ina Gordon’s conversations are peppered with the energetic expression “c’mon” as she bounces around the arid hillsides of her mountain farm. We’re dropping into terraced cannabis gardens—the Homestead Garden, Serendipity, the Ancient Garden—in the afternoon heat of a late summer’s day baked in California sunshine. The full-sensory experience at Moon Made Farms begins with the sweeping views of the bullseye where Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties meet. This is the cradle of modern-day cannabis cultivation, the world-famous Emerald Triangle. Soon the fragrant aroma of lemon verbena and the bright sour citrus taste of purslane hit my senses as a cooling breeze picks up and shakes the branches of the 2023 cannabis harvest that’s growing directly off of Gordon’s back deck. The sharpness of wild arugula pulled straight from the garden beds is followed by a tropical puff of this year’s light deprivation-grown Hawaiian Fanta rolled into a joint. Moon Made Farms continues a longtime tradition of growing outdoor cannabis in a place cannabis culture calls “the hill.” Through cultivators and caretakers of the land like Gordon, the stories from this remote wilderness of Northern California
