The Farm
My alarm went off early this morning, and I stumbled out of my bed in my usual zombie-like manner to prepare for my trip to CBDRx Farms (@CBDRxFarms). I would be catching a ride an hour away in Longmont, Colorado (50 bucks or so by Uber, I don’t drive). From the street CBDRx Farms looks like any other farm, in fact it reminded me of working on similar properties up in Vermont, helping herd animals and plant crops.
What sets CBDRx apart is their crop. As we explored the farm, we found their specially bred Cannabis sativa plants, easily recognizable by their towering size. Cannabis plants come in three main flavors, sativa plants are tall, and have thinner leaves, indica plants are squat and have fatter leaves, while ruderalis plants are the smallest of all and exhibit an auto-flowering trait. The reasoning behind CBDRx selecting a sativa plant is simple: sativas contain a higher ratio of CBD to THC compared to the indica plants. An added benefit of using the taller plants is having more raw materials to work with. One of the CBDRx employees we talked to mentioned selling the leftover hemp stems to create hemp fibers.
CBD has become a bit of a buzzword recently after its highly publicized use as anti-seizure medication, the well known Charlotte’s Web strain gaining extensive media coverage. One of the messages this company, as well as others in the CBD field are trying to promote is that CBD has more uses than most know about, as an anti-inflammatory, and a general painkiller just to name a few.
“Wanna see what thirty pounds of bud looks like?” Asked Hunter, a 23 year old horticulturist and grower at CBDRx uncapping the 55 gallon “Breaking Bad” style blue drum. Unable to resist, I stuck my head inside and took a deep whiff. Despite having a higher CBD:THC ratio, and being only slightly psychoactive, the ground hemp in the drum had that same kind of dispensary smell that 420 friendly Colorado residents are so accustomed to. We were inside the classic red barn, looking at the old seeding operation. Before the use of vacuum powered seed collectors, the farm used drums like these to separate seed from flower and stem.
Project Status
I finally have a topic I’d like to work on for my final article. HB 1366 is new Colorado legislation relating to the labeling of edibles. While I was at Sweet Grass kitchen the other day, It was mentioned, almost as an aside, that the bill was funded and promoted by a group with connections to the for-profit prison industry. For my story, I’d like to delve deeper into this legislation and find out if the “special interest” group behind this legislation is really astroturfing from the prison industry.
