Everything feels different at TreeHawk Farms. The energy of Seattle seems so far away that its almost like you traveled through time to get here, the surge of the city is a distant memory. Team TreeHawk is on their lunch break, scattered across a picnic bench, eating sandwiches, taking dabs, and playing with the farm goat. Jason Olsen, owner and founder of TreeHawk Farms, pulls up with a truck bed full of tools, equipment, and the pieces of what will become a new gazebo to hide under during the Summer heat. The life of a TreeHawk farms cannabis worker is much like the life of the dairy farmers that built Chimicum Valley from the ground up. Hard work and long days that result in a ‘rich land, but poor in money’ type of lifestyle. TreeHawk Farms cannabis represents the decades of hardworking farmers that filled Chimacum Valley for decades.
Farming communities tend to fly under people’s radar. Chimacum is a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. Located between Port Townsend and Port Ludlow, Chimacum is a historical farming community named after the Native American tribe that lived in the area until the Nineteenth Century. The Native Americans in the area relied heavily on salmon fishing for their livelihood. In the 1800’s a British sailor by the name of William Bishop settled in the area and eventually opened a diary and creamery that was not only successful but attracted Native American people to the area and supplied them with jobs.
When agriculture was introduced into Chimacum, the area thrived as a food and dairy producer. The same eight family-owned dairy farms operated in Chimacum Valley for 100 years. George Huntingford has been a dairy farmer in Chimacum his entire life, celebrating his 100th birthday in 2016, attributing his long life to hard work and home-raised food; a true product of Chimacum. Commercial farming has eaten up a lot of Chimacum’s dairy production. By the mid-2000’s 140 family-operated dairy farms dwindled down to one, the Bishop family dairy.
The farming and cultivation spirit slowed but never left Chimacum. Recently, there’s been a resurgence of family-operated craft-style farms and dairies. The leaders in this resurgence have been the Finnriver Cidery and their friends at TreeHawk Farms.
Jason Olsen started getting involved with TreeHawk Farms cannabis after he finished college with a degree and went into the corporate insurance business. After a rowdy college life and busy city stint that lasted 15 years, he yearned for a lifestyle closer to his childhood in Chimacum. Jason started smoking weed at a young age and was always a high functioning stoner, consistently making the honor roll and Nationals Honor Society. Cannabis use never caused him to falter academically or athletically and he continued to smoke through his school and business career. Using his business knowledge, he had a vision of starting a cannabis farm that would reflect the values of his grandpa’s dairy farm while reclaiming some of the carefree spirit he had while smoking weed with his friends in high school.
Jason married his wife Sam in 2014 and convinced her to move from Seattle to Chimacum, a drastic change, to say the least. She worked in supply chain management at Mircosoft and helped create the Xbox Design Lab, the program that lets gamers create custom Xbox One controllers in any color combination possible. Sam supplied much of the brainpower behind TreeHawk’s branding. Her last move at Microsoft? Designing custom TreeHawk Xbox One controllers. Sam followed her husband to Chimacum but stayed low-key about her involvement with the business at first. She now runs the daily operations and proudly takes up the mantle as Mama TreeHawk.
“We have a kick-ass team!” Sam said.
The idea for the TreeHawk brand came from Jason’s days on the basketball court. Jason was a big recreational hooper and played with some notable human beings like former NFL player Lawyer Milloy. The recreational team he sponsored was called the TreeHawks, based on the team’s love of the Seattle Seahawks and the fact that they all smoked trees before and after rec. games.
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As much of a stoner as Jason is, the licensing process was stressful enough to make him stop smoking for a while. The weight of convincing his wife to leave their comfortable city life and starting a weed farm in his hometown gave him a lot of anxiety. The anxiety was not in vain, the license went through and TreeHawk Farms cannabis went to market in June 2016.
“It took a while to build the machine that is TreeHawk,” Jason said.
TreeHawk Farms is now a successful cannabis business, which started small with just a single 600 square foot room with 21 lights. There are now three of these rooms, and a greenhouse on the way. The greenhouse will allow growing with both lights and full solar spectrum. Utilizing sunlight, and electric lights during the offseason, will save power and give the cannabis more natural properties.
TreeHawk Farms initially launched with five cannabis strains referred to as the Genesis-Five: Ace of Spades, Northwest Pineapple, The Wills, Chocolate Thai, and Snoop’s Dream. Ace of Spades is the only one of the five that isn’t in the rotation. Their cut of Snoop’s Dream, in particular, has garnered quite the following. These five strains culminated in a genesis joint pack, one joint of each strain to pay homage to their importance in TreeHawk’s history.
TreeHawk has been utilizing their three-room system to perpetually harvest 60 pounds every nine to ten weeks. The heart of their system lies in the vegetation room, which Jason calls the hybrid room. TreeHawk’s hybrid room is akin to the training camp before a fight. This room is about the survival of the fittest, only the best 330 plants get to make the walk downstairs and fight in the bright lights of the flower room.
“If you get in trouble here {veg room}, you’ll never recover,” Jason said.
TreeHawk has many more strains in their garden now: Magnum P.I., Candyland Cookies, Skywalker OG, Black Afghan, Island Poison, Sunset Fire, and Candy Apple round out the stars on their roster. Each one of their strains has unique look and feel, which was highlighted in TreeHawk’s cure vault. Every canister released noteworthy terpene profiles. Magnum P.I. is the most clever strain of the bunch, a cross between Agent Orange and Blue Hawaiian. For those not up on 1980’s pop culture, Magnum P.I. was a show starring Tom Selleck as a dashing Oahu private investigator. This strain has a tropical citrus aroma about it. Candyland Cookies is the “pride and joy” of the garden. This sativa-leaning Bay Platinum Cookies and Granddaddy Purple cross is hard to keep on the shelf. You get all the cookies flavor with lighter and more energizing effects.
Candy Apple is one strain Jason believes people need to know more about. This is a triple cross of Blueberry, Pineapple, and Afghan. This strain has intense creamy and fruity terpenes and is another sativa-hybrid.
Sunset Fire and Island Poison are unique takes on common trends. Sunset Fire is a Sunset Sherbet cross and Island Poison is a Trainwreck and Durban Poison cross. TreeHawk took them and bred them powerful Afghan genetics that adds a turbocharge to already strong strains. Sunset Fire is a hybrid with a cherry vanilla smoke and Island Poison is a sativa-hybrid that has the full spectrum of haze aromas with sweet-pine notes.
Skywalker OG follows suit by taking a strong strain and adding Afghan genetics to it. This strain has berry and gas terpenes and is a straight looker. Large elongated flowers that have deep-blue highlights, rustic hairs, and a slathering of trichome frosting. Each strain stands on its own and is easily identifiable. Longer growing cycles allow each strain to mature, bringing out more defining characteristics. Another factor that Jason points to the plant’s robust features is the water. All of TreeHawks water comes straight from the ground out of a well. This is as clean as water gets, and its a simple factor that potentially makes worlds of difference. All of these strains are packaged to order for retail partners.
Jason gets a lot of support from his community for risking his posh city life to create a thriving cannabis business out of the Chimacum Valley. While there is some hate, that naturally comes with the territory, but in general, people are rooting for him and TreeHawk Farms to succeed. TreeHawk is on the way to becoming, arguably, the biggest thing to come out of Chimacum, as Dyllyn Greenwood put it. While that puts lots of pressure on Jason, the connection he shares with the land, his family, and TreeHawk farms cannabis make his time well spent.
TreeHawk Farms Cannabis Reviews
Island Poison | Candy Apple | Chocolate Thai | 9lb Hammer | Candyland Cookies | Skywalker OG
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