near and dear to my heart, is Hemp Snacks for Chickens, from Kansas. International imports include wares from Vietnam, Germany, the UK,
John Grady with hemp baby blankets. They are so soft!
and South Korea. I bought a very cute hemp hat from Nepal, and hemp overalls from the Himalayas. I love my job! A good time was had by all.
Both retired from the Navy, the Gradys are committed to providing whatever veterans need. They were in the middle of a project with the late, great Waxy Brown to open the first cannabis-friendly, alcoholfree VFW hall in the area.
Over to Kansas
Katie, Kara, and Dolores trying on hemp hats at Slap Happy Hemp.
Well done, Nazhoni Woodie and Zach Gill, at the Prairie Band Decortication AG factory outside of Topeka, KS, on the Pottawatomie Indian Reservation. Thank you for your hospitality and the tour! For those of you who really want a treat, the Prairie Band Casino and Hotel is all class! Nazhoni, who just turned 31, is in charge of the grow operation and shares the work at the processing plant with 30-year-old farmer Zach and other tribal members.
Dolores Halbin( middle) holds a hemp drinking straw made from the large hemp bales behind her by Nazhoni( on left), and Zach at the Prairie Band AG processing plant.( Photo by Clayton Stallings)
Very young( to me, anyway) Zach converted an old cotton gin to produce plastic. Notably, all the plastic resin is made from parts of the hemp plant that have no other use and are being discarded by other decortication factories. We could all learn a thing or two from these two bright young farmers.
Also from Kansas, the tireless and very young farmer, Kelly Austin Ripple, can be congratulated for bringing his first hemp crop under the USDA in for testing. Again, huge and hard-fought for changes. Well done, young man.
Once again, it is the power of one, or two, or four, in the case of the couple in Rosebud and two more bright people in Topeka, who are changing the world for the better!
Sad Goodbyes
And a very sad farewell to one of the biggest, brightest, most joyful stars of the cannabis plant and community, our own Daniel Jones, aka Waxy Brown. Fly high, buddy. Heaven’ s gain was most definitely our loss. I hope you and Gene found each other and then went and found our young warrior, twelve-year-old Ayden Markum. It’ s been a tough month for our MO-Canna family.( See page 34 for more about the recent passings of Waxy Brown and Ayden Markum.)
These losses have taught us all that we are family, and we need to have each other’ s backs, always.
Zach Gill, Dolores Halbin, and Nazhoni Woodie at the Prairie Band AG processing plant outside of Topeka, KS, on the Pottawatomie Indian Reservation.( Photo by Clayton Stallings)
It was magic holding the resin that would soon be hemp plastic, hemp drinking straws, and hemp golf tees. It might seem small, but this is huge! We now have the technology to upend fossil fuel plastic.
Dolores Montgomery Halbin, RN, BSN, and Ordained Nurse Minister, resides in SW Missouri. After her husband passed in 2015, she retired from nursing. She worked with the 2014- 2018 Missouri campaigns for legalized medical marijuana. She continues as a cannabis reform activist volunteering with Canna Convict Project and working toward Federal decriminalization through educational speaking and freelance journalism. Dolores Halbin, doloreshalbin @ gmail. com.
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