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Doug Fine: American Hemp Farmer - A Book Excerpt - Hemp a Versatile Superfood (Hemp Pesto Recipe)

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Doug Fine: American Hemp Farmer

– A Book Excerpt –


Suburbanite turned hemp farmer and regenerative living expert
Recounts a production of hempseed oil
Following the footsteps of shamans of the past
To process a harvest of hemp for use


Fine Continues Speaking Engagements
Which Have Included SXSW, NoCo Hemp Expo
(Eight Consecutive Years),
Acres USA Ego-Ag Conference
(with Address Broadcasting on C-SPAN),
Hawaii Farmers Union Conference, Southern Hemp Expo,
And Montana State Hemp and Cannabis Festival


Global Journalist and Author of Six Books
Continues Hemp Cultivation at His Homestead in New Mexico
As Well as The Rosebud Sioux Tribal Land
And George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate.


Fine’s American Hemp Farmer TV Show in Production
With Dr Bronner’s, Top Selling Brand of Soaps, As Opening Sponsor


Regeneratively grown hemp plants are highly efficient in carbon sequestration, which is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide (one of the most commonly produced greenhouse gases) and can help mitigate global climate change. Growing hemp outdoors helps build soil, and a growing body of research suggests that each cubic inch of topsoil we restore of the world’s farmland sequesters up to three billion tons of carbon annually. And what about the small farmer? For every acre of hemp planted, 1.6 tons of C02 is captured according to the National Industrial Hemp Council, Hemp can be refined into many materials including paper, auto parts, rope, clothing, biodegradable plastic, and biofuel. Its seeds are also edible and considered superfoods (foods that offers high levels of desirable nutrients, linked to health and wellness). Hemp seeds are an excellent source of protein, contain all nine essential amino acids, and are high in omega-3 and omega-6 (essential fatty acids).


If you are not growing your own hemp plants, you can buy roasted whole hemp seeds, hempseed oil, or hemp hearts at your local grocery store and add them to your diet. Fine suggests seeking out both organic and locally sourced products.


Doug Fine’s polyculture farming – hemp and basil


Here is Doug Fine’s recipe for his Hemp Pesto which was inspired by his own polyculture farm which including growing hemp and basil plants side-by-side (as shown in Doug’s picture here).


Doug Fine’s Hemp Pesto Recipe:

  • 1 cup organic hemp hearts
  • 3 cloves organic roasted garlic
  • 5 cups freshly harvested basil leaves, mashed in a pestle with the garlic
  • 1 cup organic olive oil
Mix or blend all ingredients, and add to pasta of choice. Garnish with one cup organic parmesan cheese. Makes about two cups, pesto enough for a pound of pasta (feeds 4-6).  


Doug Fine is available for interview.

Fine explores hemp and its many benefits for regenerative living including: ..
  • Hemp is a soil building crop (much of the world’s farmland is stressed or damaged by herbicides and pesticides but can be remediated)
  •   ..
  • Hemp is a carbon sequestering plant, which is vital to help mitigate climate change
  •   ..
  • Hemp seeds and hemp seed oil is a superfood
  •   ..
  • The plant’s strong fibers are used in construction, to manufacture clothing and to replace petroleum-free-plastics in industrial items such as car parts
  •   ..
  • Being outside in a farm or garden is the most fun you can have outside the bedroom


  Doug Fine is the author of six books including American Hemp Farmer (2020, Chelsea Green Publishing) and the Boston Globe Bestseller, Farewell, My Subaru. His writings and expertise have led to media appearances (Conan, The Tonight Show, BBC, CNN) as well as a TED Talk (TEDxABQ) and testimony before the United Nations regarding international drug policies. He has raised goats and cultivated superfoods (including hemp since its 2018 legalization) for more than a decade and taught his methods of cultivation and seed building at Vermont’s Sterling College and online at DougFine.com.


Most recently, Doug has cultivated hemp for food, farm-to-table products and seed-building in six U.S. states. His own hemp seeds have been used to clean contaminated soil in a New Mexico University study. Fine further spreads the word about culture and climate change with his award-winning journalism, which includes contributing to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and being a long-time correspondent for National Public Radio from five continents. In the past year, he has spoken at SXSW’s Climate Change Track, NoCo Expo, and Southern Hemp Expo. This month, he returns to the Montana State Hemp and Cannabis Festival.


Fine, who notes that “being outside in a farm or garden is the most fun you can have outside the bedroom,” has also launched his on-line course, “Hemp Gardening: Growing Food Security and Fighting Climate Change.” The comprehensive, self-paced, Acres USA program takes aspiring hemp farmers through the entire soil-to-product process, from seed acquisition to market. For more information or to register for the course, here.


None of us would be here today, he says, if not for the regenerative lifestyle-and it’s only recently that humanity stopped living that way. So Fine hopes that we can reactivate that “instinctive regenerative awareness” and start working together to save the planet. Experienced, grounded, and a keen wit, Fine is the perfect person to shepherd us through the conversion.


Now in production and seeking distribution, his American Hemp Farmer television series, which is based on Fine’s best-selling sixth book of the same name, secured its opening sponsorship with Dr. Bronner’s, a top selling brand of soaps. As with the book, the series will see Fine—a former suburbanite—sharing his hard-won regenerative hemp farming expertise, which he admits is rooted in trial and error.


“We don’t all have to become farmers. This time, farmers can lead the way while everybody supports them through lifestyle tweaks. Buying their locally-sourced products, getting our produce from community-supported food co-ops or farmer’s markets, or even working in community gardens are all valuable contributions.”


As the American Hemp Farmer series moves closer to greenlight, Doug Fine is available for interviews and further speaking engagements in 2022. A website of Fine’s print and radio work, United Nations testimony, television appearances and TED Talk is at dougfine.com. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @organiccowboy.


Doug Fine’s “American Hemp Farmer” Sizzle Reel (2:47)
TV Series in development and available for distribution.
 


 


book cover – American Hemp Farmer


An excerpt from Doug Fine’s book, American Hemp Farmer

Following in the footsteps of shamans of the past,

Fine processes a harvest of hemp


   My first question when embarking on any stage of the hemp process is, “What has always worked?” Another way of asking this is, “What would the shaman do?”


Among the supplies Colin, Erin, and I toted into that frozen commercial kitchen were 27 gallons of hempseed oil, in six 4.5-gallon “jibs.” My Hemp in Hemp eixir being both a seed and a flower product, we had a multistep process in front of us prior to bottling. First prepare the seed oil, then infuse the flower in it. One hundred eighty minutes at 130 degrees, just like the shaman did it.


The procedure is so tried and true, so ancient (even being alluded to in biblical priestly anointing-oil passages), that I wonder if the term processing, given its association with slices of prepared cheeselike product, is apt. It just doesn’t feel true to the “double, double toil and trouble” life that we lived for those shivery 48 hours in that 2019 blizzard.


 

In the kitchen processing hemp for oil.
   

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