Rachel McDevitt reports for WITF 

(Mount Joy) — Mitch Shellenberger’s hands are covered in a dark, oily residue that’s tough to get off. It’s evidence of the long hours he’s spent handling acres and acres of industrial hemp as he rushes to harvest and dry it.

By late October, he’s already invested months growing a variety of hemp to be used for CBD, a compound that’s used in health supplements, and he has a ways to go.

“It feels like a mountain,” he said, “and it is.”

Shellenberger is a third-generation farmer running a hog and heifer operation in Lancaster County. He grows field crops, like corn, to feed the livestock.

Last spring, he was approached by two private investors who wanted to get into the hemp business. It’s a tough time to be a farmer, and he recalls thinking that this was a chance to actually make some money. He dived in.

Shellenberger was one of many in Pennsylvania ready to gamble on what some advocates tout as the state’s next cash crop.

During a lunch break on on Tuesday, October 29, 2019, one of Mitch Shellenberger’s volunteers holds out her hands to show the residue left behind from handling industrial hemp. The crew was using coconut oil to remove it.

This year, the state Agriculture Department issued 324 growing permits, compared to 37 issued just for research last year.

A spokeswoman said the department strongly recommended farmers line up a buyer before putting seed in the ground, and they believe many followed that.

Even with the first commercial growing season behind them, there’s still a lot of uncertainty for hemp farmers. Questions linger about how much demand there will be for hemp products and whether the crop can add to a grower’s bottom line.

In Shellenberger’s case, his investors’ money covered the financial risk of growing a crop with an untested market, but he had to sink a lot of time and energy into the endeavor.

“It’s been a really uphill climb,” he said. “It’s not just the work. It’s the fact that we need to figure it out. Every step of the way is like, what’s next? Well, I don’t know how to do that.”

Industry advocates say a lot of first-time hemp growers started with just a few acres this year. Shellenberger planted 30.

That complicated matters when it was time to harvest. The plants have to be dried before being sent to a processor. Drying helps cut down on mold and disease. In some western states, farmers can let the crop dry in the field, but Pennsylvania is too humid for that.

Shellenberger found an old hog barn that he rigged into a makeshift drying facility. His wife, in-laws, and friends pitched in to help him unload trailers of hemp and line up the plants — which look like small, ragged Christmas trees — in the slats between the barn’s floorboards, where an industrial-sized fan could blow a steady breeze over them.

A variety of industrial hemp used for CBD extraction stands in a field in Mount Joy, Lancaster County on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.

Shellenberger has been promised a cut of the profits from this crop — if it makes a profit.

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