by: John Friedlein
GLENDALE KY.-- Jerome Peerce??s hogs didn??t handle their pot buzz very well, but that was a small price to pay considering the stakes were as high as they were.
The year was 1942. The double threat of Japan and Germany loomed across each ocean. Ships transporting men into battle needed rope that wouldn??t deteriorate when wet. Hemp was the answer.
That??s where Peerce comes in. Sitting in the living room of his old, white-frame farmhouse Tuesday, the 95-year-old told a story of patriotism, pigs and pot plants. He??s practically blind and in a wheelchair, but his mind is as sharp as a thresher.
Peerce, then in his early 30s, stayed stateside during the war to farm; Americans, after all, needed to eat.
As far as he can recall, he first heard about the initiative after seeing a newspaper ad asking for growers willing to produce a hemp plot. ??It sounded pretty decent,? he said.
Decent, but labor-intensive like tobacco. His first and last hemp crop grew as tall as a second-story window, out of a combine??s reach. Peerce attacked the stalks with a corn knife and then propped them up as the Amish do with corn.
He also ??beat the heck? out of the plants to remove the seeds. Then, using one of the county??s only combines, he further refined the product. Obtaining fiber was the project??s ultimate goal, but the government wanted Peerce??s crops for the seeds.
The combine he used blew the chaff into a waist-high pile. One frosty, autumn night, more than two dozen of his hogs made a bed of it. As they snoozed, their body heat caused the leaves to give off fumes, he said. ??They got a good dose of the stuff.?
The next morning, Peerce??s dad woke him up odd things were afoot.
They found some hogs sleeping on their backs, their snores audible 100 yards away. ??You couldn??t hardly wake them up,? he said.
Others ran. Peerce??s fingers wiggled as he described the ensuing pursuits. At least one of the pigs was so stoned it ran off a cliff, falling 20 feet.
Peerce also heard that one of the sows, which he sold, later passed along birth defects. He told the story to school kids in California to warn them of the dangers of pot smoking. ??If it did that to hogs, what might it do to our children?? he said.
Back then, the connection between hemp and marijuana wasn??t on his radar. While it was legal, growers first had to get a license from the government. Peerce, who has roots in the area going back almost 200 years, thought only this of the plants: They were something farmers used to grow in the region. Something they grew well.
Candi Penn, a spokeswoman for the Hemp Industries Association, said the variety Peerce would have grown did have the psychoactive chemical found in cannabis, but only a ??tiny bit.?
Just how much heat is necessary to generate enough fumes (or whatever it takes) to get 30 hogs high, one can only speculate.
To lend credence to Peerce??s story, though, local historian Mary Jo Jones said she has interviewed another Hardin County hemp farmer who said his hogs acted as if they were drunk one warm October morning after sleeping on a hemp bed.
Regardless of how happy, hungry and possibly paranoid local pigs acted in the ??40s, farmers like Peerce both fed the nation and helped keep it safe.
Peerce lost about $2,000 by dedicating three acres to hemp instead of another product. In addition to pigs, he raised corn, tobacco, hay and cattle.
Uncle Sam did pay him $600 for the seeds by itself, not enough for him to live high on the hog, so to speak.
Peerce, however, followed a more important motivation than money. ??Our necks were at stake,? he said.
Picture below says:
Jerome Peerce, now 95, raised hemp on his
Glendale farm in 1942 to help the war effort
during World War II.
