How Acknowledge Farm’s whole-plant, low-intervention approach makes high-quality hemp tinctures from the ground up.
Acknowledge Farms, a woman-founded company, focuses on growing the best organic, cannabinoid-rich hemp on their land in western Maryland, which lets them take a “hands-off” approach in crafting their single-source extracts.
After harvest, their buds go through a low-heat extraction method that preserves all the best, beneficial compounds straight from the plant. After rigorous third-party testing, these tinctures hit the shelves with just two ingredients: hemp extract and pure organic safflower oil.
Then the cycle starts again. Hemp is an incredibly sustainable crop, but only if you farm it right. By using regenerative farming techniques, Acknowledge Farms stewards their land for not just future crops, but future generations.
Use code LEAFLY at checkout to receive 20% off your first purchase from Acknowledge Farms.
Here we’ll dig into how Acknowledge’s choice to honor the plant in both their farming and extraction techniques translates into more sustainable hemp and a more wholesome product.
Growing better hemp
At Acknowledge, every step of the growing process is handled with care—and a light touch. Each strain is carefully selected for its unique properties, then sun-grown in their Maryland micro-climate. Each harvest is done by hand.
When the harvest is done, the crop has a rich concentration of cannabinoids and natural terpenes ready to be preserved in small-batch extraction.
By setting everything up correctly in the first place, there’s very little need to intervene, and that starts with the soil. Regenerative agriculture, which takes a holistic approach to a farm and its ecosystem, keeps the soil rich between crops and keeps the farm’s carbon footprint low—unlike most industrial agriculture, which depletes biodiversity, wastes water, and accelerates soil erosion, hurting both the land and the crop.
This way, when the harvest is done, the crop has a rich concentration of cannabinoids and natural terpenes ready to be preserved in small-batch extraction.
The whole entourage, straight from a single source
In the late 1990s, scientists studying cannabis proposed that every element of the cannabis plant works together to create unique effects. They called this phenomenon the “entourage effect,” and it’s why each strain hits a little bit differently—each one has different ratios and concentrations of cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, and other plant compounds. It’s why Blue Dream has notes of fruit and why Northern Lights smells a little like a pine tree.
In hemp-based products, when you see a “strain” assigned to a product, it’s usually just a reconstruction of a cannabis strain, made from isolated cannabinoids and isolated terpenes to create something like the original, rather than an actual hemp strain straight from the earth. Often, these building blocks don’t even come from the same place.
The strains on Acknowledge Farm are grown for their own merits, so each of their powerful tinctures are actually from a single source. The Forbidden V tincture is naturally rich in CBD, CBC, and focus-boosting CBDV (and bursting with tropical flavor) because of what’s in the Forbidden V strain—not what’s on the shelves of a lab.
Preserving the whole package takes a careful approach, even after harvest. Acknowledge sends its buds to its neighbor Catoctin Hemp for small-batch extraction. Some cannabis compounds are volatile and easily lost in ordinary extraction methods, so Catoctin uses a butane extraction that allows for a lower heat. This creates rich, solvent-free extracts that hang onto all the good stuff and lets the subtlety of each strain truly shine.
Science meets sustainability
MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil, often from coconut oil, has become popular in industry messaging as indicating a high-quality extract, but is it the best option? How well you absorb a cannabis extract depends on its bioavailability, or how much your body is actually able to absorb. CBD is actually most available when combined with a long-chain fatty acid like safflower or grapeseed oil rather than a medium-chain one.
Acknowledge uses organic safflower oil in its products. Safflowers thrive in ecosystems like theirs, are grown domestically in the US, are attractive to local pollinators and beneficial insects, and are low allergenic, so their use is a win-win for both quality products and sustainability goals.
Total transparency
When multiple extracts go into a single hemp product, they could all come from very different sources—and that’s a lot to keep track of. Because Acknowledge sources their hemp from its own farm, they know firsthand that everything is grown organically, and sustainably, meeting their high standards. The products only get handed off once during the entire process, to a trusted neighbor, so it’s easy to track a tincture’s journey from seed to shelf to ensure quality.
You don’t even need to take their word for it, because each batch is third-party lab tested for potency and purity—and each result is publicly available on their website, showing levels of a variety of cannabinoids and a bevy of terpenes.
Incomparable results
This is the entourage effect as it was meant to be enjoyed—from the ground up.
Single-origin extracts, when produced correctly, give you a major boost in quality without any loss in potency. A 30ml bottle of Forbidden V tincture can pack in 1,500mg of CBD and 900mg of CBDV along with the natural terpene and cannabinoid profile that came straight from the plant, including, CBC, THCV, and even a little kiss of THC (fewer than 2 milligrams in a dose). The natural, tropic-tinged hemp flavor comes from bountiful terpenes, especially caryophyllene.
This is the entourage effect as it was meant to be enjoyed—from the ground up. Visit the Acknowledge Farms website to see what whole-plant, single-source tinctures are on offer this season.
Use code LEAFLY at checkout to receive 20% off your first purchase from Acknowledge Farms.
