Organic Farmer February / March 2020

Marty Bates pulls up used drip line and black plastic from a harvested hemp field.
Continued from Page 13
plastic, some don’t,” Marty said. He uses
the black plastic to retain soil moisture.
Normally, the Bates would work up
the hemp fields after harvest and plant
a cover crop. The plan was to plant
crimson clover. But because of the mud
Hemp processor at Bates Farm.
they can’t do it this year.
The rain causes other problems besides
mud. It also creates mold issues. “A lot
of people got mold,” Bates said about
the 2019 harvest season. Fortunately
for the Bates, their varieties – KLR
Farms #1 and #117 – are mold resistant.
They made it through October and
November mold free, but the weather
was cold and plants didn’t mature.
A week of freezing conditions down
into the 20s in October compounded
problems. “It just wasn’t gonna grow
after that.” Bates said. Still, they couldn’t
harvest it all at once, either. “Have to
chop it as the dryer is ready,” Marty
said. They harvested as fast as the dryer
could do its job, but towards the end
of harvest, still lost some of the plants
to mold.
Chopping and Drying
Marty and his family use the old dairy
equipment for the hemp. They harvest
with a corn chopper and load it onto the
dryer conveyor belt out of a feed wagon.
It travels up into a pre-dryer that warms
it up and gets it ready for the main
dryer, which finishes the process.
The propane dryer is a model from a
company out of Wisconsin. The original
design was meant to dry sand used as
cow bedding. The dryer can dry about
200 pounds of hemp an hour.
After the chopped hemp comes out of
the dryer, it’s kept under cover in silo
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Organic Farmer February/March 2020