This week on the hemp podcast we saddle up and gallop out to Gordonville, Lancaster County, for Horse Progress Days, a two-day celebration of all things horsepower.
Nearly 40,000 people were in attendance July 5-6, mostly Amish and Mennonite farmers and families. The weather was hot, the air was thick with humidity and the sounds of horses whinnying.
What does Horse Progress have to with industrial hemp? Good question. Bear with me.
In one of the vendor tents there was a cluster of businesses that specialize in working with hemp.
Cameron Macintosh, hempcrete builder at Americhanvre, was there representing his company as well as the Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council.
He said the horse power farming communities know about hemp, but because of the volatile CBD market, hemp does not have the best reputation among the horsepower set.
“Many farmers in this community invested heavily in growing CBD back in 2018 and ’19,” he said, “and then suffered through the subsequent crash of that market in 2020 and 2021.”
So when you mention hemp in this community, that’s what they think of.
“That’s why we’re here,” he said, “to show the community that the fiber industrial side of the (hemp) plant has dramatically more promise, more opportunity for their community than CBD ever did.”
On this episode, we will talk to several of the hemp folks in attendance at the event, including Heidi Custer from Tuscarora Mills in Bedford, Pennsylvania, and Kelly and Jarrett Burke from KifCure, a hemp company based in Northern Illinois that’s developing regional infrastructure in the Great Plains.
