Hoboken, New Jersey – Just hours after OxiClean pitchman Anthony Sullivan’s plane landed from England he sat down in Lulu’s Lounge at the W Hotel with the host of the CBD Source Podcast, Col Cheney, to discuss his hemp farm business in Vermont. The famous pitchman recently ventured into the world of CBD with business partner Dave Christian, and what better way to get started than to buy a 116-acre plot of farmland in Vermont? Anthony shared with Col the heart-wrenching reason he started MontKush:
“Just over a year ago my daughter Devon had some seizures. She was born with a rare genetic disorder, and she’s had a lot of health issues throughout her short little life. She got put on anti-seizure medication and over the course of two to three months she lost twenty percent of her body weight, but the thing that really got me was this dramatic shift in her personality. She’s a vibrant and present girl, and just all of a sudden I didn’t recognize my little girl.”
Anthony shared with Col the first time he stepped foot in a hemp field. Before realizing that he wanted his own, Anthony visited a friend’s hemp farm in Vermont where he feels he had an out of body experience while staring off into acres and acres of hemp plants as far as he could see. Anthony told Col about the moment:
“I was in a complete moment of serenity and sobriety just sitting in the middle of this field and thinking about how beautiful it was and how peaceful and magical. And in my mind, I’m thinking ‘This is the plant that is making the medicine that is benefiting my daughter.’”
Anthony and Dave talked about the early stages of MontKush. They told Col that when they first purchased the farmland there were no structures, not even a water well! Anthony shared that it was the wettest spring in recorded history. Locals to Plainfield would drive by and he could see them shaking their heads thinking “These yahoos are never going to make it.”
There were a couple of times when they thought all of their workers were going to quit. After some greenhouses were built they purchased their seeds and got to work planting the seeds for germination by hand. Anthony shared that he had planted fifteen to twenty thousand seeds himself, just using his pinky.
After visiting a hemp farm in the previous year during the harvest, Anthony and Dave thought that it would be a great idea to film their journey from start to finish for a reality TV show. Dave shared that the harvest season was beautiful, crazy, and chaotic all at the same time. They didn’t have much room in the budget for a film crew, so Anthony called up an old friend and told him to bring a camera and a microphone. Anthony shared:
“I don’t remember how much footage we got of the early days, but it was brutal. The only thing that would have made it worse was if we were getting shot at.”
The footage is now being weeded through, edited, and produced in LA by none other than Thom Beers, the creator, and voiceover of Pitchman, and executive producer of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. The yet-unnamed Netflix series drops sometime in 2020. There have been some unconfirmed rumors that the show title will be Kings of Kush.
It was a long hard year for MontKush. They braved through drilling a well in the snow, planting in a hail storm, almost losing their crop to high humidity levels, and not knowing how to farm at all. But they made it, with one-hundred percent of their seeds taking root and bare minimum loss during the harvest. Anthony told us about the day his daughter came to visit the farm. He said that seeing his daughter and her mother run around barefoot in the hemp fields brought it all into perspective.
“I’ve got a very personal story here and I think that by doing it the hard way, we’ve put our ten thousand hours in this year. We didn’t just do this to slap my name on a bottle or my daughter’s name on a bottle, we wanted to do it the hard way. And I would do it all over again. I’m looking forward to knowing how to drive a tractor, and knowing how to use a plastic layer and plastic removal and working the water wheel. I’m looking forward to the second time around, everything is easier the second time around.”
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About CBD Source Podcast
The CBD Source Podcast is the official podcast of the CBD Source Center, a chain of 60+ stores in New York and Pennsylvania dedicated to informing the public of the benefits of using CBD as a natural remedy. The CBD Source Podcast is the number one source for all things CBD. Host Col Cheney records from a studio in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York. The show teaches of the benefits of CBD and allows listeners to hear the stories of real people’s trials with CBD, interviews with industry experts and celebrities about their personal experiences, and alerts listeners of new products that come to market. The CBD Source Podcast is on all major podcast streaming platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Youtube. You can contact The CBD Source Podcast with feedback, questions, personal experience, and interview inquiries at 1-833-CBD-GANG or email at c. The show can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. Visit www.cbdsourcepodcast.com for more information and episodes.