Harvest Highlights: Farm Fresh Hemp

It’s a picture-perfect, blue-sky, Vermont fall day at Lang Farm, where son-father team Justin and John Lang, proprietors of Farm Fresh Hemp, are hard at work on their CBD hemp harvest.

The Lang family has been farming for 5 generations (for more background, check out their business spotlight). With a strong belief in the benefits of CBD and industrial hemp, they’re dedicated to producing high quality, local, organic agricultural products.

While their entire farm encompasses 172 acres, the Langs have planted 7.96 acres with about 5000 hemp plants, up from over 2000 plants last year. Everything was hand-planted, and strains were chosen for their hardiness and resilience – particularly in the face of unpredictable weather during harvest time.

“I’m sure, like other farms, we are constantly learning and figuring out ways to improve our operation and the quality of our product.”

What they’ve discovered is that while frost hasn’t been a problem, managing moisture in the greenhouse where the plants are drying has been more of a challenge. Inside the greenhouse, where an assortment of workers are busily trimming and sorting flower, they’ve put down tarps as a moisture barrier while their trimmed plants hang on snow fencing to dry.

Overall, this season “has been a blessing as well as another progressive learning year for us,” says Justin Lang. “We have an amazing group of dedicated team members that make this all possible. But I’m sure, like other farms, we are constantly learning and figuring out ways to improve our operation and the quality of our product.”

Farm Fresh Hemp is developing proprietary technologies for trimming and drying, and they’re planning on building a second greenhouse where they’ll be able to harvest year-round. They also “look forward to offering ag services to other hemp farmers.,” says Justin Lang, and “plan to expand upon our high grade manicured CBD flower operation.”

They also intend to start THC cannabis in grow houses once Vermont has a legal commercial market. “If you’re going to grow cannabis,” says John Lang, “you gotta do both.”

John Lang also noted with pleasure that the community’s attitude towards cannabis has changed markedly in recent years. “It’s different than even 5 years ago,” he says. “It’s much more accepted, and nobody from the state is saying anything.”