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Half Hill Farm among Tennessee’s first to grow hemp

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Industrial hemp grows on Half Hill Farm in Woodbury, TN

(Woodbury, TN) — Half Hill Farm is the first USDA certified organic farm in Tennessee to grow legal hemp. The state legalized hemp last year despite decades of federal prohibition under the Controlled Substance Act. Growing hemp requires a background check and permit from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

Half Hill Farm grows several hundred plants in a pilot partnership with a co-op of farms under Tennessee Hemp Farm. Using various farm methods, participating farms hope to learn how much seed and fiber production they can expect from a plant not grown legally in the United States since the 1950s.

“My guess is hemp will grow just fine here in Cannon County,” said Half Hill Farm’s Christian Grantham. “The exciting part for us is what can be done with it.”

While industrial hemp contains little to none of the psychoactive ingredient THC, hemp seeds produce the highest omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids of any grain. Milled seed is an excellent source of oil and plant protein, and hemp is one of the world’s most renewable sources of industrial fiber.

“It won’t be long before you start seeing several Tennessee products made with hemp grown and processed right here,” Grantham said. ”As part of our farm’s mission, we can’t wait to share the health benefits of hemp through value added products.”

In the mid 1800s, Tennessee farms reported growing over 2,200 tons of cannabis using it to make rope and industrial canvas used in boat sails and to bag cotton harvests. According to state records, production fell with competition from other states.

Growing commercial hemp is still illegal under federal law. Permitted farms in Tennessee work closely with state and federal authorities under new farm rules for states that legalize hemp or recreational & medical marijuana.

Under state law, farms growing hemp can sell hemp fiber or viable hemp seed to a manufacturer and value added products direct to consumers. The first hemp crops in Tennessee will harvest in late September.

Learn more:

UPDATE 12-10-18: We now manufacture quality CBD hemp oil extract blends in 500mg, 1000mg, and 2500mg formulas. Learn more or sign up for a wholesale account.

VIDEO: Half Hill Farm with Christian Grantham

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Half Hill Farm is a small seven acre USDA certified organic farm in Woodbury, TN. We are dedicated to sustainable farm practices that reflect our deep commitment to being good stewards of our planet and our general well being.

Check out this excellent introduction video by our good friend Rob Cantor interviewing me over Memorial Day weekend. While you are at it, be sure to subscribe to our new YouTube channel for future instructional videos from our farm!

UPDATE: mushroom workshop pavilion progress

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Construction started this week on Half Hill Farm’s mushroom workshop pavilion. Made of locally milled oak & cedar, it’s a perfect setting to help foster an important relationship with nature through a hands-on learning experience. We can’t wait to share this beautiful space with you this Fall here in rural Woodbury, TN!

We could not have done this without you! Back in March of last year, several of you helped us raise a portion of the funds we needed to build this shelter. We didn’t meet our goal, but with a little hard work and support we are finally creating a space to share sustainable fungi-culture & our love of the outdoors.

We are also humbled by the love and appreciation for the healing products we create out of personal needs and our deep reverence for the natural world. Our 1:1 Red Reishi mushroom dual extract was first introduced as a gift to donors of this project last year and has since shipped to over 40 states to folks seeking nature’s balanced remedy. There is never a day we are not here quietly listening, learning and creating. Every day you reach out to us and share your story of why and how you found us affirms our commitment to serve.

Nature’s remedy: organic Red Reishi mushroom dual extract

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Ganoderma Lucidum dual extract

Half Hill Farm is dedicated to sustainable farm practices that reflect our deep commitment to being good stewards of our planet and our general well being.

In keeping with our mission, our organic Red Reishi Mushroom Dual Extracts are now made with USDA certified organic pharmaceutical grade (USP) alcohol. We use a hot water and alcohol extraction process with a 10 micron filtration and bottle at our Woodbury, TN farm in premium Miron ultra-violet glass bottles. Combined with our USDA certified organic Ganoderma lucidum mushrooms and distilled water, our extract provides a full spectrum of beneficial compounds as clean as nature intended.

Red Reishi mushrooms are known in ancient medicine as the “Mushroom of Immortality” used in a wide range of folk remedies. Recent studies find extracted polysaccharides, triterpenes and other compounds from this mushroom have significant anti-tumor, anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties as well as the ability to reduce inflammation and modulate immune responses.

This powerful extract has a natural bitter taste that blends well with coffee or tea. We use a 10 micron filtration that keeps smaller spore and beneficial compounds that appear as suspended filaments in the bottled extract.

Many people prescribed long-term medications or antibiotics, or with chronic illnesses, use this extract in conjunction with or as an alternative to treatments. Often taken in tea or coffee, this extract is also used as natural remedies for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypertension, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and conditions associated with: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Lyme Disease, Morgellons, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichia, Mycoplasma, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and AIDS/HIV.

Here are links to some research on extracted compounds from Red Reishi (Ganoderma Lucidum) mushrooms:

DISCLAIMER: Please consult your physician before using any of our products for health purposes. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. 

Getting the most from your Shiitake mushroom log

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Shiitake mushroom logs in the woods at half Hill Farm

Last night looks like the last of forecasted freezing temperatures for early Spring here in Middle Tennessee. If you have one of our Shiitake mushroom logs marked SP15 (Spring 2015) or earlier, now is the time to prep your log for an early Spring flush.

Shocking logs: Get a five gallon bucket and fill it with rain water or water from a nearby creek and then soak your log for 24 hours. Place the log in a wooded area with roughly 80% shade. You can place it under a bush near your house’s North side if you do not have woods. If you have more than one log, use a larger tub like the one pictured above. The water should not be chlorinated tap water and should be very cold. This hard soak and cold temperature followed by the gradual warming of outdoor Spring temps will “shock” the mycelium into “pinning,” the beginning stages of mushrooms.

Pinning: Each pin that forms pushes through the bark as you see pictured above and will develop into the beginnings of a mushroom within 2-3 days followed by a rapidly growing mushroom over a five day period. Depending on the weather throughout Spring, you could experience 2-3 natural cycles of mushrooms with roughly two week resting periods between each flush.

Harvest: Once you start to see the mushrooms unfurl their outer edge (typically tucked under the mushroom cap), it is time to pick mushrooms. At this point, the mushroom is in the early phase of releasing its spore. Simply cut them off at the log, brush off any debris and either eat them fresh, store them in the fridge for up to two weeks, or dry them to use for months to come.

How to purchase: Each Shiitake mushroom log from Half Hill Farm produces up to 90% of the log’s dry weight in mushrooms over a 3-5 year period. You can purchase your own inoculated logs from 15 lbs. one foot logs up to 50+ lbs. four feet logs at our farm here in Woodbury, TN. Just give us a call and let us know you’re coming!

Spring planting 2015: seeds of change and progress

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Spring is about 6 or 7 weeks away. Time to get the popup greenhouses out and get these seeds going!

Progress: Last March, many of you helped us raise funds to open our farm to more mushroom workshops. Although we fell short of our goal, a little hard work made up the difference. Thanks to your help, the workshop pavilion pad is getting poured next week (somewhere in the photo above) along with the entrance to our farm! We’re excited about what this means for accommodating growing interest in our certified organic mushroom production and farm practices.

This year is our official harvest of Tennessee’s first certified organic crop of hops on our farm! Most of this year’s harvest will be dedicated to a new product coming out this Fall with some hops available to local brew clubs. Follow us on Facebook to know when these items will be available.

Change: This year we will not be regular vendors at the Woodbury Farmers’ Market due to demand for our mushroom products. We’re still figuring out what days we’ll be there. This year will be our first official apple and blueberry harvest, and we’re excited to make these available through local restaurants or at our local market.

Seeds: We’re planting a lot of our favorites for salsa making this year from newly purchased certified organic seeds. Like our Shiitake mushrooms, whatever vegetable produce doesn’t turn into Raw Salsa will be available direct to local restaurants.

RECIPE: Shiitake mushroom soup

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A 5 lbs. mid-Winter harvest of organic Shiitake mushrooms from Half Hill Farm.

Once your Shiitake logs from Half Hill Farm start producing mushrooms, you can dry them, store some in the fridge for a couple weeks, or eat them! That’s exactly what we did using the following recipe and an unexpected January harvest.

There’s a lot you can do with your Shiitake mushrooms and a lot of good stuff it will do for you. One recent study, for example, shows medicinal compounds in Shiitake mushrooms can eradicate HPV, a virus that causes 99% of all cervical cancer, 95% of anal cancer, 60% of oropharyngeal cancer, 65% of vaginal cancer, 50% of vulvar cancer, and 35% of penile cancer. Here’s more research on this and other mushrooms we grow, and here’s our recipe for how to make some Pho-tastic Shiitake mushroom soup.

Shiitake Mushroom Soup

  • 2 cups chopped Shiitake mushrooms
  • cubed tofu
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 4 tbsps of fresh grated ginger
  • chives
  • cilantro
  • 4 cups chopped Napa cabbage
  • rice noodles (or rice & quinoa)
  • 8 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
  • soy sauce (or Bragg’s) & lemon to flavor

You can use either rice noodles or a little rice and quinoa. Either way, cook these first and set them aside. You won’t need much – about a total of half a cup if using rice/quinoa.

Put a little olive oil in the soup pot you plan to use and cook your cubed tofu. When complete, stir-fry the chopped garlic cloves and ginger with the cooked tofu. This takes a couple minutes. Now add the broth, mushrooms and either noodles or rice/quinoa. Let this simmer for 20 minutes and then add the Napa cabbage and let simmer for five more minutes before serving.

Place a little chopped cilantro and chives in a bowl and fill the bowl with soup. Add a generous squirt of soy sauce or Bragg’s and a squeeze of a couple lemon wedges and enjoy!

The sum of this year’s goodness

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Our friends at Yellowbird Farms take a break from sheep to make Shiitake mushroom logs.

Our first season of mushroom log workshops is now closed as we head into the Winter thankful for another amazing year!

The 20 mushroom workshops we did this Fall on our farm helped introduce several people in our community to a sustainable way to grow edible Shiitake mushrooms. We are grateful to our neighbors who offered us their fallen or storm damaged oak trees for mushroom production. The logs we used helped sequester over a ton of carbon back into our food chain rather than being released back into the atmosphere as fire wood.

We were also excited to begin offering mushroom logs at our local farmers’ market in Woodbury this Summer and look forward to expanding these health & educational opportunities next year.

Despite a personal loss in our family with the passing of Sandra Landers, we were inspired to create Red Reishi and Turkey Tail extracts that now help others and fullfill our mission to be good stewards of our planet and our general well being. We are so grateful to those who seek us out and who continue to enhance our understanding of how our extracts are used.

The sum of the year’s goodness ultimately comes down to each of you. By taking a personal step to buy local, buy organic and support a sustainable lifestyle, your combined action has become the change we want to see in the world. We are forever grateful to see that at the end of a long season. Thank you for that!

Turn your storm damaged trees into mushrooms

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This lightning struck White Oak became several Shiitake mushroom logs.

It’s always fortunate when the only damage from a storm is to property. Sometimes that includes damage to favorite old trees that in a matter of hours is reduced to firewood.

If you had a White Oak, Red Oak, Hickory or Sweet Gum tree that recently fell victim to storm damage, we can help you cut it up and remove as much as we can safely. We aren’t a professional tree service, but we can work with a tree service of your choice or cut up 4 inch or greater diameter logs they leave for us. In exchange for the logs we take, we will bring you a few of the logs inoculated with edible gourmet Shiitake mushrooms.

The inoculated logs will grow 90% of their dry weight in mushrooms over the next 3-5 years and keep decades of sequestered carbon in their tissue from re-entering the atmosphere as burned fire wood. You basically get some logs removed, create a healthy super food source (like this amazing bowl of soup) for your family and help address climate change. It’s a win-win-win!

If you want to turn your storm damaged tree into mushrooms anywhere within an hour from Woodbury or Murfreesboro, TN, give us a call at 615-469-7778.

How to get more vitamin D from your Shiitake mushroom harvest

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Shiitake mushrooms growing on oak logs at Half Hill Farm in Woodbury, TN

If you purchased a Shiitake mushroom log from Half Hill Farm that is tagged “F14,” now is the time to follow your soaking / shocking steps to get your first edible mushrooms within a week.

Once your Shiitake mushroom log starts producing mushrooms, there’s a simple technique that dramatically increases their vitamin D before you either eat them or dehydrate them for long term storage.

Mycologist Paul Stamets details this simple process and science here, but the basic steps are pretty simple:

  1. Remove stems and slice into roughly half inch slices.
  2. Spread slices evenly on drying racks (anything that allows air flow) in the sunshine with the gills facing up for 6 peak hours avoiding early morning dew and evening moisture.
  3. Bring the mushrooms indoors overnight to avoid humidity, then repeat 6 hours of sun exposure the next day to achieve 12 total peak hours of UV exposure.
  4. Finish completely drying your Shiitake mushrooms in a dehydrator, and store them in sealed jars. To enjoy anytime, simply soak them for an hour and follow most any recipe for fresh mushrooms.

According to Stamets, Shiitake mushrooms that are not exposed to sun may have less than 40 IU/100g of vitamin D. With the steps above, you can expect 46,000 IU/100g of vitamin D, D2, D3, and D4!

To achieve healthy serum levels of vitamin D exclusively from your dried Shiitake mushrooms, you will need to eat no more than 10 grams a day which is roughly equivalent to 100 grams of fresh Shiitake (3.6 ounces).

Purchase your own mushroom log: Our one foot Shiitake mushroom logs are available for scheduled pick up on our farm in Woodbury, TN. They are $22 and will produce 15-20 lbs. of mushrooms over a 3-5 year period. Here is how to get yours.

Make your own mushroom log: Schedule your own private 2-3 hour mushroom log workshop for groups of up to four people on our farm, take home the log you make, and start turning your own logs into a sustainable food source. Here’s how to schedule your workshop.

DISCLAIMER: I am a farmer. I am not a doctor. Please consult your physician before using any of our products or advice for health purposes.