A Day in the Life of a Botanist Who Grows Sustainable Organic Hemp
My name is Kimi Silva Roberson, I was born and raised in Ecuador. My family and I moved to Hendersonville, NC, where I have lived for 13 years. I have had the great pleasure of working for Kingdom Harvest and their organic farm in North Carolina for two years.
I have always had a big love and interest for all things nature. Growing up in a country with such diverse fauna, as well as a mother and grandmother with amazing green thumbs, only intensified that love as I grew older. My interest in natural medicine began pretty early on in life and is what led me to have such interest for hemp and its effects on the body.
A typical day at the farm can start off as early as 5 AM on days when I feed nutrients to our plants. Most days begin at 8 Am with a thorough look at all the plants, I check to ensure plants are healthy and are receiving the right amount of nutrients, and any issues are caught and treated in its early stages.
Harvesting natural hemp at our organic hemp farm
To begin the season we select the strains we will be growing for the year and start up the seeds that will become the "mother plants". Those plants are later cloned to ensure quality and consistency in our products. For this year I grew 4,000 clones that we planted into our field in the spring. This process requires daily watering and feeding of the plants, as well as checking to ensure all plants are females. Watching the plants change drastically throughout their flowering cycle is so rewarding, especially when they have reached full maturity and we can begin to harvest. Harvest time is a fun process that requires a lot of work so we take all the help from our entire team. We begin with pulling the mature plants from the field and we move them to our climate controlled shed where we give them a light trimming and then proceed to hang them for a few days in order to slowly remove moisture from the flower. Once they have reached optimal moisture levels we take them down and remove the flower from the stem and store in airtight containers to transport to our processing facilities to create the amazing products Kingdom Harvest has to offer.
Right now at Kingdom Harvest Farms it is harvest time! We are excited to finish this year strong and start up our mother plants for next year's grow.
Focusing on sustainability
If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting the farm, it is easy to see why we love working here. Nestled in the mountains, is it a peaceful, beautiful, history filled piece of land. Nothing tops taking a walk through the foggy hemp filled fields early in the morning. But ultimately the most rewarding part of my job is seeing the amazing benefits and relief our customers get from consuming the products made from the medicine I work so hard to grow throughout the year.
At our farm we choose to grow in an organic, sustainable manner that allows us to produce high quality products as well as taking care of our land and ultimately our planet. We refrain from using plastic on our field producing the least amount of waste throughout the entire process.
CBD extraction is achieved by mixing hemp with a liquid solvent that will hang on to the cannabinoids and terpenes. Kingdom Harvest's Whole Spectrum Hemp Extract is different from other carrier's CBD products because of its unique extraction process that allows us to extract every possible cannabinoid from our organically grown hemp, giving our customers fully loaded products that work in harmony with their body.
Maintaining hemp with innovative techniques
As a young grower, I am always looking for ways to improve my growing techniques and expanding my knowledge in all aspects of the growing hemp industry. When it comes to growing, I feel the best kinds of practices are those that result in the smallest impact on the Earth. Feeding the plants organically and treating pests, with beneficial insects and animals that