Hemp

This past week I got the opportunity to go with the Mesa Verde Gardeners group on a tour of a brand new local hemp growing facility.  Colorado has had legalized recreational and medicinal marijuana for a number of years now, and the hope is that a hemp growing industry will start to take hold in our state, too.

There are 2 ways to grow the hemp.  The first is called agricultural which is for the fiber, where the plants are planted close together so that they grow very tall with long fibers in the stems.  The second is called industrial hemp, which is used for medicinal hemp oil.  These plants are planted widely spaced so that the maximum numbers of flower buds can be harvested from each plant.  These dried buds then go through an extraction process to distill out the oil.  Acres of these plants have to be harvested to get a relatively small amount of oil, and that is why it is so expensive.  The healing compound in industrial hemp is CBD, or cannabidial.  It is not hallucinogenic. 

So getting back to the hemp operation, this facility clones plants to ship out to hemp farmers, who then plant these very small plants in their fields.  The facility has tens of thousands of cuttings in tiny pots on racks under plastic domes to keep the moisture in.  These clones are carefully tended with the right amount of organic fertilizer, light and ideal temperature until they are ready to ship out. 

It took me a while to get exactly what the cloning process was.  I was imaging some sort of weird genetic science taking place in a laboratory in a secret back room of the facility!  Not so.  It simply means that cuttings are taken from the ends of the branches of the mother plants, and then inserted into the dirt in the tiny pots.   

There were 2 other rooms where the mother plants were grown, with about 50 of them in each climate controlled room.  They were all at least 6 feet tall, and when I asked how old they were, I was astounded to learn that they had just been planted the previous November, so about 7 months old.  Hemp does fall into the “weed” category, and it grows very fast and aggressively, especially when all of its nutritional and climate requirements are met. 

Our group first entered the room where most of the clones were being grown.  Energetically, it felt like I was in a huge stadium of kindergartners with all of them talking and yelling out at once.  Wow!  It was a very energetically loud space.  The rooms with the mother plants were calmer, but with a more solid and somewhat aggressive energy.

It is interesting that all of these hemp plants came from a single genetic strain, so they are all genetically identical.  I would naturally assume that I would be dealing with a big group plant consciousness with a single voice, not the many thousands that were in that building.  Additionally, all of these plants were female!  This is because the female flowers are what is used to extract the CBD. 

Now, here is a weird science twist.  The owners of this facility want to start producing seed, since at this point, it is illegal to import hemp seeds into the state.  Hemp seeds and marijuana seeds are indistinguishable, hence the ban on the imports.  To produce seeds, the female flower must be fertilized with pollen from a male hemp plant.  But there are no males!  One of the owners told me that they can create male plants from female ones by applying colloidal silver to the growth nodes on the mother plants.  I wonder what the spirit of the hemp plant thinks about that?   

As I tune into the spirit of hemp now several days later, I am still astounded by the energy, strength and vitality of this plant.  No wonder its healing powers via the CBD are so strong as well.  If any of you are taking hemp oil for health reasons, I encourage you to tune into and communicate with the spirit of this plant.  It is my sense that if a dialog can take place, a communion and mutual respect will be the result, and your healing will be much more powerful.