Love this blog! Thanks for putting yourself out there. I really appreciate the honest discussions you’ve presented. You are absolutely a leader in this industry. They maybe bigger but none of them are as thoughtful in the process as you. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
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Thanks! I will be doing this again next year, and may add in 10-15 acres of hemp which will be done in the same way, if I get a contract lined up in time.
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Oh, I got $100/lb for the for 300lbs (150lbs of 2 cultivars) for a trial run. I was initially told $90-95, but my separation of leaves went better and the visual quality was higher. My buyer is now paying for merit, about damn time… I am hoping to be 20% above average and get $120/lb. Fingers crossed, will update when I get the bulk offer.
I don’t think I uploaded my winnowing videos and pictures, I’ll have to do that. Crazy busy time of year. I hope to be completely done by Thanksgiving. Just me, my one employee, and my dad processing roughly 4500lbs for sale.
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Congratulations, @Farmer_Dan! You are worth your weight in gold to us! Keep up the good work and we are really looking forward to seeing more posts in your Conventional Field Production 2.0 thread!
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Here is winnowing in action. 2 of us can seperate about 1000lbs bud and trash leaf to 800lbs of bud and remaining attached leaf per day. Good enough for extraction and raising the oil yield per pound about 20%.
Winnowing TL 30sec.avi (5.2 MB)
3 grades from the winnowing:
Full view
Trash
To run again
Keepers
If my mids were trimmed, they’d look like this:
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Preliminary results show a refined oil yield of 91% THC, and a 3rd year of undetectable pesticides after refinement (less than 1 ppb). I’ll have a 150# average retail ready oil yield on 2 of 7 cultivars in about 2 weeks.
Shaping up to be my best year to date in every category.
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I think there is room for improvement.
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Congrats! Great Job!
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let me know if I can help in anyway!
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An outstanding harvest, Dan! And thank you for sharing so much information with everyone!
If there is any data on THC percentages from the buds themselves, as opposed to the refined oil, that would be very helpful for us to know. Thanks!
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Outstanding! This is what we’re trying to show our OCC accomplishes - visual quality of plants, along with increased levels of THC, CBD and terpenes. And of course, better resistance to threats.
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I’ll send you yield data when I get a break.
Now we are getting paid for quality, but nothing is segregated, so next year we should try a quality experiment.
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Depends on winter temperatures, of the farm. My first choice is annual rye as my standard. We also use inoculation clover as are secondary cover in fields that we fallow. Annual rye also makes for great walkways. Vetch is a weed most of the the places I have grown.
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Rarely hit even in the 20s and can go all winter without an actual freeze. At worst, maybe 20s for 2 weeks right before we start warming up. The blend is a winter cover formulation for the Willamette valley.
Vetch seems pretty easy to kill around these parts. The original pasture was dang near 50% vetch and it never came back on it’s own after plowing. Most of my weeds are thistles, nightshade, wild carrot, and a couple of grasses.
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I see that deficiencies in soil and nutrient programs can cause issues for guys.
Over the last two years in R&D Ive created a 4 step nutrient program with all products made with L-amino , fulvic and humic acids making each product bio available for immediate uptake. We really are using less growing more. But I created each product to be fully backed. So Cal/ Mag is in my Bloom product for later stages .
Its called Posidean 4-8-7 it has Cal/ Mag/ Kelp and organic sugars. Makes a complete homerun for bloom. Its Powdered formula thats highly micronized. We had a organic Bio Tech Lab in NJ and we make formulas specific . WE guarantee success if you follow our entire program. Obviously I can only do this with jobs that I can help oversee a tiny bit. Water Management is my biggest fear.
We feed our products into COCO. I also source bulk OMRI COCO COIR.
Contact me If ever needed. This I feel has given success to the original conventional production.
If your a super soil fan. My microbial formulas will help speed up digestion creating more oxygen for more roots and overall metabolic growth.
Using super soil medium we are producing roughly 2 lb per light using 1000 watt gavita . I can pass this along to those interested. Air movement, water management and light are what is most important. IPM as you Guy know .
Effective nutrient program and using a coco substrate will reduce overall labor and will help cut cost . Just my opinion from the grows I’ve been around . NOT FACTS
Ralph T. Henninger
Founder
Royal Knight AG
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Thistle is my favorite place to find Orius spp. I like Orius minutes the best of all the Orius as a great predator insect. One bites you and you know it. Collect them from the flowers. I think I did a post about them a long time ago.
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Dan, no problem on getting me data when you can.
Your quality was better this year than last - both visually and in levels of active compounds, so that’s great!
Just curious to compare what harvest looked like last year, as well as what levels were at.
Thanks for sharing when you’re able to!
Glenn
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I finally feel like a successful farmer, so I am going to go ahead and move into the overalls stage of my life, I earned it.
3847lbs and a place to sell it all. God bless Cura!
Definitely room for improvement. I reckon I lost 500lbs due to pathogenic fungus that I believe was brought on by russet mites as a vector. Anyhow, Cosavet, buy it, use it. Totally safe from a testing standpoint, my last application was 1 month prior to harvest. I intend to preventatively spray Cosavet and increase post harvest efficiency and thereby reduce losss. I also plan to make some changes next year and see what happens. It isn’t like there is a book on this stuff, maybe I should write one. 
I’m down to intense property cleaning to make a good impression for our bank inspection for our full fledged cannabis account, complete with outrageous fees and intensive transaction reporting to FinCEN.
I reckon it is time to start Conventional Field Production 2.0.
Next year’s goal, 40,000sqft of canopy, ~2500 plants, and 5000lbs ready for market.
Maybe even 10 acres of CBD hemp.
STAY TUNED!
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My goodness – what an awesome and informative thread as well as a testament to humility and hard work. Farmer_Dan, you are a inspiration to what can be done when the whining stops and hard work starts.
Such kudos and I hope this year is going even better.
JB
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