Wood made from hemp is harder than oak and many endangered Amazon Rain Forest species. Greg Wilson joins Joy Beckerman to talk about HempWood of Murray Kentucky's innovative process for using Hemp to create hard wood products including flooring and frames. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/greg-wilson
Wood made from hemp is harder than oak and many endangered Amazon Rain Forest species. Greg Wilson joins Joy Beckerman to talk about HempWood of Murray Kentucky's innovative process for using Hemp to create hard wood products including flooring and frames.
https://podconx.com/guests/greg-wilson
Dan Humiston: [00:00:08] Welcome to another episode of Hemp Barons. On today's show, Joy travels to Kentucky to speak with a true Hemp, entreprenuer and inventor about Hemp Wood. This is a fascinating discussion about the process of creating actual hardwood using Hemp instead of trees from the Amazon. Let's join Joy's conversation with Greg Wilson from Hemp.
Joy Beckerman: [00:00:39] Well, Greg, thank you so much for being with us on Hemp Barons today. Hey, thanks for having me. As I have more than sufficiently gush, but didn't want to do it on the online here with our listeners. We're just so totally thrilled to have you. You are a Hemp hero of epic proportions as you sit here and create dimensional lumber with Hemp, which we have been dreaming about at least Neese since I was bit by the Hemp bug 30 years ago and now moving of course into flooring and other things. And we'll talking about your wood turning products that are available online even as we speak today.
Joy Beckerman: [00:01:15] But Greg Wilson of Kentucky, you have created the company Hemp would rather and I happen to know that you were had a friend, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong here, because I want to get up to some of the what you're making, how you do it. Some of the comparison in testing and use our time for that as opposed to the potentially more fascinating pieces of how you came into this. But I know that you were a vinyl fighting and flooring guy traditionally and an inventor of sorts, and that you had a friend who had a bamboo flooring company wanting that bamboo flooring to be commercially available. And as we all know, those of us who have had bamboo floors in our kitchens, you drop any type of an object on that bamboo floor. You wear high heels, God forbid, and you're going to damage that floor, such soft wood, and that you then set up a nanotech lab in Australia and I believe China to study various plant fibers and lo and behold, discovered that Hemp worked, created the patent, the trademark, but the u._r._l. And here we have Hemp Wood working with Murray State University on this project. Brother, tell me, what is it right now? Where is your company at? In terms of the products that are available today as we speak and we're right here in mid to late March combating this unprecedented circumstances of Corona virus as we speak today. What can you sell to us? And you're the only one who can do it on the planet Earth right now. What is it that you can sell as we embrace despacito valuable crop?
Greg Wilson: [00:02:50] Well, thanks for the introduction. You've pretty much summed up the last fifteen years and about two minutes. But yes, it has moved from nanotech labs that we're developing, how to use plant fibers and different types of adhesives to make wood composites or replacements for hardwood trees. So we now currently are making Hemp wood in our marriage and Chutki factory in coordination with Murray State University, who was the pioneer in planting Hemp in 2014. They were the first university to get the seeds in the ground. So Dr. Brandon, who is the dean of the ag school, which they're really good ag school there, he got his package in the mail. One of two that made it through back in May of 2014. And when the DEA showed up to confiscate the seeds the next day, they already had a couple acres in the grounds. And he told them they had to they're going to have to go and dig it out one by one. So that's the reason that we're here, because he took the risk and they have three or five university farms that they grow Hemp test plots since 2014 to do all the different trials and their students get to trial, growing it on the school's dime, basically. And then when they go home after they graduate, most of the ag students go into farming to some degree, whether it's on the commercial side or whether it's actually growing their crops. But they've had a couple of years practice with doing it at the university farm under the guidance of people that know what they're doing. So that's why Murray in Little West Kentucky is kind of the epicenter of the Hemp industry, because we have close to twenty thousand acres that was grown within 100 miles of our plant here.
Greg Wilson: [00:04:52] And a big portion of that is due to the fact that Murray State taught him how to do it their field days. They have all these training sessions. They actually have the Agricultural Hemp Innovation Center is based on campus there, which were a part of. So that's what ended up here. We are currently making dimensional lumber in the form of six by sixes. We are cutting those down in two boards are standard board as a one by six and it's priced just above solid oak currently. But we're working on getting it. So it's just below in price of U.S. domestic oak. We are now launching. Our picture frames, which we're making in coordination with one of our cabinet manufacturers here in West Kentucky, are about fifteen minutes away. They've been doing a lot of trials for us about how this stuff milled and rounded and cut and things like that with machinery that we didn't have in-house and we developed a picture frame with them. So we do dimensional lumber in the forms of six by sixes. We do one by sixes. We can cut it to specialty thicknesses that a lot of people are starting to make guitars and make different projects for down to a quarter of an inch. We are launching our picture frames currently as soon as we can figure out how to get the shipping dynamics on our Web site. If anyone's listening, can help us out with that. That would be really helpful. And our flooring launch was scheduled for noko next week. And that has been delayed.
[00:06:32] I just want to I just want to get in there and say how excited I am about that. I'm riding out the Corona virus with Lizzy Knight, one of the co-owners of noko, and that her ranch here on the outskirts of Fort Collins. I because I live in New York and evacuated myself out of New York to Lizzy's ranch.
Joy Beckerman: [00:06:50] And to say that we are excited for the spa floor at noko to be Hemp Wood. I mean, you are the highlight. There are so many exciting things happening at noko brother, but I'm a Hemp building materials just complete nut.
Joy Beckerman: [00:07:07] I've done the training for years for Hemp Technologies, which built the first permanent Hemp three homes in the United States, and the giddiness of the noko staff and leadership and those of us who love noko and have been with it since the beginning. We're so you're the highlight of noko brother. We're gonna have Hemp wood floors at the spa at noko. This is amazing. So we're gonna get you in August to do that for the rescheduled dates of no-kill again on the sixth through eighth now.
[00:07:36] Is that right? Oh yes. So we had our first large scale production run that we did last week of fifteen hundred square feet. And now we're supposed to be for the trade show. So it's going to be for the spa area as well as our booth. And now we've got fifteen hundred square feet that we're sending out to our first commercial customers because the demand has been built up for a while. So yeah absolutely. Did it noko. We will have our flooring listed on our Web site for sale next month. We were planning on doing it in person that noko.
Greg Wilson: [00:08:13] But I guess God change that idea a little bit. And yes, we have also a lot of different wood blanks for people that we call craftsmen or woodworkers. So people are making guitars and duck calls and bows and ferns and statues and necklaces and rings and all these different items. So if you go to our Web site, you can also see some of the more popular things that people are putting on their turning machines and their lathes and doing their routine. People are making bicarb, pepper shakers and you name it. I have an arrow that somebody's made.
Joy Beckerman: [00:08:54] I'm seeing that. It looks like you've got the pepper mill blanc, the bobbling, the bottle stopper blanc, the coaster blanc, the drinks, penne blanc. I mean, this is a hamster and crafters dream at Hemp with GOP.com.
Joy Beckerman: [00:09:09] These materials that you're getting out to folks and and you probably also know the other co-owner of of Melco is, of course, Maurice Beagle of Silver would have guitars.
Joy Beckerman: [00:09:20] And, you know, he is all and he's a rock star, amazing musician who is really his who is in that industry for a very, very many years and still dabbles in it.
Joy Beckerman: [00:09:32] And so we're watching Maurice and his Hemp with guitars. I mean, this is so exciting to have this incredible material available to us to get Hemp into our homes and into our lives with everyday articles and to really see it on on on a building material scale. I'm just so excited. Of course, noko would have loved to have had that first fifteen hundred square feet, but amazing. You're actually going to be able to get it out and sell it to somebody who's been dying to have it in their home or their or their other project. This is so wonderful.
Greg Wilson: [00:10:06] Oh, yes, absolutely. It's some. There's so many different neat things that are being made out of it. And we're setting this up kind of as a sharing community, where we'll be the first ones to admit we don't know all of the different ways to use it. And we don't understand all of the different properties in all these different settings that people are looking for. And so when people are buying material from us, we're saying that, hey, look, here's what we find to be the best uses. If some. Make something really creative or wants us to put up what they made on our Instagram site. You can go to Hemp would underscore and you can see all the different things people are making and people are sharing with each other how it actually performs, how to use it. What are the little secrets and the little ideas that somebody thought of in, say, western Canada? That's then sharing that with somebody in Florida, that's using it for making different objects, because there's so many different fields that it's starting to creep its way into. And everybody has a different idea of how it's working and how it's happening. So we're trying to do the social media thing where everybody can let each other know what you can make out of it. What are the best techniques for using it? We actually had John, who's our marketing guy. He was with our local wood turner, who we'd been working with for six months now and making YouTube videos to just kind of show people how it performs and what are the different things that you need to do, especially when you're like rounding corners, because the Hemp fibers are so strong that when you're rounding a corner, they tend to be a little they fray a little bit or become stringy. But if you put a wood hardware on the corner, if you have like around the corner, put a wooden partner on it and then you send it and it stands off.
Greg Wilson: [00:11:58] But when you try to cut Hemp fiber because of how strong they are with a blade, sometimes it Terry's a little. So there's some unique attributes there that really need to get worked out. Oh, yes. And everybody sharing it. Oh, yes. Every machine that touches Hemp has to be modified. That's my my general rule.
Joy Beckerman: [00:12:22] It's a large part of the lesson here, because so many folks, they want some plug and play. Like all of the sudden we're just going to go ahead and, you know, put Hemp fiber into the woodcraft called cellulose papermaking companies. No problems, just switch it up. And, you know, there is no plug and play. And and that actually is a great Segway to what I'm very much interested in speaking with you about.
Joy Beckerman: [00:12:44] And that is the larger lessons that are going on for us as a planet, as a as a human race, in terms of consciousness and and also on an industrial and agricultural revolution. And that is nanotechnology and permaculture, which basically say nature doesn't make mistakes.
Joy Beckerman: [00:13:06] Nature is efficient. Nature figures it out. It practices maximum efficiency.
Joy Beckerman: [00:13:13] And we want to mimic designs and systems in nature to work smarter together as opposed to harder and against each other and an inefficient manner. And so I think Hemp has so much to teach us in that respect because it's not plug and play. It requires a rethinking of of everything. And while we're sitting here rethinking systems, let's go ahead and really rethink them and start to mimic the way nature would design that system. And so right there on your Web site, it says Hemp, what is made the patented process that utilizes bio mimicry to transform Hemp fibers and protein based bonding agents into a variable substitute for anything solid it can be used for. So I first want to talk about biomimicry. And then we can talk also about all of the purposes that the Hemp crop is used for, at least your source of it. Some people, many folks are going for only one purpose. And right now, because the market was there, that was extract for the most part this year course we had a major overproduction problem and saturation in the market, but we'll get on to those other tight duell and try crops and really utilizing the whole crop. Let's go back to bio mimicry, brother, and explain to us what that means and then specifically what that means for Hemp Wood.
Greg Wilson: [00:14:39] So the easiest way to explain it is that you are mimicking what nature does. Just as you say. So what we looked at one doing the various products from bamboo eucalyptus to recycling woods now to Hemp wood is first you want to start out with what you're looking for, the final attributes that you're looking for in the plant. And everyone is after the 200 year old tropical rainforest wood. And that's because of the density is high, which gives it a high hardness as well as a high stability. That's why you hear like Brazilian cherry or teak being the wood that everyone is after. So we determined that you want to have a high density wood that is mimicking a 200 year old rainforest tree. But in order to kind of do the right thing for us, for mankind, is you want to use something that's renewable, something that's pulling carbon out at a fast rate. And so we've developed an algorithm that takes fast-growing plant fibers. You take an adhesive which you can use a bio based adhesive that we're using now, which is made out of soy. And it actually mimics the way that muscles take their strength. And then you take the proteins from the soy, you impregnate that into our Hemp fiber. You use our crosslink an agent, which is an organic acid similar to what the muscles use. And that is how you bind the product together. You have to dry it out and you bake it in another like a loaf of bread that causes the crosslink thing to occur. And there's actually a couple of little secret things that we put in there. All of them are natural, but they keep out insects and they keep mold out because Hemp tends to mold fairly quickly. So does the high protein inside of the adhesive. So the biomimicry is essentially an algorithm that takes a fast growing plant as a bio based adhesive and turns it into a replacement for your tropical hardwoods. And final attributes. Does that make sense?
Joy Beckerman: [00:16:50] It surely does. And I so appreciate that explanation. And it's it's very visual as well.
Joy Beckerman: [00:16:56] And a lot of folks are used to hearing all of this anti-fungal and anti mold and antibacterial qualities for various parts or indices and Hemp such as in textiles. And then I remember getting my first pair of Hemp rope sandals. I was following the Grateful Dead in the early 90s and Hemp Rope's nandos became available and I bought my parents. Hey, Vance, I'm all right. These things are gonna mold. Well, it only took that one rainstorm and those five puddles and that leaving them in the back of the van for a week for me to realize that wasn't entirely true. And of course, for Hemp Creek, which we is a construction infill and above ground construction infill, which is mold rod testing, fire resistant, that is because of the line. Of course, that's a Hemp heard that inner woody core of the Hemp stock for our listeners as opposed to that vast fiber, the outer bark of the Hemp stop and a very particular lime and water. But it's the lime, of course, and the specific mixture ensuring that you've done it correctly that keeps out the mold. So you have to compensate for that with with the Hemp blade pre-destined. And let's talk for a moment as we discuss those things. Why Hemp? Of course, there are many different attributes. As we often say, Hemp may look like Tanakh or flaks as growing, but on the microscopic scale and certainly on a nanoscale, which we didn't even have the ability or technology to see Hemp on the nanoscale. Thirty years ago, when we were really first getting involved in this movement in this industry is quite different. So let's talk about that. Why? Why did Hemp fiber work had the Hemp plant work versus these other plants?
Greg Wilson: [00:18:49] So the first thing that we look at is how the plant grows. And so if you have a plant that grows really fast, it takes the box of being a renewable resource. But it also means that the plant has capillaries that run for it or it has a means of transferring nutrients and sunlight and just the different soils and elements and rain and water because it grows so fast. And there's capillaries are actually what we use in our process because we take the adhesives and we dilute them down with water significantly and then we use the water as the vehicle to drive the proteins into the cell structure. So you're impregnating it rather than encapsulating it. Very often when people would take something like that, you took a stick and drifted in the water, then you would just be encapsulate encapsulating it or different in the glue where as we break the cell structure open, but it's already partially open because it has these capillaries in it and it allows that pieces that we had been diluted down with water to drive into the cell structure of it. So that's really important because that's what gives you your strength and your density where as if you're using something that grows really slow and it already has all of its lignin and cellulose in place that's already given into hardness, you can't get that same method of making it.
Greg Wilson: [00:20:20] So the fact that it grows really, really fast and the fact that it looks kind of like bamboo turned beyond to.
Greg Wilson: [00:20:31] The ability to use it. And so we started looking at we actually took it from some tea fields in China because they use Hemp for tea over there and they had these long stalks after the people were picking picking the Hemp flower off and the leaves. And we used those stocks in the Mannatech lab to just see if it works. So it made sense to do, but it kind of sat on the shelf as a joke. I had a sample sitting on my desk since 2010 and used to say to people that the manufacturing algorithm is so versatile we can turn weed into wood. And that's before I even knew about the whole Hemp element of it, before I was really into that. It was another plant fiber that made sense to use. And it was not legal. So it didn't make sense to commercially pursue. And 2014 changed all that. So 2014 with passing the Hemp bill, then it actually allowed it in certain states. And it did not allow it federally. So entrepreneurs could chase after making a new product out of it rather than a large corporation that had to follow federal rules. So that's what kind of allowed us to sneak in?
Joy Beckerman: [00:21:48] Absolutely. I mean, that it will see, of course, Agriculture Act of 2014, the farm bill, which had that glorious legitimacy of industrial hemp research amendment in it and created the agricultural pilot program that defined term within that legislation and defined industrial hemp for the first time in U.S. history. Distinguishing it from marijuana. And I remember, you know, the naysayers when by that time I'd been working in the Hemp movement for 24 years. So this was an amazing revolutionary cosmic seismic shift in Cannabis policy in the United States. And folks complain because it wasn't enough. And we knew that this path forward through the agricultural pilot program and of course, now, thank goodness, completely legalized devant, agricultural commodity and removed in every respect a Hemp from the Controlled Substances Act and the shackles of DEA jurisdiction. Side note, USDA interim final rule. But I digress. But we knew that that was a blessing and it allowed these agricultural research pilot programs then to begin to be invented or for those state departments of ag, of course, to be able to promulgate rules to create them in states where Hemp was allowed to be cultivated. And then for our institutions of higher education and as you say, Murray, think boldly even before the University of Kentucky or Kentucky State University took advantage of that.
Joy Beckerman: [00:23:21] And, of course, as you stated in the beginning, had to come up against the DEA, who, despite the clear legislation and intent of it, said, hey, this this viable Hemp seed here is a controlled substance. And that litigation was fascinating, as was the settlement, but absolutely incredible that it unfolded that way. So that so that exactly as you say, the huge corporations could not immediately come in and take advantage and instead inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, cottage industry, really able to to get in there. And. And, you know, for a good many folks focused on extract, here you have you and very state and your incredible team and all of those who support you and have supported you throughout deciding, no, we know where the trillion dollar industries are and we know where the planetary healing is. And it's in many, many uses of this incredible fiber. Let me ask you this. The silica content within Hemp, which is one of the reasons, by the way, that Hemp is so perfect for Hemp Creek to make that construction and fill with lime is because the lime wants to bond with silica and wood cellulose is basically void of it. Is the silica content within Hemp? Does that play a factor in your product as well?
Greg Wilson: [00:24:45] That's one of the things that kind of helps from its natural state that allows the bonding to occur. I wish it was higher in protein's because I wouldn't even have to use the soy as the base for the growth. We've been working on that, but it just hasn't really come to fruition or being able to make an adhesive purely out of it. So it definitely does give it a boost. It makes it so you don't have to do a preparation step that you typically have to do with different woods or different bamboos, which is you have to boil it into hydrogen peroxide to rough up the surface to be able to get that cross linking and actually hook into the cell structure. But the silica in this, I believe we at least give part of the credit. That's why you do not have to do that stuff, because it actually helps us not having a whole bunch of discharge water from the facility that we have to figure out how to clean it up.
Greg Wilson: [00:25:40] So that's part of the problem with Bambu, is that you have to pull all of these natural elements out of it to basically kill the plants and then we can look into it. Whereas this one word just unveiling the round bales, we invented a machine to do that. We call it the toilet paper on Roller. It just looks like a big toilet paper on roller and it's got a motor on it. We pull out a half a bale at a time. So I think 32 feet long. Four feet. Why? And then we put it through a plywood roller and that plywood roller breaks open the cell structure of it before we put it into a Batson system and submerge it into our it is it. Once it comes out of there, we took it. Tobacco barn and we hooked up a silo dryer that you use for like drying corn and beans. We hope that up to our tobacco barn. And then we put a recirculating system in there with some humidity and temperature controls to be able to drive it back down to a certain moisture content. And that moisture content makes it so it doesn't crack. So it doesn't have to dry out as much like natural wood, because with natural wood, when you cut down a tree, you're at 50 percent moisture content.
Greg Wilson: [00:26:54] And then the ends of the logs always split. And so you're ending up cutting off the last six to 12 inches of each end to the log before you turn it into boards where we're able to avoid that wastage because we dried up for moisture content that is appropriate for what we want to do with it. And then that's what we press on general block and bake it like a loaf of bread. So there's all these different things and we don't know all the answers, but we're just kind of moving it along as fast as we can and figuring it out on the fly. We've bought probably 25 percent of our equipment for the facility as we were building it up and learning stuff just on Facebook Marketplace and eBay and second hand farm stuff for Dragon and that a different Barnes around the state of Kentucky and Tennessee and adapting all these different things to try to make it work, because it's a shame to say that people don't make very much in the United States anymore. And so, one, we're doing different projects in different places like in China.
Greg Wilson: [00:27:57] You can go on Alibaba dot com when you have an idea of how you can process or adapt the process in some sort of piece of equipment doing Alibaba, you can buy that equipment. It arrives next week and you can do your trials. That's really inexpensive here. Nobody makes machines anymore or very few do. And so we have to take a machine that's 30 years old sitting in somebody's barn. And then we have our in-house machinist who sits down with our engineering team and says, how should we adapt this thing to try to make it work on Hemp? And then all of a sudden it. Kind of works when we take these older machines and adapt it and then we have to build new machines based off of what we prototype there. For instance, we actually create a significant portion of urd energy in the plant by taking our waste Hemp and we have a bio burner that turns that into our key for our facility, as well as the heat for ovens, for bacon and the heat for our kilns were drying out for wood. So we're taking our waste and using every bit of it.
Joy Beckerman: [00:29:03] Just, you know, the USDA interim final rules and this is specific to cultivation.
Joy Beckerman: [00:29:08] Of course, the USDA only has jurisdiction over cultivation and not processing, but the multitude of public comments which I wrote for various organizations and, you know, it was just. Are you kidding me? On the destruction of Hemp that it tests above point 3 percent THC as opposed to disposal, which, by the way, the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, the farm bill, the most recent one that legalized Hemp as an agricultural commodity, you know, uses the word disposal, not destruction. And so literally begging the USDA and these public comments to, at a minimum, allow for bio digestion and pyrolysis and to spell it out because the USDA is actually conducting research on pyrolysis to please, at minimum allow the use on farm for for this hot Hemp, so to speak, or non-compliant Hemp to be used for bio digestion and pyrolysis. It is more of a thrill. I mean, more as in I was already so beyond impressed and just in love with Hemp Wood for a number of months now and now to discover that you are using your waste Hemp then to create energy in this facility. This is mind-blowing to me. This is so great to understand about Hemp Wood.
Joy Beckerman: [00:30:29] Yeah. And so we had to figure out that whole process of it by taking locally made them bio burners that typically are used at windmills and they take Chipps woodchips and sold us. We have plenty of sold us from here. We put that in there, but we have to figure out how to grind up the Hemp and nothing likes to grind Hemp because it's so hard to just take plastic grinder's and then modify them to be able to put the Hemp socks into it so we can grind it up. And there's dust everywhere and just it works, but it's a pain in the butt. So we take our waste or grind it up. We turn it into the energy. And then because we have to use higher temperatures for setting our glues, typically these are only using water to transfer your heat to the different areas inside of your plant. But we had to come up with a solution that was not oil to be able to transfer the heat to the different sections in our plant. And so we came up with greising, which is used in the solar panel industry for transferring the power that's created in solar panels. We're now using that to pipe our energy through the plant. So there's all these it's science and engineering happening from two o'clock in the morning when I get to the plant. And so 8 o'clock at night, whenever the lessons go home, it's quite wild.
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Joy Beckerman: [00:32:39] Hemp is so lucky to have you brother. And I want to get into some of the certifications and testing so the listeners can in the time that we have less of the listeners can really understand the strength of this product. And because we wanted to get into of course, all of the uses of the plant and I apologize then that we didn't get into it. That piece of it. I do want to make sure the listeners know that it sounds to me and you correct me if I'm wrong at Mary State, they are growing five or Hemp or they're growing Hemp. You know, that's 12 to 14 inches tall. The combine comes and takes that flower from the top so that it can be used for abstract or other purposes. And of course, takes the seed, perhaps does the seed for its seed bank. And then and then you come along and with another sitting on the combine and go ahead and take that stock and just leave the roots. Now the root. Of course, can be used. They're a very valuable try tarping located in the roots of the Hemp plant that are very difficult to find in any plant and don't exist in any other part of the Hemp plant. But those very same roots, of course, build such organic matter in the soil and helped to build the soil. So it's great that they're left there. But the Hemp that you use grown in America. Mary stake being used for the seed bank, the flowers and the stock. Just amazing. Correct me if I'm wrong with any of that. And then after that, please let us know about some of the tests come to compliance. The Janka hardness, the dimensional change coefficients and so on. Brother, sir.
Greg Wilson: [00:34:11] So you're absolutely correct. The Hemp is grown plain about 40 pounds per acre of sea. And so it grows really dense when it grows really dense.
Greg Wilson: [00:34:22] It doesn't allow the overcrowding of the weeds so they don't use any sort of pesticides and herbicides or anything like that. apro is really, really thick. The canopy gets up and then that canopy prevents the sunlight from allowing weeds to grow at harvest time, which is typically two weeks after the male plants start to die. The seeds are ready to go. And so when the seeds are ready, that's the cash crop for the people that we're working with.
Greg Wilson: [00:34:49] So they set their combined headers for about six foot. Some of them, they have to sign a little bit lower, maybe five feet, depending on when floral and seed material starts on the soil. So set the combines Columbines. They take off the top of the plant. It's separated into flower and one bean seed in the other bean. The seed goes to the seed banks and the it to freeze it so they can grow it for next year or the stuff that's 3rd year crop and goes into food because after the third year you don't have high enough germination rates and the food seed costs take a quarter of what the replanting seed value is. So they have different streams that the seed goes into the floral material in baled and is sent to oil processing facilities. And the next day we typically come back with cycle bars and cut down the stocks and then you let them read for a couple of days, dry out and get the green out of them in the sun, turn it over with a window, come back and bale it, and then we get 0 four to eight truckloads a day into the facility here or more stuff in every barn we can find around here full of. Keep it out of the rain when it comes in here. Then we go through.
Greg Wilson: [00:36:06] Right now we're only doing maybe 1 to 2 tons a day. We want to be able to get up to processing a ton in our facility. So it's on the way. But yet none of the plan is wasted. They do leave the roots out in the field. I think that's just because when you're dealing with thousands of acres, how are you going to dig thousands of acres of roots out of the ground? People are doing trials. There's all types of research happening on it. But when you say biomimicry and trying to use the whole plant and everything, our company's name is actually Fibonacci and it's named Fibonacci because we use the Fibonacci sequence and that manufacturing algorithm. And that's the sequence of life that kind of tells you what is the optimum means of putting certain items into nature due to sunlight and due to rain and how things can actually grow. And so that's what we use to make this product. So it's kind of a full circle thing. There is a reason that that number comes up in nature so much and there's a reason it works for making our different products. We might not know exactly why, but it does. And that Fibonacci sequence that gives us our density of the final product gives us our hardness, which is the Janka hardness and the Janke hardness.
Greg Wilson: [00:37:20] As you take a ball bearing that's essentially one inch in diameter and you measure how much pressure it takes to have. I believe it's 50 percent of that ball bearing imprint in to the board or the material that you're putting into it. And so our Jenko hardness ratings have come back in the 28 100 scale 20. I've seen some. There were twenty five hundred up to twenty eight hundred where your domestic oats are typically eighteen hundred. So it's significantly higher than what OQ is. We only claim 20 percent higher in hardness because it's a lot easier to under-promise and overdeliver than to say every single one is 50 percent harder. And then some of them come back. It's only 40 percent or 35 percent. Some of the other testing that we do or they're all ASTM, I believe it's ten thirty seven. A is the standard testing for wooden materials and composites. And so we do. Ah what testing. We do our dimensional change coefficient or forward into those. We do our DRI strength testing. An impact test. It's essentially like a hammer that you take to see how much force it takes to actually break the wood. Your accelerated aging where you put your materials into water for two hours and then take a measure 24 hours and take a measure and then you let it dry back out and take a measure.
Greg Wilson: [00:38:50] You also have these eight hours of tests where you put it in water for eight hours and you let it dry for eight hours. Then you put it in an oven for eight hours to do your accelerated ageing going through different climates, basically. Even though that one doesn't pertain to ours because we're not an exterior product, we still run those tests. You have your card to compliance, which is VRC emissions because we're adding no formaldehyde. We do not have any VRC emissions that have been added to our products are all natural plants do have a little bit. So all trees and leaves and everything like that. Have a little bit. But we have zero added formaldehyde. We have zero added viruses. Other testing that we do. There's a lot of different processing, testing for how it cuts, how it stands, how it stains, how it's moisture resistant. Right now we are doing a interior non structural, which the standard uses would be flooring is typically about 60 percent of the different products that we come up with by volume. We have crunchier, which includes stair treads and cabinetry as well as chairs and desks and tables and things like that. Products are usually ends up being about 20 percent of the output of the different products we come up with.
Greg Wilson: [00:40:08] And then HomeGoods and Hollywoods and HomeGoods and Hollywoods go into all different types of lamps and all, you name it. There's people making what they call the wounded warrior scenarios. They're making defense canes. So people that were wounded in the military, instead of just having a regular game, they have a team that's made out of something that's harder that they can defend myself. It makes them feel a little bit better. There's people making chef's knife handles, duck calls, everything you could think of. And it works for most of it. But there's a serious learning curve for all of that. And trying to figure out how it will work in different uses is still there's a lot of work to be done there. John, who does our marketing? He compiles all of this stuff and he puts it on line.
Greg Wilson: [00:41:00] We try to share it as much as we can on the Web site for our different partners that we're working with, like real lumber out in California. They're really good to us. Tennessee wood flooring that we do the flooring with. They're really good to us. They also have Hemp with Canada that's taken off our buddy Karrine up in Nova Scotia. Just had the first template kitchen that you took to a trade show. So there's a whole lot of stuff that's happening. There's a whole lot of new products on the horizon. And we'd love to see when people make something new and different and tell us how it performs and give us their test results, whether it's some guy in his little workshop or it's a huge corporation like show, there's all different types of people trying to figure out how does this fit into their current products or into their lifestyle.
Joy Beckerman: [00:41:48] Well, Greg, watching the lotus pedals of Hemp would unfold is such a pleasure and treat, especially for a Hemp nerd like me who is just been invested in this dream nalla reality for decades and you are such a big part of it without even realizing how much real estate Hemp would have been taking up in my mind and in my heart since I discovered your existence. Watching it all unfold. Thank you. We're talking about a plant grown in America with a facility right here in America created by an American innovator just like you. A vinyl siding and a flooring guy really is such a huge part of the revolution.
Joy Beckerman: [00:42:33] Everybody do not run, do not walk.
Joy Beckerman: [00:42:36] Run to him for a dot com and please see what the products that are available there, because guess what? If you get into the woodturning section, there is something there for everybody or somebody that you know. And it's time for all of us to have a piece of this in our home, to touch it, feel it, use it and embrace the new Hemp economy. Greg, thank you so, so much for being with us on Hemp Barons Day and I can't wait to have you back.
Greg Wilson: [00:42:59] Well, thanks for having us. And I can't say it more. It takes a village to get this done, whether it's the people that are growing, whether it's their fellow processors or it's the market. If people don't buy what we're making, we won't last long. So if you can go to Hemp for dot com and purchase something while you're sitting at home with this corona virus blues and trying to figure out what to do in your boredom just off your table, saw or ditch your chops all out by some Hemp foot and you can get it delivered to your house. You don't even have to go out. lozer anywhere. Pick it up and make something cool. Share it back with us and we'll put it up on mine to be able to know what's going on and how it works and if anyone wants to come and visit as soon as this scare is over. Come on down. We're in Murray, Kentucky, south. We're right behind buntings, a little burger joint. So it's hard to miss us. Everybody in town knows.
Joy Beckerman: [00:43:52] I'll be taking you up on that offer. Brother, my youngest will start his MBA gaten at UK in June, and I will be taking you up on that offer.
Joy Beckerman: [00:44:01] Greg, thank you so much again for everything you do here at Hemp Barons. We are just wishing you the greatest success.
Greg Wilson: [00:44:07] Thanks for having us. And keep up the good work.
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