Tag Archives: industrial hemp

Construction begins on hemp testing and CO2 extraction lab In Woodbury

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Half Hill Farm began construction on a hemp testing and supercritical CO2 extraction lab today at their Woodbury location. The lab will be one of only a few such facilities across the state.

Hemp farmers and manufacturers will be able to send crop or product samples to the lab for required testing to ensure quality and state compliance. The expansion will also help integrate Half Hill Farm’s partnered indoor hemp grow operations with production of high quality supercritical CO2 extractions for food, beverage and supplement makers.

“Bringing this healing plant to the people and keeping the value of the crop close to home is important to us,” said co-owner Christian Grantham. “Tennessee is ready to lead in this growing industry, and we are proud to keep this investment in Woodbury.”

This year, more than 2,700 industrial hemp grower licenses were issued to farmers by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture. The state’s chapter of the Hemp Industries Association, the lobbying arm for farmers and industry stake holders, is now the largest in the country.

“Hemp is going to change our country,” said co-owner Vince Oropesa. “What I see it do for our customers will make a believer out of anyone.”

Since many customers use CBD products for personal health reasons, Half Hill Farm created partnerships to monitor the entire growing process from seed to flower harvest. The new lab will take those select buds and prep them for sale or extract them into oils.

“Our commitment to health and wellness runs deeper than the buzz of hemp,” said co-owner Scot Smotherman who is leading the farm’s hemp growth. “Being involved in the entire growing process all the way to extraction is critical to controlling quality.”

Half Hill Farm was the first certified organic farm to grow hemp in Tennessee. They are a licensed industrial hemp grower and processor and permitted manufacturer making CBD hemp products in an FDA registered facility under Good Manufacturing Practices. The farm got its start making mushroom extracts that are used across the country by cancer patients as adjunct therapies in consultation with a doctor.

Half Hill Farm recently opened two new health and wellness stores operating as the Wellness Emporium in Bell Buckle and Woodbury with plans to open two more this Spring. Their beverage and tonic manufacturing expansion late last year now has their products in 15 stores in Middle Tennessee with plans to expand for distribution later this year.

In addition to their popular functional beverages, mushroom extracts and apple cider vinegar tonics, Half Hill Farm also makes quality CBD hemp oil extract blends in 500mg, 1000mg, and 2500mg formulas and a 1000mg full spectrum CBD hemp topical salve.

The new hemp testing and extraction lab will be operational in the Summer. You can follow Half Hill Farm’s progress on FaceBook.

Please consult your doctor before taking any of our products for health reasons. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Organic grow plan for licensed industrial hemp farms

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Today, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture began mailing out over 2,700 industrial hemp grower licenses for the 2019 grow season. If the record number is any indication, it could be the start of something big in Tennessee.

We are already getting lots of calls from farmers looking for buyers of flower and biomass. One of the requirements many buyers, including our business, will want is organically grown with no evidence of pesticides or other banned inputs in organically grown hemp.

One mistaken use or exposure to a banned input could render all your hard work unusable for certain buyers or the consumer, so we created a working draft of an Organic Grow Plan for licensed industrial hemp growers that outlines a few relevant National Organic Program standards used to certify a crop as organic by the USDA. It is not a full exhaustive plan and are not requirements, but it can be a great guidance to ensure quality and get you on your way to certifying your hemp as organic.

Half Hill Farm was the first certified organic farm to grow industrial hemp in Tennessee. We are a licensed grower, processor and permitted manufacturer that makes quality CBD hemp oils and other products. We are currently partnered with an indoor grow and building a CO2 extraction and testing lab at our Woodbury, TN facility. We are one of many retailers and manufacturers who will want quality Tennessee grown flower and biomass for our stores and products and hope this document can help ensure your product passes quality testing.

Collaboration: If you are a certified organic grower of hemp, or use organic practices you feel need to be added to this document, please leave a comment with the addition or contact us directly. If you have favorite organic products you use that you’d like shared, or have questions, add them in comments. We’ll edit changes into the document. We want this document to be open sourced and available to everyone. If you are one of the many new hemp growers in Tennessee, congratulations and we hope the very best for your farm’s new direction!

Stories of healing: how CBD hemp oil has changed lives in Tennessee

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In the time since industrial hemp was legalized in Tennessee, over 1,000 Tennesseans have died from opioid use. The problem is so bad all over the country that it has been declared a national emergency by the federal government.

Some politicians funded by pharmaceutical contributions – like Tennessee’s Rep. Marsha Blackburn – have made the problem worse by removing the DEA’s authority to stop the flow of opioids into our communities. Now that the public knows which politicians are getting paid to keep the pills flowing, these same politicians are misusing state agencies as cover to focus the public’s attention instead on the purported dangers of hemp.

While some politicians use our tax dollars on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to convince us God’s creation is the problem, the fact remains that there have been zero deaths from the use of CBD extracts from industrial hemp in Tennessee. You can thank God for that, but there is something else you can do to protect our access to this natural gift.

Help us share stories of healing: We’ve seen veterans, farmers, pastors, police officers, teachers, family and people of all walks of life find healing using CBD. How has CBD affected your health? Please share your story here in comments and give a voice to hope and healing across the state of Tennessee!

Half Hill Farm’s full spectrum extract CBD hemp oil

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Our farm has witnessed first hand from customers the healing power of cannabis. We’ve seen veterans get off years of pain pills. We’ve seen parents buried under a decade of opiod management come off their drugs and wake up to a family at home. We’ve seen people come off powerful anti-inflammatory drugs. We’ve seen people with fibromyalgia or other chronic pain finally find the relief they’ve been seeking all their life.

We’ve seen lives changed forever using CBD as an alternative natural remedy, and we believe we are seeing the beginning of a revolution in health care.

At the same time, we’ve seen elected officials foment confusion over legal use of industrial hemp and politicians intentionally create a policy driven national emergency that kills three Tennesseans a day - all to keep their opioid and private prison industry patrons fat and happy.

Making and bringing healing hemp products to market has always been on the horizon for our farm. Half Hill Farm was the first certified organic grower of industrial hemp in the state of Tennessee. We helped change state law to bring the promising health benefits of CBD to the people. We are now on the manufacturing side proudly producing quality CBD hemp oil extract blends in 500mg and 1,000mg formulas.

Half Hill Farm uses organically grown domestic industrial hemp from Kentucky that goes through CO2 extraction and then is formulated and blended in our FDA registered facility in Woodbury, Tennessee. We do not sell private labeled product. Our CBD hemp oil products contain up to 0.3% THC. Each batch is tested by third-party independent labs to ensure quality and compliance.

Want to retail our products in your store? Sign up for a wholesale account here. You can purchase our farm’s CBD Hemp Oil and other CBD products through our online store or at Wellness Emporium of Woodbury, TN (110 W High Street. Woodbury, TN 37190) or the Wellness Emporium of Bell Buckle, TN (13 Webb Rd. E, Bell Buckle, TN 37020).

Please consult your doctor before taking any of our products for health reasons. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Half Hill Farm restocks CBD hemp oil in Woodbury

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Half Hill Farm is now restocking our CBD hemp oil products following clarity provided  by Circuit Court Judge Royce Taylor (TN Judicial District 16). The judge acknowledged in his order of injunctive relief that hemp-derived CBD products are legal under state law. Half Hill Farm removed CBD products with an abundance of caution until we could understand whether the court intended to uphold or challenge state law.

Yesterday, Judge Taylor provided injunctive relief to business owners arrested in Operation Candy Crush ordering the return of keys and cash registers seized in raids. He also placed the burden of proof on District Attorney Jennings Jones to prove the store owners knowingly sold “marijuana,” as the indictments claim.

Judge Taylor, citing Tennessee Public Chapter 369, said the state must prove that the CBD products sold by those arrested and seized by law enforcement came from marijuana and not industrial hemp which is legal in Tennessee.

The 2017 law passed unanimously by the legislature defines industrial hemp as including “any industrial hemp-derived products that do not contain more than three-tenths of one percent (0.3%) of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in a topical or indigestible consumer product” (TCA 43-26-102(4)(B)). Industrial hemp also includes viable and non-viable plant, plant parts, or whole plant extracts with the same THC limits and additional restrictions if the source is growers and processors licensed by the state (TCA 43-26-102(4)(A)).

State law also explicitly removes industrial hemp (non-viable industrial hemp OR products made from non-viable industrial hemp from a licensed grower or processor) from state marijuana criminal codes (TCA 39-17-415). Despite some irresponsible television and print reports citing poorly written press releases, it is legal for consumers to purchase, consume and possess industrial hemp products without a prescription.

Half Hill Farm was part of the state hemp pilot program. We wanted to create extracts but could not plant the seed we wanted or sell the product to consumers. Recent changes in state law and Department of Agriculture rules fixed both those problems (allowing high CBD variety seed and legalizing any industrial hemp derived products) and created a market for legal, safe industrial hemp products. The legal distinction in state law between marijuana and industrial hemp creates a market for state grower and processor hemp products and for retailers to offer those products with competitive choices. Without these protections the state’s hemp pilot program would likely fail.

Here is a picture of the 2017 law beside a picture of our product’s certificate of analysis. You can view these documents in our stores.

You can purchase our CBD Hemp Oil products at our store in Woodbury (Half Hill Farm – 1424 John Bragg HWY Woodbury, TN 37190) and in Bell Buckle (Wellness Emporium – 13 Webb Rd E Bell Buckle, TN 37020). You can also view full lab reports for each purchase.

UPDATE 02-28-18: District Attorney Jennings Jones has dropped all charges against store owners. If you are a district attorney in Tennessee and have law enforcement or politicians coming to you with this issue, take note and don’t make costly mistakes like this.

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Confusion over state hemp law leads judge to arrest business owners

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We don’t want to go to jail or have our business shut down for helping people, but that is the situation we now face here in Tennessee.

This past week, 21 business owners were arrested in neighboring Rutherford County after Rutherford County District Attorney General Jennings Jones secured indictments from Circuit Court Judge Royce Taylor citing a 2015 law that limited sales and possession of CBD. The problem, as Tennessee Hemp Industries Association President Joe Kirkpatrick points out, is that the law was updated in May 2017 unanimously by the Tennessee State Legislature and signed by Governor Haslam (Tennessee Public Chapter 369). That mistake could have caused harm to those doing it legally.

The definition of “industrial hemp” is a clear exception to the definition of marijuana under both state law and the 2014 Farm Bill, which created the industrial hemp pilot program. The TNHIA does not take a position on marijuana legislation, only on hemp legislation. If the products in question are “industrial hemp” derived, the TNHIA takes grave exception to the actions of Rutherford County law enforcement.

Unless the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department and the Murfreesboro, Smyrna, and LaVergne municipal law enforcement investigators can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the CBD products were derived from a “marijuana” source rather than an “industrial hemp” source, they are in clear contravention of the law allowing the growth, processing, blending, and marketing of such products, and the victims of this action should be entitled to petition for any economic and/or punitive damages applicable under the law.

- Joe Kirkpatrick, President Tennessee Hemp Industries Association

The new 2017 law removes industrial hemp and any dirivatives with .3% or less THC from the state’s marijuana criminal code and allows for legal possession without a doctor’s prescription as long as the product is clearly labeled and sourced to a licensed grower or producer. Judge Jones relied on an older version of the law requiring stricter rules.

We have seen first hand what this amazing plant can do for veterans and for families helplessly caught in a policy-driven opioid crisis that has our country in a state of declared national emergency. It is unfortunate that the lawful good we can do is declared criminal by a Rutherford County District Attorney while those fomenting this national opioid crisis continue to profit on addiction and death.

Despite our confidence in state law and the products we carried that helped many customers from all walks of life, one DA and a circuit judge has undermined that confidence for us and an entire industry. We hope more clarity and education about the law does result from this. Due to the confusion and actions taken against other businesses, we have removed CBD products from our Woodbury store until we receive clarity from the 16th Judicial District of Tennessee on state industrial hemp laws. You can purchase our TN Public Chapter 369 compliant CBD products at the Wellness Emporium of Bell Buckle, TN.

UPDATE 02-17-2018: We’ve now restocked our Woodbury store with our CBD hemp oil products following clarity from the court.

UPDATE 02-28-2018: District Attorney Jennings Jones has dropped all charges against store owners. If you are a district attorney in Tennessee and have law enforcement or politicians coming to you with this issue, take note and don’t make costly mistakes like this.