living room speakers, and I remember laughing with my friends as we smoked our way into oblivion at 4:20 on some random afternoon.

Eugene is a verdant place, where the heat is ripe and everybody looks like they belong in an outdoors magazine. It’s a liberal college town, one so quintessential that you’ve seen it in movies, and pot was just a part of life. We got high every day at 4:20 because that’s what you were supposed to do. We had our rituals, we used alarm clocks. But we thought “420” was the call-code cops used to radio in a charge for marijuana possession. It made sense: when Snoop Dog said “187 on an undercover cop,” he meant murder; the band 311 chose their name because “311” is the call-code for indecent exposure; “420” obviously had something to do with cops and smoking pot (which is why it was so cool). But I was young and clueless—sometimes, clichés really do fit best—and I didn’t know the truth:

Back in 1971, there was group of Californian kids who called themselves the “Waldos,” and San Rafael was their hood. They were athletic teenaged boys and best friends. I’m sure they wore sweatbands in their shaggy hair, and striped socks pulled all the way up to their knees—I’m sure their music was loud, and I’m sure the ‘66 Impala they drove around town still felt modern and new.

One day, one of the Waldos heard about a military man who lived in the Point Reyes Forest. He was shipping out somewhere, leaving his post on the peninsula, and he wouldn’t be around to guard his pot-patch, growing somewhere out in the forest. One of the Waldos even had a treasure map. So, they made a plan: every day after school and track, they’d meet at 4:20 by a Louis Pasteur statue next to the wall behind which they usually got stoned (incidentally, this wall put the “wall” in “Waldos”). They’d start smoking immediately, and then they’d drive out into the Point Reyes Forest. They’d get out of that ‘66 Impala and they’d roam the loamy forest floor, hunting through the dappled sunlight for a hidden glen of unguarded pot plants. They never found what they were looking for, even after two weeks’ worth of searching, but they did find a form of immortality, because the Waldos created something that’ll live on forever.

The rest of the story is easy-cheesy: one of the Waldos had a loose connection to one of the Grateful Dead, and “420” found a carrier, just like the common cold. And it spread through the Waldos’ school, like things do. The virgin-minded freshmen watched with awe as the Waldos got high behind their wall, and after each graduating class, the Waldos lived on, reincarnated in a younger troop. After time, those two weeks’ worth of raiding into the Point Reyes Forest were forgotten, but the time to get high wasn’t: school still ended at the same time, so did track practice, and that statue of Pasture still stood watch over the new kids, doing his best to keep their minds from curdling. The original Waldos grew up and moved and had children of their own, and the origin story behind 420 was diluted with myth and by geography until it found me sitting on that balcony in Eugene, smoking my way into oblivion, convinced in totality that my alarm was going off because of a police call-code.

Anyway, seventeen years later, businesses have started adopting “420 friendly” as a lowkey way to advertise that they’re cool with pot; it provides for their customers an appreciated level of discretion. And at least five times a day, someone will come in and ask me if I know of any 420-friendly places in town. First and foremost, I tell these customers that per Colorado state law, marijuana can only be smoked on private property with the property owner’s permission. Quite a few of the local hotels that have smoking rooms will allow you to smoke marijuana in their rooms, but here’s the important part: always ask first. I know it might seem a bit counterintuitive to ask someone at the front desk if it’s okay to get high in your room, but trust me, these people are used to the question, so there’s no point in being timid (after all, it’s legal now). And if you’re staying in a hotel that doesn’t allow in-room smoking, just ask if you can use their designated smoking area—the same principal applies, and if you get permission, everything is peachy on the legal front.

And there are a few other businesses in town with outdoor seating that don’t mind too much if you get high on their property, especially if you’re using something discrete, like a marijuana vape pen (again, always ask). But if you’re still leery on the legality, please feel free to come into The Greenery and ask one of our knowledgeable budtenders about the regulations; after all, The Greenery is the friendliest 420-friendly place in town. We’ll tell you when and where you can smoke, and we’ll do our best to make sure your 4:20 is comfortable and legal, because We’re Your Best Buds, and that’s what we do.

Kief Brick

Posted on September 30, 2017 - 9:00 am

Thirty years ago, my father had a poster hanging on the inside of his closet door: it said, “a puff of kief in the morning makes a man as strong as a hundred camels in the courtyard.” The poster was warped and creased with age, the font was straight out of the sixties, and a tall hookah was pictured on the left with smoke wafting from the bowl at its crown. And as a child, I had no idea what it meant. I assumed it had something to do with drugs, because those are the things you “puff,” but I ruled that out quickly because my father didn’t do drugs; he loved his polo shirts and his hard-to-read books and his government job. However, the years passed, and I finally figured out that the poster was indeed a relic from my father’s hippy youth. But I still didn’t know what “kief” was.

Fast forward to my freshman year: a guy named Drew gave me a homemade kief box as a gift. As a side note, they call them “pollen boxes” now because kief is still illegal in most backwoods states, but that’s irrelevant. Anyway, when Drew gave me the box, I opened it and looked inside. There was a fine screen in the bottom with another compartment below it. I asked Drew what the hell a “kief box” was, and after giving me an incredulous look, he told me to keep my weed in the box and shake it gently from time to time—Drew told me that the “kief” would fall through the screen into the compartment below, and that I could take it out and smoke it.

So, I did exactly what Drew suggested. And after an eighth or three of that good west coast weed, I’d collected a decent dusting of kief in the bottom of my box. I took it out, sprinkled it on top of a bowl loaded in my bong, and I smoked it. I sat back in my dorm room and I waited for the strength of one-hundred camels; I waited for the superpowers promised by my father’s poster. They never came, of course, but at least I figured out the riddle to that poster (by the way, Google says it’s worth $1000 now), and at least I discovered kief.

Kief is an Arabic word meaning “pleasure” or “intoxication,” which, if you think about them, are two pretty damn synonymous words to start with, so it makes sense that the Arabs would use only the one word. But the kief I’m talking about is something you smoke: it’s a naturally-made marijuana concentrate formed from the dried trichomes found on cannabis flower. And frankly, kief is one of my all-time favorite ways to get high. But it’s always been difficult to find, just like all the good stuff in life, because most kief is homemade and so good that most people won’t share it. However, that’s an annoyance from the past because The Greenery Hash Factory has started manufacturing and selling old-school kief right here in Durango, Colorado.

We make it simply and naturally—we put premium, boutique flower in our dry-sift machine (using a 150-micron filter), and we let friction do the work. The flower tumbles around for a while and all the wonderful kief falls into a collection bin below (it’s like that little wooden kief box of mine, but on steroids). We take out the powdery kief and compress it into a brick with a pneumatic jack, and then we cut it up into grams of “kief brick” that we sell for $30 before tax at our local dispensary. The batch I smoked just before writing this (yeah, that’s right) was made from Indiana Bubblegum flower, and the numbers are incredible: the THC came in at 44.9%, and the CBG came in at 3.1%. At this point, especially if you’re a regular reader of marijuana blogs, you’re probably bored to tears when it comes to information on cannabinoids like THC and CBD because it’s ubiquitous, however, CBG is an up-and-coming cannabinoid you should pay attention to—this odd little chemical is actually the parent of both THC and CBD, it’s thought to have anti-inflammatory properties, and it might even be a neuro-protectant (smoking high-CBG concentrates might actually protect your brain, despite what your mother told you).

However, just like I said in last week’s post, the numbers don’t matter much, nor does the science—it’s the experience that counts: our kief is incredible, and I’m pretty sure this is the stuff Tinkerbell sprinkled on the Lost Boys to make them fly. And smoking kief is like eating the frosting first and leaving the cake behind, because you’re smoking the trichomes without the sticks and stems you’re used to. It’s flavorful and rich, and the smoke expands in your lungs, like a genie trying to get out of his claustrophobic lamp. The high is complex and long-lasting, with warm body notes and a cerebral giddiness that seems way too intense for something that costs only thirty bucks per gram.

But it’s the flavor that’s remarkable.

All the terpenes for which marijuana is famous are found in the trichomes—these terpenes are what give marijuana its smell and taste, and when you’re smoking pure trichomes, the flavor is multiplied exponentially. You can taste all the fruit and citrus and pine notes as if they were highlighted by a big marker, and all the subtle nuances that were hinted at before in plain flower stand out in kief like the stars they truly are. And this stuff smells exactly like it tastes: pungent, like intoxicating potpourri.

Actually, you just need to see it for yourself. You need to smell this stuff in person. You need to smoke it and sit back, and experience if it’ll make you feel stronger than one-hundred camels in the courtyard. So please, come in to The Greenery and ask one of our budtenders to show you our kief; this stuff is just as good as it sounds, and we’ll share it too, because that’s what Your Best Buds are for.

Moroccan Hash in Durango

Posted on September 23, 2017 - 9:00 am

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The Berbers are a people of ancient Arab stock—they’ve lived in the mountainous Rif region of Morocco for as long as records have been kept. Their eyes and hair are deep brown, their traditions are exotic, and they paint their houses and streets blue to mirror the sky, to be reminded always of a god living above. And they make hashish, just as they always have, because it’s a part of Moroccan life.

In the Rif, the soil is red and rich, and the air smells salty because the Mediterranean Sea starts where the mountains end. And hidden in the highlands are terraced hills covered with flowering marijuana. The Berber men tend their crop until it’s time to harvest, and then they reap their fields the way their fathers taught them to. The harvested marijuana is set aside to cure for a month, and then the flower is trimmed from the stalk. The green bud is ground gently, and then placed on a silk drum—the silk acts as a filter: the pollen falls through while the plant matter stays trapped on the surface. The Berber men cover the flower with a tarp, and then start beating on it rhythmically with bamboo canes; they call this “making music.” When the hash-song is done, the men uncover the beaten flower and throw it away. They take the silk head from the drum and look inside; the brittle trichomes that filtered through the silk sit in the drum’s bottom. Light brown, pungent, intoxicating.

The men press the powdery hash by hand, heating and kneading it gently, and they smile as their Moroccan hash darkens. They roll it into balls, keeping the best for themselves, and then they send their hash out into the world; these Berber men make half the world’s supply. But oddly enough, marijuana is illegal in Morocco. Lenience is given to the Berber tribes because it’s easier than policing them, but once their hash leaves the mountains like snowmelt flowing downhill, it loses its protection. It’s coveted and fought over just like anything else that makes you feel good, and it’s always been ridiculously hard to come by in the States. I’ve only had authentic Moroccan hash twice in my life—I could tell by the tribal stamp pressed into the bricks I bought—and I didn’t want to think too much about how I got what I got, because most of this hash is smuggled out of Morocco in a very… personal way. But each time I smoked it, I loved the feeling Moroccan Hash gave me, and after each time I ran out, my smile turned upside-down.

But that’s over: now, The Greenery Hash Factory is making their own Moroccan Hash, and we’re selling it at The Greenery for thirty-five bucks a gram. And the craziest part is that the stuff we’re making is better than the stuff I’ve smoked before; maybe we should call it “Durangan Hash” and smuggle it into Morocco so they can see what they’ve been doing wrong for centuries. For one, we use the best marijuana in Colorado to make our hash—our cannabis is grown in a controlled environment with living soil by a badass Master Grower, not out in the wind and rain of a Moroccan mountainside (and we don’t have to worry about goats eating our pot, which is nice).

Secondly, we use modern technology to make our “music”; quality control is much easier to achieve when you’re using a dry-sift machine instead of bamboo canes. And when you do everything scientifically, from using an exact heat to caramelize the hash to testing the hash in a modern laboratory, you end up with a superior product. Our most recent batch of Moroccan Hash is simply awesome: we made it from Skunk #1 flower, and the THC came in at 65%, the CBD came in at 1.3%, and the CBN came in at 2.3%. Today, when most marijuana concentrates are made using a chemical extraction process, these numbers are exciting because we did it the old-school way, naturally.

But in the end, it’s the experience that counts, not the numbers or the three-letter-acronyms, and I swear to you that to smoke our hash is to know perfection. The flavor is deep and musky, like a velvety dark chocolate or a fragrant black tea. The high is focused and intense, with profound relaxation and a centered calm. It’s the high I’ve been looking for through the years since I held those tribal-stamped bricks of the real deal, but taken to another level in the hands of our hash craftsmen. So, come in to our dispensary and ask one of our affable budtenders to show you what I’m talking about; you can smell it and see it for yourself. From now on, we’re offering this Moroccan Hash to Durango and our neighbors because it’s just better than what has been offered before—that’s what you’ve come to expect from Your Best Buds, and that’s what you’ll get if you try our house-made Moroccan Hash.

Best Bud of the Month

Posted on September 16, 2017 - 9:00 am

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Mike Michon
Cultivation Manager

It came up casually in my conversation with Mike that he’s seen Phish in concert fifty-two times. He said it like it was no big deal, nothing out of the ordinary. But it is, and I stopped him halfway into a new subject so we could talk about it:

Me: “Dear god man, seriously? Fifty-two times?”
Mike: “Yeah, some people think it’s strange.”
Me: “Actually, that’s pretty badass.”
Mike: “Yes! There’re so many people out there who aren’t passionate about anything. You need something like that in life, whether it’s mountain biking or model trains or Phish.”
Me: “… I like model trains. Especially the tiny ones.”
Mike: “Damnit. Now I want a train.”

Mr. Michon is The Greenery’s Senior Cultivation Manager; he’s our Master Grower. He spends his days about five minutes out of town tending our grow with a level of skill that borders on wizardry. And that’s not something I’m writing just to promote the weed we grow and sell; Mike’s pot is sublime. His Pakistani Chitral Kush is so good it made me want to get a “PCK” lower-back tattoo—Mike’s Indiana Bubblegum is so good it made me regret the tattoo I wanted to get because “IB” is the only pot for me.

Anyway, I sat down with Mike over the weekend and conducted one of the most entertaining interviews to date. However, I had to redact about ninety percent of what follows because Mike pulled the “off-the-record” card no fewer than twelve times (and for pretty good reason). Here’s the G-rated version:

Q: When did you start working for The Greenery?
Mike: “June 9^th, 2016.”

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Mike: “Joints. And Grape Ape is my favorite strain.”

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Mike: “Snowboarding.”

Q: Tell us about your pet.
Mike: “Walfredo is a border collie named after a Phish song.”

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Mike: “Grateful Dead Radio. It’s channel twenty-three on Sirius XM, but I hate Sirius XM. I’m only listening to it because of the free introductory subscription that came with my new truck. But yeah… I love The Grateful Dead.”

Q: What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Mike: “I like plants better than people. And real jobs are a shame.”

Mike gave that last answer with a smile. I laughed. But below the hilarity lives a truth—I can’t imagine how peaceful it must be to work with those plants all day, to care for them and feed them as you walk slowly through the verdure, calmed as you go by the intoxicating perfume all around. Mike is lucky to have such a station in life, but we’re just as lucky to have him on our side, because Mike is the type of person who doesn’t suffer from a dearth of passions—he isn’t “one of those people.” He loves his dog and his Phish, he loves his east coast hockey and his deep-dish pizza, and he loves growing marijuana. He takes these things seriously, and because he grows for us, we reap the benefits: thanks to Mike, The Greenery sells the best marijuana in Durango, Colorado. And that, my friends, is why Mike Michon is your Best Bud for September. Thank you, sir!