In California’s countryside, there are many opportunities to travel to farms and experience the joy of picking your own flowers and fruits. This fall, Sonoma Hills Farm is adding a unique crop into the rotation: hemp.
The same plant as cannabis, defined as separate by its threshold of THC, hemp is making headlines these days due to a potential change in its definition that would result in a ban of many hemp products.
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An essential building block of early America, before all the recent noise, hemp was seen as a healthy food additive. And, after the U.S. legalized hemp under the 2018 Farm Bill, it allowed more access to the diverse composition of cannabinoids in the plant that extend beyond THC.
The upcoming u-pick hemp event at Sonoma Hills Farm is set for two days at the end of September and invites visitors to get onto the farm and cut down their own plant.
“Sonoma County has such a tremendous history of u-pick opportunities at various different types of agricultural farms; add in hemp to the mix,” Sonoma Hills Farm chief operating officer Joyce Cenali said. “I think this is going to be both a testament to the local spirit, but also something that drives a little bit of uniqueness.”
The Adventures of Hemp & Cannabis
When I heard about the concept of picking your own hemp, I immediately thought of the scene in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Tom convinces his friends that whitewashing the fence is not a chore, but a privilege. After all, with hemp and cannabis, the work that comes after the harvest—drying, curing, and trimming—is the hard part.
During the event, Sonoma Hills plans to have two cultivation experts on hand, Christina Wong and Penny Barthel, to provide instruction on the steps involved in post-processing to achieve smokable hemp flowers.
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Sonoma Hills is located in the Petaluma Gap appellation and was founded in 2017 as a cannabis and culinary enterprise. Since its founding, the farm has diversified its income through strategic partnerships with businesses across different industries.
Last month, I attended a lunch event celebrating 10 years of the fine dining restaurant Nightbird in San Francisco. The restaurant has a cocktail on its regular menu that’s made with infused hemp from the farm’s signature strain, Pink Jesus. At the anniversary event, bartenders wrapped a hemp flower in the lemon garnish of the cocktail, and select guests were offered branded Nightbird pre-rolls created by Sonoma Hills Farm. The farm has also created cannabis pre-rolls and gummies with Chris Consentino, a chef and reality TV personality who was one of four foodies crafting sandwiches at the anniversary celebration.
High & Dry
Sonoma Hills has been cultivating hemp since 2020 and also grows an assortment of vegetables and flowers. Aaron Keefer, the farm’s vice president of cannabis cultivation and production, explained that the hemp is dry-farmed, which means it is not irrigated and draws its water from what’s stored in the soil after the winter rains.
“It’s Goldridge soil, and it’s a really special sandy loam,” Keefer said. “It stretches from Sebastopol all the way through Petaluma, and it’s really beautiful, fertile soil with a lot of silica in it. But underneath is a limestone cap, and that’s what holds a lot of the water.”
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Cenalli explained that the dry-farmed hemp is oily and herbaceous, comparing the flowers to the rich flavor in dry-farmed tomatoes.
The hemp grown at Sonoma Hills includes Pineapple Kush, a silver medalist at this year’s California State Fair, and strains that are dominant in CBG and CBD.
“Some of these have interesting cannabinoids like CBG, but also really what you get is the chance to get something at the source and cure it and dry it at your own pace and really kind of skip the whole commercial processing of it,” Keefer said of the u-pick event. “We’re hoping to start a tradition that will carry on through the years, kind of like getting your own Christmas tree.”
The Abundance of the Harvest
The hemp event at Sonoma Hills Farm has been sanctioned by the county of Sonoma, which sends inspectors out to test the plants to make sure they aren’t “hot,” meaning they don’t contain over 0.3 percent of THC.
For Sonoma Hills Farm co-founder and chief executive officer Mike Harden, the event is an opportunity to show the similarities between hemp and cannabis.
“We started with just five or six hemp plants, just to sort of showcase that ‘Hey, look at these two plants and look how we define them,’” Harden said. “There’s really interesting discussions that are hyper-relevant right now as those rules get redefined.”
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But beyond politics, the enjoyment one finds in walking through a big field of flowering plants is undeniable. With the harvest event, this can now be experienced by the public at large, not just farmers and invited guests.
“There’s just a joy that you get from being around the plants and this sense of abundance,” Harden said.