May 26, 2020
The 73rd Year
Day 68
Farming is not for everyone, especially if you plan to make your living that way.
We have been farming since 1983. My then teenage nephew who had been milking cows in Massachusetts since he was 12 heard we were leaving DC to return to Vermont and farm. He offered sage advice well beyond his years:
“Rob, if you want to be a successful farmer, you have to keep one foot in the real world.”
In other words make sure you have a real job.
Of course I did work off the farm in Vermont, for about 35 years until I retired in 2015. From the outset the farm was more than a hobby but less than a full-time job.
We milked cows by hand and once I got viciously kicked in the chest while doing so. I was knocked on my butt 30 years ago by a feisty ram named Bernie, after Vermont’s most famous politician. The ram earned the name because he was always angry and had a shaggy mane like Bernie Sanders who at the time was an unsuccessful, fringe-party candidate railing against the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Over the years we bred sheep, chickens, turkeys and heritage pigs and maintained extensive gardens that seem to grow bigger each year. We have bottle fed lambs, even intubated some that refused to drink from any nipple, real or plastic. We learned to castrate lambs and later slaughter the animals we had nurtured from birth.
Our farm sustains us which I suppose makes us sustainable farmers. But we never once planted a crop thinking we might actually earn money.
Until last year.
Hemp! Cannabis! Marijuana!
It was billed as the crop that would save the family farm. Farmers here jumped in with both feet, seeing dollar signs everywhere.
When we moved to Vermont in the early 1980s there were more than 3,000 family dairy farms. Today there are less than 700 dairy farms and those that operate successfully are typically larger or have widely diversified.
Vermont farmland is not necessarily fallow, nor did it get subdivided, developed and sold. Small farms became big farms, supporting fewer families yet still struggling to get by as milk and grain prices rose and fell. Other types of farming emerged and the natural foods movement gave organic farmers a boost. But it was still always a struggle.
Hemp was going to change that. It is now legal to farm hemp and a growers license cost only $25 last year. Hemp was profitable because the demand for CBD products was skyrocketing. But the real money would come in the out years, when marijuana, now legal in small quantities, would be licensed to grow commercially. More than 1,000 farmers registered to grow hemp with the state Agriculture Agency last year, twice as many as in 2018.
I do not know anyone who made money.
We had a license for an acre and planted about a half that. Our plan was to break even and learn how to grow hemp in the first year, expand and make a profit in year two and later a killing when it became legal to grow pot. Well that was my son’s idea anyway. Hemp was a family venture. At one time or another all our kids and their families helped out. Hemp farming is a ton of work.
We started 1,000 supposedly feminized plants inside and put about 500 in the freshly tilled earth we had enriched with manure, lime and organic soil trucked in from a local compost facility.
Last spring processors were paying about $300 a pound for dried hemp with a high CBD and low THC count. We needed to make about $60 a pound to cover our cash outlay, more if we wanted to cover any labor costs.
Easy peazy, right!
In October we had about 70 pounds ready for market. By then processors were offering just $30 a pound. We were crushed by simple economics; the supply far outstripped the demand.
Most of our hemp today resides sealed and unsold in a barn.
Ok so we did not make any money. But we do have a lot of home-made CBD products. My wife bought a small processor with flashing psychedelic lights called a Magic Butter machine developed by stoners to extract the CBD from the dried plants, mostly the flowers. She has made several different CBD creams, salves and tinctures; they are a popular gift item in our family.
Ok the stoners were actually extracting THC to make hash and brownies but while hemp and pot look the same, they are very different.
We learned a lot, significantly that cannabis is a weed! I always say that we made every mistake possible all summer long and still got a crop.
This is true. But it is also true that we did many things right including working tirelessly everyday to fix our screw ups and keep up with this new crop and all our other farm work.
We did better than many Vermont first time growers. A lot of hemp simply stood rotting in the field last fall as farmers realized there was no immediate market for their crop. Those that could harvest and store their crops collected and held onto it hoping prices would rise. Those that did not, just let it rot in the field.
This year a Vermont growers license for an acre is $500, a big hike from $25 a year earlier. Predictably far fewer growers have signed up. The markets are still very low. The future is bleak.
We did not sign up. Our hemp field has been tilled. Later this week after it rains we plan to sow potatoes, corn and tomatoes on the sunny hillside that last year produced our only “cash” crop in more than 35 years of farming.
Sustainable farming has sustained us for years. It is all we need.
Be safe.
The 73rd Year
Day 68
Farming is not for everyone, especially if you plan to make your living that way.
We have been farming since 1983. My then teenage nephew who had been milking cows in Massachusetts since he was 12 heard we were leaving DC to return to Vermont and farm. He offered sage advice well beyond his years:
“Rob, if you want to be a successful farmer, you have to keep one foot in the real world.”
In other words make sure you have a real job.
Of course I did work off the farm in Vermont, for about 35 years until I retired in 2015. From the outset the farm was more than a hobby but less than a full-time job.
We milked cows by hand and once I got viciously kicked in the chest while doing so. I was knocked on my butt 30 years ago by a feisty ram named Bernie, after Vermont’s most famous politician. The ram earned the name because he was always angry and had a shaggy mane like Bernie Sanders who at the time was an unsuccessful, fringe-party candidate railing against the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Over the years we bred sheep, chickens, turkeys and heritage pigs and maintained extensive gardens that seem to grow bigger each year. We have bottle fed lambs, even intubated some that refused to drink from any nipple, real or plastic. We learned to castrate lambs and later slaughter the animals we had nurtured from birth.
Our farm sustains us which I suppose makes us sustainable farmers. But we never once planted a crop thinking we might actually earn money.
Until last year.
Hemp! Cannabis! Marijuana!
It was billed as the crop that would save the family farm. Farmers here jumped in with both feet, seeing dollar signs everywhere.
When we moved to Vermont in the early 1980s there were more than 3,000 family dairy farms. Today there are less than 700 dairy farms and those that operate successfully are typically larger or have widely diversified.
Vermont farmland is not necessarily fallow, nor did it get subdivided, developed and sold. Small farms became big farms, supporting fewer families yet still struggling to get by as milk and grain prices rose and fell. Other types of farming emerged and the natural foods movement gave organic farmers a boost. But it was still always a struggle.
Hemp was going to change that. It is now legal to farm hemp and a growers license cost only $25 last year. Hemp was profitable because the demand for CBD products was skyrocketing. But the real money would come in the out years, when marijuana, now legal in small quantities, would be licensed to grow commercially. More than 1,000 farmers registered to grow hemp with the state Agriculture Agency last year, twice as many as in 2018.
I do not know anyone who made money.
We had a license for an acre and planted about a half that. Our plan was to break even and learn how to grow hemp in the first year, expand and make a profit in year two and later a killing when it became legal to grow pot. Well that was my son’s idea anyway. Hemp was a family venture. At one time or another all our kids and their families helped out. Hemp farming is a ton of work.
We started 1,000 supposedly feminized plants inside and put about 500 in the freshly tilled earth we had enriched with manure, lime and organic soil trucked in from a local compost facility.
Last spring processors were paying about $300 a pound for dried hemp with a high CBD and low THC count. We needed to make about $60 a pound to cover our cash outlay, more if we wanted to cover any labor costs.
Easy peazy, right!
In October we had about 70 pounds ready for market. By then processors were offering just $30 a pound. We were crushed by simple economics; the supply far outstripped the demand.
Most of our hemp today resides sealed and unsold in a barn.
Ok so we did not make any money. But we do have a lot of home-made CBD products. My wife bought a small processor with flashing psychedelic lights called a Magic Butter machine developed by stoners to extract the CBD from the dried plants, mostly the flowers. She has made several different CBD creams, salves and tinctures; they are a popular gift item in our family.
Ok the stoners were actually extracting THC to make hash and brownies but while hemp and pot look the same, they are very different.
We learned a lot, significantly that cannabis is a weed! I always say that we made every mistake possible all summer long and still got a crop.
This is true. But it is also true that we did many things right including working tirelessly everyday to fix our screw ups and keep up with this new crop and all our other farm work.
We did better than many Vermont first time growers. A lot of hemp simply stood rotting in the field last fall as farmers realized there was no immediate market for their crop. Those that could harvest and store their crops collected and held onto it hoping prices would rise. Those that did not, just let it rot in the field.
This year a Vermont growers license for an acre is $500, a big hike from $25 a year earlier. Predictably far fewer growers have signed up. The markets are still very low. The future is bleak.
We did not sign up. Our hemp field has been tilled. Later this week after it rains we plan to sow potatoes, corn and tomatoes on the sunny hillside that last year produced our only “cash” crop in more than 35 years of farming.
Sustainable farming has sustained us for years. It is all we need.
Be safe.
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