Hey there, my name is Chelsea Wallace and I’m the owner and creative director of Headland Homestead LLC. My husband, Patrick, functions as our farm’s operations manager.
Tell us a little bit about what makes your farm special: location, acres, processes, etc. Had you worked with cannabis or as a farmer prior?
Headland Homestead is located on just under 7 acres of private, secluded land on the Androscoggin river in Maine. The land was gifted to me by my mother, which was given to her by her mother. I have wanted to do something agricultural with the land for many years but it wasn’t until Patrick and I began tossing ideas around for a potential crop that we stumbled across the possibility of growing hemp.
Patrick has held farm positions before but has been working in custom home construction for 20 years, so when outlining the plans for getting a hemp farm up and running we knew that he was going to be leading the operations side of things, while I focused on the business side of the undertaking. This especially made sense considering that we had a one-year-old child at the time that we knew I was also going to be taking care of at home. The land was just an overgrown field, so we truly had to begin from scratch and build the farm from the ground up. In three years we have cleared the land, built a sturdy, long-lasting greenhouse, constructed a utility shed and a little home for our goats and chickens, and erected a 1,200 sq ft drying barn with a second story for storage and operations space.
Neither of us had worked in a cannabis related industry before this but we’ve certainly been able to put our perfectionism and attention to detail to good use as hemp farmers! Overall, hemp continually surprises us with its resiliency. We owe a considerable portion of that to Oregon CBD’s amazing work and stellar seeds. Whenever drought, pests, or freezing temperatures have threatened our hemp field, our confidence in the Oregon CBD genetics quickly calms our nerves and we simply focus on providing the most appropriate care for our plants.
This past growing season we tried out a pruning method midway through the summer and we were happy with the results, so we do look forward to putting this technique to good use in 2021 with potentially even more vigor. But besides this, we have found that our plants need very little from us other than weed mitigation and some watering during drought season. Overall, hemp truly has been a pleasure to tend and grow.
What does your farm produce? Do you have any products?
Headland Homestead’s primary focus is simply the highest quality flower that our plants produce each year, this being predominantly top colas. We put our new drying barn to good use this past year and dried everything we harvested on location. There is still a large percentage of our total crop that gets left in the field at the end of the growing season because we haven’t desired to spend the time and resources on harvesting plant mass for use in other products, such as biomass. Our dried, hand trimmed flower is made available for wholesale purchase (ordered by herbalists/makers and dispensaries), but the majority of our grade-A flower is retained for our line of value-added products.
We have been offering a no-frills, full-spectrum soothing CBDA salve in 1oz and 2oz recyclable glass jars for about a year now and have very gratefully received wonderful reviews from so many people who haven’t had any luck with other hemp salves. It never ever gets old hearing from a customer who has finally been able to feel relief from back pain or arthritic hands or whatever other aches and ailments they’ve been suffering from. We’ve faced plenty of challenges in the past two years, but these lovely reviews make all the hard work worth it! And it gives us motivation to add to our product line, with up and coming face serum, exfoliating soaps, packs of hemp cigarettes, and other items. We hand craft everything in small batches and hope that it always shows in the quality of what we offer.
What is your favorite aspect of family farming? Who participates?
This is such a great question to be able to answer! Farming as a family means that we can be together as much as possible. I know many households are struggling with a bit too much “togetherness” right now as COVID has forced many families to be confined to the house with remote learning and working. But as a family, we have always planned on securing a future for ourselves that provides lots of quality time together. My husband and I can both be fully involved in our daughter’s upbringing, we can all be there for each other’s emotional needs, it keeps us all communicating on a daily basis and flexible to the ever changing requirements of farming…so for us, farming as a family just suits us as individuals and as a family.
Are there days when one of us needs some time to work on our own hobbies and have some time alone? Uh, hi…an extreme introvert here who loves her independence and can be lazy as all heck, so of course! But growing hemp as a family farming endeavor is serving us well in the here and now. If it begins to be too much one day then we will cross that bridge when we come to it, but for now, each one of us enjoys our farming roles. We all do as much as we can, even our little one who never tires of helping us weed or keep the chickens company or bring us cups of water when we’re hard at work! Her love of being outdoors and working alongside us is just the motivation we need on long, tough days. We’ve also had considerable help from Pat’s brother, our parents, and the family we’ve chosen for ourselves: our closest friends, who always show up for us when farming throws its biggest challenges our way. We have been very fortunate in our family farm crew!
Any fun stories of struggles you’ve overcome on the farm?
We’ve had more struggles over the past two years than I could ever have imagined managing during the formation of a farm and small business: the passing of Pat’s father; I contracted Lyme disease; Pat fell 22’ from the top of the barn’s second story; and several other serious hurdles. But any struggles that could be perceived as “fun” take the form of farming challenges that didn’t go as planned, but ended up being great lessons!
For instance, Pat’s father being diagnosed with terminal cancer during the spring of our first growing year meant that we had to take the time for family, and our timeline for the entire season was thrown off. By the end of the summer we were faced with the sudden need to harvest hastily, but our drying barn was not even close to being finished. We had to roll with the punches and so we reached out to a local business for help with drying. Although we only intended to use their help and facility just for drying our hemp, they ended up teaching us all sorts of great methods of harvesting, trimming, bucking, drying, and storage. (Huge thanks to the guys of Right Coast!)
Looking back I wouldn’t say that the chaos was necessarily “fun,” but we made some great friends, awesome connections, and learned more than we ever would have doing everything on our own as originally planned. Overall, it wasn’t the season we had hoped for, but considering the struggles we had to overcome, we were so thankful for all that we did get to accomplish.
Do you have any advice for anyone entering the industry? Where do you think the industry is headed?
Be flexible and do your research! There will always be unforeseen challenges that spring up; some will be manageable with the application of strong will and perseverance, while others will require that you are equipped with the knowledge on how to solve something incredibly specific. It really can feel like you need to expect the unexpected at every turn. And by nature, I love having a clear plan and knowing what to expect, but I’ve learned that this sets myself up for emotional turmoil when something I hadn’t expected pops up and ruins my good intentions for a careful timeline. Learn from the disappointments and then leave them in the past. And have a good banking institution, accountant, and legal team on hand!
Further advice I’d like to mention is that total beginners (especially anyone who hasn’t farmed at all or even farmers who have no experience with hemp) may want to start small or, at the very least, know exactly what you’re getting into and have a harvesting, processing, and selling/marketing plan all put into place before ordering up those seeds! We know too many people who haven’t been able to fulfill their goals as hemp farmers because they got in too deep too quickly, and then mother nature or the market just hammered the final nail into their plan’s coffin.
Similarly, we’d like to advise most families, such as ourselves, that its best not to get into hemp farming as a get-rich-quick type of endeavor. Sure, you could get really lucky, especially if you have experience in the industry and/or already have agricultural infrastructure to work with. But we didn’t begin this journey because we thought it was going to be an easy, quick way to an impressive bank account. We are enjoying the learning process, the improvement of our strategies each year, and the natural growth within our product line over time. Please trust me when I say that Pat is still having to work as a building contractor and we still haven’t reached the financial freedom we hope to achieve one day. And that’s okay. We planned for that. Instant success would have been a blessing, but it wasn’t what we needed to achieve in order to continue on as hemp farmers.
Concerning where we think the industry is headed, we’d like to believe that it is destined for amazing growth and development. I think hemp still holds so much untapped potential and it's always very clear to us that there remains a large population of people that would greatly benefit from integrating a hemp-based product into their daily routines. But the stigma, stereotypes, and misinformation surrounding cannabis is still so overpowering at times. As growers and makers we are trying to get high quality products into as many first time users' hands as possible, but it isn’t always easy. And there is a ton of gross, ineffective products out there. It is frustrating and hurtful to the industry, but something that I think we will always have to work around.
We’re frequently having to regain the trust of individuals who haven’t had any success with using mass produced hemp/CBD topicals. These failed attempts to find physical relief, often for chronic pain, shrouds further explorations into other product lines with lots of doubt. It makes me really sad to think of so many people struggling with discomfort, anxiety, or sleep issues, fearful of giving a natural product a try, just because they have already invested money into a product that did nothing for them. So personally, I’d love to see the small scale, high quality, craft side of cannabis continue to grow and educate consumers. Placing focus on growing the healthiest plant possible to benefit the wellbeing of any individual who wants and/or needs access to a hemp product is the direction we will personally be influencing the industry to head in. And making such products accessible to all people will be the foundation of this mission.
And finally, if there are any people that you’d like to recognize from your farm or the industry in general that have helped get the company to where it is now?
Oh gosh, there are so many people that deserve thanks and recognition for their contributions to our journey! Pat’s late father, Donald Wallace Sr., was definitely one of my husband's first unwavering supporters. Pat’s brother, Donny Wallace Jr., is a saint, never ceasing to support us when times get tough and we have to call out for help. Chris Bauer, owner of Half Full Studios LLC and a providential connection we made through a neighbor, has seen us through some of our toughest challenges. Aside from Pat, myself, and our daughter, he has definitely contributed the most hands-on hours at the farm. Don’t know where we would be without him. John Winn is our 80 year old savior with a relentless work ethic and a tractor. Seemingly endless hours of mowing, stumping and tilling our field with us to reclaim the property to the beautiful riverside field he remembered from so many decades ago. Farming hemp has brought so many strangers into our field, all growing into wonderful friends and our farm family.
Absolutely have to thank the moms, Gail Wallace and Belinda Stewart, for their hot meals, loving support, and many hours of childcare. And then the farm crew who has made this journey fun and manageable would have to include Mike Fulton, Ryan McIntyre, Holland Corson, Izzi Michünas, Emily Galli, Robin Kerber, Ashley Pelton and her mother, Sheri Pelton, Melissa Keyser and her husband Matt, and the Pulsifer family. We love you all; thank you so much for showing us love with your time and energy.
Also, thank you to the dispensaries and shops who are carrying our products in their stores! We know it’s always a gamble buying new products from a new farm and business, and we greatly appreciate your trust. And finally, where would we be without Oregon CBD and the amazing little life forms that are their incredible seeds. We love our plants; therefore, we love you folks. Thank you, thank you.
