- Category
- CULTURE
- Where
- Colorado, USA
- When
- Published Oct 9
Pest control is handled by ducks: Edun, a farm in Colorado
At Edun, a family-run cannabis farm in Colorado, ducks eat the pests in the fields. The farm uses no pesticides or chemical fertilizers and puts its effort into building soil.
In Parachute, a town in western Colorado, there is a cannabis farm where ducks wander the fields. It is Edun, run by Jimmy and Michelle Brinkerhoff.
The ducks' job is to eat roly-polies, slugs and snails. As they walk, they also keep weeds down and work air into the soil. Their names are SaDIVA, InDUCKa and HIGHbird, plays on sativa, indica and hybrid.
Edun follows a natural farming method that originated in Korea. It builds living soil by layering rock, sand, clay and compost to recreate natural strata, and feeds it with a homemade liquid of fermented plants. It also uses charcoal made from sunflowers and fermented seawater.
The approach takes 20 to 30 percent more labor than conventional growing, and THC comes in at about 22 percent, lower than the state's top sellers. Edun does not sell flower as it is. It processes its harvest into concentrates, edibles and pre-rolls.
The couple compare their cannabis to heirloom tomatoes: uneven in shape, but better tasting. They also say living soil gets better every year, like a savings account that earns interest. It points to a different way of choosing, by how something is grown, apart from the race for higher numbers.