Interview with Henry’s Original Founder Josh Keats

How do Henry’s sungrown cultivation practices influence the quality of the cannabis flowers you grow, and what broader impact do these practices have on the cannabis industry?

There is inherent benefit in producing cannabis from localized earth, water and solar radiation. Unlike indoor or mixed-light farming practices, fully sun grown cannabis rooted in native mineral soils and irrigated with water sourced at the farmstead expresses itself in a manner necessarily unique to that particular terroir. A greenhouse in Santa Barbara using manufactured peat or coco based soils in plastic pots under artificial lighting is producing one type of cannabis, and I do not mean to discredit that for what it is, but there is nothing unique in the plants display of its genetic predispositions – it would express itself the same if grown in a warehouse in Texas or a warehouse in Detroit, or California for that matter.

When you engage in the practice of producing a crop truly from its environment, the expressions will be unique to that environment. How much naturally occurring calcium is available in your soil? What trace minerals are already there in your irrigation water? What seasonal cycles of sunlight intensity drive growth differently at each stage of the plant’s production? How do diurnal-nocturnal temperature differentials cause expression of genetic traits to vary crop to crop, year to year, hill to valley? It’s a beautiful and constant unpredictability you encounter when you grow with the land.

In the context of an evolving cannabis market, how does Henry’s maintain its commitment to classic strains like Northern Lights and Trainwreck while also adapting to consumer trends and preferences?

It’s interesting to watch the hype come and go. When I started growing, buyers were just happy to get fresh, sticky bud with a good nose. Everyone on the hill had their own genetics that they had bred themselves and most everyone grew from seed, or cloned off their most successful seed breedings. Every plant was different, and there was phenotypic variation in every pound. When we started seeing some really stable, consistent genetics becoming commercially available as clones it changed the market. I spent ten years growing pretty much Blue Dream, Sour Diesel and OG Kush (joking, but it seemed like it) That mix would make any buyer happy back then, and even though a hype strain might pop up here and there, as a sungrown farmer it didn’t make sense to vary that much. They were solid tested genetics that did great in the Mendocino County climate. We always tried out the new stuff, but most of it was finicky and you could get a total loss for planting something that didn’t like the natural climate of your farm. Sometimes you’d get a banger and add it to the rotation (Barry White was a good one).

The last ten years have been a wild ride to keep up with the constant change. The breeder’s names are big and the bulk buyers want the new strains they hear about on whatever social media is feeding them. We do grow a lot of the newer genetics for the bulk market, but we also keep to our roots and pull from the old library of quality genetics that got us here. That’s what Henry’s Original is all about. There’s some great cultivators producing excellent quality flower from the newest genetics that you haven’t even heard of yet, and I have all the respect for them, but it’s not our model. We produce the tried and true classics, and just keep doing what we do best. I believe our customers appreciate the consistent quality and accessibility of our flower, and we do our best to always be seeking out more Original varieties to add to our collection.

What new developments and offerings can we anticipate from Henry’s Original in the coming year?

Henry’s Original is always up to something. At the end of last year we launched larger offering sizes of our classic prerolls, with a 14 half-gram, 28 half-gram and 28 one-gram pack. We were able to utilize a variation of our iconic Kraft-paper box to continue our undying devotion to aesthetics and our quest to raise the bar for cannabis packaging. 🙂

We also launched our infused prerolls, made with the same ground 100% flower as our regular prerolls, but with liquid diamonds and hash manufactured from our trim. We’re excited to offer a new product category, but watch out, they are extremely potent! Definitely for the experienced consumer.

Coming up this year, we will continue to explore new forms and products, work some new classic strains into our crop rotations to increase variety, and keep on keepin’ on, under the sun, in the dirt and with the moon.