and in this video I am going to show you how to farm industrial hemp

using the farming methods that we used this year so stick with me.

First of all I just want to mention that we've had a ton of fun this year farming

hemp it's a beautiful plant and it's almost instantly gratifying to watch

these things grow if only four months ago we planted them

early May and they're about five or six inches tall just these little things you

didn't even know if they're gonna survive and before you know it they are

growing and every week there's progress until they get to the size where they're

almost as tall as me that as tall as me in some areas of this field and then

they're just producing beautiful flowers and have a really nice smell so even

though the plants mature over the course of four months here in Central Oregon we

have been planning this process over the course of more like nine months since

the beginning of the year taking samples of our soil and getting those tested

enters into pH levels and also understand the nutrients within the soil

and then it took some time to till the soil and get it right so that we could

lay our plastic in our drip line and eventually plant in early June

one of the things that you're gonna want to consider when you decide that you're

gonna farm hemp is what genetics are you going to use not all seeds are created

equal for us it was really important that the seed company had a good track

record of producing really large high CBD percentage plants and also they have

high percentage feminization rate out of the twelve thousand plants that we have

here in this field we've only found five male plants that we had to remove which

makes farming a little bit easier and we know that we're gonna be able to keep

most of our crop and allow the females just to fulfill the genetic potential

that that they have once we decided on the genetics that we're going to use for

this field in propagating the seeds in a greenhouse in early May and during that

time that gave us the ability to be able to lay our rows and lay our plastic

mulch and our drip tape and establish a nice healthy moist soil to be able to

plant our seedlings in in early June

when it comes time to plant your seedlings into the ground you want to

get as much help as possible we got about seven or eight people on planting

days to be able to help us and we utilized a waterwheel transplant er

which is an implement that goes on the back of a tractor and has two seats for

where two people can sit and they will drop their seedlings in two holes that

are created by the transplant er about four acres into the ground each day once

the seedlings are in the ground the next couple months really is all about just

making sure the plant is getting all of the proper water and nutrients that it

needs to be able to fulfill its genetic potential those farming duties would

include just checking and removing weeds in your rows you can notice in our field

we're pretty much weed free we have a really clean field and this has really

helped us allow all of the nutrients and water to go straight to the plant

instead of being robbed by weeds and other types of things the other thing

with weeds is you really don't want that in your biomass at the end of the season

so it's really important to be able to keep it clean field the other thing you

want to stay on top of is watering and giving the plants the fertilizer and the

nutrients that they need throughout the season obviously this is gonna be a

little bit different in the beginning of the season from the middle towards the

end of the season so in the beginning the plants are small they're really not

drinking a lot of water and they don't need a lot of water but when it gets

really hot in the middle of the summer mid-july plants are large and they are

drinking a lot of water you need to make sure they're getting enough water at

that point and that they're getting the nutrients that they need sometime mid to

late July the plant is going to transfer from the vegetative stage to the

flowering stage and it's going to really start focusing on producing flowers for

the rest of the season and so you're gonna want to switch up your fertilizer

to be able to help that out because the Sun and the light schedule is telling

the plant hey it's time to be able to bud and see you want your fertilizer and

then your nutrients to be able to follow that schedule that they are naturally

getting from this night when it comes to fertilization we

fertilized straight through the drip tape right to the roots as well as a

full-year feeding so at the beginning of the season when we were full your

feeding we just used a backpack sprayer and it was relatively easy to be able to

walk the rose and spray the plants that's the plants got bigger you can

imagine spraying a large plant like this is gonna take a lot of time and to be

able to do that on over 10 acres 12,000 plants is gonna take we figured it would

probably take about 50 man-hours so my partner developed a new little mechanism

and he was able to put a sprayer on the back of a three wheeler and be able to

go up and down the rows and spray that way so that brings up another point

because we spaced our rows eight feet wide so that we could drive a three or

four wheeler down without any problems some people don't like to do that they

like to you know maximize their land we have a lot of land here and so we

figured why not space the rows out really largely we can drive an ATV

up and down the rows so in a week or two we will be cutting and drying the plants

and we'll take a combine that has been modified kind of like a mint conversion

kit to be able to keep the really light stuff and get rid of the stalks and

stems so that we can have a real nice homogeneous biomass that we can send to

the extraction facility to have the oil extracted from these plants

something that you'll definitely want to consider before you decide to start

farming hemp is the risk that's involved anytime you get into farming there's

certain things that are out of your control

for instance this last you about a month ago we had a major major hailstorm that

swept through the region hail the size of gumballs and absolutely ravaged this

field in many other fields around us you can actually see some of the damage

still on these leaves broke the stems broke leaves and luckily it was about a

month ago so the plant had just started flowering and after the hailstorm

I think the plant gave all of this energy to producing the flowers we were

fortunate because we still have something to show for it and it looks

like this crop has not only survived but it's thrived but there are other farms

in the region that lost everything they had nothing but sticks and stems left in

their fields so you definitely want to consider the risk that's involved

because there is a lot of risk in farming and that's why I've created a

couple resources for you the first one is a free pdf that is a hemp farming

timeline and budget planner so on this PDF it'll go January through December

and I'll tell you the things that you need to be doing each month during that

month it'll also show you a per acre budget so that you can plan your

financing for your hemp farms all you have to do to download that PDF for free

is just click the link in the description and that will take you to a

page where you can download the hemp farming timeline and budget planner the

other resource I want to offer you is called Hemp Farming Academy. Hemp Farming

Academy is an online video course that takes you step-by-step from field

preparation all the way through harvest when it comes to farming hemp I've

partnered with farmer Tom Lauerman on this project and farmer Tom's been

growing cannabis and hemp for most of his life and he brings a wealth of

knowledge to this course so if you are planning on farming hemp and you want

some instructions and some help along the way

Hemp Farming Academy would be a great resource for you you can find it at hempfarmingacademy.com

or you can also click the link that is in the

description or that well thanks for watching this

video hopefully it's been helpful for you if you have any questions or

comments go ahead and put those in the comment section below

and I wish you a successful hemp farming season.