He is now developing a smaller countertop model, designed for growers with just a few plants to process. Twister T4 200/day Trim up-to 23 wet or 7 dry pounds per hour with the Twister T4. Twister BatchOne 600/day Trim up-to 88 pounds per hour dry with the Twister BatchOne. Twister BatchOne GO 150/day Trim up-to 5 pounds per hour dry with the Twister BatchOne GO. “Because when we start to process hundreds of acres of hemp, we’re not going to do it with a pair of scissors,” he says.īishop plans to produce more of the machines, as a sideline to his medical marijuana business. All of our bud trimmer rentals are cleaned, maintained, and ready to trim.
“It took roughly eight people an hour to harvest one very large plant,” she says.īishop hopes his machines will become popular as the marijuana and hemp industries scale up in Maine. She says the industry could use some innovation, because it’s a slow process for now. “With any industry you expect to see innovation come, especially when it’s new and emerging,” says Heather Darby, an agronomist with the University of Vermont.ĭarby has been working with Vermont farmers who are growing hemp and harvesting the flowers, or buds, which are not psychoactive.
Maine Public King Bishop says his bud tugger saves marijuana farmers hours of tedious work trimming their crop.īishop says, in addition to the buds, his machine also produces clean stems that can be processed as hemp fiber, which will become more valuable as that industry develops in Maine. Our quality bud is trimmed in a quality way so the customer gets the best of. I couldn’t have the extra employees, and I needed to take the garden down when it was ripe.” Their trimmers show up on time, trim quickly, and are pleasant to be around. “If the cannabis is staying outside too long, it’s like any other plant. So it would be like trying to take down your vegetable garden, all in a matter of few days, with just one person helping you,” he says. “The state allows us to grow the cannabis, but we can’t have anyone helping us. It’s fun to just stand there and stuff them in and and pop the nuggets off,” he says.īishop says the bud tugger allows him to harvest his plants when they are ready, while complying with state rules limiting the hiring of marijuana farmhands. “These technologies really just turn it from a drudgery, the side of this that you would dread - sitting at the table for hours and hours and hours. I have one, I bought one, I recommend it to everybody,” says Dan Brown of Gravelwood Farm in Blue Hill, another medical marijuana caregiver and the owner of a grower’s supply store.īrown was among the first to buy one of the machines. He has sold eight so far, without any advertising beyond a video posted on his Facebook page. For Maine Public King Bishop shows off nuggets of marijuana harvested with the help of his bud tugger.īishop’s bud tugger sells for $3,500.