From what kinds of buds are best for melt-making to New England industrial history
Like a lot of other melt heads in the Bay State, we’ve been fixated on U4EA Farms for months. The Clinton cultivator showed up on the top shelf in dispensaries across the state in 2024 and hasn’t looked back, just last week taking home a third-place trophy in the solventless concentrates category at NECANN for their Trop Cherry live rosin.
We recently visited their unique spot near the Wachusett Dam, which happens to be one hell of a place to smoke a joint. In addition to seeing how the U4EA team grows and processes its magic, we learned about some local history as well. Click the section titles below for videos.
Their facility is in a historic Bay State building. As Head of Cultivation Sam Roberts told us, “This is the first steel frame building in Massachusetts, built from 1897 through 1905. Originally, it had wooden floors before we came in, ripped them up, and laid concrete. The floors were originally nailed with handmade nails; they were all square, handmade with no power tools—all original construction.”
He continued: “In 1945, during World War II, this was used as an ammunition factory. They made shell casings here and shot them in the basement. There is a long hallway in the basement where they would test the artillery shells and fire into the masonry just to see that the shells would fire off right.
“As far as sealing it, we went through and sealed up all of the windows. We redid all of the fire sprinklers and overheads so that the fire marshal would be happy with a mill building being used for a cannabis cultivation.”
Sometimes you’re better off without a partner. As Founder and CEO Anna Dorcey told us, U4EA’s previous arrangement with another license holder in the same space didn’t pan out as they hoped. Their team wanted to aim for high quality despite the tumultuous market, and in order to bloom into what they are today, they had to assume full control. Dorcey explained that they bought out their old partners in February 2023, got to work, and finally launched U4EA with their vision one year later. It wasn’t too long after that before they started entering collaboration melts in competitions and securing trophies.
What makes for a great melt. As Head Hashmaker Joe Kiklis noted, “Typically, what you’ll see on something that washes really well is the trichome stalks are very brittle. So if you were to tap a nug on your hand with a black glove, you can see the trichomes kind of fall off. When you see that, typically that means it’s going to wash a little bit better. Also, an airier bud is typically a lot better because it allows more surface area for the water to get in there and actually remove the stalks. When you have those really tight nugs, all those trichomes inside the buds aren’t going to want to get knocked off.”
What doesn’t yield fantastic hash? While everything they harvest at U4EA might be fire, it doesn’t all translate to dabs. Kiklis continued, “Essentially, some strains have a thinner stalk, which makes it easier to knock the trichome head off of the bud. Other strains have really thick stalks, and the trichomes just don’t want to come off in the water. … It is completely strain-specific. You can have two different [phenotypes] of the same strain where one washes really well and one just doesn’t.”
They have a simple definition for “single source.” As we told them during our visit, we don’t really care too much if the bowls we are smoking have two or more kinds of weed. But upon explanation, we were actually convinced of the importance of the phrase as they define it, which is basically to mean that they’re in loving custody of the product every step of the way, from seed or clone to (whole)sale, with no “outside bulk, no mixed sources” involved.
