HENDERSON CO., KY (WFIE) -
We first told you about a hemp pilot project in Kentucky earlier this week. Now, we've caught up with a farmer who used to produce the plant 70 years ago.
"We grew it for seed, and someone else was supposed to plant it to make rope. It was very tough, I know you couldn't pull a strand off of it," said former hemp farmer, Harold Allen. "You couldn't break it, it would cut your finger. There was a steam engine and a separator would come around and thrash it. We had to cut it and feed it into it."
Farming has been a passion and business of the Allen family for a very long time.
"We've had four generations of farmers in our family. My grandfather, my father, me and now my son just graduated from UK with a major in agriculture and now he's farming," said Mark Allen, Harold's son.
Harold, a farmer in Kentucky who used to produce hemp back in the 1940's, shared his reaction to it possibly becoming a big thing again in Kentucky.
"When we were growing it we heard that people were smoking it. From what I understand from growing it, it doesn't have that same effect," said Harold.
"The Philippines is where they got the material for the rope," said Mark. "But since the Japanese were getting ready to over run them they had to have a source for the rope."
Perhaps the biggest misnomer about hemp is that it isn't the same as pot. In fact, its quite different.
"The THC content, which is what people get high on, is very low or none. Actually you wouldn't really get high, people might try it but they're not going to get any kind of high off of this," said Mark.
The only high the Allen family is getting is from the happiness farming brings them.
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