Help Wanted
The City of Buckhannon is accepting applications for the position of a full-time Assistant Youth Center Director at SYCC until October 14, 2026. Read more →
This story brought to you paywall-free, courtesy of the My Buckhannon team and our community partners
BUCKHANNON – Moon Flower will celebrate the end of its grow season with the annual Harvest Festival this Saturday. But new federal restrictions on hemp-derived THC products could make this the Main Street shop’s final celebration, its co-owner says.
Macie Queen, co-owner of Moon Flower, said their second annual Harvest Festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 17, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Main Street in Buckhannon.
With the federal ban looming, she fears this may be their final large event. As of December 11, many popular products — including gummies, edibles and drinks containing Delta 8 or Delta 9 THC — can no longer be sold legally unless Congress takes action.
“I hate to say it, but there’s a possibility it could be our last event, the last opportunity to come and celebrate with us,” Queen said. “I don’t want to think that that’s true; I have all my fingers crossed that something’s going to happen in the next few months that either kicks the can down the road or allows us to continue as a company.”
For Saturday’s festival, Queen said VIP ticket holders will get early access and extra perks. Tickets are still available on their website for $75.
“If you purchase the VIP tickets, you get early access to the store starting at 10:30 a.m., and all sorts of perks throughout the day,” Queen said. “You get unlimited drinks, a swag bag that is full of all kinds of different Moon Flower goods and all sorts of different products, new product samples and merch.”
The first 50 customers to spend $50 also earn a swag bag from Moon Flower; some of the items included are featured on Moon Flower’s Facebook page.
“We will have four different food trucks: Imposter Pizza, El Gran Sabor, Ging Rolls and Pancit, and Benny Boy’s Snack Shack — they’re doing a munchie burger this year,” Queen said. “Those will all be in the lot across from us, Travis Foster’s lot, and then this year we have a record number of vendors. We have 33 coming. We normally only do 20, but we’re going for it this year, so we have so many different cool vendors, arts, crafts, food, all sorts of different things.”
Main Street, from China Wok down to the intersection adjacent to City Hall, will be closed to make it easier to access the vendors across the street from Moon Flower.
“For music this time, we hired a DJ who’s a local student at West Virginia Wesleyan. His name’s Grant Smith, aka DJ Marinara; we’re really excited for that,” Queen said. “He’s going to be doing music for us all day and has curated a really cool playlist with some reggae/Fleetwood Mac vibes.”
The products inside Moon Flower have been curated to celebrate the fall season and include new flavors of popular items.
“We will have our baked goods cooler loaded with all sorts of fall specials; we’re doing apple cider donuts, mini pecan pies, of course, our classic brownies. The candy corner is going to be loaded up with all sorts of good stuff,” Queen said. “We will have our new flavors of cones, which are birthday cake and peanut butter chocolate, and we have our new K-Cups ready to go.”
The K-Cups are a collaboration between Stone Tower Brews and Moon Flower, and Queen said they sold out quickly, so they made a batch specifically for the Harvest Festival.
“One of the owners of Stone Tower did a mural for us, so we’re really excited to showcase our new mural. Our storefront lead, Anne, put together a scavenger hunt for the mural that you’ll be able to do,” Queen said. “There are going to be a couple of different guessing jars; guess how many gummies are in the jar, and if you win, you get the whole jar of gummies, which is going to be awesome.”
Queen said they were inspired to start the Harvest Festival last year because their annual 4/20 Festival was so popular and they wanted to celebrate the end of their grow season.
“It’s always a big feat, concluding grow season throughout the year, so we figured it’s not only something to celebrate with our team, but also with the community,” Queen said. “We had a rough grow season this year with the flood back in July. It was just difficult all around, so it feels like we should celebrate because it finally came to an end; all the hard work paid off. We’ll have a house blend of our strains available also, so it will be a pre-ground jar of flower that showcases all the strains that we did throughout this grow season.”
Queen said she is hopeful Saturday’s festival will not be the end of the story for Moon Flower. Macie said she and her sister, co-owner Riley Queen, have been advocating for their industry as much as they can before the deadline.
“We went to Charleston, we went to DC and lobbied on Capitol Hill, we’re fighting the fight, and we’re trying to get as many folks as we can to sign petitions, send in letters and call their representatives,” Queen said. “The Sign Guy is doing a project for us on these front four windows of the shop, and it’s going to be a little call out to the hemp ban, a call to action for people. People are looking for any way to support us right now, and we appreciate that more than anything in the world.”
West Virginia passed its own law regulating hemp-derived cannabinoid products in 2023, which makes it a felony to sell the substances to anyone under age 21.
Under the new federal rules, hemp itself will remain legal, as will THC-free CBD products. But new restrictions bring finished products containing more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC under controlled-substance laws.
“[The federal change] was initially supposed to happen on November 11, but the federal government gave us a month-long extension,” Queen said. “If everything goes through as is, which I don’t think it will, but if it does, December 11 will be our final date.”
The sisters have organized a petition and a page on their website to advocate for their industry and ask the community to support them. The link to the petition and the education page can be found on their website here.
