Owing to the attention accompanying a Go Fund Me campaign currently under way to raise $300,000, the word has been circulated that the Hepworth women, Amy and Gail, twin sisters and the matriarchal leaders of a 500-acre, organic farming operation in Milton, were in danger of losing the farm.
Gail, the business-minded sister to Amy’s fingers-in-the-soil virtuosity, would like it to be known that this is not the case. “The farm is not at risk!” Gail said, half laughing, half stern.
The $300,000 number behind all the fuss, Gail said, has nothing to do with the ability of the seventh-generation farmers to grow and sell crops, or with a shortage of grateful customers willing to buy them. But it does have everything to do with the intricacies of federal banking laws where growing cannabis is concerned.
That the Hepworths have added the cultivation of cannabis to the roster of their crops has not been a problem up to now. The New York State licensed them to do so, and the voters of New York State have no problem with it. The recreational use of marijuana was legalized in 2021.
Disregarding the opinion of New York’s voters and the voters of 23 other states and Washington D.C., federal law enforcement continues to lump the plant in with heroin, treating it as a Schedule 1 drug — thus illegal to grow, sell, buy or possess.
In spite of that, 352 adult-use cannabis dispensaries have opened across New York State. According to an annual report released by the state office of cannabis management, New York’s cannabis market was expected to reach $1 billion in sales revenue at this end of this 2024.
For the first time ever, the Hepworth farm was not able to secure the banking funds needed to start up the season.
“What happened is that we have a mortgage with Farm Credit East,” Gail said.
Affiliated with the federal farm credit system, Farm Credit East distributes short-term loans coinciding with agricultural cycles to farmers. The financing of the loans is made available by four regional wholesale banks which sell securities on behalf of the federal Farm Credit Administration.
The money lent out goes to purchase seed, prepare the soil, and pay for the labor and anything else that needs to happen on a farm up to and including a harvest. When the farmers sell their crops, they pay back the loans.
“So the spring, just to kick off, it’s $300,000 to get us into the greenhouse and preparing the field,” said Gail.
While the Hepworths structure their farming businesses so as to keep the cannabis operation separate from crops harvested to be eaten — they have four separate businesses — the federal lending agency proved skittish.
“When they saw that there was cannabis on the property,” Gail noted, “they said that they couldn’t do that, and they called the loan.”
Gail excuses Farm Credit East as “just not in a position to help any food-producing farmers who have gotten into cannabis.”
“There are banking laws that for the last two years they [legislators] have been trying to change,” says Gail, naming state senator Michelle Hinchey as a force for good in Albany. “She has been behind everything good that has happened legislatively for farmers.”
But legislating is slow, and the spring is already under way. In order to be ready for the next farming cycle, assuming that Farm Credit remains sidelined, Gail said she’s been in talks with local banks. She’s confident a local source will provide the funds required, likely in May.
Which is good news, she said. But farmers live on a different clock than bankers.
“This clock means that in the beginning of March we have to seed habaneros because they have a long growing season,” said Gail. “Then we start putting in our greens and our cabbage. And then comes the spring equinox. When that sun really hits, when it’s over the horizon and its due east, that means that spring is going to kick in, and you don’t get to revisit it.”
In the current cold snap, maybe 20 acres outside the greenhouses were in some level of preparation, some seeded, some with early spinaches. “Not the major crops, but things to whet people’s appetites for local greens.”
Habaneros have such a long growing season that Amy likes them to be seeded early in the greenhouse. And they don’t go into the ground until after May 15, when the soil is reliably warm. Succession planting — where vegetables are planted and harvested again and again — accounts for most of the vegetables. Others, such as tomatoes, are planted three times a year.
“If the weather cooperates,” said Gail, “that means that we’ll be having tomatoes in the beginning of July, certainly cherry tomatoes, and the bigger beefsteaks will come out at the end of July.”
That still leaves the $300,000 shortfall that started out the season.
Enter the advice of younger Hepworths — children and grandchildren — to start a Go Fund Me.
“Technologically speaking, Amy and I are paralyzed. The younger people on our team are doing whatever the website magic is.”
Amy, pomologist and graduate of the Cornell Agriculture School, “doesn’t even really use a computer,” Gail said. “She can do it all in her head.”
But the sisters did acquiesce to the members of the next generation who said, “You know, you have so much support and people want your food. It gives people a chance to help, just let it be. And so, we did.”
So far, the Support Hepworth Farms, Women Led, Organic, Hudson Valley Go Fund Me has raised $31,500.
“So we’re on track,” Gail summed up. “We have chives coming up. The greenhouse is starting. The tractors are rolling, and we thank everybody because the outpouring of support has just been humbling.”
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