Hemp Festival planned to make debut in northern Vermont

By Amy Ash Nixon, The Caledonian Record

EAST BURKE, Vt. — Eli Harrington thinks holding the first-ever Vermont Hemp Festival in the rural, remote Northeast Kingdom makes perfect sense.

Harrington and Monica Donovan, co-founders of Heady Vermont, chose to have their inaugural hemp conference in the NEK because the Kingdom has an important history with hemp.

“The last time hemp was prevalent in the NEK, a couple of guys from the St. Johnsbury Hemp Company named Fairbanks changed the world,” says Harrington.

Harrington said the platform scale invention by the Fairbanks Scales Company was inspired by the need to weigh hemp crops at the St. Johnsbury Hemp Company in the 1830s.

The festival is planned for Sept. 9 at the new hotel and conference center at Burke Mountain.

Heady Vermont, the event’s organizer, is a 2-year-old grassroots statewide network and digital media company in Burlington’s South End Arts and Business District.

According to Harrington, “Heady Vermont covers everything from statehouse…