Bucking, Wet vs Dry Trim, Hand vs Machine
The two biggest labor sinks in the whole operation — and the quality tradeoffs baked into each choice.
8 min read
Bucking: the harvest-day bottleneck
Bucking (de-stemming / debudding) mechanically strips flower off the stems — the first and most labor-intensive station on the line. A bucker pulls stems through graduated holes or counter-rotating rollers, separating flower without crushing it. Hand-picking stems is the harvest-day chokepoint; commercial buckers rate in the hundreds of lbs/hr.
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