What it's like to walk around a hemp flower farm

We're near the end of October and the end of the hemp flower harvest season. While some of the work is lightening up, we wanted to show you around a hemp farm.

Let's walk around a hemp flower farm at the near the very end of harvest.

Table of Contents

Hemp Planting

Time of year makes a large difference for the outcome and size of the plant. The tricky part is that there's a limited amount of time to plant. So you want to hire many people but only for a short amount of time. The goal of maximizing time in the ground counterbalances the fear of planting before the last frost. In an ideal world, you can plant all of your plants in one day. Often times, the process takes much longer. A month can make a world of difference.

All plants of the Cannabis sativa species depend on light-dependent flowering. Indoor growers with precise control over their lighting conditions often choose between an 18 to 20 light on to 4 to 6 hours off. Very experienced growers will know the specific and ideal conditions for particular strains or varietals.

Hemp Harvesting

Harvesting should be done as quickly as possible. Like the planting, the harvest faces the same time pressures. There is a huge need for temporary labor. Moreover, Oregon is the largest hemp producing state and our county in Southern Oregon, Jackson County, plants more acres than the next two counties combined.

The result is people travel in for neighboring states looking for work. Rages rise considerably with some people making as high as $25/hour for low skill labor. The working conditions on are farm are tough. There's a lot of hard work to do but for a short time, it pays very well.

Farmers appreciate the help too. If the hemp crop stays on the field too long, it risks exposure to cold and wet conditions that could damage the plant or enable the spread of mold. Wind too can become a problem with the fall rains. The key is to get the plants off the field as quickly as possible.

Hemp Processing

Processing Hemp requires a lot of space. Even with the two barns that you see in the video, there's not enough space to process all of the hemp already taken off the field. There are more barns as well. And new ones being built. It's still not quite enough.

Here at Plain Jane, we work very closely with Third Generation Farms. Their trimming facility actually shares a wall with our order fulfillment center. Finding enough space is key to a successful hemp harvest.

The quality of the trim and cure depends on many factors. Extreme expertise is required to end up with a high-quality smokeable hemp product. From our hemp cigarettes to the many of the strains featured on the website including Hawaiian Haze, Elektra, and more, we want to show you not only the love but the knowledge that went into growing and crafting high-quality CBD hemp flower. Premium hemp requires years of experience.

Common Questions About Hemp Farms

When you're walking through a hemp field, what does it smell like?

It smells like weed, cannabis, dank. If you spend enough time around cured hemp flower and cannabis, you can tell the difference pretty quickly. The cure exposes many of the more complex smells.

If you drive on the I5 North from the border of California and Oregon for the next 200 miles north, you will smell weed from countless hemp and cannabis farms. Every once in a while it will just hit you as you drive. It could also be from the trucks used to transport the millions of pounds of hemp biomass. 

How many farmers are there in Oregon growing hemp?

There's more than 1,600 farmers in Oregon growing a cumulative 50,000 acres of hemp.