This is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Hey there, I'm David Marcum, and welcome to Mountainthology.

Our goal is to shine a light on the wide variety of West Virginia And the wealth of wonders from the wild and wonderful.

Let's get started.

Two sisters, born and raised in rural West Virginia Started a non-traditional company in a rather traditional town.

After battling fires, nature and their own inexperience, they're thriving.

But federal legislation means it could all disappear overnight.

Producer Troy Rankin visits Moonflower Hemp to meet with the Queen sisters and discuss how everything almost went up in smoke.

I think, like the first year was the hardest year.

And it made me actually want to give up on all of this.

We lost everything.

I remember getting the call from my dad.

I've only ever heard my dad cry a handful of times in my life, and that was one of them.

And I think that he was just heartbroken for Riley and I because he knew how much we put into this.

Should we even try?

Should we just call it quits?

Throw in the towel.

Accept this as a sign.

So my parents have always had a very entrepreneurial spirit.

And if it weren't for that, you know, we wouldn't be here.

And in 2018, the farm bill passed federally, Which legalized, you know, hemp and what you're seeing us do here.

And my dad's always up for a new adventure and basically pitched This idea of, "Hey, I saw some farmland that we could buy."

"I think that we should try this hemp thing out."

And it was not hard to convince Riley and I to take that leap.

Let's say we've been passionate about this plant for a lot longer than Maybe he even might have been.

We never second guessed that we could do something like this.

And I think that that is such a privilege of our raising, Um, that nothing is impossible.

And it doesn't matter where you're from or what you come from.

It's not like our family had a ton of money.

You know, my dad's actually a retired police officer.

So this this pitch coming from him wasn't very "Really, really.

You're interested in that?"

But I never doubted us for a second.

And I knew that even if it didn't work out and it would just be something like "Hey, remember in 2018, when we all decided to farm hemp?"

But now it's become our lives.

And I think when we first started, this isn't something that like this was the basis of it.

This is kind of like where the dream was is like, "Oh my god, we get to be farmers."

and we get to farm a plant that we've loved our entire lives."

We were in college at the time, and this was, mind you, this was the first year that our family farmed period.

It's not like we're from a long generation of farmers.

Honestly, the ridiculous thing that we tried in the beginning Was planting 15,000 plants.

But yeah, 15,000 plants in the first year.

We did say that it was the worst and we mean it.

We were just starting on our farm journey and we didn't know what we were doing.

And we learned so much in that year.

And it kind of brought our vision from this industrial standpoint to the craft scene.

And now we spend a lot of time with every single plant, with our hands, making sure to touch everything throughout the season.

So when we started down the edibles journey, we approached our grandma, which is so funny in retrospect of it all.

She was the best cook that we knew and we said, "Hey grandma, we want to make some gummies."

And she got right on it and she made our gummies For the first three years, actually, that Moonflower was in existence.

We've always tried to be super active on social media And bring a level of transparency to this industry.

Through seed-to-sale.

So through showing us in the ground, following or allowing our customers to follow us all the way through the grow season.

We have very specific policies here.

Our lab is under a very specific protocol.

Everybody wears gear, and we just make sure that everything is in line.

West Virginians help West Virginians and the word of mouth that we were able To achieve through this business when it started in our hometown.

And, you know, just we get people from our state All the time saying we love to support local.

We love bringing up fellow West Virginians trying to make their dreams come true.

And we do live in a very red state.

But you wouldn't imagine the amount of people I think.

I think cannabis brings people together on both sides of the coin.

Even politically.

Maybe we don't see that in legislation, but we see that in our communities.

And whether those decision makers decide to listen to that.

I think it's so interesting that this has brought customers From both sides of the coin, and I love to see it.

I love that it brings people together.

It's kind of like how your aunt comes to your lemonade stand as a kid.

Same idea.

But our family was like, yeah, I'll take some gummies, we'll take a tincture, you know?

But our products, they speak for themselves.

I think that in the beginning, when we were first opening up our store, It was "Oh, somebody's opening up a pot shop right on Main Street."

And I think that our store even was called the Gay store From the senior center over there.

I think it was the rainbow branding, which, you know.

The community was not as receptive in the beginning as what they are now.

People think, you know, like you, They looked down on my dad for like, "How can you, like, regulate and be that person of policing for so many years and now you're okay with it?"

I'd be like "Yeah!"

He has learned.

He has seen the stigma fade away.

He has educated himself and learned so much about cannabis That he's like "Wow!

This isn't all that I thought it was cracked up to be!"

"This is a really, really awesome thing!"

And I think that that has been applied to lots of different people over the years That we've seen come in and out of Moonflower And it's a really, really cool accomplishment.

One other thing I want to point out.

The hemp industry.

I mentioned this last night.

There was an attempt to reverse this, but the final bill does contain a ban.

On unregulated hemp with THC in it.

That industry says that will crush it.

So we have to see what economic effect that has.

But that's something that looks like it's going to go through.

I definitely am kept up at night thinking about yearly legislation.

This can happen at any point.

Decision makers can wave their wands and everything That we've built for the past seven years and that breaks my heart sometimes.

I hate that a lot of times decisions are made with lack of education and lack of effort.

There's no effort to come to people like Macy and I, who are quite literally leading this industry in West Virginia.

We haven't heard from any of our representatives despite reaching out.

And that's really disheartening and it does keep me up at night.

In 2020, we unfortunately had a fire in the warehouse That housed all of our finished products, our packaging materials, Our labels, our computers, everything that we use to You know, store our products and ship out our orders.

Everything except for our extractor and our plants, basically.

And it was devastating.

We just had such a strong support system and a strong support within our community that we had no choice.

We were like, you know what?

We cannot let this get us down.

We've made so much progress.

We've learned so much.

Let's just start cleaning.

And we scrubbed the soot out of this building, cleaned up the mess, and just kept on going.

We made all of our products again.

We repurchased everything, and we didn't let it stop us.

And looking back, I'm so glad that we made that choice.

I can't believe that this is our seventh harvest out here.

Macy.

Yeah, we had a really good harvest this year.

I think that the weather was a little rough.

We had a lot of heat spells and dry spells, and then also periods of time where it was just raining, so it was a little hard on the plants.

But they persevered as always.

And yeah, had a really good harvest this year.

Yeah.

And outdoor grow is definitely always going to present Its trials and errors and all of those things.

But most of our plants made their way through.

And this is a beaut.

She is so purple.

Proud of her.

This is Jelly Donut.

Love the name.

She smells really good.

And it's like no matter how big Moonflower gets, I think it's So important to us that we are never too big for me and you to throw on You know, throw on some clothes in the morning and come out to the farm And harvest together and spend time together and appreciate West Virginia and its beauty.

And, you know, yeah, we could pay people to do this, or we could We could honestly source flower from from other farmers and other places.

But it's important to us that we keep this pillar of Moonflower And the seed to sale portion of things because it means, like I said, It means a lot to us and it means a lot to our customers as well.

What's special about West Virginia is you get this present moment that most states don't really offer.

And when I say that, I'm talking about like the silence and the connection To the land and, you know.

There's no hustle and bustle, you're very in the moment.

You're forced to stop and listen and smell and just Take in everything around you.

Everything feels personal.

And it's a really special experience.

I think a big part of that is also being born and raised here.

You know, it's not just somewhere that we're traveling.

It's somewhere that I know, like I grew up on this land.

I grew up with these people and just surrounded by the natural beauty of this state.

So just makes you appreciate it a little bit more because You know that it's the place that made you who you are.

And fall is also prime time in West Virginia.

And I always love that.

That's when the harvest season falls.

It's just always so peaceful out here in the morning.

And it's because whenever we experienced our fire, we didn't give up.

We said, all right, let's take the bull by the horns and keep going.

So, you know, just just know that you can do hard things.

Know that you can do big things.

And it's whenever you decide to bite the bullet and take those chances That big things happen.

But we decided to stay and we decided to do it.

So if that were to end tomorrow because of legislation and different things, I have no regrets.

And I'm glad that I'm glad we stayed in our home state.

Hillbilly Hot Dogs is frankly one of West Virginia's most popular tourist attractions.

With visitors and fans from around the globe.

However, if you know of the country-spanning love story That brought the 12x16 foot wooden building to where it is today A much larger wooden building adorned with another man's treasure.

Producer Bryce Smith joins Inside Appalachia producer Bill Lynch To visit co-founder Sharie Knight Where they discuss the origins and the operations of Hillbilly Hot Dogs And the legacy left behind by the self-proclaimed "Weenie Man."

So, yeah, let's start with the real simple.

The secret origin of Hillbilly HotDogs Well, Sonny and I were sitting out underneath a tree.

This old house up here on the hills, Sonny was one of 11 children.

And we were sitting out under the tree and I said, "honey, why don't just plow that land over there and build me a weenie stand?"

And the 12 by 16 building was built with him and his brothers and brothers in law, and I soon learned that in order for them to build, I had to keep a pickup truck right in front of the place and a couple cases of beer, and then they just work till the sun was coming up.

The next day-it was nonstop.

But if you took away the truck or you took away the beer, nobody worked.

Everyone would stand around goin *Drums fingers* "What do we do?!"

219 00:15:53,886 --> 00:15:56,622 This would have been in April of 1999.

We opened, September 6th of 99 and closed three days later and got married.

You know, we had people stop in and say, you know, 'you need to stay here, be here for all the Marshall games because of traffic going back and forth.

So we would stay late.

We would open early.

We just did.

We played a lot of Yahtzee.

It was crazy.

And then we and we opened in September, so we went right into winter.

And so it was very difficult.

You mentioned this, like, as a dream.

So you had wanted this for a while?

No, actually, Sonny did.

Sonny, his parents had a hot dog stand up in Green Bottom just up the road, in the 50s.

And he loved it that his parents did this together.

And, you know, people could dance and, you know, just fun stuff in the 50s.

And he loved that.

And he loves hot dogs.

He'll never go for five miles without stopping for a hot dog.

I don't care who you are.

He was going to eat your hot dog.

I mean, it's who he was.

And so he wanted that.

And I said, okay, I was a single mom, broke as a joke coming up with these crazy things for my kids to eat.

You know, the taco dog, the egg dog, whatever I had, I would scrap it on there and say, oh, this is it.

Tonight we're having gourmet!

Taco dog!

(Child, off-screen)That taco!

Taco?

-Yeah!

Issa hot dog.

And my kids just thought it was phenomenal.

So I said, let me try this with you, Sonny, and if you like it, we'll go from there.

And he did.

And he said, if we can convince people to try something different, we got a winner.

our menu had about... we had the West Virginia dog, the chili dog, taco dog.

my egg dog, and pizza dog, We had five dogs on that menu, and we had a dog that cost $2, which was unheard of in 99.

Our meatpacking guy gave us three months.

They didn't think we'd make it after three months.

Someone said, "you should go to the SBA and see if they'll give you any money."

And I went down, talk to the lady, and she said, "there's no money for you" to Sonny.

And she says, "you, we might be able to do something.

What is it you want to do?"

And I said, "well, we're building a little weenie stand down on Route Two."

"Oh no, no, no, no, nope It'll never work.

Never work.

Out, bye."

And I could feel the rod in my back getting hotter as it's coming up to my neck.

And I'm thinking if I was a 16 year old, 17 or 18 year old kid, and you told me my dream wasn't going to make it, I mean, I don't know how I take it, but I was a 42 year old woman and she was telling me it wasn't going to make it.

To this day, she still comes here and she says to me, "Thank God you didn't listen to me."

So how'd you meet Sonny?

I met him in California.

We had a huge carwash complex, very, very new for the time.

This was in like in 97. you take your car and get your windows tinted, radio, all those different things, done to your car.

And that's where he was, and I just saw him running around, hugging and kissing everybody.

And I kind of tilted my glasses and I went, "what the heck just flew into town?"

So I followed him for two years, before I got to really know him and know he wasn't married and and.... that's how our whole life started.

Yeah, back then we just had the 12 by 16. and then we'd see people with their trays of food, hot food going out to their car or wherever they were going to go sit.

And we were like, oh no, we got to put we got to put something here that people would come in and stay warm or cool.

And so we found this bus.

This is the first bus.

Yeah.

This one still runs.

It's got all its innards.

It can run And that bus over there we got for 200, but it doesn't have any engine.

So that one has to be pulled out.

Everything connected here was done by my husband, everything.

Now you have contractors that come in here- - and if y'all are contractors, you know, you look around, you see some of these weird wires hanging and you're like, what is going on here?

Well, that was Sonny.

Just Sonny and duct tape.

Okay.

The graffiti, there is a lot of it there.

There is- he got in trouble on his school bus, got kicked off for like a month.

And he had to like walk to school, which is in Barbourville.

And so he says, no, I want everyone to sign their name.

So we do.

And the only place we don't let the markers go is our wedding chapel.

Other than that, do it.

Feel good about it.

Just- I just don't like some of the drawings, you know?

Okay.

The wedding chapel.

When did that start?

And tell me all about it.

The wedding chapel started.

Well, we had a storm come through and it took out the trees.

We had the van in the one tree over the wedding chapel and it took it out.

So we had to move the van to the other tree.

And then we just looked at those two stumps of wood and we just say, what can we do?

What should we put there?

People said, you need to sell your stuff that you have sitting out here.

And Sonny goes, "well, okay."

So he built the building and he, put all this stuff in there and then people will walk in and go, "oh, how much do you want for this?"

And he'd say, "well, it's very expensive" cause he couldn't sell it!

He couldn't get rid of anything he already brought.

He couldn't do it.

So I said, this isn't going to work.

I got to get the $800 back that it costs for you to build this building.

So someone wanted to make it a Wedding Chapel.

So we are weddings, weenies and Wi-Fi.

and I'm into the 300's of the weddings.

I have one tomorrow, actually.

Do you do the services or do you have, like a preacher on demand?

I am certified, I'm licensed by the State of West 'by God' Virginia.

You betcha.

Yeah.

Let's talk about The Homewrecker.

The Homewrecker.

HOOOOOOOOO HOOOMMMEEE HOOOMMMEEEWREEE HOOOMMMEEEWREEECKERRR okay.

Again, Sonny wanted something that nobody else had, so we went to our food packing company, and he said, you know, 15 inch all beef, and we want to put all the toppings on it.

And, Buddy Logan looked at us and said, it's a novelty.

No, it's not going to last.

And I turned around and Sonny was walking out the door and I looked at Buddy Logan.

I said, you gave us three months to make the dog for him.

Just do it.

Just make it.

So he came into our- we, at that time, had a Huntington location.

He came into the store and he had a frozen prototype 15in long.

All beef- threw it down the table.

It was frozen and it just kind of bounced.

And my brother was down there and he went, And right there we got the name.

Exactly that, that second.

we had various people come out to try it, to see what they could do time wise, because we knew people would want to.

Yeah, as a challenge.

I don't particularly like that, but people do.

People like challenges.

So.

So one guy, David Frankie... he had the right last name, huh?

He was a student at Marshall.

And he did it in 12 minutes and we knew, okay, we got our set time because it took him everything he had to do 12 minutes.

So now from there, we've gone down to the two minutes and 34 seconds, which was just beat the other day by a young man.

Now, course, last year we were hit with the, you know, SS Logan closed down.

And so it was a whole thing of 'what am I going to do?'

I really didn't know what to do.

And I turned to a very good friend of mine by the name of Guy Fieri and I said, I need help.

I don't know what to do I just, I I'm lost, totally lost unless we start making them.

But then I'm gonna have to have another building to do all that.

And so he said, "I got you."

That's all I said.

"I got you."

And the next thing I know, I had chefs from all over calling me, going "give me specs, give me information, give it- Do you have any left on hand?"

Which we did.

So they had those to look at go from.

and we ended up with Vienna Beef.

And they've done a phenomenal job.

When my husband died he called.

He called me quite a few times just to make sure I was okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So he's gone, yes?

Yes, yes.

I lost him- it'll be four years in July.

And, you know, I didn't think I could even step foot on the property after he left because every part of it... even he and I sitting in here and having to clean up some of people's drawings or what have you... you know, I didn't think I could do it.

I just, you know, but I had family in that came in for his funeral and they wanted to eat.

And so I immediately brought them here and opened the kitchen, started cooking.

And that's when I realized, oh, yeah, you can do this.

Because I feel him.

I feel I'm here.

You know, we were we were crazy in love.

We were married for 23 years, and we renewed our vows 34 times in our 23 years.

Yeah.

Everywhere we went, that man found a preacher.

Everywhere.

First thing, first thing on the agenda.

We're going to get married again, Shar' - I gotta go.

-I gotta go.

I know, I know that feeling.

Well you guys be safe out there.

-That was really good.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Come back and visit me.

-We will, this is our first time.

Well, see?

It's realy nice.

And I don't know what perfume you're wearing but that is nice!

Very nice.

So a lot of first timers- since I've been here there have been at least 2 or 3 people have said this the first time.

Yeah it's crazy and it's really word of mouth.

It really, truly is.

I mean, I think the Food Network, when they came out and filmed us in 2007, put us on the map without question.

And now, I mean, when I say map, I mean the world, because we have friends from Paris that come every year and bring us something, and we always have something again from somebody around the world.

And I have people that come here that don't even speak English, but they'll point to whatever they want.

And yeah, it's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

What comes next?

I don't know, I just don't know.

But I'm open to, you know, I think because my son, his wife, he's got two sons, their little one, the oldest ones six.

And I'm hoping for the next generation I always want to be- as long as I'm on this earth, I want to be around it, beside it, cuddle it.

But I... I'm ready to let the next generation take on.

And my son has been phenomenal.

And he was, you know, really highly trained by Sonny.

So he still has all that from him, which is beautiful, beautiful.

Thanks for following me to explore some of West Virginia's more obscure stories.

Stay tuned to West Virginia Public Broadcasting for next month's episode of Mountainthology.

Until then, extended versions of our stories are available on Passport And later on our Youtube channel.

I'm David Marcum.

See you next time.

This has been a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.