Farmworkers strip flowers from dried hemp at Hepworth Farms in Milton. The flowers contain the highest concentration of CBD oil. Farmers throughout the Hudson Valley are harvesting the region’s first sizeable crop of CBD hemp. [JUDY RIFE/TIMES HERALD-RECORD] Hide caption Times Herald-Record MILTON — The hoop houses that stretch […]

As soon as the prickly, sticky, plants are properly dried – they can mold only too readily – they’ll be removed and stored for further processing and sale. And the hoop houses will be filled again, and again.

Hemp’s oil, high in antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, is being being used in an explosive number of new food, body and health care products that claim to provide stress and pain relief. Unlike its psychoactive cousin, marijuana, the plant only contains a trace of the tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, that causes a high.

A labor-intensive crop

The crop has proved to be as labor-intensive as predicted, although local farmers admit they were surprised at just how “labor intensive” came to be defined at harvest time.

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