HOW TO HARVEST HEMP?
This year it took 8 pairs of loppers, 29 family and friends, gloves, signature shirt, good food, and cheer! We cut 1,100 in 2 hours in time for a late lunch. This year’s boutique harvest was a snack compared to 50,000+ clones harvested in 2019. We grow for the smell of it. Take a whiff outside our farm in the fall and find yourself smiling. The harvest process is rather simple. We put small teams together. The first team focuses on cutting the plants. Using hand loppers the plants are cut as low as possible just above the soil line to avoid taking off branches and keeping the plant with all its buds as one unit to retrieve from the field. The plants are then taken to the end of the rows in a staging area. It is here where the second team with the tractors and hay wagons attached covered in loose tarps pull up.
(Pictured:2019 Harvest Team in action)
The plants are loaded with the stem base facing out so they are easy to grab and the buds stay in the center. The tractor takes the wagon to the edge of the barn. Here the tarps are pulled off the back of the wagon and into the barn. Inside the barn, the third team runs long “budlines” like clotheslines using bailer twine. Vertical supports are dropped from the rafters to support the weight of the plants. The plants are then just thrown over the twine and hooked to it using one of the lower branches of the plant. Here the plant will hang until the moisture fall below 12% and the stems snap when you bend them, that's the farmer’s way of knowing the buds are ready to strip. This is just part of the process of making Kentucky’s Best Hemp. (Pictured: The Harvest Team hanging plants on the bud lines to cure in October 2020, Lee on the Gator loaded up, Will and Mason examining a large praying mantis)
Check out our drone video of the 2020 harvest process.