November 7, 2026

Dianne de Guzman

Why U-pick cherries when you can U-pick hemp?

U-pick farms are everywhere in California, usually touting season-fresh berries or deep-red cherries. But recently an email floated into my inbox touting a first for me: a U-pick hemp harvest in late September at Sonoma Hills Farm in Petaluma. Although the business is mostly known for its cannabis strains and its frequent collaborations with musicians and chefs (such as Lyrics Born and the team at Humphry Slocombe), another one of its ventures is the world of hemp, supplying CBD for honey and beauty products. 

U-pick hemp? This might be the most Northern California story of my life. It was imperative that I investigate FOR JOURNALISM. This is the first year that Sonoma Hills Farm has offered hemp harvesting to the (21-and-over) public, and I wanted to learn more about the crossover of hemp into food. 

I think the public probably already knows a lot about cannabis in its psychoactive THC form, but my knowledge of hemp is perhaps limited and dated. The extent is tagged to the anxiety economy, and the wellness and CBD drinks like Recess that launched in 2018, a boom year for CBD in the American zeitgeist. But if you pressed me on what these things do, and how the pungent and sticky plant exactly makes it into food or drink products of any kind, I’d likely mumble something about how there’s probably an extraction process of some sort and (somehow) it makes you calmer without the high.

My visit to Sonoma Hills Farm proved educational, with a side of being overwhelming; there were terms thrown around, such as cannabinoids, CBD, CBG, CBDV, and more! I was out of my element — more familiar with Googling ephemeral ingredients in cocktails than navigating the chemistry of plants! Thankfully founders Mike and Shauna Harden were around to answer questions and take me around the farm to talk about the food and hemp space.

[As the farm’s U-Pick info page emphasizes — and as I shall also emphasize — this is hemp, NOT cannabis. Hemp particularly does not contain more than 0.3 percent of THC, the psychoactive cannabis compound. The field consists of industrial hemp, and it has passed California’s pre-harvest compliance testing as industrial hemp. Furthermore, what you’re taking home is a fresh hemp plant, raw and unprocessed, and there is no consumption of any kind on the farm. And while we’re at it with an editor’s aside, I’ll also stray from making any healthful claims about hemp or cannabis since I’m (unfortunately for my parents) not a doctor, so I’m merely approaching it from the food space.]

Sonoma Hills Farm opened in 2017, receiving its hemp permit in 2020, and all throughout, the team has held close ties to the food world. Former French Laundry gardener Aaron Keefer joined the team as vice president of cultivation and production, and the farm partners with chefs and restaurants, producing items like a special grown cannabis strain used in pre-rolls for two-Michelin-starred Lazy Bear and providing hemp for hemp-infused cocktails at Linden Room. Hemp can also be applied to cooking, such as in the case of the farm’s partnership with chef Chris Cosentino (who I happened to run into at the farm) for a hemp sea salt they call Herbs de Petaluma. (Cosentino has even made hemp ice cream.) 

“Chefs are always pushing the envelope looking for new things to experiment with,” Mike Harden told me at the farm. “We’ve always wanted to be that farm to tie over and give chefs the tools to really bring this plant into the dining room, whether it’s using the fan leaves for juice or it’s even just plating with it.”

I’m probably not the one to contact about how to dry and cure your hemp plant after a mere day at the U-pick event, but the (non-high) food and drink possibilities of hemp are really striking. The use of hemp-derived terpenes in cocktails seems to be a new(er) frontier; although typically associated with cannabis, terpenes “form the major constituent of essential oils from plants” and also come from tea, thyme, sage, and citrus fruits. The terpenes can bring the scent of lavender or citrus to a cocktail in the form of a bitter, for instance, giving a drink a different dimension. 

“They’re not psychoactive at all, but ... when you smell this plant right here, it is uplifting,” Harden says. “You’re not getting high — there’s nothing associated with psychoactivity. It’s just the smell of really fresh terpenes, the same things people are using in their food products, in their other skincare products, et cetera.” (Whether one can easily extract terpenes for bitters as part of a home process with U-pick hemp is debatable, given that terpenes need to be distilled from the plant, but I’m sure a determined bartender or chef with the right setup would be able to. For other food applications, I’ll point you toward The Cannabis Gardener, whose author Penny Barthel was on hand at the U-pick event and extremely knowledgeable about home cooking applications.)

Is it worth the trip to a hemp U-pick farm? I’d say so, if you’re a person who enjoys a day stomping around a farm, learning about hemp and its uses, and enjoys getting in the weeds (ahem) of processing ingredients and tinkering with food. If you’re a dabbler in fermentation or are fascinated with the nuts and bolts of the bread baking process, this could be for you. Although events are done for the year, Sonoma Hill Farms is looking to pick back up with U-picks in 2027, if you’re interested.