Why I bet the farm on Industrial Hemp.

 The Bernice Gardens Farmers Market  2013

For the last decade I have enjoyed growing organic fruits and vegetables but have not always enjoyed the pay(or lack of) in doing so.   Last year I looked for off farm income to help rectify that.  I found out quickly that after being out of the IT world for over a decade, my services were no longer in demand.   When the Arkansas Hemp Program came into being I thought this might be a way to keep farming full time.  I could catch the hemp wave,  re-capitalize my farm and my life at the same time.

I talked with several of my long time fruit and vegetable customers and a few others about investing in my first season.  After lining up the resources and coming up with a solid plan , we pulled the trigger.  Similar to when the farm was first certified organic in 2009, I over planned the research plan and easily obtained the licence from the Arkansas Plant Board.   We grew 4 varieties of Cannabis.Sativa L using several different methods; field, high tunnels , white and black plastic mulch, early planting, late planting and shade.   In the above photo the purple lettuce is 'Merlot' and is always a best seller.  We grew a cannabis variety with the same name.  This season we have had 'hot' hemp and most of the 'Merlot' had to be destroyed because it exceeded the THC threshold (.3).  It's never fun to brush hog or burn your crop, but this year was research.  Figuring out what worked well and what did not was the priority. 

We smash the cannabis flower.

and extract the Rosin

We harvested, dried and cured approximately 600 lbs of hemp.  As of this post we are waiting on the results from the last 100 lbs post harvest test.   Our focus is now extracting and making hemp products.  Oil, topical balms , gummies (soon) and other hemp products are on our production list.  We use a rosin press to extract the CBD from the hemp.  This is a small scale slow process but does not use any solvents for the exaction so we have a very clean product. This full spectrum rosin is highly concentrated and mixed with MCT or Olive oil to produce our oils and balms.

Selling our CBD Oil and Balm at The Bernice Gardens Farmers market October 2019

Now our current opportunity (we have no issues only opportunities - an old Wal-Martism) is to get the word out about the benefits of our hemp products.  More precisely the benefits of buying organically produced from seed to container products from our small farm.    We did not plan on  being unable to sell our products at our main farmers market or being unable to advertise them via Facebook.   One of the workarounds for FB may just be this post.   If your reading this as part of our FB promotion then it worked.  The links below point to our farms website and our farms online store.

The good news is this blog has started again and we will be posting more about our hemp.  What I have learned so far is it's not the snake oil I feared.  It works, I use the topical on my sore muscles and it relieves the pain.   The opportunities abound, both on the good side and the less than good side.

To learn more about our farm click here          To visit our online store click here


We are still growing fruit and vegetables at the farm,  our fruit will be used to flavor our hemp products and the vegetables will be feeding this farmer and sold at the markets.
It's been a while since I have learned so much and love the feeling that I have so much more to learn.

But What Do I know, I'm just a dirt farmer.