One of the first industrial hemp fields planted in Alabama in mid-May, just below Chandler Mountain in St. Clair County, has an herbal scent, almost like a hint of basil.

Its neat rows of mostly thriving plants range from two feet to four feet tall. They appear almost jolly.

“It looks like a field of 3-foot-tall Christmas trees,” said Ed Glaze, who oversaw the planting of the crop. “They look very cute.”

Fran Summerlin, owns the former horse farm that now has a five-acre hemp field, walks through the rows with her dogs, Zella and Zeke. Deer prints are evident in the dirt between the plants, but there’s no evidence that they’ve eaten any of the leaves.

“Deer don’t like hemp,” Glaze said. “We can’t see where they have eaten anything.”

Nor have bugs noticeably bothered the plants. No pesticides are allowed on the hemp.

“We’ve had no issues with pests,” Summerlin said.

The hemp farmers are more than halfway through the growing season for the first legal crop of industrial hemp, which looks like marijuana, but is a species of cannabis that lacks anything but the tiniest trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive ingredient that gets people high.

They are farming hemp for CBD oil, or cannabidiol, which is purported to have a variety of positive health effects and is now widely legal.

Glaze and Summerlin are learning to grow their first crop. Many of the farmers across the state who have been licensed to grow hemp are experienced at growing cotton, soybean and other crops.

“We’ve got some really good farmers in the program that we know can grow anything,” said Alabama Department of Agriculture Commissioner Rick Pate.

“I think people seem pretty pleased,” Pate said. “Most of them think they’ll have a crop. There are smart people hoping they can make a little money. With CBD oil taking off, there are plenty of people wanting to buy it.”

Law enforcement issues

Many law enforcement officers across the state expressed concerns about the industrial hemp pilot program,” said Hassey Brooks, deputy commissioner for the Alabama Department of Agriculture.

“We did the right thing early by meeting with law enforcement,” Brooks said. “We’ve been working with them. There has been some apprehension.”

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency flies over the state with helicopters, looking for illegal marijuana. Industrial hemp can easily be confused with marijuana.

“There has been occasion they’ve dropped in on places, and we’ve been able to work through the issues,” Brooks said. “We want law enforcement to be happy.”

The Department of Agriculture keeps a logbook of global positioning satellite coordinates for its hemp farmers and shares that with law enforcement. So far, there have been few problems with security on hemp fields, Pate said.

“We had a farmer in Coffee County, somebody had been out in his field and pulled up some plants,” Pate said. Hemp doesn’t have enough THC to get anyone high, he said. “They’ll get sick if they try to smoke it.”

The interloper threw some of the plants out in a neighboring county and deputies seized it. “The deputies don’t want to release it back” to the licensed hemp farmer, Pate said. “He’s having to go through extra channels to get his hemp back.”

Those issues were to be expected in the first year of the industrial hemp pilot program, he said.

“We’re going to have some hiccups with a new program,” Pate said. “There’s going to be miscommunications.”

In another instance, an ALEA helicopter landed at a hemp farm and the owner had to show paperwork proving it was a licensed hemp farm, Pate said.

Another concern is being pulled over during transport of harvested hemp and having it mistaken for marijuana.

“If you’re going to move it, you need to have your license with you, so they can know you’re a licensed grower,” said Gunter Guy, general counsel for the Alabama Department of Agriculture.

The harvest

A week ago, a hemp farmer in a county in south Alabama told the Agriculture Commission he was ready to harvest.

“They cannot harvest without notifying us,” Pate said.

“We pulled a sample and told a guy it’s good,” Pate said. “It tested out good, below .3 THC. He’s got to harvest within two weeks. He could have already harvested. Once we pull the sample, he can harvest.”

One farmer just reported planting a crop of hemp in the last week. That will probably be the last crop planted outdoors this year, Pate said. The harvests for the early plantings in May should be done this month, and September will be a busy month for harvesting and state testing, Pate said.

That will be a challenge for the state chemist, who does the testing in a state lab.

“If there’s a bottleneck, it’s in our lab,” Pate said. “We’ve got to get the samples and report back to them so they can harvest. We’re expecting September to be our busiest month.”

Any hemp that tests at over .3 in THC will be destroyed, he said. Marijuana tests at 15 percent or more THC levels, he said.

“If it tests higher than .3, we’ll come to destroy the crop,” Pate said.

Praying for Rain

The biggest problem for the first hemp crop here at Chandler Mountain, an area better known for the state’s best tomatoes, has been keeping it watered.

“We need a little rain every two to three days,” Glaze said. “We’re always praying for rain and sun.”

They explored some possibilities for irrigation, including digging a pond, installing a fire hydrant or renting water trucks. All of those turned out to be less practical than praying for rain, Glaze said.

“We’re kind of stuck if the Lord doesn’t water it himself,” Glaze said.

The rain has been coming and potential pests have steered clear.

“We’ve had unexpected blessings,” Glaze said.

The hemp has been growing, although some of the plants are inexplicably short, and they vary in size and thickness.

“Some will get to that 5-foot-mark,” Glaze said. “That’s as big as we’ve gotten.”

There have been three different plantings of three different species of hemp at the Chandler Mountain farm, procured as clones, or small seedlings, from farmers in Tennessee. There will therefore be several harvests at different times for each group of hemp plants. The first harvest will likely take place in the last week of August.

Last week, Glaze and Summerlin walked through the hemp field with a couple of curious visitors, including an herbalist considering planting a hemp crop next year.

“You really are pioneering this for a lot of other farmers,” the herbalist said. “We really appreciate it.”