Anybody want to buy some cows?

[Lathum]

So it is more of a supplement?

[lungs]

Yeah, in order to keep on the good side of the FDA, it is labeled and sold as a dietary supplement with no claims of treating any diseases and all that. The only FDA approved CBD drug is Epidiolex. And it's only approved for a few pretty rare forms of epilepsy.

With the passing of the Farm Bill recently, Hemp has been taken off the Schedule I drug listing (no medical use, high chance of abuse). Hopefully that will get some research going as being Schedule I meant that research was either tough to impossible to conduct. I saw some promising stuff at some conferences in terms of research but it still falls into that 'need more data' stage.

[thesloppy]

Originally Posted by lungs

With the passing of the Farm Bill recently, Hemp has been taken off the Schedule I drug listing (no medical use, high chance of abuse). Hopefully that will get some research going as being Schedule I meant that research was either tough to impossible to conduct.

This point get lots on lost of critics and/or folks who aren't familiar with cannabis politics

Because marijuana was/is categorized as a Schedule 1 drug for so long (which is the most restrictive federal drug scheduling classification) doing research on cannabis was effectively illegal for most of American modern history. As such there is frustratingly little historical research, or long-term studies, on anything related to cannabis, CBD or otherwise.

[lungs]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

This point get lots on lost of critics and/or folks who aren't familiar with cannabis politics

Because marijuana was/is categorized as a Schedule 1 drug for so long (which is the most restrictive federal drug scheduling classification) doing research on cannabis was effectively illegal for most of American modern history. As such there is frustratingly little historical research, or long-term studies, on anything related to cannabis, CBD or otherwise.

Exactly.

And now I just found out FDAs approval of Epidiolex has a negative consequence. Facebook just shut down our page (along with a lot of other CBD business pages). Apparently they have a policy against advertising prescription drugs on their platform, and now that Epidiolex is approved they are shutting down all CBD business pages they find.

[Flasch186]

Can you post any kind of exception in your site? Something like not to be used in any prescription form or something stupid to get back up? Then appeal their rejection?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tarcone]

New St. Louis count prosecutor put out a new policy that they will not prosecute anyone with less than 100 grams of marijuana in their possession.

Legalization is coming. Then you can grow the good stuff.

[nilodor]

I thought CBD had to be combined with THC to be effective? Maybe it's a much smaller amount of THC than would get you high?

How do you handle aphids normally?

[thesloppy]

THC is psychoactive, and CBD is not only non-psychoactive, but actually counteracts some/most of those effects if used with THC in significant amounts. Folks who typically suffer from paranoia/anxiety when smoking high THC cannabis often get some relief from those symptoms by using strains with a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of THC to CBD.

Aphids that live on leaves/stems can be treated pretty effectively with natural pesticides like soap, peroxide, or predatory bugs/nematodes. Root aphids are another beast entirely, and folks tend to go more nuclear with some derivative of neem oil, and/or chemical pesticides, but the trick is that there aren't many solutions that are effective for root aphids which aren't questionable for human consumption and/or tested for by state regulations (I dunno if/how that applies particularly to CBD).

[lungs]

We won our second appeal with Facebook. Just need to take the buy now button off our page. No big deal.

Originally Posted by nilodor

I thought CBD had to be combined with THC to be effective? Maybe it's a much smaller amount of THC than would get you high?

How do you handle aphids normally?

There is evidence for an entourage effect with all cannabinoids (THC and CBD being the main ones) but no hard data that I've seen. People do take CBD Isolate (no other cannabinoids, just CBD). I think the general consensus among users is that a full spectrum of cannabinoids is best but some people can't do to drug testing or other reasons.

As a grower, if and when it is legalized, I want to explore a different ratios between CBD and THC in the plants themselves, as thesloppy was talking about. Plant breeders have selected for high THC over the years. Demand will dictate it but I believe cannabis would be more accessible to a larger audience if we weren't blowing their brains out with super high THC. Of course you could argue that making cannabis more accessible is not a good thing. I'll just disagree with that

[Lathum]

Do you have a website?

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Do you have a website?

Link

[Flasch186]

I'm taking CBD for the first time, for ADD and Anxiety and I can't tell if it's doing shit. 30mg a night.

[thesloppy]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

I'm taking CBD for the first time, for ADD and Anxiety and I can't tell if it's doing shit. 30mg a night.

This has generally been my experience with CBD as well. For whatever it's worth my doc tells me that it can be difficult for some folks to differentiate the effects in an instant, day-to-day, basis. Some folks don't notice the difference until they've been on it for a few weeks/months and realize they haven't repeated certain stress-related behaviors or indicators over time, rather than feeling an acute, noticeable difference in mood. My doc also noted that some folks seem to respond entirely differently to delivery methods, which can make it doubly difficult to determine if it's working for you, for some folks a tincture might be effective and a topical rub won't do anything, whereas some folks experience the opposite, and there's numerous delivery methods to account for.

....and then there's also probably plenty of folks for whom it just isn't effective at all. Good luck finding some relief!

[Drake]

Agree with thesloppy here. In a case like my wife's (seizures), we have a specific metric that we can track. Before CBD, she would have at least one seizure every day. Normal days were 4+. After CBD, that dropped to one every couple of weeks (or longer, depending on other environmental stressors).

Trying to track a more generalized set of symptoms would have been much more difficult.

I had the same experience with prescription medications a few years ago that you're having (Flasch). I developed a case of encephalitic meningitis, and as part of my recovery process, started having pretty severe panic attacks as my brain re-wired. My doctor put me on Effexor, which I took for a couple of years. I still had panic attacks and felt pretty anxious over stupid things, but they gradually diminished in frequency. I couldn't tell you if that was due to the Effexor or just my brain healing up, because I couldn't compare how I might have felt if I hadn't started taking the medication. (And Effexor isn't one of those meds you can just stop for a bit and see how you do. The withdrawal and brain zaps and shit are no bueno.)

ETA: My wife (who is also an RN), suggests that you might try a different dosing schedule. 30mg a night might be helping you sleep, but that isn't something you'd necessarily notice. Her recommendation is that you work with your doctor to design a dosing schedule specifically for your symptoms. Her schedule is 15 mg in the morning and 15 mg at night to cover the whole day. If you're not working with a doctor, you might try 5 or 10 mg in the morning and see how it affects you (balancing drowsiness and performance). You have to experiment with what works best for your body and your habits. And because she *is* an RN, she wants me to stress here that you should work with a doctor for optimal results.

[lungs]

Thanks for those good answers.

I'd echo both answers. Dosage is finding your own sweet spot. A friend was doing 30 mg/day and it was helping his sleep and aches but thought it was killing his appetite. So he went down to 15 mg/day and it's working better.

I definitely split my doses between morning and night. Some don't. Some divide it into three doses.

On another note, I've done my first extraction!


This is just a practice batch but I think I'm on the right track

[thesloppy]

Mmmm, lovely color! What kind of extraction are you doing? Is that all extract, or is there still some kind of solvent in there?

[lungs]

Ethanol. I've reduced it by half, so there is still quite a bit of ethanol in there. Kind of playing around with different kinds of filtration before I purge the rest. Coffee filters aren't catching some of the stuff that comes out of suspension while in the freezer (waxes I'm guessing?). So my vacuum filtration system will be coming soon. And I'm strongly hinting to the people funding this operation that I need a vacuum purge oven too

[thesloppy]

All the pro operations seem to use vacuum ovens, but it's certainly not something I ever screwed around with on my micro scale. My assumption is the intent is that the vacuum and heat purge out any lingering solvents over time, but are you also using it to decarb the extract....or are you specifically trying to avoid that?

[lungs]

I’m thinking decarb’ing the extract might be easier than decarb’ing the flower. With this batch I did the flower. I’m thinking I could use the vacuum oven por purge and decarb. I wouldn’t bother with the decarb if my extract was being dabbed or smoked somehow. But with most of my stuff being ingested, I’ll need a decarb at some point.

[claphamsa]

how much volume is that..and whats it worth?

[lungs]

Originally Posted by claphamsa

how much volume is that..and whats it worth?

Looks to be a little above a 12 oz mason jar's 12 oz line. But like I said up thread a little bit, it's still mostly suspended in ethanol, which I need to boil off.

Originally, I used 33 grams of flower. After boiling off the ethanol, I'd hope there would be 10-15% of that weight left. Just a very small batch, not worth much other than the practice I'm getting.

[claphamsa]

gotcha! neato

[PilotMan]

This must be the guy who hooked lungs up, so you know he's legit.

[lungs]

My spam bot works! JK

[JPhillips]

“...foreign markets for American dairy products have shrunk in response to tariffs that President Donald Trump placed on foreign steel and aluminum. Cheese shipments to China have fallen almost 65% ... and exports to Mexico are down more than 10%.” https://t.co/q4HjJ0HqKv

— Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) February 21, 2019

Looks like you licked the right time to get out.

[JPhillips]

Dammit. I can't get the edit to save.

Picked, not licked!

[lungs]

Just got done reading that article. Probably one of the most comprehensive and well written articles I've seen on this situation.

I definitely did get out just in time. People liquidating their assets this year will be losing a lot of value compared to what we got last year. Right now we are just waiting for the final appraisal and we will close on selling the land that the farm itself is on (my dad is keeping a good chunk of the rest of his land). We have to cross our fingers that the buyer doesn't back out at the last second. Once that is done, we are home free.

Had one of my former employees stop by looking for work again after my neighbor laid him off. Neighbor farm wasn't as big as me, but still milked about 300 cows. He's going to get down to 100-150 cows and lay off his help as a last ditch effort to stay afloat. It's not going to work. What I fear most, is that this guy is diagnosed bipolar and this will send him into a mental health tailspin.

A few months back, I helped pick another farmer friend of mine off the street as the ambulance and cops were ready to haul him away after he got piss wasted and punched a guy trying to get him home safely. I ended up getting him home and a few weeks ago was able to talk to him in a somewhat less inebriated state and he admitted that he was on a four-day bender when that incident occurred. Alcohol often becomes the escape for these folks.

It's depressing, no doubt. I just want to tell everybody to get away as fast as they can but farmers are stubborn. They like to think they can tough it out. But there's currently no end in sight to the economic woes.

[JPhillips]

I'm not sure what the situation is like in your area, but around my hometown there's no other work if you quit farming. All the factories left years ago, so the options are minimum wage customer service, welfare or moving, none of which are appealing to a third generation farmer used to hard work and self-management.

[lungs]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm not sure what the situation is like in your area, but around my hometown there's no other work if you quit farming. All the factories left years ago, so the options are minimum wage customer service, welfare or moving, none of which are appealing to a third generation farmer used to hard work and self-management.

I wouldn't say the job market is that dire around here. Truckers are in huge demand. Construction is still pretty steady around here. The guy that I saved a trip to jail figured he's going to milk cows a few more years and then go to work pouring concrete.

When I first decided to get out, I had several inquiries from companies in the dairy industry. One would've been a perfect fit for me. It was on the technology side and I had good experience with their tech and the job would've been helping other farmers implement their systems on farm. Couldn't have been a better fit. Until I looked at the salary. It might've been a decent job as I was coming right out of college but the fact of the matter is that I paid my milkers more money than this company was offering. Maybe I paid my milkers too much and that's why I'm out of business? I dunno. I didn't pursue the offer because I really have no desire to get back into an industry that is by all accounts, dying.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm not sure what the situation is like in your area, but around my hometown there's no other work if you quit farming. All the factories left years ago, so the options are minimum wage customer service, welfare or moving, none of which are appealing to a third generation farmer used to hard work and self-management.

The WI job market is on FIRE.
I cant speak to lungs specific area, but manufacturing jobs are plentiful and above average paid and cant find work.


My company reps for a company HQ'd in WI and they have 6 factories around the state. Lead times are at all time highs and they cant get them down because they cant find enough people to staff a 3rd shift (already running 16x7)

[lungs]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

The WI job market is on FIRE.
I cant speak to lungs specific area, but manufacturing jobs are plentiful and above average paid and cant find work.


My company reps for a company HQ'd in WI and they have 6 factories around the state. Lead times are at all time highs and they cant get them down because they cant find enough people to staff a 3rd shift (already running 16x7)

Pretty much Madison-Milwaukee and up the Fox Cities-Green Bay corridor you'd have to be pretty incompetent to not find work. Madison gets ripped on by the rest of the state for being some kind of midwestern communist Berkley clone, but has seen the most economic growth of anywhere in the state.

Another reason I found the FoxConn thing to be kind of stupid.... who is going to work there?

[CU Tiger]

My WI geography sucks but we have plants in:
Eagle, Waukesha, White Water, Berlin, Osh Kosh, Jefferson


and all need people.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

My WI geography sucks but we have plants in:
Eagle, Waukesha, White Water, Berlin, Osh Kosh, Jefferson


and all need people.

All are within range of either the Milwaukee/Madison corridor (I-94) or the Fox Valley corridor (I-41).

Moving here from ND (where the labor shortage is chronic even before oil booms are factored in) a couple years ago, I was surprised to see that the labor environment here was so similar, at least in the southern/eastern parts of the state. Unemployment at about 3%, entry-level jobs paying more like $11/hour than the federal/state minimum wage.

[lungs]

We just posted a job in Milwaukee County (not far from Waukesha, CU). Part-time and only $10.00/hour to run our store. We've already had 108 applicants in a few days. I guess people want to work in the cannabis industry? My sister's other business needs caregivers and can't find anybody.

[cuervo72]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viral-v...ok-2019-04-16/

[lungs]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viral-v...ok-2019-04-16/

That pretty well sums it up. Thing is, I don't think there has been nearly enough bleeding in the industry for things to turn around anytime soon. Milk prices are up somewhat, but costs have been going up this whole time. Problem is, farmers are a prideful bunch and like to think they will weather the storm. It's looking like we will be getting out of this in good shape, as planned. The farm my grandfather settled is now in the hands of a immigrant family from the Netherlands. We were so fortunate to have everything line up perfectly to get that sold. Others are finding that when they sell out that their facilities are not bringing nearly what they had them valued at on the open market. My folks are coming out of this pretty well intact and will be able to enjoy a comfortable retirement. It won't be that way for a lot of other people.

As for me, I'm going to be doing 3.3 acres of outdoor hemp this year. Should be around 1500 plants. Still hoping to get my indoor grow facility up this summer and start growing more of this:

[tarcone]

Man, you got out at the right time. Some Minny milk farmer was crying on social media. No way independent farmers can compete today. Its a sad thing, but nothing can change things,

[JPhillips]

I saw this in a story about the Ag Sec. telling small farmers they may all fail because in America the big get bigger and the small opt out.

Wisconsin, which touts itself as America's Dairyland on its license plates, has lost 551 dairy farms in 2019 after losing 638 in 2018 and 465 in 2017, according to data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

[lungs]

While I'm not a big Sonny Perdue fan, I don't think he is wrong. But it's not something people want to hear. I've maintained for a while that a small farm needs to add value to their product rather than sell it as a commodity where they will be buried by the large farms. Direct sales to consumers.

The problem is the masses like to talk a big game about supporting these business but the reality is far different. I know a lady (her husband is a distant relative) that's had a fairly successful CSA type organic vegetable business. Her sales have been steadily going down the past few years to the point where she's decided not to continue. It's not that the quality has gone down, but that organic has become a commodity too. There is no need to patronize these small organic farms where you can buy direct when you can just get it at the grocery store. Who cares that it is organic produce from South America? It's got the label and that's all that matters.

Small dairy farms going forward are going to require outside income to sustain what will become classified as a hobby. It's going to be a hell of an expensive hobby, too.

[Lathum]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc...mp/ncna1080586

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Lathum

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc...mp/ncna1080586

Dean's has not been a well run company. They thought they could put their milk in stores right next to store brand milk and charge $1 more per gallon when it's the same stuff. You can charge more for value added milk like organic but consumers seem to be smart enough to know that slapping a different label on the same stuff and charging more money. Especially when stores will use their store brand milk as a loss leader. Not many people in the dairy industry shedding tears for Dean's.

On a personal note, I'm pretty close to taking a job. I've enjoyed the independence of growing hemp and don't plan on quitting, but eventually the bills need to be paid. It can still be a decent side gig but I was once again caught in the commoditization of the industry where I'd have to have significant investment to compete. I grew more than our retail operation needs but not enough to support myself, essentially.

It goes to show that it's not what you know, but who you know. My college roommate works at a local engineering firm swamped with work. Despite having no experience in the field, it sounds pretty promising that I'll be able to get into a support role with the company. Not engineering anything, of course. Sounds like a nice, relatively low stress job with a solid company.

[lungs]

dola

Another funny little tidbit. The guy who bought our farm hasn't done a whole lot with it yet. Sounds like he's going to go the robotic/automation route of milking cows (probably a smart move) but has the issue of raising the $3 million it'll take to get that up and running. He asked my dad if he would like to be an investor. In a very nice way, my dad told him that if he was interested in investing in a dairy facility, he would have done it when he owned it.

[Edward64]

Saw the vino update and wondered how the MJ business is dong nowadays?

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Saw the vino update and wondered how the MJ business is dong nowadays?

I didn't grow this year. The United States grew 5x more hemp than there was for actual demand. 2018 was the year to make a killing on it, and if I learned anything from dairy farming it is that any time margins are good in commodities, they soon won't be. I'm glad I turned investors away. I'm glad I convinced my brother-in-law that we should take a wait-and-see approach to this industry before he sticks all kinds of money into it. Covid put an end to our physical store location, which was tenuous at best anyway. Internet sales always outpaced it and remained decent during the pandemic, so I'm just sitting back and collecting a percent of that each month as the work I put in is finished.

The legal MJ business I'm less in tune with but I think it's still fairly strong. Some of the big name companies people were investing in have been flops. More states will be legalizing I'm sure, if not an outright federal legalization is Dems win and have the intestinal fortitude to do something about it. Not much I'd recommend on the investing side though, maybe the MJ ETF if anything as I just wouldn't trust any individual companies in this industry.

As for me, I'm working on 5G rollout for one of the bigger carriers. Easy job. I get to stay home and look at pictures of antenna installations all day. It might be boring, but at this stage in my life, boring is a good thing. And it pays better than farming, minus the few years things were good.

[Warhammer]

My sister division at work jumped on the hemp train and saw much the same thing. Things were initially good. Then the market became flooded when more growers jumped in the market. The issue for them was all the suppliers that jumped in the market. As margins got thin, people were looking for lower cost providers and the market has largely dried up.

[Izulde]

Not to mention, it's already been dominated by large players the last couple years (many with massive scientific research teams and connections to Latin American drug cartels from my understanding). The small people and outfits trying to jump in were essentially hoping to get crumbs.

[thesloppy]

I think that all mirrors what's happening in the world of psychoactive cannabis & products as well. There was a glut of basically every related service & product, and as a result there is a massive buildup of supply & the returns for everything involved have done nothing but steadily decrease with time.

...though even with a dispensary seemingly every half-mile, the dispensary owners I've talked to have said that they think there is still room for more people & growth & plenty of profit to be made in that space, strictly selling product.

[lungs]

Since we did our own growing/processing I didn't really get too involved with the whole support side of the industry. From what I saw, you simply couldn't trust anybody. Grower/processor contracts weren't worth the paper they were written on. Processors refused to do splits (processor keeps product as payment) because they needed cash to help pay for the expensive equipment and keeping product from the farmer didn't work because the product wasn't worth anything. There is probably a pile of last year's crop that hasn't been processed.

My sister built a little CBD niche in the fitness community, and my parents sell it to fellow retirees in Arizona when they winter down there. My mom has gotten pretty good at making crude hash oil (something I never dreamed I'd teach my mother to make!), so that's been keeping her occupied during this pandemic.

It was a nice little diversion for me while I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I've now got some pretty nice equipment to grow...... tomatoes

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by lungs

Since we did our own growing/processing I didn't really get too involved with the whole support side of the industry. From what I saw, you simply couldn't trust anybody. Grower/processor contracts weren't worth the paper they were written on. Processors refused to do splits (processor keeps product as payment) because they needed cash to help pay for the expensive equipment and keeping product from the farmer didn't work because the product wasn't worth anything. There is probably a pile of last year's crop that hasn't been processed.

My sister built a little CBD niche in the fitness community, and my parents sell it to fellow retirees in Arizona when they winter down there. My mom has gotten pretty good at making crude hash oil (something I never dreamed I'd teach my mother to make!), so that's been keeping her occupied during this pandemic.

It was a nice little diversion for me while I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I've now got some pretty nice equipment to grow...... tomatoes

Thanks for the update.

Good luck on the tomatoes.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by lungs

The legal MJ business I'm less in tune with but I think it's still fairly strong. Some of the big name companies people were investing in have been flops. More states will be legalizing I'm sure, if not an outright federal legalization is Dems win and have the intestinal fortitude to do something about it. Not much I'd recommend on the investing side though, maybe the MJ ETF if anything as I just wouldn't trust any individual companies in this industry.

I still feel like it's only a matter of time once there's a power shift in Washington. I've been getting killed this year on MJ, but it's a long haul kind of investment, and while I could do better in the short term elsewhere, and am, it's something that I see as an eventual sure thing.