Faces in the Field: Nyeela Hueholt of Rooted Heart Remedies

BY DIANE RUSSELL / PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ROOTED HEART REMEDIES

For Rooted Heart Remedies, the CBD difference is in the mountain soil.

Despite its centuries-old support of the tobacco industry, Virginia continues to have harsh penalties for possession of marijuana. When Maine expanded its medical marijuana program and inched closer to full cannabis legalization, Nyeela Hueholt uprooted her life in the South and put down some deep roots in western Maine where she felt safe building a cannabis business as a caregiver, and later as a purveyor of CBD products.

For Nyeela, CBD isn’t just a product to sell to her customers up and down the East Coast. “After two years of living in Maine, I was introduced to CBD and started taking it myself. It helped alleviate my Lyme disease symptoms, addressing the brain fog, fatigue, and arthritic pain. It even helped with mood stabilization. THC helped, but I’m very sensitive to it, and CBD allowed me to take larger doses and really got to the root of the issue.”

Nyeela Hueholt

Hueholt and her partner, Chris DiMascio, decided to expand beyond caregiving to grow hemp so they could oversee every aspect of quality control. Last year, they grew 180 hemp plants, and they hope to grow 800 this year, with Chris focusing on the farming side of the business.

“My first year of owning a CBD business, I was outsourcing extracts and hemp flower. I noticed that, even though it was organic, the quality was not as high as I wanted. It sparked me to want to do things myself so I could be 100% certain the quality was there,” explained Nyeela.

Rooted Heart Remedies is now an MC3 certified hemp farm that focuses primarily on CBD-infused herbal topicals and infused tinctures. It is expanding into the world of CBD concentrates, including CO2 extraction and RSO. The small business provides a full spectrum of CBD products, with flower infusions and hemp flower. Ingredients are local or organic, and Nyeela credits the western Maine mountains for providing high-quality soil for their farm.

Nyeela Hueholt

“I focus primarily on salves, a fat-rich topical for more serious ailments with up to 500 mg of CBD per two ounces. My warming salve has turmeric, ginger, and cayenne in combination with hemp CBD to increase circulation and stop inflammation.”

Earlier this year, the FDA modified a rule around CBD marketing and food. Ostensibly to reign in the bad actors in the market, the rule created an earthquake of fear overnight. Rooted Heart doesn’t sell much that would be considered food, so it didn’t really impact the product line directly; however, they added “not intended for human consumption” to their tinctures just to be safe. Nyeela credits Maine’s emergency CBD fix bill for alleviating any concern that Maine might be poised to take a step backward. “I do think that CBD companies who have no background in cannabis - who just hopped on the train to make a dollar - my hope is that those companies will start to die off. And, that the people who have a background in cannabis, and are doing it to provide an all natural medicine for people are really going to shine. Hopefully, the people who are really putting in the effort from seed to finished product will be the ones that outshine those other companies.”

For Rooted Heart’s full product line, visit

www.rootedheartremedies.com

or call

(207) 319-5430

Nyeela Hueholt