On today's KVNF Farm Friday, we take you to Fields of Glory just outside of Paonia, Colorado. KVNF Senior Reporter Lisa Young joined owner Steve Schauer at his dinning room table to talk about his farm during the Mountain Harvest Festival farm tours.
Steve and Claire Schauer moved from Reno, Nevada six years ago to Paonia, Colorado to convert a horse ranch into a hemp farm to grow CBD.
"In 2018, the farm bill legalized hemp in all fifty states. And we had known a lot about the benefits of it. We started off just growing the hemp and drying it and send it off to somebody to use," Steve Schauer said.
After the price of selling biomass from hemp plant tanked, Steve and Claire decided to start their own CBD line.
"When the price dropped and it was no longer profitable to just grow and sell, and really, it turns out the farmer makes less than anybody, typically on almost any crop because of all the stages that have to contribute to the final product. So we decided let's just make our own. Then we started researching what other people were making and how did we want to tweak it," he said, adding. "When we were going to develop our gummies, people would say, ' I like the gummies, but they taste so awful, I hate to take it. 'So we worked with our formulator."
The Schauers send their hemp to an extractor on the Front Range who pulls out of the the biomass and the oil. The oil is then taken to a formulator.
"She's in like a half million dollar lab. She's a chemist. And she helped us work through what we want in the balms. What do we want as a gummy. "
Fields of Glory formulates products for sleep, focus and energy, relief balms and even hemp oil for your pets. But, there's a bit of a catch if you're promoting CBD products.
"The disadvantage to hemp is you can't claim anything social, online, socially. When we sample our products, we get tremendous testimonies back. You just can't believe how effective hemp is in all manner of of illnesses and conditions, but we cannot put that on the website. So we started the farmers markets and there we can interact with people. A lot of what we do is education. "
Schauer says a big part of what they do is to educate people about hemp and the benefits of their products.
"And then we tell them, like for the sleep products, how that works, what's in it, what you can expect. We tell them, 'you're not going to get groggy in the morning because it's not a narcotic. It's not synthetic. It's just a natural hemp plant''.
The contractor turned farmer confesses that he had plenty of experiences in his younger days with CBD's cousin THC.
"Well, I'd say. Long time ago, in a faraway galaxy. I was pretty invested in THC, so always was a big fan of cannabis, but eventually got out of all that. But we knew about hemp. And then in 2018, when they legalized it, we said, 'hey, this is something that we'd want to pursue''.
So the couple headed out in their travel trailer where they visited Estes Park for a couple weeks and on there way back the stopped in Paonia to visited Claire's nephew. Just to happens, that he was growing a bit of hemp on small acreage.
"We got here at night and couldn't see anything, but I could smell that smell. And then in the morning, I walked out in the middle of the field and looked at those plants, and I said, 'I got to do this'."
Steve had forty five years contracting and looked at hemp farming as a great change where he could help more families than re-modeling homes. Now with Fields of Glory products, he says his helping hundreds of families every single day.
"We decided to go organic because we always believed in that. And you go through a big process of certification. They check all your amendments, which cost twice as much because you're organic. They do inspections. And then once the formulator makes our products, she sends it off to the state labs to verify if we claim there's twenty five milligrams in this product. It really is in that product," Schauer said, adding. "So we were just big fans of of knowing what hemp could do for people and how many people we could help."
Claire, who worked as was a nurse case manager remotely, also found that growing and producing hemp products from their Paonia farm was a way to help more people.
"It's very rewarding when we do all the work here to make the product, and then the testimonies we get back makes it more than worthwhile to be out in the hot summer, six hours a day. When you're organic, all you can do is pull weeds. There is no insecticide, pesticide, nothing. So that's a lot of of hard, hot work. But we feel great," said Steve.
Folks interested in Fields of Glory products can purchase directly from the farm or go online to shop.
"Well, people inquire about the farm, and there's always welcome to come here and buy direct from us. But typically they'll go online and order through the website."
Products can also be bought at local farmers market.
"This season we did three farmers markets each week. We went to Glenwood Springs, which is about two hours, and you drive on the 133 there, gorgeous drive. So it's two hours there. We did Carbondale, which is an hour and a quarter. And then we did Ridgway, which is two hours south. And then every once in a while when they let us, we would do Palisade, that's the ultimate market for us."
