Specially formulated to support women, Winged designed these Relaxation gummies to be non-drowsy while still helping you feel calm. And as a non-drowsy treat, it is a delicious option to wind down at any time.

These gummies come in a beautiful pink and teal box that’s full of helpful information. Each Winged product has a different bird on the packaging, which we thought was a wonderful touch. And the company gives back, sharing profits to help women thrive.

Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies are vegan and gluten free, and they taste great. They are peach flavored but don’t have the overpowering sweetness or intense fruit flavor found in many gummies. They have a slight tartness and aren’t too sweet, but still have a lovely sugar coating that helps them feel like a treat. And they have almost no “hempy” aftertaste that we noticed. We found ourselves enjoying them daily whenever we needed some focus.

Winged CBD paid us a fee and offered us free products in return for our honest opinion. If you buy a product using our coupon code MOH20, we’ll receive a percentage of sales (& you’ll get 20% off). Read more about sponsored content on the Ministry of Hemp.

Keep reading to learn more about our experience with Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies.

Quality CBD gummies with a specal blend of relaxing herbs

You will find the gummies come in a childproof container, which is perfect for keeping young people out of your infused treats. Each box of Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies come in a plastic jar of 21, and each gummy holds 10mg of full-spectrum hemp extract. 

On the back of the box, you will find a QR code that will take you to a third-party certificate of analysis (COA). Once scanned, the QR code will take you to a page that asks you to put in the “Lot ID” of your product. You will find the Lot ID located at the bottom of the box under the “best buy” date in the form of a string of numbers. Our reviewer found success in entering the code, after a couple of tries, which allowed her to view the COA. We appreciate the transparency; these lab results are so important!

These gummies stand out not just because they are a great tasting full spectrum gummy (a rarity among gummies). They also contain a carefully curated blend which may enhance the effects of CBD. Created with Primrose Oil, which assists in fatigue resistance, Winged CBD also combines chamomile, lemon balm, and L-Theanine. L-Theanine is also said to help promote relaxation. Combined, these pairings helped us feel stress relief without becoming tired.

The gummies don’t hold a strong fruity flavor but are chewy and semisweet. After a few minutes, the reviewer found herself relaxed and able to focus better on the tasks at hand. Throughout the week, she found herself more productive, which may have been due to the gummies regularly taken. These are delicious, so the reviewer found herself popping in one gummy as needed throughout the day. 

Giving Back to Women the Winged Way

Winged’s founder Jess started the company after feeling too sleepless and too stressed.

In the search for mental clarity, she gave CBD a try. after a friend introduced it to her. After finding success in CBD, she delved deeper into research about hemp. Jess uncovered that CBD holds benefits for women in particular. And that’s when the idea for Winged started to form.

Jess wanted to share that knowledge with other women. And she designed Winged to share that relief she felt from CBD. Winged continues to carry out those values through its mission. Their goal is to empower women to be the best versions of themselves every day.

Winged gives back to several nonprofit organizations that help advance empowering women. These nonprofits include Girls For A Change, and the Downtown Los Angeles Women’s Center. 

Winged wants to give women the ability to be the best version of themself through hemp products. And with that simple mission, we believe Winged will continue producing great products for its consumers. 

These little sugar-coated treats are delightful. If you are looking for relaxation, check out the Relaxation formula by Winged CBD. It’s a sweet way to calm your mind and unwind no matter what time of day it is.

Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies Official Review

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• Highlights: Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies are a semi-sweet gluten free vegan gummy treat with a light sugar coating. These gummies are easy to take and are a relaxing blend of full-spectrum CBD with targeted herbal ingredients.
• Strength: 10mg CBD per gummy, 21 gummies per bottle 
• Price: $35.00
• Special Offer: Use code MOH20 for 20% off your order!
• Customer Service & Shipping: Fast, friendly customer service. Free two day shipping available. 
• Independent Test Results: Online.
• Flavor & Texture: These chews have a wonderful sweet flavor with a subtle peach tartness that makes them even more delicious. The texture has the perfect amount of chewiness without being too tough. 
• Key Ingredients: CBD oil / Full-spectrum Hemp extract with Evening Primrose oil, Chamomile extract, Lemon Balm extract, L-Theanine
• Other Ingredients: Cane sugar, Tapioca syrup, Water, Natural flavors, Pectin, Olive oil, Malic acid, Sodium Citrate, Citric acid, Organic Fruit and Vegetable Juice (Color).
• Other: Winged CBD offers a 45-day return policy for unsatisfied customers.

On June 5, 2020, Ministry of Hemp conducted our own lab test of Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies using Analytical 360, our trusted lab. Download test results here.

Winged makes their CBD products from hemp grown in the U.S. without pesticides. They offer a variety of formulas designed to support sleep, mood and wellness.

The post Winged Relaxation CBD Gummies: Stress Relief That Won’t Make You Sleepy appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt sits down for a conversation with Raven Faber of EngErotics for a conversation on motherhood, engineering, starting a business, sex toys and CBD. This is the latest part of our ongoing Women in Hemp series.

Raven is a black woman who started her career in STEM and ended up founding a healthy, educational sex toy company, EngErotics. Using her engineering background Raven has developed sex toys that work for people of all sexual orientations, genders and body types. Matt sat down with Raven to discuss their recent addition of CBD products to their line and how CBD can affect and even help improve intimacy.

Previously, we reviewed EngErotics Oh!Nectar, a CBD-infused oil which can be used for intimate massages or as a lubricant. If you’re interested in trying their products, you can use coupon code The_Ministry to get 10% off your first EngErotics order.

Send us your feedback!

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast

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Sex & CBD with Raven Faber: Complete episode transcript

Below you will find the full written transcript of this episode:

Matt Baum: I’m at Matt Baum, and his is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

I’ve been talking to a lot of women who are doing very exciting things in hemp on the show recently, and today we’re going to talk to another one. Her name is Raven Faber, and she is the CEO of a company called EngErotics. Raven doesn’t directly work in CBD or hemp, but she does bring CBD into your business. You see, Raven works in sex toys and she comes from an engineering background and she is amazing. She’s so fun to talk to and you guys are going to hear my conversation with her real soon. Now, some of you might be saying, “Well, what does CBD have to do with sex toys at all?” You’ll see, trust me, but when I started thinking about the differences between the hemp market, specifically the CBD market and the sex toy market, they have a lot of things in common. Both industries have been battling a lack of education and understanding that can shunt them to darker disreputable places.

When it comes to CBD, you’ll find less than reputable companies making all kinds of medical claims about how it’ll cure your allergies and make you see better and cure your cancer. The same thing knows with the erotic sex toy industry. For too long, you’ve had to go to very male humor driven porn shops, full of essentially joke memorabilia that doesn’t do anyone any good. Raven found a way to, not only help people enjoy sex, enjoy themselves and accept themselves for who they are, but introduce CBD into their sex life as well with some pretty cool results. While we don’t get into the nitty gritty of things, today’s episode is going to be pretty explicit, so if you have little ones, again, this might be a good headphones experience, but I’m really excited about talking to Raven, and I think you guys will think she’s really cool too. Here’s my conversation with Raven Faber of EngErotics.

Meet Raven Faber

Raven, welcome to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. Nice to have you aboard.

Raven Faber: Yeah, thank you for having me. This is this really cool.

Matt Baum: Before we go into like the CBD stuff, tell me about EngErotics. Tell me how about how this came about because it sounds like you were kind of a nerd and you got interested in some stuff and you just took it to its logical conclusions over there.

Raven Faber: No, still am. I’m currently a nerd. Yeah, EngErotics is my first baby, I guess next to my actual babies and my cat, which is my fur baby. I still am very much a nerd. I’m an engineer by profession and I practiced in the corporate world for 10 plus years, about 12, 13 years before. Well, actually, I founded EngErotics while I was still working on the tail end of that, but yes, I’m a structural engineer. Went to CU Boulder here in Colorado and got my bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering and my master’s degree in civil engineering. My area …

Matt Baum: Okay. Let me stop you real quick here.

Raven Faber: Yeah.

Matt Baum: How do you go, and this is … I’m not doubting what you do. I think what you do is necessary and important and kick-ass. Thank you for doing it, but how does one go from structural engineering to engineering erotica? Well, not erotica, but erotic tools and whatnot.

Raven Faber: Yeah. I feel you. Well, first of all, there are a lot of similarities between structural engineering and sex toys and sex in general because structural engineers, we engineer things to stand up straight and not fall down. Erections, we erect things.

Matt Baum: Ideally that’s what the erection does, right?

Raven Faber: Yeah. I’m also trying to erect things over here.

Matt Baum: Fair enough.

Raven Faber: The story is, is that my career in engineering and my career in sex toys, they were running alongside each other in parallel, believe it or not. When I was in grad school, I was broke, and I didn’t know that the recession was going to be a thing. I was just trying to get … I was about to go to grad school. I actually started in direct sales. So, I was a sex toy sales lady. I did sex toy parties. I started doing that in grad school as a way to make some extra money. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do this thing and make some money.” What I didn’t know is that I was going to like it a lot and I didn’t know I was going to be really, really, really good at it.

I actually continued to be a sex toy consultant on the side while I was being an engineer during the week, working 40 plus hours a week during the week. Then, on the weekends I’d go make some extra change, sling and dildos and talking about vibrators. That’s how I learned about sales and being … and not just sales, but being able to sell something that’s so personal and maybe even like taboo and dirty. Taboo, big air quotes, taboo and dirty.

Matt Baum: The Ministry of Hemp does not think it is taboo or dirty, but yes.

Raven Faber: I figured.

Matt Baum: I understand what you’re saying. This is a very [inaudible 00:05:58] show and we will not use those words.

Raven Faber: Yeah, you guys would have to bleep me out every other word.

Matt Baum: No, don’t worry about that.

Raven Faber: Learning how to sell a product and put the client at ease when it comes to buying their first vibrator or their first butt plug, whatever it is. I met all kinds of women. I’d say like I did this like for nearly a decade. From the time that I was, oh gosh, I was just barely 22 up until, gosh, my late 20s, and for reference, I’ll be 34 in March. I was an engineer in the corporate world and a sex toy sales lady for about the same length of time. During that time, I really liked selling. I liked it and I was finding that the direct sales route was not really what it was cracked up to be for me.

I wasn’t really getting everything that I needed out of it. I started to notice that in a variety of the things that were being offered because its direct sales. I would never bash anybody if that’s what they want to do, but you get your kit and you have your catalog. Most consultants, you don’t really get to choose what you’re offering. You just surely don’t have any say in the design process.

Matt Baum: So, this is the scientist nerd in you started to go …

Raven Faber: Yes, exactly.

Matt Baum: I think I can make a better vibrator than that.

Raven Faber: Yeah, exactly. I started to notice design flaws, things that could be very easily fixed, but they were just designed a little bit differently, and I started noticing some real gaps in the market. I noticed that a lot of what we were offering and how we were marketing it, very, very heteronormative. I know for the longest time, I’m not going to mention any company names obviously, but I know for the longest time that the idea was to have a fun ladies only party. You can imagine how that’s going to get muddy because you meet somebody who identifies as a woman and maybe they have not gone through their transition. It’s painful and expensive from what I understand. It’s like, listen, I’m not going to do ball checks at the door and reach my hand under somebody’s skirt. It made me really uncomfortable, that whole premise.

Then also, the things that we were offering they weren’t necessarily inclusive to other sexual identities, other gender identities. It was a very … yeah. We’ve gotten better over the years, but historically, the sex toy has been very status quo, very heteronormative.

Making better sex toys

Matt Baum: It’s so bizarre me. That blows my mind because it just seems like if there’s one industry that should fundamentally understand this stuff, you know what I mean? And be like, “Look, we’re not taking anybody’s crap and we’re not judging anybody. If you want a toy, we got it for you.” It seems like it should be the sex toy industry. Right?

Raven Faber: You would think that. Granted, things have gotten so much better over the past eight or 10 years, but there was a period of time where it just wasn’t that, it really was not that. Think back to, this was well before I knew anything about toys, because I was a little, I was a child, the late ’80s, early ’90s. You’d go get sex toys from the CD shop on the bad side of town and you had a very basic veiny throbby looking dildo.

Matt Baum: Yeah, and there were garbage. It was just garbage. It was stuff that you bought for parties and jokes and whatnot.

Raven Faber: Yeah, they weren’t being marketed like they are now. They certainly weren’t being marketed to women. They weren’t being marketed to queer couples, trans couples, it wasn’t there. We still have a long way to go, granted, and I’m finding that there are other companies that are trying to rehabilitate their image for lack of a better term, but there are a lot of really great companies in sex tech right now that are really doing, like leading the charge.

Matt Baum: A lot of women fronted companies I’ve noticed too, it seems like a lot of women got into the industry and said, “What the problem is? There’s too many dudes that are running this and you guys all think it should be geared a certain way.”

Raven Faber: Well, gosh yeah. We’re seeing, like it’s 2019 and we’re still trying. Like women, we’re still trying to get our seat at the table. There was this whole to do last year at CES and Laura de Carlo and they rightfully …

Matt Baum: Okay, CES. I don’t know what that is.

Raven Faber: The Consumer Electronic Showcase. Yeah, it’s in Vegas. It’s where you go to see all the latest tech gadgets, robotics, drones, the SAT and the other …

Matt Baum: Sure. It’s going on right now, right?

Raven Faber: It’s going on right now. It’s going on this week. Yeah, I know somebody who’s there with her invention and it’s quite amazing. We’re still fighting for a seat at the table. They have been having like VR porn and sex robots and stuff like that at CES, but as soon as you have a woman owned company with a vibrator that’s for women’s pleasure and that’s what it is, like no, no, no, no. This year is a bit different. There’s a big handful of sex tech companies that are at CES this year. I’m so pleased because that’s …

Matt Baum: It’s awesome.

Raven Faber: I’m so pleased. I’m just like …

Matt Baum: The more open we can be about this, the more normalizing we can be about it, the better we will all feel, literally.

Raven Faber: Well, yeah. The thing is that it’s a big market. It is a huge market. There are so much designing to be done, so much money to be made, and when the tide rises, all of the boats are going to rise, all of them, every single last damn one. Yeah, so when I started noticing these gaps in the market, this need for better design, better materials. I can’t even remember if I knew … I don’t even think I’d heard the term sex tech. I just knew that, I am an engineer, I take in circuits, I like building stuff. For anything that I don’t know how to do like when you go to school and you’re an engineer, well you have a bunch of other friends that are also engineers too.

Matt Baum: Sure. You call the right nerd. They tell what screw needs to be tightened or whatever.

Raven Faber: Yeah, pretty much.

Matt Baum: Obviously, I’m an engineer, I know what I’m talking about.

Raven Faber: Obviously. The engineer’s always right. All you got to do is just dig down real deep and just be like, “I feel like an engineer today.” Just real, real deep, find your inner engineer.

Matt Baum: So, you knew sex tech existed, you just didn’t know it was sex tech.

Raven Faber: I didn’t even realize what it was called.

Matt Baum: It just wasn’t a thing yet.

Raven Faber: I just wanted to build, can I curse?

Matt Baum: Yes, you can curse. That’s fine.

Raven Faber: I wanted to build shit. I’m cursing.

Matt Baum: Trust me, this show is already explicit.

Raven Faber: I just wanted to build some shit and I didn’t even know what the company was going to look like. I didn’t know. I just knew that it was on my radar. I started thinking about it probably two years before I actually founded EngErotics. I’m still in the corporate world and a friend of mine introduced me to a, they’re no longer in business, but a startup called Orgasmatronics, and I had the pleasure of meeting their founder, their CEO and their team. It just blew my mind. I’ve told each and every one of them that, that was really like the catalyst. That was the inspiration. That was really when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that yes, there was a place for engineering and science in the realm of sex toys, because of that company, although it was not founded by a woman, it was founded by a physicist with a PhD. I’m like, holy shit.

Matt Baum: A nerd, there you go.

Raven Faber: What is going on? And he’s doing videos about eccentricity and frequency and rotational vibration. He had his whiteboard, and he’s putting this on YouTube and writing equations and shit. I’m like …

Matt Baum: Like yes, yes, this is what we need.

Raven Faber: Yes, where was this course in college? Where was this? Unfortunately, the company went under and I was really sad to see that happen because what they were bringing to the table was really cool. The concept, just Orgasmatronics. I was like, yes.

Matt Baum: Great name.

Raven Faber: Yes, absolutely. I speak very highly of them because they were really my inspiration and affirmation that, yeah, this is a thing. Yes, absolutely.

From sex toys to CBD

Matt Baum: Let me ask you. From there, because I have to, obviously the show is about Hemp so we need to bring it back to hemp, but from there you start building your own superior, well engineered sex toys driven for women, for trans couples, for just about anybody who needs one. How do we get to CBD?

Raven Faber: Oh gosh.

Matt Baum: How does this [crosstalk 00:15:27]?

Raven Faber: We could be, “Yeah.” I’m like, “This is a hemp show.” We might have to do edition two on this.

Matt Baum: Yeah, no doubt.

Raven Faber: Because it’s a wild ride and there’s a whole like thing about the sex toys and what we do because there’s a difference between being the inventor and being the engineer and that’s a whole different thing. CBD, all right, yeah, CBD. CBD came to find me quite literally. I didn’t even know we were going to be working with CBD. I had no clue. I had no idea at all. We have a private group on Facebook, the EngErotics community. It’s basically like, we have conversations, you and I are having, do Facebook lives. It’s where I gather feedback because I want to give the people what they want.

Matt Baum: Yeah, of course.

Raven Faber: It’s a safe space where we can talk about sex and all that stuff. One day somebody posts in the group, “Hey, Raven. What do you think about CBD infused lubricant and THC infused lubricant?” To be completely honest with you, I had been out of the loop because I’ve been in the corporate world for a long time and the firm that I was at right before I made the leap to become an entrepreneur, I think I can call myself that these days. I think I qualify. Sometimes I’m like, “What the hell am I doing with my life?” I honestly had no clue because I had been … my previous firm in the firm before that, they did randoms and there was a zero-tolerance thing and so I didn’t touch anything.

Matt Baum: Gotcha.

Raven Faber: So yeah, I didn’t use any topicals, I didn’t vape, I didn’t smoke anything. I went to school in Boulder.

Matt Baum: It was around.

Raven Faber: We’re 420 friendly.

Matt Baum: Yeah, it was around.

Raven Faber: Yeah, absolutely. I just couldn’t, because I didn’t want to risk losing my job and so I said, “I have no clue. Let me ask.” Because there were other people that I knew in the space. One of the first people that I asked was one of the founders at Steep Fuse Coffee in Boulder, Colorado.

Matt Baum: Okay. I’ve heard of them.

Raven Faber: Yeah, Devin. Him and I went to high school together.

Matt Baum: Oh cool.

Raven Faber: Yeah, I reached out to him and I was like, “Hey, I got this question, don’t know. I’m reaching out to people. I need people who are current 420 hemp CBD THC people tell me what’s going on because I don’t know how to answer this question.” Long story short, the idea was pitched to me that perhaps maybe EngErotics should dive into this realm and create CBD infused intimate body care products. I thought about it and I realized there was certainly a need for that. On the chemical engineering side, on the formulation side, because sex toys and CBD, they don’t seem like they’re related, but they actually have a lot of things in common. Neither one of them are regulated for quality and safety.

Matt Baum: That’s one of the things when I first heard your name and what you were doing, I said to myself, “Oh my God, this makes perfect sense. How did no one think of this yet?” That’s what blew my mind.

Raven Faber: Well, that’s the thing. I’m sure that many people have, but it’s like a lot of people have an idea, just about everybody has an idea. I have no doubt that there are probably half a dozen other people that maybe thought about launching a company like this, but it’s in the execution. Too often, like, “I have an idea and one day I’m going to do this idea.” And it takes a lot of work to actually … yeah, the execution is … I was very intrigued, very intrigued, and I’m like, I think that there is definitely a need for this and we’re going to see regulation for quality and safety on the CBD side long before we do on the sex toy side, unfortunately.

That’s because of societal stigma and whatnot, but there’s even something stigmatized and taboo about CBD. I hear it every day like, “Oh, I want to I want to give my mom in-law, one of yourself sticks for her whatever, she’s got pain.” Whatever the case may be, “But she has never touched anything cannabis related. I don’t know how she would feel about it.”

Matt Baum: She’s afraid of marijuana or like …

Raven Faber: Yeah. Once we started diving into it. I was really blown away by what the demand was. I was really shocked by how many people didn’t realize you could use CBD to enhance the sexual experience. I was even more shocked to learn that people did not know that there’s no regulation here. There’ve been plenty of people that have been injured by subpar sex toys with toxic materials, butt wider, but you never hear about those things. But if you find somebody who’s an ER nurse or an EMT, those stories.

Matt Baum: Oh yeah, they’ve got plenty of them. Sure.

Raven Faber: Yeah. Sex Sent Me to the ER, I forgot channel it comes on, but there’s a reason why it happens.

How CBD enhances sex

Matt Baum: Can I ask? When you said how CBD enhances, can you explain that? How does it work? In your products, maybe just walk me through one of your products how it’s used and what it’s used for?

Raven Faber: Well, CBD has been, as I’m sure … tell me if I’m telling you something. You’re at the Ministry of Hemp. You know all of this shit.

Matt Baum: No, but we’re here to learn. Don’t worry about it. We’re here to learn.

Raven Faber: We know that it can act as a vasodilator and get more and more blood flow going, and when there’s more blood flowing into an erogenous area, the sensitivity is apt to increase.

Matt Baum: That makes sense.

Raven Faber: Yes. When you apply a CBD topical to the clitoris or you use it internally, on the G spot or you use it on the penis, it has the potential to create more sensitivity for an enhanced experience. Of course, your mileage may vary, everybody is different. Depending upon things like age, do you use tobacco? What’s your medical history? What kind of medications are you on? Have you been using alcohol tonight? These are all things that, I know like when I’ve been drinking, my reaction to CBD is a little bit different because like I feel a little bit …

Matt Baum: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve had CBD in cocktails and stuff and it is a different sensation.

Raven Faber: It’s different. It’s very different. I always tell people, part of the fun is really experimenting to see how it works for you. I always tell people, I find that for a number of people it helps to prolong the experience.

Matt Baum: Really?

Raven Faber: Yeah. It’s like while increasing your sensitivity, getting you out of your own head, especially if you’ve been vaping, I’m not limiting it to … we don’t do vape, but just say you decided to vape CBD, it helps you to get out of that anxious level. I’m a mom. My head is like all over the place and sometimes it’s like, for us women especially, when we’re worried about the kids, we’re worried about doing the … we got to do the school project and all of that stuff. How the hell do you get in the mood for sex when your mind is just like scattered? Or maybe, for us women who are postpartum, it’s like, we don’t look like we did when we were 21. I sure don’t. It’s like gosh, I feel so self conscious and after having used CBD, it’s really a good way of getting out of your own head and getting into a more relaxed headspace so you can have an orgasm and that’s just the mental benefits outside of anything that’s happening in your vagina, on your vagina, on your vulva.

Matt Baum: You’re not thinking about it, you’re just enjoying.

Raven Faber: Yeah, absolutely. But I’ve had clients of mine write into me and tell me about how it’s helped them to increase lubrication, how it’s helped them … they have more sensitivity, they’re able to have more orgasms. It’s helped prolong their partner. It’s been all across the board and since people are so different, it’s like, I can never tell people like, it’s going to do this, this, this for you. All I know is it’s going to be good.

Matt Baum: That’s the same with any CBD product. That’s the same.

Raven Faber: Yeah.

Matt Baum: Anyone who’s making the hardcore claims, it does this, it does that is probably a liar, but we know it helps with anxiety, we know it helps, like you said, take you out of that headspace, it helps mellow you out. And it would make sense that yes, if you introduce it into an erogenous zone, chances are it’s going to absorb the same way and have similar properties.

Raven Faber: Yeah, absolutely. I am not a doctor. I am an engineer. None of us are doctors. We’re all engineers and scientists. Our formulations specialist, she’s very good at telling us this is what you can and cannot say. It’s why we do our labels the way that we do and this, that, and the other. But I can tell you that a number of our clients have written into me and said, “Hey, I have this condition in my intimate area and it’s made it easier for me to have sex.”

Matt Baum: That’s incredible.

Raven Faber: Yeah, I wonder if we’re in this area where there’s new hope for women who have things like vaginismus, vulvodynia, endometriosis. I wonder if we’re like in this space where, there are a lot of women that have … they want to have sex, but it’s very painful, very difficult, even impossible for them to have sex. Maybe this could help them. I tell people like, “Listen, go to town. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. I can’t guarantee that it’s going to do something specific. Your results will vary. They will vary, but I can say that you’re going to have a really good time.” It’s been a very rare occurrence that somebody’s told me like, “Your product didn’t do anything for my sex life.” I’m just so thrilled that our products are helping people and people are loving what we’re doing. Yeah. It came to me. CBD came to find us.

The EngErotics product line

Matt Baum: What do you guys offer right now, CBD wise at Eng? Is it EngErotics or EngErotics? What do you call it?

Raven Faber: EngErotics. Think engineered erotic.

Matt Baum: EngErotics. I kept looking at it. I’m like, how am I going to … ENG, ENG?

Raven Faber: Yeah, it’s okay. It’s all right. We offer a few different things in a variety of different versions right now. We started our product line with our soothing self stick. We retroactively named it the original formula, and it is formulated with coconut oil and cocoa butter. It contains 500 milligrams of CBD. When we launched that, we had a bunch of people that were like, “Well, hey, I want to try it too, but I’m allergic or sensitive to coconut oil. What can you do for us?” So now we also have a coconut free version of the soothing South stick and it’s formulated with mango butter in lieu of the coconut oil and deodorized cocoa butter. So it’s a virtually, I mean, they’re both … neither one of them are scented, but the coconut free version it doesn’t really sound like anything.

We started with a 500 milligram soothing South sticks and then we created our extra strength, 1,000 milligrams South sticks, again original formula and coconut free. Then after that, came the soaking sand bath shots, which if I’m being honest, I didn’t even want it do. I was like, “What do you guys mean you want us to make …? You want us to do what?

Matt Baum: Like a bath bomb basically or? Where you just drop it in?

Raven Faber: No. We don’t do bath bombs. My formulation specialists and I, we had a really long conversation about bath bombs and why we don’t do them. It basically boils down to efficacy. With CBD being oil soluble …

Matt Baum: It is so good to hear somebody say something that makes sense in these [inaudible 00:28:19].

Raven Faber: Yeah, I threw that. I said efficacy. Damn it. How many people …? It’s not a buzz word. It’s something that we really care about. Our soaking sand bath shots, they come in four ounce vials. They look like kinetic sand, if you ever played with that as kid. I play with it now. I got kids, so whatever, I do one.

Matt Baum: It’s super fun. Yeah.

Raven Faber: Yeah. So, you dump the whole thing into your bath tub. They’re 20 milligrams of CBD each. They come in a variety of different scents that we custom blend in-house. Dump the whole vial into your bath water and you soak, and it feels like your body has had a glass of wine, but your inhibitions are not affected at all. So it’s like your whole body is just like “Oh.” The bath shots will get you right. The cool thing about those is that they’re formulated in such a way where the CBD is evenly dispersed throughout the water. If you’ve got a big fancy tub that you can soak right on up to your neck, that’s a very good thing.

Matt Baum: Right. Is it like an oil that comes sits on the top of the water when you get in, it just coach you? Is it like that?

Raven Faber: No, it doesn’t even sit on top of the water. It’s evenly dispersed. Just hangs out.

Matt Baum: Really?

Raven Faber: Suspended yeah, on the top, like from the top down to the bottom. Our testing showed that the efficacy was much better. We don’t plan on doing bath shots, or excuse me, bath bombs. We don’t plan on doing bath bombs. Our people, our followers, they’re like, we want something for the bath. I was like, “What does that have to do with getting it in at night?” And they’re like, “Well, you got to relax and you got to …” I was like, “Oh.”

Matt Baum: There you go.

Raven Faber: But you see, I’m a mom. I haven’t had time for that shit. Since we release those, I have become an occasional bath taker. I still don’t have time, but I take time out to use my own bath shot. So we have those. Then we have them our Oh!Nectar massage oil. We don’t have a CBD infused lubricant because personal lubricants are classified as a class two medical device by the FDA. Yeah.

Matt Baum: Makes sense I guess.

Raven Faber: Yeah. Listen, we’re still on the come up. I don’t have like a whole pile of money to fight the FDA, so we don’t want to piss them off. But we’re marketing … it’s a massage oil and it is safe for intimacy and it’s very good for erotic massage, it’s good foreplay, it’s good for intercourse, it’s good for back door play. It’s good with toys. It’s not safe with latex though because it’s oil-based of course. But those come in a variety of different sense as well. We also have an unscented version in both the bath shots and the Oh!Nectar. Then last year we released, we call it body polish, and it’s a CBD infused sugar scrub. Very gentle. It’s good for your intimate areas. To have a CBD infused bath with a partner or a group of people, we don’t judge.

We’re not here to … And you get that real sensual scrubbed down and you want to get the vibe right. You can’t just jump right into it. You can’t just like, boom, there it is. Draw that bath, soak in the CBD, get your little scrub on that sort of thing.

Matt Baum: Right. Foreplay baby, some romance. Come on.

Raven Faber: Yeah, and it’s like, gosh. I’m like, I feel like such a hypocrite because it’s like … with two kids, it’s like, “Where the hell … I’m lucky if I get a quickie.”

Matt Baum: Yeah, I got 15 minutes, let’s get in. Let’s get going.

Raven Faber: The kids are asleep. Do I want to watch TV? Do I want to go to sleep? Do I want to have sex? Pick one. Maybe two, but you can’t have all three. Otherwise, you can’t, you’re exhausted more so than you already are. Yeah, so that is what we currently offer. Going into 2020, we’re going to be doing some R&D with water soluble CBD.

Matt Baum: Very cool.

Raven Faber: But we’re focusing mostly on toy R&D for 2020. We have a pressure sensitive dildo that we’re working on. I’m very excited.

Matt Baum: That’s very cool.

Raven Faber: Yeah, it’s cool. We’re essentially picking up where Orgasmatronics left off with the team’s blessing, of course.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Raven Faber: I talked to each one of them and I’m still in contact with them. I said, “I would be privileged and honored to work on this and to bring it back and get it to where it needs to be.” Yeah, so we’ll be focusing mainly on mechanical device R&D in 2020. Maybe releasing a couple of new things on the CBD side, but probably not. We’re not in any rush. Our current product lineup is really solid. People seem to love it. I love it.

Matt Baum: I’m excited to try it. I think I’ve got a box coming and I’m super excited to try it.

Raven Faber: Yeah, no, you have a box coming. I’ve got to send that email and …

Matt Baum: Awesome. There’s something to be said about, and I was looking at your site, it’s a great site and it’s very inclusive …

Raven Faber: Thank you. Thank you.

Matt Baum: … and it’s very body positive. There’s something to be about going to a place like that where you know, someone not only thought about this but they put work into it, and not just their own products but the products you’ve selected, and I think you’re doing an amazing at job.

Raven Faber: Thank you. I have to say, I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out the designer who did my website, but her name is Laura Russo and she runs the EA graphic design. She is the reason why we have the look and feel that we do. Because initially I was pumping all my money into R&D and we didn’t really have money to focus on aesthetics. So, she did our website overhaul, she did our rebranding and she really helped us level up.

Matt Baum: She did a great job. It feels like a safe place to go to buy stuff like this.

Raven Faber: I think she nailed it.

Matt Baum: And there’s plenty of other dark corners on the internet.

Raven Faber: I want for people to …

Matt Baum: Where you should be careful.

Raven Faber: It’s really important. I think you nailed it. A lot of people don’t feel safe with this, like what if somebody finds out? What if I go to a sex toy store and I see somebody that I know?

Matt Baum: Right, when my boss is there, or what if somebody sees me outside?

Raven Faber: Yeah. It’s really at the heart of what we do, aside from safety and quality and science and engineering, all that jazz. It’s making people feel safe and cared for and we really want to be a place, like we want to set the tone that you can have a big air quotes because it’s a podcast, prestigious, respectable engineering firm that’s working on sex toys. There’s no reason why this can’t be respectable per se.

Matt Baum: Absolutely. Like we said earlier, the more open we are about it and the more comfortable we make people with it, the better we will all feel about it. I think it goes …

Raven Faber: We have to normalize the conversation.

Matt Baum: I think it goes beyond the fact that you guys are being respectful or you are being reputable. I think it’s the fact that you listen. I think it’s the fact that you listen.

Raven Faber: We try so hard.

Matt Baum: And you feel what people want. That’s how you said CBD found you. I think it is amazing and that’s why I brought you on this show because you’re the only person I’ve heard of doing this and I think it’s incredible.

Raven Faber: Being a minority, being a black woman, there aren’t really a lot of founders in either the sex tech space or CBD that look like me.

Matt Baum: Absolutely. Or just women period, let alone black women. It’s crazy, but it is changing.

Raven Faber: Yeah, and it’s the same …

Matt Baum: We’ve seen a lot of that changing. I’ve been interviewing a lot of women that are coming into this industry, the hemp industry that is, not so much the sex toy industry, but they’re coming in and saying, “Sell, there’s a right way to do this and I’m going to step in and do it. Whether it’s forming or creating a tincture or …” I just spoke to a woman that is making hemp nutrition bars that are amazing. She was like, “I saw a niche and I went for it.” It sounds like that’s exactly what you’ve done. Raven, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been fantastic.

Raven Faber: Oh gosh, this is amazing.

Matt Baum: Thank you so much.

Raven Faber: I’ve never been on a podcast before.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum: As you obviously heard, I had a blast talking to Raven. She is the coolest. She is a mom, she is a scientist, she is a nerd, she’s in the CBD and she makes sex toys, which puts her right up there in my top five most interesting people that I’ve probably ever spoken to, and of course, you will be able to find links to EngErotics and all of their products in the show notes for this episode.

Next time on the show, bring your appetite because we are going to be talking hemp in food again and I might even do a little bit of cooking. As always, I want to thank everyone that has been supporting the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. You guys have been great and you can hit me with all your opinions, your thoughts and your questions. You can email me at matt@ministryofhemp.com, or you can call the Ministry of Hemp phone line at (402) 819-6417 and leave a message, and you might just hear your question answered on the show by myself and Kit O’Connell, editor in chief of ministryofhemp.com. Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, make sure to get over there and check out Kit’s picks for the best CBD salves, creams and topicals of 2019.

While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to Ministry of Hemp newsletter so you can be the first to hear about all the exciting news reviews and educational stuff that we are doing at ministryofhemp.com. If that’s not enough for you, follow us on Twitter @MinistryofHemp or on facebook/ministryofhemp. As always, you can find a full written transcript of this episode in the show notes as well because at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everybody, but right now, this is your host Matt Baum saying, be sure to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is that the Ministry of Hemp Podcast signing off.

Editor’s Note: We initially picked an incorrect photo of Raven Faber for this article, using a clip art model instead. The photo has been corrected. We regret the error. -KO

The post Sex & CBD With Raven Faber Of Eng Erotics appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt talks with Franny Tacy. Franny is the founder of Franny’s Farm where she grows hemp for products sold in her multiple Franny’s Farmacy locations and online. This is the second part of our ongoing Women in Hemp series of interviews.

First, Matt discusses the future of multi-use hemp varietals and what they could mean for farmers and the environment. Thanks to Let’s Talk Hemp for the scoop.

Sponsored by Hatshe

This episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast is brought to you by Hatshe.com. Be sure to check out their full line of topical CBD products to help active people with recovery and doing more of what they love.

For a limited time, Ministry of Hemp listeners can enter the code hemp15 at checkout to receive 15% off your Hatshe purchase.

Send us your feedback

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Talking with Franny Tacy: Complete episode transcript

Matt Baum: The Ministry of Hemp Podcast is brought to you by Hatshe. With a full line of CBD topicals that are designed to help you keep doing the things that you love to do, this female athlete owned company not only promises very high quality CBD and all their products, but they also work with local nonprofits to constantly evaluate their manufacturing waste stream, their packaging, shipping methods, and their ingredient sources. Go to H-A-T-S-H-E.com, that’s hatshe.com, and use the code hemp15 for 15% off for all of our Ministry of Hemp listeners in their online shop. Again, that’s hatshe.com, H-A-T-S-H-E.com, and use the code hemp15.

I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by Ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

The promise of multi-use hemp

Matt Baum: I talk a lot about farms on the show and we’re going to talk to another farmer today, but one of the reasons is because that’s where hemp comes from, and it’s important that we have a good starting place. Of course, at Ministry of Hemp we encourage everyone to use the best of organic farming practices mixed with modern farming practices when they make sense and they make a better plant, and they’re better for the soil, of course. One of the things I’ve been asking a lot of farmers and people producing hemp products is the idea of a multifaceted hemp plant. One that’s not just used for CBD, but one plant that can be used several different ways. For the flower, for the hurd and fiber, and for the grains even.

I get a newsletter in my email from a site called LetsTalkHemp.com. It’s a great site. You should check them out. In their latest newsletter there was a link to an article by Steven Hoffman where he is talking about predictions for hemp and the hemp industry in 2020, and one of them touches on this very subject, and that is using the whole plant. According to this article, in the coming decade, we’ll see a focus move beyond CBD to the whole hemp plant.

This is a quote from Marysia Morawska, a horticulture educator at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and she says, “I think a lot of farmers are going to realize the cannabis plant is not a CBD plant. What we’re going to see is a movement toward a trifecta or even a quad usage plant, so something that’s utilized for the hurd, for the fiber, for the flower, and for the grain. And once we realize what those genetics are, we’ll end up realizing that each region specifically has growing styles that will be differentiated by the genetics of that region, and we’ll move into a place where processing will include not just CBD.”

Basically what she’s talking about is developing a hemp plant that does all of the above. It’s a plant that be used for CBD, can be used to make hempcrete, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show, it can be used for hemp seeds for eating and hemp oil for cooking. A multifaceted hemp plant that farmers can sell not just to one supplier, but to four suppliers. It’s an amazing idea.

Before we get all cringy about the whole idea of genetic modification, this is probably the future of hemp. Already legal farmers all over the United States are choosing hybrids that work best in their region to grow the type of hemp plant they want. Whether it’s one that is high in CBD and low in THC, or high in fiber for textiles or hempcrete. Currently the vast amount of hemp grown legally in this country is grown for CBD, and like we’ve also discussed, there is a CBD bubble that is going to burst. When it does, farmers are going to need to look for a hemp plant that they can do more than just produce CBD flower with. That’s where this idea comes in, and I think it’s one of the most exciting things about hemp and its future on American farms.

CBD is great, don’t get me wrong. I use it every day. But there is so much more that hemp can do, from textiles to plastics to woods and even concrete. Now just imagine if you could develop one hemp hybrid that can supply all of that in one plant. I don’t know that there’s another crop out there that would be that versatile. Not just for farmers at the marketplace, but also for our environment.

There’s agriculture scientists that are hard at work right now developing this multi-use hemp plant, and it is coming and soon. Maybe not this year, but hopefully. And when it does show up, it will be the farmers that have to grow it. So in the meantime, we’re going to keep talking to them on this show. In fact, we’re going to talk to one of the busiest farmers I have ever met in my life today.

Meet Franny Tacy

Matt Baum: We’ve been running a series in the show about women in the hemp industry, and I’m talking to a pretty amazing one today. Her name is Franny Tacy, and she represents not only Franny’s Farm, but Franny’s Farmacy. She has been a firefighter, a pharmacy rep, a teacher, a world traveler, a hemp farmer, and a friend to some of the cutest goats you will ever see.

I spoke with Franny from her farm in Leicester, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. And if you haven’t been to Asheville, it’s absolutely gorgeous, and the countryside is unreal. If you’re a child of the ’90s you might remember the TV show Dawson’s Creek, and it just happened to be filmed in and around Asheville if you’d like to see what I’m talking about.

So I was looking at your website a little bit ago and you call yourself the Hippie in High Heels. Lay that out for me real quick before we go into your origin story.

Franny Tacy: Okay. I worked in pharmaceuticals for 12 years, and that’s what the doctors called me. That was my nickname throughout the pharmaceutical industry. I was a specialty rep in respiratory sales.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I did training and marketing. That’s where a lot of my business experience and all the stuff, we have our own manufacturing for our product line, where a lot of my experience came from.

Matt Baum: Okay. Where did the farm come from? That sounds like from a very young age you were a farm kid.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, my dad was a farmer. My parents divorced when I was really young. So I’ve got my dad who was a cattle farmer, grew up riding horses, and my mom was super big time corporate business woman. She worked in the financial world.

Matt Baum: And you ended up taking a little bit of both of their magic and turning it into what you do now, Franny’s Farmacy, basically.

Franny Tacy: Yes. I’m the middle child. Three girls.

Matt Baum: All right, that explains it.

Franny Tacy: So I’m the typical middle child. Nobody knew who I was or where I was, but I was always doing something mischievous.

Matt Baum: Gotcha, gotcha.

Franny Tacy: Or adventurous. Because I was very curious.

From firefighting to North Carolina hemp farming

Matt Baum: So tell me your origin story. You grew up on the farm, you went into pharmaceuticals, you went back to the farm, and now you were involved in CBD. Tell me your origin story. How does this happen?

Franny Tacy: Well, by the time you get to 50, most people have done a lot. But I hear I’ve had a few lifetimes. So yeah, I mean, I grew up. I always wanted a farm from the time I was little because I grew up on a farm and loved that. So in college, I have a family full of engineers and Episcopal ministers, and I went to ag school, which was unheard of.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Then transferred into forestry, and I have a biology degree. I worked in forestry, I lived in the woods, I’ve been in every national park, camped for months. All this stuff. I am just a nature mama. That was my family’s nickname for me.

Matt Baum: Were you like a forest ranger when you say forestry?

Franny Tacy: Yeah!

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: I was the first female firefighter in Idaho.

Matt Baum: Oh wow.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, in 1990.

Matt Baum: Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. That was just not that long ago. I know. Yeah.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Isn’t that crazy. So that’s when I lived out West. Then when you have a $40,000 forestry degree, at some point you’re like, oh, I need to do something. So I went back and got a master’s in education.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Teaching is not the way to do that, but I loved teaching. I did six years in teaching and have a masters. Smithsonian Institute Scholarship for teaching with the brain in mind, was what I was working on in my PhD when I got into pharmaceuticals.

So now we’ve got all the things. Our lifetime is always what brings us to this. So in pharmaceuticals, I was called the Hippie in High Heels, the Anti-Drug Rep. The more and more I was involved in that industry, and being like a really big health freak that I am, it afforded me the opportunity to get out of college debt, buy my farm, and get out of that industry.

Matt Baum: That’s amazing.

Franny Tacy: So my story is pharma, P-H-A-R-M-A, to farm, and now to Farmacy. So we had the farm seven years ago, before hemp was even on the radar.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I was teaching. My hobby has always been farming. So I got city chickens in the ordinance in Asheville, because I wanted to raise my own chickens. That was before their farm. I worked with farmer’s markets, and all my best friends and hobbies was farming.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: That’s what I did.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: I cooked, I had a garden, a city garden, and fed 19 people. Finally, I mean my whole neighborhood, as much as I fed them, they were very thrilled that I finally got my farm. They’re like, out of here!

Got the farm, and I was teaching business of farming classes. And that is when, for the state of North Carolina, we farmers, all collectively, gathered together to figure out how we could grow hemp. North Carolina was the 11th state that came online with an industrial hemp pilot program. It’s the only state that was funded by farmers. Our state would not back us with money.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Franny Tacy: The farmers here in this state gathered together to raise $200,000, put together plans and everything so that we could grow.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Something very similar is happening in Nebraska, where I’m from.

Franny Tacy: You know, people dog politics a lot, but this was a really good situation. It was one of those at like 11:58 it passed at night, and we got the call the next day, and we’ve been working on this for like almost two years.

Matt Baum: Okay.

The first woman hemp farmer in North Carolina

Franny Tacy: So you get to the point where you’re like, whoa, we’ve got to grow now? We’ve got three weeks. It should be in the ground. Where are we going to get it? It’s illegal. So thus begins a whole other story of how I became the first female farmer in to plant hemp. Which I didn’t even know until after eight months after I planted it.

Matt Baum: So before we get into that, how did you get to hemp? You said you loved farming and you were very outdoorsy. How did you find hemp? What was your first experience with that?

Franny Tacy: Well, I’ve always been a supporter of cannabis in and what that plant can do, everything from fiber and food, for a long, long, long, long time, and very into plant medicine and herbs. It just makes sense to me. It just always made sense.

I knew the story. I mean, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” All this stuff came to me decades ago when I was out West. So it’s not like I had this epiphany like a lot of people now that have what I quote hemp fever.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: They’re like, I’m going to grow hemp. I’ve always been a supporter of it, and I’m a huge supporter of agro economy throughout the US. I love history and science, and it just fits. We need to return. I’m so passionate about what this plant can do for our economy and for farmers across the country.

Matt Baum: Okay. How much hemp are you growing on the farm right now?

Franny Tacy: So right now we’re in our third year and a lot is transitioned. I’m super proud, this was a huge goal. And a growing and agro economy is supporting now seven other farms that grow for us with our standards.

Matt Baum: That’s awesome. That is awesome.

Franny Tacy: Which is so amazing. I mean, it’s a lot of responsibility.

Matt Baum: How does that work, though? Did they find you, or did you go find the farms?

Franny Tacy: They found us.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I mean, I had about 800 applicants for people that want to meet the criteria in a work and grow, and there’s a lot of it. Region is one thing. We’ve put these farms under an NC state research program. So at our own farm right now, because we were already an established farm, we were an agrotourism farm. We had gardens and animals and goat yoga. We were on Vice TV and Lodging. I’ve kind of evolved the hemp for us to fit the model of our business plan here. So we grow about a quarter of an acre now.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: We do different varietal trials with Front Range Biosciences and Triangle Hemp. We have a hemp history tour. We do workshops. People can come and learn. I do a ton of consulting. And this is become the hub for us doing our clone research and a bunch of other things to support these other farms.

Matt Baum: This is nowhere near just a farm. You’re a full on like education system, it sounds like.

Franny Tacy: Oh, listen. If you can dream it, you can achieve it, they say. Right? Well, I’m such a dreamer.

Matt Baum: I can’t believe how much time. How do you make this work? You have a farm, you’re teaching classes, you do goat yoga. You know?

Franny Tacy: I mean, we have three people that live and work on the farm.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I mean, it’s my passion. So I do this 24/7, even in my sleep in a lot of ways.

Matt Baum: I believe it. I believe it.

Franny Tacy: Started with really amazing women, a Women In Hemp nonprofit, which we use different fundraising and awareness and educational events to raise money to fund female researchers at NC State that are doing all the data collection and trials and so forth on our farms.

So there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s so much collaboration.

Matt Baum: Yeah. So not only are you trying to do it right and you’re going for it the right way, but you’re doing it with lady power too. That’s awesome. I like that.

Franny Tacy: Yeah.

Matt Baum: That’s very cool.

Franny Tacy: I mean, that’s the reason I was chosen as a featured farmer for Hemp History Week last year in 2018. Not because I grow the biggest bud or because any one thing I do great, I just am an advocate for this industry and have helped in collaborations with data and research, because I’m kind of a science nerd from pharmaceuticals and all that stuff.

Matt Baum: Right. Right.

Franny Tacy: Just connecting and collaborating. That’s how we do it, with a lot of muscle and brain power.

Growing better hemp & making quality CBD

Matt Baum: So tell me about your hemp that you’re growing. You said you have standards and whatnot. What are you trying to grow and what are you using it for? What are you doing with the hemp?

Franny Tacy: So we’re vertically integrated, because when you’re first, there’s nobody to call for help. You’ve got to figure it all out.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Hey guys, you’ve got to do it yourself.

Franny Tacy: So that’s what we did. We have manufacturing and we have distribution. In our manufacturing, we have 50 different products right now.

Matt Baum: Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, and [inaudible 00:16:02] we have a GMP, good manufacturing practices manufacturing plant, and we’re actually about to launch a public offering so that people can buy stock in that, and we’re going to expand it. We’re running 24/7 right now.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: But how this ties into the hemp growing? That’s a really great opportunity if people are looking into it. There’s a lot of opportunities for farmers and for industry and business folks, and people that love it, but just want to support it from the outside.

So with the different breeders we’re working with, and we believe in working with breeders, don’t get your clones from mojo next door.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: There’s a lot to that.

Matt Baum: You know exactly what you are getting, basically. You can say I want it bred like this and I want it to do this, and you know exactly what you’re getting.

Franny Tacy: Well, we want the consistency for data, and how are these going to do in this area? So with Triangle Hemp, we use BaOx. And just theirs, not anybody’s. Just want to know that their genetics as the baseline for our products.

Matt Baum: Real quick, what is BaOx? I don’t know what that means.

Franny Tacy: BaOx is a hemp variety that’s grown for cannabinoid production.

Matt Baum: Okay. Gotcha.

Franny Tacy: So that’s where the CBD oils come from. We send that through extraction.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Then depending on what product it goes into, there’s different ways. Most of our products contain full spectrum, they’re used with a distillate.

Then we also, in all our dispensary’s, we have two corporate stores. But we franchise, so we have other business owners and will have 10 stores, six now, 10 by the end of first quarter.

Matt Baum: Is that all in North Carolina, or is it up and down the coast?

Franny Tacy: It’s North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Connecticut. Soon to be Connecticut and Florida.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. So there’s franchise opportunities as well.

Matt Baum: So and someone comes to you and they say, I like what you’re doing, I want to franchise, and you oversee it?

Franny Tacy: Yeah.

Matt Baum: That’s amazing.

Franny Tacy: And we’ve got it all dialed out. Here’s the plan, here we are, and I’m at every grand opening. So I’m excited about getting to travel, see some new places, and enjoy the towns and the people.

Matt Baum: Definitely. So, okay, you’ve got a thing on your website that says from farm to farmacy, which I love that. That’s fantastic.

Franny Tacy: Yes.

Matt Baum: I have a feeling you have some marketing background too, because you’re really good at this from what I can tell.

Franny Tacy: Well, thank you.

Vertical integration in hemp

Matt Baum: But explain that to me, your process, how you guys go from the farm to Franny’s Farmacy?

Franny Tacy: So like I was saying, vertical integration. So we take all of our hemp that’s grown everywhere, biomass goes into super sacks that goes to our processor. Then Front Range Biosciences is who we’re working with for all our top cut varietal trials, which is smokable flower, the buds.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: Then the trim from that that’s used in pre-rolls and all that type of stuff. We have a lot of genetic trials going on. It all goes through processing, always under the Franny’s watch, and then it goes into our manufacturing.

So we have different forms of it that is used through manufacturing. We have our topical division of manufacturing, then we have our edible division of manufacturing. And that’s where the expansion is going. Then we have our distribution center. We ship to every state in the country. We’re drop shipping. We white label, private label, about to break into some international markets finally.

Matt Baum: Oh wow.

Franny Tacy: That’s been a super long process.

Matt Baum: That’s impressive.

Franny Tacy: Yes. So our distribution center is where everything comes out of when you’re doing online orders. I love going in distribution. There’s boxes of products and foam.

Matt Baum: Oh yeah.

Franny Tacy: All the excitement.

Matt Baum: Just pure insanity.

Franny Tacy: That’s where everything ships out to all our dispensary’s. It is the hub. That’s like a big heartbeat there. There’s a lot going on. Then we have all our stores. So that’s how she goes. Vertical integration.

So our product is going all the way through that. So me and the NC State researchers are taking it from the farm processing.

Matt Baum: Sure. Do your stores only carry Franny’s Farmacy stuff, or do you carry other brands as well?

Franny Tacy: We carry other brands that are not competitive with ours.

Matt Baum: Okay, so they’re doing something different.

Franny Tacy: So we have our Franny’s Farmacy tincture, we wouldn’t carry something else. You know?

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: One of our alchemists also has a vape line, so we use some of their products. We’ve got a lot of the edibles and foods. When you go in our dispensaries, it’s like a hug. It’s a market.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: So you can get food and you can get other things. So there are some products that are not ours.

Supporting international hemp farmers

Matt Baum: Okay. Any textile stuff?

Franny Tacy: But mostly they are our proprietary hemp, blends. Yes.

Matt Baum: Any textile stuff, like clothes or hats or anything?

Franny Tacy: We have hemp hats.

Matt Baum: Oh, cool.

Franny Tacy: And right now that’s really, really a passion of mine. I’ll be in China for a few weeks this summer.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Visiting Patagonia and Astral Farms. So I’m a spokesperson or representative for several hemp lines that are really into the fiber. I just got my Astral shoes that are hemp boots to wear in Cuba. I leave for Cuba in a few days.

Matt Baum: Oh my God, I am so jealous.

Franny Tacy: We’ll be visiting 17 farms, 10 to 17 farms there we have on the agenda with the videographer and really understanding more agro economy, that’s what feeds our world.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: Not industrial agriculture. So between Peru and Cuba and all these places, it’s still building that. We are all connected. We all are human.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: Food is one of the things that binds us.

Matt Baum: Tell me about Peru. You just got back from Peru. What were you doing there?

Franny Tacy: Oh, I spent three weeks in bliss of exploration, adventure, many amazing farmers. So I spent some time with farmers that were in the jungle and in the mountains.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Then seeing how community, the food brings everybody together, the market, and all that in the cities, casting a web of interconnecting agro economy, culture, food, and farming.

Matt Baum: Let me ask you. In a place like Peru, obviously this is pretty new in the States and we’re getting it figured out right now, what is hemp farming like in Peru? Is it friendlier? Is it looser? I mean, I assume it’s something that’s been going on for awhile.

Franny Tacy: No.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: Absolutely not.

Matt Baum: No kidding?

Franny Tacy: No. When I went there, there was actually an international hemp symposium that was not actually right in Peru, but outside of that. It is being grown in certain areas, but it is heavily guarded right now. It is not mainstream at all.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: There is a lot of confusion in there about how hemp is different from marijuana.

Matt Baum: No kidding? I don’t know why that is so shocking, but, I mean, yeah.

Franny Tacy: I know, because everybody thinks there’s like Rastas and there’s all this stuff.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: But it is still very, very, very much like we experience here.

Matt Baum: So it’s like hemp in North Dakota, basically.

Franny Tacy: As I’ve been along the educational highway, people just don’t know or understand and they assume it’s marijuana.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: So they’ve got some things to address before it really becomes mainstream.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: A huge interest there is on the food side of it, and it’s very, very interesting.

Matt Baum: So what about Cuba? What is Cuba like? Is it any looser there? Or what do you expect when you go to Cuba?

Franny Tacy: I am trying to be completely present and completely open to ask these questions, and they’re such good questions. Maybe we’ll get to have another discussion after.

Matt Baum: I would love to.

Franny Tacy: But I’m trying not to predict. I’ve got the videographer with me and we’re doing the docuseries while we’re there. So I’m there to learn.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: On our farm, we actually have Sundaze, D-A-Z-Y, on the farm, and the spring that launches. We do Peruvian meals and we have discussion topics about it, and I’ll share some of the information.

Matt Baum: I’ve got to get down there. This sounds incredible. I have got to get down there.

Franny Tacy: Come on. You are welcome here.

Matt Baum: I would love to. Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, January 26 is when we’ll do our one on Peru, and then we’ll do one on Cuba.

Matt Baum: So when you go out and you meet these people, you just come back with more ideas, and better ways to do this, and people that you know in other countries now that you can hook up with and whatnot. Is it literally just a learning, or are you also teaching?

Franny Tacy: Oh, it’s both. It’s learning and teaching, because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Franny Tacy: Win, win. Like in Peru, all the people that I was talking to, I mean, when it comes to farming too, I know how to butcher any animal on a farm, do [inaudible 00:25:34].

Matt Baum: I believe it.

Franny Tacy: From the kill all the way to the table. I even raise it. I’ve got a wealth of experience. So anything they need help. Laying on a concrete floor for a new pavilion going up. And just talking, just learning. I mean there is so much to figure out. And our Women in Hemp nonprofit is also going global, and there’s a lot of people, and a lot of what I do is talk about women have been written out of agriculture.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: So a lot of my personal passion is finding out the stories, what their parents did, and what their grandparents did, and what was the role? Bringing women back to the face in the light of what they’ve done throughout history, and what they’re doing right now, and trying to find ways to support them and their communities.

Matt Baum: Right on sister. I like it. That’s awesome.

Franny Tacy: But I did not come out and go, oh great, I’ve got it all figured out. It is just like it has been here.

Matt Baum: Well, none of us do. Right. None of us do. We’re all learning, and the more that we learn, the better we get at this. Right?

Franny Tacy: Yeah, and the more you know, the more you don’t know sometimes.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: Sometimes I’m like, I’ve got million more questions.

The future of Franny’s Farmacy

Matt Baum: Let’s go back to Franny’s Farmacy for a minute. What are you most excited about that you guys are doing right now? What’s selling the biggest?

Franny Tacy: Our number one product is the tincture, which people also refer to as the oil, or the drops you put under your tongue. Everybody tries to call it a bunch of things. That’s still our number one selling product. Our number two is our salve, which is insane all the success stories, all the testimonials on that. We sell insane amounts of that, and it’s all hand filled. It’s a very hard one to do systematically through manufacturing.

Matt Baum: I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: That’s part of the reason it’s so popular. But people love, the bath bombs are really popular. Chocolates and gummies and all the smokables.

Matt Baum: Yeah. That seems like something that’s really taken off this year really, smokable CBD and smokable hemp.

Franny Tacy: Yep.

Matt Baum: That seems to be very new.

Franny Tacy: And in North Carolina, we have been in a battle with that.

Matt Baum: I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: And we have dispensaries in South Carolina. I’ve had to stand up in the dispensary when they were shutting them down and pulling flower out of dispensaries without any legal right and say, guess what? I’m right here. I’m right here. We have flower. And I invite the police. You all come in. I’ve invited people to arrest me a ton of times. They don’t do it. I can’t figure out why. It’s probably because it would be way too great of a marketing plan. [crosstalk 00:28:29].

Matt Baum: Yeah. Exactly.

Franny Tacy: You know, a letter has nothing to do with it being legal.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: That’s what was happening in North Carolina and South Carolina. The government sending out letters and making raids that were really illegal. So I challenged it and we’ve never had a pull, but it’s been a real battle here.

Matt Baum: Are you still seeing that, or is it starting to mellow out a little bit?

Franny Tacy: It’s mellowing out a little bit as people are redirecting their focus. Right now, with the holidays and everything, everybody was out of session. They were taking a break. But I assume it’s going to heat back up here at some point.

Matt Baum: I’m sure. I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: Until there’s some type of conclusion.

Matt Baum: Well, we’re in an election year, too, so we’ve got to get out and huff and puff and save the children , right?

Franny Tacy: Exactly. Exactly. It’s an election year. Oh, gracious. [inaudible 00:29:25] for the ride.

Don’t forget the goats

Matt Baum: So completely off topic. Tell me about the goats. I’d see these pictures of the cutest damn goats I have ever seen, and you’re holding them. Tell me about the goats. I love goats.

Franny Tacy: Okay. They are so adorable and so funny. So agrotourism farm, we have farm camp here in the summer. Goats are so personable and funny. So we’ve had goats.

Somebody sent me a link a couple of years ago, three years ago, from it happening in Oregon. So we’re like, all right, well let’s do it. It’ll be fun.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: So we had baby goats, we did goat a yoga. Then when it was Halloween we did disgoat yoga, and everybody dressed up in disco outfits.

Matt Baum: Good Lord.

Franny Tacy: We had strobe lights. And they’re little and they’re bouncy, and they’re just like-

Matt Baum: And they love it.

Franny Tacy: They go through all stages. As babies, they fall asleep really quick, and people just pass them around. Then they go through the pinball bouncing phase.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: And then they get older and they just want to run through your legs for a cheese ball when you’re in a warrior position. I call it joyful yoga. It’s fun. It brings people out. Asheville is a huge hit for weddings as a wedding destination. So we have all these groups that come in and they’ll have tee shirts made and all this stuff.

Vice TV was coming to town, actually, on a very interesting subject of gerrymandering.

Matt Baum: Yeah. That’s been in the news a little bit in North Carolina, actually.

Franny Tacy: Yes, there is.

Matt Baum: Little bit.

Franny Tacy: So they were looking for radical smart people, the business people that were also doing crazy things, I guess.

Matt Baum: Right. And they happened to find you.

Franny Tacy: And they happened to find me. I was like, hi, [inaudible 00:31:14]. I was like, I’ll talk to you about politics, and put a goat on your back, and continue to smile. It all changes all the time.

Matt Baum: That is so cool. Are they working goats? Are they in the fields? Are they eating?

Franny Tacy: They actually are working goats, because between goats, sheep, two cows, and a donkey, that’s how we manage all our pasture land is by rotating them. So we have seven rotational pastures.

Matt Baum: That’s the old school way, man. That’s how you do it.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. Goats are browsers. They’re going to eat the brush.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: Sheep and cows are grazers, they’re going to eat the grass. So it helps us manage the land and keep it healthy, and they’re fertilizing it as they go. We’re a completely regenerative farm.

Matt Baum: That is so cool. That is so cool. I’ve got to get down there and see this. This sounds amazing.

Franny Tacy: You do! There’s so much hidden that people couldn’t even know or understand how everything was planted with intention. We have Blueberry Hill. We’ve got bees, a pollinator garden, an agroforestry project. Mulberries around all our pastures because they create a protein rich dense leaf that falls in the leaves, it’s a deciduous, to give our animals a little protein snack before they go into the winner of no grass. We’ve got hay.

Matt Baum: This is amazing. This is absolutely amazing.

Franny Tacy: That really, really goes back to what I did in college, is what I was developing, ecosystem and forest management plans. So I did a logging projects on nine acres of our farm, and created a different habitat for animals, and tulip poplar groves, and walnut groves. Yeah. Oh yeah. It never stops.

Matt Baum: Franny, I can’t decide if you’re a saint or a unicorn, to tell you the truth. You’re amazing. This is incredible.

Franny Tacy: Oh, you’re amazing. We all are amazing.

Matt Baum: Oh, stop. Stop.

Franny Tacy: Everybody is amazing in their own right. It’s just what is their hobby? Mine is thinking about a lot of things at one time.

Matt Baum: I can tell. Thank you so much for your time. This was fantastic. You a very busy woman.

Franny Tacy: Busy doing good things.

Matt Baum: That’s right.

Franny Tacy: Having the time of my life.

Matt Baum: That’s right. Keep it up, sister.

Franny Tacy: Thank you so much.

Matt Baum: We appreciate it.

Franny Tacy: If you need anything, you let me know.

Matt Baum: I absolutely will. Thank you so much, Franny.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum: As you heard, Franny is an amazing woman doing amazing work in the hemp business. You can find more information about Franny’s Farm, Franny’s Farmacy and their products, and, of course, goat yoga in the show notes for this episode.

That about does it for this episode of Ministry of Hemp Podcast. One final thought on female farmers. They are a group that has grown by 27% in the last five years. That is a pretty impressive number. Do not forget to support your local female farmers.

I hope you dug today’s episode, and if you want to let me know what you thought or you have a hemp related question, you can call me at (402) 819-6417. That is the Ministry of Hemp voice line. Leave your message there and you could have your question answered on a future show. You can also shoot me an email directly to matt@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com with your questions, your comments, or anything you’d like to hear on this show. You can follow the Ministry of Hemp on Twitter, @MinistryofHemp, on Facebook, backslash Ministry of Hemp, and we love to hear from you.

Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, be sure to stop by and sign up for our newsletter so you can get notified about all the cool stories that Kit, our editor in chief, posts over there. He’s got a great one about the FDA and some statements they made on CBD. There’s some really good clarification in there and I highly recommend checking it out.

As always, you can find a complete written transcript of this show in the show notes for this post, because at Ministry of Hemp, we believe a more accessible world is a better world for everybody.

Until next time, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, signing off.

The post Franny Tacy, The First Woman To Farm Hemp in North Carolina appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

First, our host Matt discusses the recent passage of the SAFE Banking Act in the U.S. House of Representatives and what it means for hemp businesses. Then we begin our Profiles of Women in Hemp with a conversation with Jane Pinto, founder of First Crop.

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you really want to help us out, we’d love for you to rate or review the show.

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More about women in the hemp industry

Here are some other articles we’ve published about women in the hemp industry:

• Exploring Hemp in India with Mansi Shah of Hemp Fabric Lab
• Becoming a hemp advocate, with Cait Curley
• Women owned CBD brands we love

Women In Hemp & Hemp Banking Update: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the full written transcript of this episode:

Matt Baum: 00:04 Welcome to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. My name is Matt Baum. Today on the show, we are starting the first of what I’m calling a series focusing on women in the hemp industry. Today we’re going to listen to my conversation with Jane Pinto from First Crop. Jane is amazing. She is not unlike interviewing a unicorn. She is spiritual. She is excited. She is powerful, and she is helping hemp farmers to bring their product to the public and making sure they do it in a safe and responsible way. Jane was wonderful, and I can’t wait for you to hear this interview, but before we get into that, let’s touch on a little news first.

Hemp banking update

Matt Baum: 00:52 Just a couple episodes ago, we were talking about banking and how difficult it is for anyone in the hemp business to legitimately process electronic payments or get loans from a bank. Well, there’s actually very good news this week. The SAFE Banking Act or the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act of 2019, which is sponsored by several different bipartisan representatives, just passed in the US House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote of 321 to 103, which is crazy because there are no more bipartisan votes in Washington, DC. The hemp industry is feeling pretty good. It looks like this could pass the Senate, and the SAFE Act is going to be introduced, and it’s going to get voted on.

Matt Baum: 01:39 What it would do, it would allow marijuana related businesses and states with some form of legalized marijuana and strict regulatory structures as well as businesses selling hemp derived products, that’s where the hemp comes in, to access the banking system. 2019 was not a great year for hemp crops. The farmers battled rain and drought and hail, mold, everything you can possibly imagine that would kill a hemp plant. This year’s harvest, which is the first since hemp was made legal throughout the US under the 2018 Farm Bill is estimated to come in at 115,000 to 138,000 acres, and that’s according to votehemp.com. That sounds like a lot, but it’s nothing when you think about the millions of acres that are devoted to major cash crops.

Matt Baum: 02:30 I know you hear me saying the word marijuana, but due to the confusion over the legality of hemp, most banks and credit card processors have been hesitant at best to provide services to what they call cannabisnesses. Some of them have even canceled banking and financial services for very legitimate hemp businesses because they were afraid they were selling marijuana. Well, the good news is if the SAFE Banking Act passes US Senate, then everyone is going to have access to legitimate banking and legitimate electronic payment processing. From there, hemp becomes a legitimate business.

Matt Baum: 03:12 What can you do? Call your senator today and make sure that they plan on voting for the SAFE Banking Act to legitimize hemp and hemp businesses in your state. Now, my conversation with Jane Pinto.

Jane Pinto, hemp entrepreneur

Jane Pinto: 03:34 I have been entrepreneurial literally it feels like from a very young person, and I think everything I’ve done along the way really has led to this place, this transformative place with hemp because all the businesses I’ve been in and started with wonderful people along the way have truly been about not just what are we doing? Who are we doing it with, and how are we doing it, and why are we doing it?

Matt Baum: 04:14 Right. There’s thoughtfulness behind it basically.

Jane Pinto: 04:16 Always been mission-based, always been impact businesses.

Matt Baum: 04:20 That’s awesome.

Jane Pinto: 04:21 Have no interest in working to just work. I call it work-work living.

Matt Baum: 04:27 Sure. You’re a bad capitalists like me then.

Jane Pinto: 04:32 Oh yeah, but I do believe in capitalism very much because I-

Matt Baum: 04:35 I do too. I’m just not very good at it. That’s the problem.

Jane Pinto: 04:40 I believe in regenerative capitalism. I believe in reciprocity. I believe that we should be really successful and we should share that success in service.

Matt Baum: 04:51 That sounds wonderful. Do you come from an agriculture background?

Jane Pinto: 04:56 I have absolutely nothing to do with agriculture, nor have I ever … Except that I love mother nature and our planet, and that is why I am involved with these great men and great women in hemp. I am.

Getting into the hemp business

Matt Baum: 05:14 How did you end up here? What brought you to hemp?

Jane Pinto: 05:17 This is how I got there. I was in the food business. I had started a company with a great group of people that was healing food allergy kids like my child had life-threatening food allergies, nothing for her to eat, nothing healthy, delicious or safe. We went into that free-from world so you get into the natural products industry and into that marketplace, and you start meeting incredible people and then all of a sudden, because you want the best ingredients and you want to know who farmed them and how they farmed them, that’s how you get into agriculture. That’s how I got in, was through Don’t Go Nuts through Pinto Barn, the the previous company that I founded. In that industry, I met so many great people.

Matt Baum: 06:09 Did you say it was called Don’t Go Nuts?

Jane Pinto: 06:12 Yeah, Don’t Go Nuts.

Matt Baum: 06:13 That’s a great name.

Jane Pinto: 06:14 It was the food line.

Matt Baum: 06:15 I like that.

Jane Pinto: 06:18 Yeah, food is great.

Matt Baum: 06:19 From there, you started-

Jane Pinto: 06:20 The families do go nuts trying to keep their kids safe with that.

Matt Baum: 06:22 Oh, absolutely. It is awful right now.

Jane Pinto: 06:28 You start working with the farmers and then the suppliers and we had to do a field to fingers process and practices so we knew where everything was coming from and it was safe. I started to meet the farmers, and that changed me. We really did.

Matt Baum: 06:45 They’re incredible. They’re incredible people to do what they do on a daily basis and work as hard as they do for as little money. It’s true passion and it’s amazing. You used the term field to fingers. What is that? Tell me about that.

Jane Pinto: 07:00 Well, field to fingers was that we knew who grew it, how they grew it. If it was gluten-free, we knew there were no fields around to crosspollinate. We knew where it was shipped from, what supplier held it. We knew cross-contamination and all the way through our manufacturing facility, all the way to the kid’s fingers. We knew what the quality and safety was with that product, so we knew they were safe and they would be well for meeting it.

Matt Baum: 07:28 I really like that, field to fingers. I’m going to steal that and use it. That’s good.

What is First Crop?

Jane Pinto: 07:32 Yeah. Well, we’re soil to soul at First Crop.

Matt Baum: 07:36 Tell me about First Crop. You are helping small hemp farmers currently, right?

Jane Pinto: 07:42 Well, First Crop came together because of all the incredible people I met in food. I met this wonderful man along the way, Michael Bowman, who is called Mr. Hemp. About four years ago, he and the other people who have founded this company with me because we all had been talking about it for quite a long time, we really started to watch policy and see what was going to happen. What I learned, because of who it sounds like you and I are, everyone else was looking at there are five lanes of hemp. This is going to be a multi trillion dollar business, 100,000 products. What I love is that it pulls carbon out of the air and puts it back into the soil, and that helps every living being on this planet. We have to take care of it.

Jane Pinto: 08:36 We’re out of time. We got to grow things and make things that save our planet, and then we need those products to also heal our bodies and our souls. That’s why I think hemp is … I approach this plant with heart and humility because I actually feel it’s a pretty sacred transformative delivery to us right now. I truly believe that, Matt.

Matt Baum: 09:01 Hearing you say that, you sound … The same words came out of some of the Native American growers in Nebraska, in Colorado that I met. They sounded exactly like what you were saying and saying that this is not a plant that we own, and we should not treat it that way. This is a plant that can help us, but we have to grow it right and we have to take care of it and it will take care of us.

Jane Pinto: 09:29 Well, that’s exactly right. I hope and pray that we have set First Crop up in a regenerative ecosystem that really honors that process all the way from the loamy soil, how we treat it, what nutrients we put in, how we can nourish it throughout the coming years, the type of seeds we use, the partnerships with our farmers that elevate them and their rural communities because we have a foundation that will give back to them. We share our profits with the farmers, and that for me really makes this a kinship instead of where the people who grow hemp and then we sell it and we buy it and we make this. We’re a regenerative system, and I don’t think our world is going to survive without regeneration and reciprocity.

Matt Baum: 10:21 Flat out it’s not going to. No question there. The science bears it out no matter what anybody tells you. It’s interesting because I talked to a couple of people recently that spoke about what they called the marijuana mavens, the people that came in and said there’s money to be made here, and we just have to grow as much as we can, as fast as we can and flood the market with it, just like in soybeans or corn or any other crop out there. It seems like you and this person realize that we have a unique chance here to grow a plant that really hasn’t been modified since we stopped growing it 75 years ago and do it the right way.

The healing power of hemp

Jane Pinto: 11:05 Oh, it’s pure. It is transformative. It is humble. It’s pure. It’s a healer.

Matt Baum: 11:14 Yeah, definitely. No question. I’m taking CBD daily, and it’s helped with pain in my hands. What does First Crop do?

Jane Pinto: 11:23 It’s a healer right from the minute we put the seed in. You know what I mean?

Matt Baum: 11:27 Sure.

Jane Pinto: 11:27 That tap root starts working on our earth and then it grows up and then it just pulls carbon out of the air and puts it back in the soil. What more could we ask?

Matt Baum: 11:37 Exactly.

Jane Pinto: 11:37 Nevermind what it does once we get it out of the earth. You can use every bit of this plant to do something that is regenerative for our planet after it’s already regenerated … done regenerative practice on our soil. It’s beyond words really.

Matt Baum: 11:59 I laugh because it’s true. You’re absolutely right. Can I ask, how does First Crop, I called it first corp, I apologize, how does First Crop help farmers?

Jane Pinto: 12:08 That’s okay. We don’t want to be corpses [crosstalk 00:12:10].

Matt Baum: 12:10 No. Exactly. Not yet. It sounds a little too big banking to me.

Jane Pinto: 12:17 I want the loamy soil but not so fast.

Matt Baum: 12:19 Right, exactly. How do you help small farmers? Where does First Crop come in?

Jane Pinto: 12:25 Well, we like to say instead of teaching and helping them, they’re actually teaching and helping us. We partner with them so that by bringing the resources and expertise that we have on the team in regenerative farming, in seed gen, in genetics, in planting soil to soul that we bring them … They’re the flowing river. We’re the banks. We’re just helping them and partnering with them to make sure that they take this risk and there is a reward that is not only in carbon currency, it’s in capital currency, it’s in full currency, all of that because it’s a big deal for a farmer to trust that they cannot do what they did the year before and do this and know they can feed their families.

Matt Baum: 13:24 It’s got to be terrifying to make that choice.

Jane Pinto: 13:27 Yeah. I think because Michael Bowman and David Hill and Dave Weir and Dave Armstrong, who are my partners, co-founders in this, and then we have incredible women helping always in product development, in relations. I just think that when we bring it all together, there’s trust and credibility to the farmer that we’re going to walk them through this process. Look, we’re learning too. This is a new thing. Anyone who says they’ve got it or they’re the ones, they miss the whole point. We’re all the ones together.

Matt Baum: 14:05 Exactly. They’re probably lying if they say they’ve nailed it and they’ve got it.

Jane Pinto: 14:10 Yeah.

Helping farmers grow hemp

Matt Baum: 14:11 Let’s say I’m a tobacco farmer, and I contact you guys, and I say, “I want to grow hemp,” what is step one? When you guys come in, what do you tell me is step one?

Jane Pinto: 14:20 Sure. Step one is I would put you immediately with David Hill, Dave Armstrong and Michael Bowman because that’s their lane. The farmer comes to us however they come, and then that that team, the First Crop Commons team talks to them about exactly what our program is. Here’s a copy of our contract. Here’s what we’re paying. Here’s what you’re going to get from us, and here’s what we need from you. We really talk this regenerative partnership.

Matt Baum: 14:53 You’re accepting some of the financial burden too to help the farmer get started.

Jane Pinto: 14:59 We accept some of the upfront cost of the seeds. This year, they paid half, we paid half, and then upon time of harvest, they would pay the other half. We’re working very hard to get our first harvest done and see where we are because our ultimate goal would be that we are seed providers to these farmers so that together we know their soil is ready and that their seeds are the best that are possible, and then we go through the growing process with them, then we go through harvest with them. They have to have their own people to do it, but we’re their partners and guides. Everybody is going to harvest and dry. Our first extraction facility, our First Crop Commons, first one is going to be up and running and doing its job in another month. The extractor arrives Friday.

Matt Baum: 15:58 Cool.

Jane Pinto: 15:59 The building is up and we’re ready to go. That’s a model we hope to replicate around the country.

Matt Baum: 16:04 Do you help with the other end as far as introducing the farmers to people that want … producers that want to make CBD or CBD products or is it just up to-

Jane Pinto: 16:15 No. We buy it.

Matt Baum: 16:16 You buy it.

Jane Pinto: 16:18 We buy everything from them, and they know when they sign the contract at the beginning of the season at planting, at getting the soil ready, we tell them we’re going to buy it from them at … Of course, there are all these conditions, and I don’t want to speak about things that aren’t my lane but-

Matt Baum: 16:41 Got you.

Jane Pinto: 16:42 … the efficacy of the product and all of that. We work together and all of that, but we buy their product, and then we have our own brands that we are bringing to market in January. Many people on our team, our brand developers and sales and marketing, talents from other industries, mostly food and skincare and all of that. I really feel like we’re in the right lane. We’re going to do pharma and skincare and topicals. In 2020, start with our food and really bring this beautiful transformative product to wellness and food too.

Matt Baum: 17:21 That is very cool. I’ve spoken to some people who weren’t happy with how the industry was working, so they went out and found farmers that were doing it right or they started their own farm. I really liked the idea that you guys are saying, look, we will come to you and help you get started and plant this, and then you sell it to us, and we’ll help you make money. That’s incredible.

Jane Pinto: 17:44 Yeah. Well, they get paid a good and fair, beautiful market price for their product that they deliver, that they harvest, and then they get 5% profit sharing. Everything we do with that product in the branding world-

Matt Baum: 17:59 That’s amazing.

Jane Pinto: 18:00 If we can grow this to where we believe we will, and we will grow it there, these farmers will have profit sharing with us. It’s not just what they grew, but it’s all the way to the shelf into the soul.

Matt Baum: 18:12 See, I don’t think there’s another crop or product or even manufactured product where the people that grew it or made the raw materials get anything on the backend. That is truly incredible.

Jane Pinto: 18:26 Thank you, Matt. We really feel excited about that. We feel like it is something we’re doing that is true respect and reciprocity for the farmers. We can’t live without them.

Matt Baum: 18:39 Again, bad capitalism but the right way to do it.

Jane Pinto: 18:44 Right. Good capitalism. Reciprocity is profitable.

Matt Baum: 18:48 We have to stop thinking of the evil capitalism as the good capitalism. Right?

Jane Pinto: 18:52 That’s just the way of … I hope and I believe it’s the way of the future. If we don’t do this for our planet and for each other, we won’t be here. I think people are waking up to this.

Matt Baum: 19:07 You said you’re working with several different farmers. What states are you guys in right now?

Jane Pinto: 19:12 This first year, we’re in Northern New Mexico and Colorado. We are having planning meetings this Thursday and Friday on where we’re going next. I believe we have a beautiful group of farmers in the Selma area, and I believe that will bring transformative healing on so many levels. I hope that’s our next big group of farmers.

Matt Baum: 19:42 That’s amazing.

Jane Pinto: 19:43 We’ve been talking with them, and they’re incredible people. That soil is beautiful, and that feels like regenerative practices and transformative acts on every level.

Matt Baum: 19:58 Wow. That’s amazing. You said your extractor is coming next week.

Jane Pinto: 20:03 Yes.

Matt Baum: 20:04 What kind of extraction are you guys going to be using?

Jane Pinto: 20:07 We’re using an extractor from Cool Clean. We really respect those guys, their practices, their technology and who they are. That’s CO2. We really want pure … I would say we’re more boutique artisan than some extractor that can do a whole state. We’re not one of those 100,000-square foot facilities. We’ll have small footprints in many places. Making a big difference is really how we feel our path will go.

Matt Baum: 20:46 That also allows to help more people locally as well as opposed to one big place with a few jobs. You can spread it out and spread the love, right?

Jane Pinto: 20:57 Yeah, definitely. We just want to share this with the farmers in their rural communities. I think we can make a big difference that way. I think we’ll really have a pure quality product, and we’re going to be certified organic at our different First Crop Commons where our extractors are, and we will definitely be partnering and be … We’ll be partners in communities. That’s what I think really matters.

Matt Baum: 21:29 You guys have quite the scheme going here. I like it. It’s undermining the way we think of farm to table, but it makes a whole lot of sense. You know what I mean? As opposed to just going and buying produce from people. You’re helping them to create it the way that you need it created to do what you need it to do and the responsible way for the land as well. That’s brilliant. It’s like guerrilla environmentalism, if you will.

Jane Pinto: 21:59 I hope so. I know that is our true intention. I know it’s how we are all moving forward and how we’re living and being. I believe it’s time for businesses like ours, and I know there’s many more, and I’m so happy about that. People are really looking at how to do things better.

The nurturing power of women in hemp

Matt Baum: 22:16 Women like you too. Don’t forget that, women-driven businesses, female-driven business popping-

Jane Pinto: 22:21 What?

Matt Baum: 22:27 I said women like you. Don’t forget that. It’s really important.

Jane Pinto: 22:30 Hey, listen. That’s right. I love my male brothers. I am someone who’s had a long, beautiful marriage. I understand that there’s been oppression with women, but there’s been oppression with men as well.

Matt Baum: 22:47 Sure.

Jane Pinto: 22:48 We have to just get in harmony, hold each other’s hands now, treat each other with a lot of respect. I believe the more female hearts that come forward and bring vision and just transformative soul companies to the world and bring their great brothers beside them and great sisters, man. We’re in good shape.

Matt Baum: 23:09 Absolutely.

Jane Pinto: 23:11 We’re going to be in good shape.

Matt Baum: 23:11 You know what? I think the men whine about it more than the women. I think you guys are way tougher than we are to tell you the truth.

Jane Pinto: 23:18 Highly possible, Matt, but you guys are pretty great too.

Matt Baum: 23:22 Hey, we do our best. As poor, dumb old boys, we do what we can, but it’s very cool. I haven’t been in the hemp world very long. I’m learning along with people that listen to this show. This is about my hemp education. In meeting a lot of people, I cannot believe how many women are coming up in this industry, and I can’t speak to the rest of the agriculture industry, but it sure does seem like there is a much larger percentage of female-driven farmers, businesses, producers, lawyers even that are behind the hemp industry. I think it’s fantastic.

Jane Pinto: 23:57 Well, I don’t think it’s by mistake. I think there is a divine universal power. If women are the … They bring love first, nurturing, fierceness. They’re just pure and true. That’s what this plant is. It makes total sense to me that if this is a transformative plant that comes from heart and humility that it would be drawing women around the globe and will continue to because that’s what we care about. We care about being involved in those kinds of things. Mother Earth is calling us all to do this. I believe we will see great women in hemp, great women.

Matt Baum: 24:43 Sister Jane, it sounds like you’re doing it the right way, and I’m glad you’re out there. I don’t want to take up anymore of your time. This has been excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jane Pinto: 24:51 Thank you.

Matt Baum: 24:51 I’m glad we got it figured out finally. You said-

Jane Pinto: 24:55 Yeah, we got it figured out.

Matt Baum: 24:56 Yeah. You said January is when we can start looking for your products.

Jane Pinto: 25:01 Absolutely. We’ll definitely be … First Crop will be out as soon as we can and completely in gratitude to everyone in this hemp world who’s helping each other, and we’ve had so much help from so many people in the industry, and you’re one of them. Look at you doing these stories.

Matt Baum: 25:18 Yeah. Someone has got to get the good word out there.

Jane Pinto: 25:21 Thanks so much.

Matt Baum: 25:22 Ministry of Hemp will be sure to follow you. When your stuff does start coming out, we’ll be sure to talk about it on the website. I’d love to have you back on when you guys are getting ready to actually go to market and we’ll talk again.

Jane Pinto: 25:34 Thank you so much.

Matt Baum: 25:35 Absolutely. Jane, you have a wonderful evening. Okay?

Jane Pinto: 25:39 Okay. You too. Be well.

Matt Baum: 25:40 All right, thank you.

Final thoughts on women in hemp

Matt Baum: 25:49 Jane is one of an ever growing population of women in the hemp business. I don’t know if it’s because the world has changed and more women are getting involved in agriculture and that’s why I’m noticing so many women working in the hemp industry, but it really is encouraging. It’s women like Jane that are going to help keep this business in check and make sure that farmers are growing at the right way and producers are handling the product responsibly and treating it with respect. Thank you again to Jane and First Crop. You can find out more about Jane Pinto and First Crop in the notes for this very show.

Matt Baum: 26:31 That about does it for this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, but I want to thank everybody that listens in and helps out. As always, you can call us and leave your hemp related questions at (402) 819-6417. I’m getting ready to do another hemp Q&A show with Kit, the editor-in-chief of Ministry of Hemp. You may have heard some of the earlier ones we did. They’re a lot of fun and you guys have such great questions. If you don’t want to call in, you can always email me, matt@ministryofhemp.com or you can drop your question on Twitter at Ministry of Hemp or Facebook\ministryofhemp. We want to hear from you guys. If you like the show, please give us a star rating. Give us a thumbs up, whatever works best at your favorite podcast app, but it really does help get this information into the ears of people that want to hear it.

Matt Baum: 27:44 The Ministry of Hemp Podcast is written, produced and edited by me. When you do that, I really appreciate it. Thank you. As always, you can find a full written transcript for the show in the show notes along with all of our social media, our phone number, and any other links that I mentioned. They’ll all be right there.

Matt Baum: 28:04 Thanks again for listening and downloading, but for now, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post Women In Hemp & Hemp Banking Update (Podcast) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Cait Curley is quickly becoming a name to know among hemp enthusiasts and cannabis fans of all kinds. We noticed that whether she’s exploring the potential of hempcrete or winning hearts and minds at hemp expos, Curley seemed to be everywhere we went and interested in the same topics we were. In November, she created a “Women of Cannabis” photoshoot, highlighting the diversity of the industry. Now she’s expanding her hemp media brand and, after years of partnering with other hemp companies, getting more involved in self-driven hemp projects.

She told us she sees hemp as key to solving our environmental crisis.

“This plant can overturn the synthetic world we live in, and save our planet,” Curley declared, when we caught up with her by phone.

Impressed by her passion and energy for hemp in all its forms, we wanted to know how she got involved and how other people can support hemp too.

Cannabis Brought Freedom from ‘Burnout’

“Until 2005, I believed all ‘drugs’ were dangerous and dirty,” Curley recalled. “I got high one night, for the very first time, and changed my perception on cannabis right then and there.”

That night, Curley realized she’d bought into the social stigma around cannabis without learning the real facts about the plant. That moment set in motion a major journey of discovery and transformed her into a hemp and cannabis advocate.

“If you have a connection to the plant, then you already are involved and part of the community.” — Cait Curley

Curley was always drawn to entertaining and inspiring people from a young age. She even participated twice in the world championships for Irish dance. In 2010, she moved to New York to pursue acting and modeling. However, she wanted to find ways to help people on a deeper level.

She switched to a career in audiology, the science of studying hearing and treating hearing disorders. The position she took led to a corporate style job. Success meant good money but also working incredibly long hours.

“I understood what the term ‘burnout’ meant.”

Move to Colorado Allowed Full-Time Support of Cannabis

Although she hid her recreational use of cannabis for a long time, due to the stigma around it, her experiences changed her life.

Just spending time in nature while high helped Curley gain a new perspective. She decided she needed to get more involved, and become someone that could openly support cannabis access and legal reform. She also wanted to leave her corporate job.

In 2015, Curley packed up her life and moved to Denver. She started attending meetups and networking and immediately found herself part of an incredibly welcoming group of cannabis/hemp supporters. Now, in addition to creating cannabis/hemp-related media, Curley works with the NoCo Hemp Expo, Southern Hemp Expo, Tree Free Hemp, One Planet Hemp, and Let’s Talk Hemp Media. She also appears at hemp events and collaborates with various other brands that reach out to her.

Curley passionately supports the cannabis plant in all its forms, from psychoactive cannabis (“marijuana”) to industrial hemp, believing both are integral to making a better world.

How to Be a Hemp Advocate and Support Hemp

“If you have a connection to the plant, then you already are involved and part of the community. Curley emphasized during our chat. “There is no official stamp.”

However, she also offered a few additional tips for how anyone can support hemp and become a hemp advocate:

• Use hemp. Hemp goods are often better for you, more durable, or otherwise better than the alternatives. They can also be more expensive, meaning it’s not simple to transform your whole wardrobe from cotton to hemp overnight. Start small: wear a hemp t-shirt, add hemp hearts to your diet, or switch to hemp lip balm. Every hemp product you use supports this growing industry. It’s also an opportunity to start a conversation.
• Educate others & yourself. The first step is to understand hemp and its potential, then help those around you learn. Many people still misunderstand hemp and cannabis, and their many potential benefits for humanity. Even people familiar with CBD, thanks to its incredible popularity at the moment, may not be aware that hemp and “marijuana” can be made into clothing, food, even Farm Bill legalized hemp, there’s still a lot of room for improvement especially in local laws and regulations.

While the hemp industry is growing by leaps and bounds, even more importantly Curley describes hemp advocates as a “family and a community.”

When you make hemp a part of your life, Curley believes that “not only are you bettering yourself, you’re supporting a movement.”

We couldn’t agree more!

Support Hemp and Help Change Our World

Curley sees the hemp movement as part of global progress towards sustainability and renewed recognition of our common humanity.

“A huge shift is coming, and cannabis has a huge part to play in that.”

Projects like her “Women in Cannabis” photo shoot help to illustrate that shift by countering the idea that only white men work with hemp. She partnered with prAna hemp clothing, Silver Mountain hemp guitars, and The Original Jack Herer to create the photos.

For Curley, hemp is a gateway to a better world, one that emphasizes both people and planet, through practices like regenerative agriculture, more responsible use of resources, and other alternatives to our current “synthetic” way of life.

“This is my purpose, this is my life,” she told us. “I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

The post How To Support Hemp, With Hemp Advocate Cait Curley appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.