Welcome to the first Cannibis Corner!
Jun 03, 2022 09:53AM ● By KATHY BLUME, JESSILYN DOLAN, AND AMELIA
Many people think you smoke the leaves of the cannabis plant. In fact, you smoke the female plant's un pollinated flower. When processed, this flower is also known as a bud or nug. While there are many ways to partake of cannabis, a couple of the easiest, most traditional methods are to smoke pieces of the bud in a pipe or grind it up to roll a joint, which is what we do for our testing process.
One of the things we look for when
inspecting a mature cannabis flower is the appearance of little orange hairs
called pistils. They’re the female plant's
sex organs. They start out clear, and
as the flower matures and approaches
readiness for harvest, they turn a dark
amber or reddish-purple.
Another thing we look for is a white, frosting-like coating on the plant. This coating is composed of trichomes, tiny crystals that appear late in the plant's arc of maturation. They start out clear and then turn cloudy—another sign that the plant is ready to harvest. The trichomes are also loaded with a very sticky resin that is full of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis. When the flower is harvested, processors remove all the leaves but try to keep the trichomes intact.
Strain: Dos-Mints
Genetics: Do-Si-Dos x Thin Mints
Company: SinCity Seeds
Grower: Bushy Beard Cultivation
Dos-Mints from SinCity Seeds presented us with a tightly packed, mature-looking bud. As we inspected our Dos-Mints bud, we noticed that the trichomes were mostly cloudy rather than clear, and the pistils were a dark reddish-purple, which means the cannabis was harvested later in the maturation process.
While our sample had some of the mid-winter dryness you tend to see with Vermont cannabis, it still had good density. However, we noticed that the trim was quite close and that some of the trichomes had been chopped off at the head.
Normally, the resin from trichomes will stick to your fingers or cause your grinder to clog up with plant matter. Because many of the trichomes had been partially removed during the trimming process, we encountered no finger-stickiness or grinder-clog something you might normally expect from quality weed.
Dos-Mints gave off a lovely light-green, fruity aroma with a welcoming vibe that even the most tentative cannabis newbie would appreciate.
Whether smoked with a 1-hitter (a small glass pipe) or rolled in a joint, Dos-Mints coated our mouths with a creamy, slightly sour, gently grassy taste and left us feeling upbeat, happy, energetic, and capable of doing anything from playing music to cleaning the house to going for a walk.
This was a light, kind, yet long-lasting high, great for maintaining thought, speech, and function and hanging out with friends on or off the couch. @bushy_beard_cultivation
Strain: Strawberry Slurpee
Genetics: XJ13 and StrawNana Company: Bred by Malek in collaboration with Breckenridge Organic Therapy
Grower: Forbin's Finest Dominant terpenes: pinene and ocimene
Strawberry Slurpee, grown by Forbin's Finest from a breeding collaboration between Malech and Breckenridge, came out of the jar in a beautifully tight, closely trimmed nug. While it felt dry to the touch and didn't clog the grinder, the grind itself had a fluffy, velvety feel that was a pleasure to work with when rolling a joint.
Strawberry Slurpee is also appropriately named, as it gives off an intensely berry-like scent, particularly after being ground. But with hints of balsamic as well, it had a fundamentally sophisticated aroma.
In contrast, the “pear-shaped” flavor was almost unremarkably mild, with only slight whiffs of gas and pine. The taste also commanded a little more attention in a joint than when smoked in a glass 1-hitter.
The "creep weed” surprise came when the high ran right up the back of our heads after only a couple of hits on the glass. While the smoke was a bit mouth-numbing and cough-inducing (and funkier-smelling than the aroma coming off the nug), the overall effect was truly awesome.
Anxiety abated, hatred of humanity fell away, and the only thing that would have made the experience better would have been the chance to soak in a hot tub while spooning from a big bowl of brownie batter. forbinsfinest.com
Jessilyn Dolan, RN, CMT, CLD is a certified Ganjier who wears many hats. She is president of the American Nurses Association–Vermont, the founder of the Vermont Cannabis Nurses Association, and serves on the board of directors for the American Cannabis Nurses Association.
Jessilyn specializes in maternal and
child health, opioid and substance use,
mental health disorder, and chronic pain. As a research nurse at the Vermont
Center on Behavior and Health at
the University of Vermont College of
Medicine, she recently published “Breast/
Chestfeeding and Marijuana Use:
Recommendations from the Field Post
Marijuana Legalization In Vermont.’’
Jessilyn cofounded NurseGrown Organics, Vermont’s first Clean Green Certified hemp farm, and is wellness director for CannaMommy‘s virtual clinic. Jessilyn is a yoga instructor, massage therapist, experienced herbalist, intuitive healer energy worker, cannabis nurse, activist, labor doula, and childbirth educator.
Kathryn Blume, communications director for NurseGrown Organics, is a speaker, performer, writer, musician, educator, and passionate advocate for creative, justice-infused, world-saving action. And cannabis. She loves cannabis!
The former communications director for Heady Vermont, she was the cofounder and executive director of the award-winning climate and sustainability game Vermontivate. She founded the environmental news radio show Earth on the Air and cofounded the Lysistrata Project, the first worldwide theatrical event for peace. Kathryn is the author of Dancing to the Beat of the Great, Green Heart, a collection of essays and speeches on building a climate movement of hope and power.
Kathryn served as board chair of the climate action group 350 Vermont, and has given speeches, taught workshops, and toured her one-woman shows in over 60 cities in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. A wedding officiant and yogini with more than 30 years of practice, Kathryn received her BA from Yale with a self- designed degree in environmental studies and theater.
Amelia is a graphic designer for numerous business leaders in the cannabis community, a medical cannabis patient, and fierce patient advocate. She became a registered medical cannabis patient in 2014, at the age of 19. After getting her cannabis at a dispensary for two years, and spending several thousand dollars in the process, she became painfully familiar with the struggles Vermont’s medical cannabis patients faced accessing high-quality, effective products. Since then, she’s been advocating for progressive medical cannabis reform in Vermont, with a focus on centering patients and caregivers. Currently, Amelia is the director of communications for Green Mountain Patients Alliance and also works for the cannabis media and events company Vermontijuana.
