The afternoon sun filters through the cannabis canopy at Supernaturals, casting golden shadows across rows of plants that stretch toward the rolling hills of Ulster County. Here, where the Hudson Valley's agricultural heritage meets its cannabis future, Jens Verhaegh moves through his fields with the practiced eye of someone who understands that great farming transcends any single crop.
Sheep graze contentedly in an adjacent pasture—the same land that hosted cannabis plants just last season. It's a rotation as old as agriculture itself, yet revolutionary in the context of New York's emerging cannabis industry. This is farming as integration, not isolation, and it represents something profound happening in the Hudson Valley: cannabis taking its rightful place alongside the region's centuries-old agricultural tradition.
“It's like medicine from our landscape,” Jens explains, crouching to examine the rich, dark soil beneath a particularly robust plant. “The herbs, the honey, the foods that are grown around us—there's a synergy when stuff around us is what's best for us.” It's a philosophy that extends far beyond cannabis cultivation, rooted in a deep understanding of place, season, and the interconnected web of sustainable agriculture.
From Builder to Grower
Jens's journey to cannabis mastery began not in the fields, but in New Jersey, where he worked in sustainable building design—energy auditing and retrofits that sought to create harmony between human habitation and environmental stewardship. “I was drawn to farming through just growing my own food,” he recalls. “It was about being self-sufficient, and sort of like a lifestyle closer to the land.”
The path from sustainable building to sustainable farming wasn't direct, but it was inevitable. Rock climbing brought him to the Hudson Valley in the mid-2000s, where he found work on herb farms—first at Taliaferro Farms, then Windfall Farms, eventually living at Clove Valley Community Farm. Each experience deepened his understanding of what it meant to work with, rather than against, natural systems.
“I grew my first plant in my parents' front yard in the late '90s,” he says with a laugh. “I was like 18 in high school, and I had this tall plant right in front of the house. The ‘tomato plant' that never had any tomatoes.” His mother knew; his father didn't. It was a familiar story of cannabis cultivation hidden in plain sight, a practice that would eventually emerge from the shadows into licensed, regulated agriculture.
When he bought his current property in 2015, cannabis remained in those shadows—what he calls “personal plus” growing, plants tucked into field edges where they caught whatever light they could. “I didn't know outdoor weed could look this good because it was always grown sort of on the edges and in the shade,” he reflects. “But then once we got the full sunlight, even with the CBD strain, some of those flowers turned out really amazingly beautiful.”
The Philosophy of Living Soil
At the heart of Supernaturals' approach lies what Jens calls “minimal inputs, simple methods, and sustainable” farming. The buzzword “living soil” gets thrown around frequently in cannabis circles, but here it represents something deeper—a commitment to building and maintaining the soil food web that makes healthy plants possible.
“Living soil has to do with the soil food web,” Jens explains. “It's soil that's alive with microorganisms that are digesting the soil and making nutrients available for the plants. Having a beneficial environment for beneficial bacteria and less likely to harbor diseases and non-beneficial bacteria.”
The compost comes from Ulster County. The hay for the sheep comes from nearby farms. Even the selection of beneficial plants—dill, cilantro, and yarrow to attract ladybugs and parasitic wasps—reflects this commitment to working within what Jens calls “a closer sort of biome.” It's hyperlocal agriculture in the truest sense, where every input strengthens the connection between plant, soil, and place.
This isn't just philosophy; it's practical farming with measurable results. “I've been able to see really growing in areas that haven't been cover cropped, composted, that have seen cannabis multiple years in a row,” Jens notes. “You can visibly see a reduction in vigor from the plant.”
Integration, Not Isolation
What sets Supernaturals apart in the cannabis landscape isn't just their cultivation methods—it's their integration with traditional Hudson Valley agriculture. The partnership with Taliaferro Farm, where Delaney Ferriss is taking over operations from her retiring father Pete, represents more than land access; it's a symbol of cannabis finding its place within the region's agricultural continuum.
“In our case with Taliaferro, it's very synergistic right now,” Jens explains. “The relationship in terms of getting access to the land and the equipment and also the expertise.” The sheep that graze his former cannabis fields, the cover crops that build soil between seasons, the rotational systems that prevent pest buildup—these are farming methods as old as the Hudson Valley itself, applied to a crop that's finally legal to grow.
Beck Rourke-Mooney, Supernaturals' Director of Operations and Head of Sales, sees this integration as central to the company's identity and future. “There's a hope that the Hudson Valley, because we're like a place where people will pay for organic produce that's been grown by people they know and we'll pay a little extra, right? The same thing is going to happen with Hudson Valley cannabis.”
It's a compelling vision: cannabis as terroir, where the specific conditions of place—soil, climate, farming tradition—create products that reflect their origin as distinctly as a Finger Lakes Riesling or a Hudson Valley apple.
The Art of Staggered Harvest
Traditional outdoor cannabis cultivation follows a single harvest schedule, with everything coming due in the fall rush. Supernaturals has reimagined this rhythm, creating what Jens calls “staggered harvest” through careful strain selection and auto-flowering varieties.
“This morning we were harvesting auto flowers and that's already our second harvest of the year,” he explains during our early August interview. “We'll be doing three this year. Yeah, actually four. Four different harvests.”
For an outdoor grower, this represents both practical and philosophical advantages. “In terms of being an outdoor grower and having all the harvests come in all at once, it's overwhelming,” Jens notes. “You got too much all at once, and that's basically what you've got for the whole year. So being able to stagger it, it's sort of like hedging your bets if the weather's bad, and you lose a crop, at least you got the one before it, and maybe the one after it.”
The quarter-acre canopy allowed under their micro outdoor license becomes more productive through this careful orchestration of timing. “We more or less harvest that around three times a year,” Jens explains. “So in total, three times 10,000 [square feet].”
Quality from Field to Pre-Roll
Where many cannabis operations focus on flower sales, Supernaturals has built their reputation around pre-rolls—but not the industry-standard version made from trim and smaller buds. Their innovation lies in using what Beck calls “A-buds” for their pre-rolls, the same premium flower that others reserve for jars.
“The biggest difference of the industry standard is to take your A-buds and put them in jars as whole flower and then take your smalls and your trim and make your pre-rolls out of that,” Beck explains. “That's why a lot of people get inconsistent pre-rolls from a lot of other brands, but ours are just solid great sun-grown flower from living soil.”
This commitment to quality extends through every stage of production, from the insulated containers that maintain precise temperature and humidity during drying, to the hand-preparation and careful trimming that ensures each pre-roll burns perfectly. “You can ruin a lot of good weed by improper drying,” Jens emphasizes. “Really having the drying in these insulated containers with air conditioners has been working out great.”
The result is a product that customers recognize and return for. “We have a lot of people who are what I would think of as weed snobs tell me that it's the only pre-roll that they'll smoke,” Beck reports. “It's really the quality, but it's also like people do love the story.”
Building Community in a Competitive Industry
Despite operating in a theoretically competitive market, Supernaturals embodies what cannabis advocate Jordan Eisenstadt calls “cooperatition”—the recognition that rising tides lift all boats, especially for small businesses navigating a heavily regulated industry.
“It's funny because it's not like necessarily a competitive atmosphere, at least like most of the people that we work with, we don't feel like we're competitors even though we are in the same market segment,” Jens reflects. “We're all like small businesses and farms that are all just trying to survive.”
This community extends beyond cannabis to the broader agricultural ecosystem. At the annual Rondout Valley Growers Association dinner, cannabis farmers sit alongside dairy farmers and vegetable growers, sharing the universal concerns of weather, regulation, and market access that define agricultural life.
“Farming is, there's a lot of similarities, right?” Jens observes. “You're all talking about the weather. And in terms of cannabis, like farming, there's all sorts of different types of cannabis farmers or growers—indoor and greenhouse and mixed light and outdoor. The way where I've come from is sort of through farming farming. So those are some of the techniques that I'm applying to a unique crop.”
A Woman's Perspective in Cannabis
Beck's role at Supernaturals extends far beyond typical operations management. She translates Jens's cultivation vision into scalable business practices, manages compliance requirements, and represents the company throughout New York State's emerging cannabis market.
“When I first met Jens and he explained the brand to me, I was like, ‘Oh, so it's like your essence,'” she recalls. “This brand is your essence. And he'll have the idea and the vision. And then we basically need to translate it into a bunch of steps that we can actually make happen and make it compliant and make it replicable.”
Being a woman in cannabis sales brings unique challenges and advantages. “Women are used in the cannabis space for sales, for that attractive hook kind of thing,” Beck explains. “My number one thing is immediately making it clear to whoever I'm speaking to that I know a lot about this plant and I know a lot about this subject matter so that I'm taken seriously.”
This expertise becomes a business advantage. “When I would stand in front of people and talk and tell them all this detail about botanical science, then they would buy it. Because they were like, ‘Oh, she knows this much about weed and she thinks I should buy this. Maybe I actually should.'”
Expanding Horizons
From their Ulster County base, Supernaturals has built distribution across New York State, from Long Island to Buffalo. It's an ambitious reach for a micro operation, but one that reflects both the quality of their product and the collaborative spirit that characterizes their approach to business.
“We're all over the state,” Beck explains. “It was like so early on when, in the Hudson Valley, there weren't the dispensaries because of the injunction, it was kind of just like go wherever you can get. And then it was a choice at a certain point. Are we able to keep fulfilling orders out to Buffalo? But basically we built up enough of a customer base in Western New York that we're pretty well known at this point.”
Looking forward, Jens envisions expansion that stays true to their core values: living soil greenhouse cultivation, a potential retail location enabled by their micro license, and an expanded product line that makes use of every part of their harvest. “We're sitting on lots of ingredients for more products that we've accumulated,” he notes. “We have kief, so there's more kief making, potentially some static kief separating or other types of infused pre-rolls.”
The Future of Hudson Valley Cannabis
As cannabis cultivation matures in New York, Supernaturals represents a particular vision of what the industry might become: deeply rooted in place, committed to sustainable practices, and integrated with rather than separate from the region's agricultural heritage.
“I think there's a hope that the Hudson Valley, we're the Napa Valley of the East,” Beck suggests. “There's always going to be a big interest in the stuff that's coming out of our soil. When you think about all the farms—Windfall, Clove Valley—these are all solid parts of the local farming ecosystem.”
This vision extends beyond individual operations to encompass something larger: cannabis as a legitimate agricultural crop that strengthens rather than disrupts rural communities. “Everyone was like cannabis is going to save everyone,” Beck observes, “but it's so regulated that it's not exactly as simple as that. But there's definitely integration happening.”
For Jens, success isn't measured in canopy square footage or production volume, but in the ability to maintain quality and values while building a sustainable business. “I didn't really want to grow 100,000 square feet,” he reflects. “That's not even like, I don't know, I don't even want to start thinking about it. It stresses me out. This is more my speed. This is how I want to have a cannabis business.”
Medicine from the Landscape
As afternoon shadows lengthen across the Supernaturals fields, Jens returns to the idea that first drew him to farming: the connection between place and well-being, between sustainable practices and superior products.
“It's like medicine from our landscape,” he says, watching his sheep graze where cannabis plants grew last season. “Those herbs, like the honey, the ones and the foods that are grown around us, all of those things I think are more nourishing because we, this is where we live and this is where it's growing. So there's that synergy of stuff around us is like what's best for us.”
In this vision, cannabis isn't an interloper in Hudson Valley agriculture but a natural extension of it—another crop that benefits from the region's soil, climate, and farming wisdom. Supernaturals' success suggests that the future of premium cannabis lies not in industrial cultivation divorced from place, but in farming practices that honor both the plant and the landscape that nurtures it.
As New York's cannabis industry continues to evolve, operations like Supernaturals point toward a more integrated future—one where cannabis cultivation strengthens rather than replaces traditional farming, where quality trumps quantity, and where the unique character of place creates products that couldn't be grown anywhere else.
In the Hudson Valley, cannabis is finding its place not as a disruptor of agricultural tradition, but as its latest chapter—grown with the same attention to soil health, seasonal rhythms, and community relationships that have sustained farming here for centuries. At Supernaturals, the future of cannabis looks remarkably like its past: rooted in the land, connected to community, and committed to the patient work of growing something truly exceptional.
