Alaina Mullin and Nicola Harger
Tennecanna founder and CEO Anna Brown didn’t set out to start a CBD company.
In fact, she could never have predicted that she and her husband would become cannabis farmers. But that’s exactly what happened. After growing up in Mount Juliet, Brown headed West for Colorado. She thought getting away for some adventure would do her good but found herself homesick, and she and her husband soon moved back to their hometown. But the move wasn’t a total bust—it introduced the Browns to the business of CBD.
“In Colorado it was more talked about, and it was something that interested both my husband and I,” she says.
Alaina Mullin + Nicola Harger
When they moved back to Tennessee, they had an even more personal interest.
“I had anxiety that started in college and it just got stronger and stronger as different phases of life happened. When I was pregnant, it was really hard,” she says. “There was a farmer that lives close to us who opened a shop selling CBD that he had grown. We went in there one day and talked about it and tried some of the full-spectrum CBD that he had. It helped me right away.”
Inspired, the Browns got serious about making CBD their full-time job. But starting a new agricultural/medicinal business isn’t easy.
“You can’t just go to the library and pick up a book on how to grow cannabis,” she laughs. “It was a challenge for sure, but it is similar to growing other plants. I grew up around a grandmother who grew everything: vegetables and fruit trees and flowers. She really taught me all that kind of stuff growing up. So, I had learned how to cultivate plants a little bit and started from there because it is just growing a plant. It’s very similar. It takes a lot of work for each individual plant.”
But this was something bigger than a garden, it was a crop.
Alaina Mullin + Nicola Harger
“I didn’t know how to grow a crop, so that that was intimidating. But we’ve done under two acres both years, so it hasn’t been too much of an undertaking,” she says. “There was a hurdle at the beginning with trying to figure out where to get the seeds. You have to follow the state regulations, be a licensed hemp farmer through the state and all that. There are some really good hemp growers in Nashville, and they were sourcing seeds from other places that were really good quality, so I felt safe buying through them.”
The next step was to turn their harvest into a product that could help the masses.
“I didn’t want to just grow it to learn how to grow something, I wanted to grow it because I wanted what I created to help people.”
Alaina Mullin + Nicola Harger
Brown and her husband had their hemp flowers processed into oil and began toiling with product ideas. Tennecanna’s line now encompasses CBD oils, facial serum, chocolate, and local honey. And as the company expands into new products and new ideas (Brown is full of both), she gets nostalgic thinking back on a quiet moment early in the process.
“In our first grow season, I started the habit of walking out into the field at night. Our harvest is always near the harvest moon, so [it was bright enough to] see all the plants.”
The moonlit walks inspired Tennecanna’s harvest season tradition.
“Our first year we opened it up to family and friends. It was so cool,” she says. “Lots of people came out—there were babies and kids everywhere and we harvested together. I love the idea of doing that as a community and people getting to actually see the plants and touch them and be like, ‘So this is what goes into my CBD oil.’”