Mattole Valley Farm’s Blue Dream: Finding Award-Winning Cannabis on California's Lost Coast
Mattole Valley Blue Dream
Blue Dream is an iconic cannabis strain, a sativa-dominant hybrid, Blueberry Haze cross, known for its euphoric effects and ability to relieve stress and boost creativity. Nasha’s Blue Dream flower is grown by Dylan Mattole, the owner and operator of Mattole Valley Sungrown (MVS) in Humboldt county, near the banks of the Mattole River.
The Mattole Valley
The Mattole Valley is at the heart of California’s Lost Coast, the part of the coast so rugged and impassable that no roads can follow it. This is still California’s wild west, with place names like Bear Hollow, Rattlesnake Ridge, and Hunter Place, hidden away in the shadows of the King mountain range.
While the Mattole is a coastal valley, due to the King mountains, it rarely gets the fog that blankets other coastal valleys, like the Anderson Valley in Mendocino. This means that, unlike the nearby Humboldt Redwoods State Park, rather than redwoods, the Mattole is dominated by Douglas fir and other hardwoods. It also means hot days with cool nights, where Dylan says “it isn’t uncommon to see 40-50 degree temperature swings in the summer,” but they are “spared the worst of the heat further inland.”
The name “Mattole” comes from the indigenous tribe who first lived in the area and translates to “clear water.” Unfortunately, in the effort to tame the wild west, large scale timber harvesting caused countless tons of sediment to enter the river and turned the clear waters of the Mattole to a murky brown. Since 1983, the Mattole Restoration Council (MRC) has fought to protect the entire Mattole Watershed from pollution and they’ve seen salmon numbers begin to rebound.
Mattole Valley Sungrown
Continuing the legacy of environmental and political activism started by the MRC, Dylan Mattole grows his cannabis using regenerative farming practices in native soil under the California sun right along the Mattole River. The farm is both Dragonfly Earth Medicine pure and Sun+Earth certified, which is an even higher standard than USDA organic. In addition to running MVS, Dylan is the Chairman of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance, fighting to defend the rights of cannabis farmers at the local and state levels.
Dylan grew up in the Mattole Valley, after his parents, two hippies who were part of the Back to the Land Movement, moved there in the late 1960s and his father renamed the family after the valley they now called home. The homestead where he now grows cannabis was where his father grew the first plants Dylan ever saw. “Our farm is where we’ve raised our family so it’s more than just a job,” said Dylan, “it’s a way of life for us.” In his time running the farm, Dylan has won multiple awards for their cannabis including “awards for ice water hash at the Emerald Cup, live rosin at the CA State fair, and the Grow Off competition for both terpenes and THC percentage.”
Blue Dream Genetics
According to in-depth analyses by journalists at High Times and Leafly, no one is 100% sure who the original breeder of Blue Dream is, and so there is no way to say exactly what Blue Dream’s lineage and genetics are with certainty.
That being said, there is wide consensus in the cannabis community about what the genetics probably are — half Haze and half Blueberry. While everyone seems to agree it is a Haze and a Blueberry, it is an open question which Blueberry and which Haze. Is it DJ Short’s Blueberry? Haze or Super Silver Haze? As Blue Dream has a long history in Santa Cruz, most sources say it is a combination of DJ Short’s Blueberry and the original Haze bred by the Haze Brothers in Santa Cruz.
Flavor, Terpene Profile, and Description
Blue Dream is a hybrid of a blueberry strain, which usually are on the denser (more indica-dominant side) and a Haze (close to a pure Sativa with light fluffy buds). The resulting flower produces light green nugs that often have a faint bluish tint and are flecked with orange hairs (pistils).
Blue Dream’s flavor profile is usually described as similar to blueberries or blueberry muffins. While generally descriptions of the flavor focus on the blueberry side of the parentage, some people do get notes of musk or sandalwood, which come more from the Haze side of the genetics.
Mattole Valley Blue Dream COA
When looking at certificates of analysis for Blue Dream, the most common terpene is often beta myrcene (overripe mango, spices, with a sweet, pungent smell), which is one of the most common terpenes in cannabis in general. Other terpenes that are major parts of Blue Dream’s scent include alpha and beta pinene (pine needles), as well as beta caryophyllene (black pepper and many other herbs). Interestingly, the main terpenes in actual blueberries are cineole and linalool.
The effects Blue Dream is most associated with are euphoria, stress relief, and boosting creativity — in short, just what one would expect from a pure-sativa Haze balanced with an indica strain like Blueberry.
Blue Dream Rumors
As with anything where the origins are not entirely known, rumors abound about Blue Dream. One rumor, building on the Santa Cruz origin story, is that it was first bred by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a medical cannabis cooperative started after Prop 215 was passed in 1996. While this lead was chased down by High Times, it could not be verified. There could be some truth to this rumor, as Bonny Doon, where Craig Johnson from Alpenglow Farms said Blue Dream was originally developed, is near where WAMM’s garden was at the time.
Another rumor focused on the unknown genetics of Blue Dream, that perhaps, there is a Two Dream out there; a second cut with possibly different genetics. As this story goes, perhaps the original Blue Dream was developed in Santa Cruz and was DJ Short’s Blueberry and the Haze Brother’s Haze, but along the way someone tried to reverse engineer it or sprouted a seed they got in a bag. While it is possible that Two Dream has the same genetics as the original (i.e. coming from a bag seed), it could also have been bred from a different blueberry and a different haze (i.e. Super Silver Haze or Super Lemon Haze). It is also possible that what folks are noticing is a phenotypic difference, in other words, it is the same genetics but looks different because it was grown in different places by different farmers.
Finally, according to a 2016 analysis of the Colorado cannabis market by the Trichome Institute, Blue Dream was the “Most counterfeit strain in Colorado.” This isn’t so much a rumor as a cautionary tale about how, presently, there is no guarantee that what a dispensary is selling to you as Blue Dream really is what they claim it to be. The best way to know you are buying real Blue Dream (or anything else for that matter) is to know your farmer.
It may not be that it was fake Blue Dream, so much as low quality Green Rush weed. “Blue Dream was much easier to grow than other strains like OG, has high THC content, and a great nose appeal, so during the Green Rush a lot of people started to grow it,” said Barron Lutz, Nasha’s CEO. Dylan also mentioned the challenge those Green Rushers posed to the local community in Honeydew, offering the MRC a new threat to water and salmon. “That time was certainly punctuated by conflict within our community regarding both the size of farms and the practices of some growers,” said Dylan, adding “since permitting under Prop 64, many of those farms are now gone or abandoned.” Now, thanks in part to Nasha’s partnership with MVS, Lutz says “Blue Dream is making a comeback.”
In addition to checking out Dylan’s Blue Dream and his Jack Herer in Nasha’s Blue Jack hash, now you can try both of these strains as flower from Nasha.