Hello a tous,
Has anyone experimented with wrapping bundles of fresh hemp biomass for later extraction?
I find myself with a large quantity of fresh biomass on plant that is starting to mildew in places, the majority of the crop is healthy, I urgently need to harvest and preserve at least the assets,
What do you think of ensiling and wrapping the biomass, and extracting it once the workload has been reduced?
Hoping for help!
Thank you
dont do it
Why?
Silage preserves cannabinoids, doesn’t it?
I could at least extract the isolated acidic or neutral cannabinoids!
saw this a ton in the early days of hemp; it will rot in the bale and be terrible to extract
There was a local spot that did this and the bales just sat rotting on the side of the road for a couple of years. Cost a few farmers a lot of money
cut and windrow it, let air dry a couple days, then wrap if possible weather permitting. Agreed - wrapping fully wet bails is a mess and will require alot of clean up.
The weather is not looking good…
Otherwise, I have the option of ensiling and freezing with dry ice…
Harvesting and drying is the hardest part of trying to farm hemp by the field. I was lucky to have a big barn already, and the other thing that helped is the weather changing in the fall, which makes the air dryer. It would probably mold if hung up in the humid summer.
If you cant access an existing structure in which to hang your plants to dry, you might consider a temporary one. A circus tent with a lot of electricity available to run heaters, fans, and dehumidifiers would do the job.
Have you dug around here? It’s come up more than once.
Yet to see anyone actually claim it was a win.
Eg: Wet Baled
The scale is huge, we estimate 400T fresh, I’m thinking of crushing and freezing the whole thing,
Would any extractors in Europe be interested in processing the freshly frozen plant?
Write to me in DM,
Freezing it isn’t really ideal either…because then you have to pay to KEEP it frozen until you can get it all processed.
I’ve seen groups that ended up paying more than their harvest was worth to achieve that…
I find it mind boggling how many folks get all the way to harvest and then start looking at the problem.
It’s an opportunity I’ve been offered, rather than my harvest, otherwise I’d have planned and organized it
By what method do you plan to extract?
On a few occasions I have received “fresh frozen” material that is usually a headache. the only reason it was frozen was because they didn’t have anywhere to put it. Imo this technique should more so be used for quality material or certain types of extraction. I like ethanol so for many reasons I find it counterproductive and less effective than drying your material.
Although I’ve never encountered a milled fresh frozen, there is definitely a wrong way and correct way to freeze your material.
you don’t find it ridiculous that said opportunity exists?
I totally get that looking the client straight in the eye and asking “what the fuck were you thinking?” isn’t always the right approach…but if you don’t make it clear just how far they missed by, they won’t truly appreciate your work when you manage to salvage some portion of their harvest.
As I said, wet baling has been explored here. Pretty sure there are even folks who reckon they can (have) made it work (hexane extraction?) who have contributed.
However, the general consensus is “fuck no!” from most extractors…so finding someone who has played this game and is willing to play it again is mission critical before committing imo.
Same for frozen biomass.
“No, I don’t want to store 400T of frozen material while I chew through it at 1T a day”…”I might consider it if YOU pay for storage” would certainly be my guess for most frequent response for frozen material. So sorting out an extraction partner (first) there also seems advisable.
exactly!
freezing biomass in a panic/as an afterthought seldom leads to freezing it correctly…and extracting incorrectly frozen material is not on my list of fun things to do.
Freezing or wet bailing both rule out (trivial) extraction with ethanol, which is arguably still the most common extraction solvent…
Freeze drying works…but finding 3rd party freeze drying for 400T seems unlikely given your timeline
I second this
I wouldn’t touch it, let it rot.
Someone else’s lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on your part.
Are there grain bins available? If available and have heated plenums and stirrers inside you could combine field, auger in bins and force air (heated if necessary) for a week then auger out and into whatevers next.
That gives me PTSD 
Not enough tent to even hold “just the cola’s”, entire area churned into 6” deep sticky mud by the frantic activity, and much of that electrickery delivered via extension cords under rated for the task with junctions in standing water/mud.
Actual circus tent would work much better that the makeshift “tenting” I saw.
Hoop houses can also be pulled into duty and presumably might prove useful at other times of year as well if one needed to justify the cost or acquisition
Location and scale are the biggest variables when deciding how to dry your hemp. We had a drying facility that dealt alot with wet bales and I would not recommend it.
If you’re growing in the Midwest or a high moisture environment you’re going to be harvesting with around 80-85% moisture content. The minute you chop the material you’re on a timer for heat being generated and the material heating up and rapidly degrading.
We had an IEC Thermo fluid bed dryer and it was a complete piece of shit. Terrible design for a resinous biomass and would catch on fire all the time. The belt fed dryers are the way to go but again, it comes down to throughput, harvesting capabilities, weather, distance, and time.
Obviously hang-drying is the most optimal but that limits your harvesting options and scale becomes an issue.
