“The first thing a lot of people ask me is ‘can you smoke it?’” laughs HempWood founder Gregory Wilson. But he doesn’t have any interest in farming the cannabis sativa plant as a commercial intoxicant. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite reason he started working with hemp.
Wilson lives on a 171-acre organic farm in Murray, KY, growing hemp, mushrooms, berries, garlic and more while raising cows, chickens and pigs. He cares about where his food comes from and what goes into his body—and he thinks the same level of caution and care should factor into what goes into your home and its building materials.
He spent 14 years in China engineering wood flooring from bamboo—a process that uses formaldehyde to bind the filaments together. “I’ve got all sorts of health problems because of that,” he says.
Wilson, who’s an inventor as much as he’s an entrepreneur, was perfectly positioned to make use of hemp as a wood flooring product when the plant became legal. The process he developed for HempWood uses a soy-based adhesive which didn’t work as well with bamboo—a plant with a waxy, oily outer layer.
When hemp became legal in 2018, he filed some patents on it and moved to the small city of Murray in an area of the Bluegrass State that historically yielded plentiful hemp crops dating back to pioneer days, until it was banned in 1970. It was there that he launched HempWood and built a product that would be awarded “Coolest Thing Made in Kentucky” in 2024 by the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers: a carbon-negative, zero-waste, zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) hemp lumber and flooring product that’s both beautiful and of high quality.
HempWood grows their own hemp—approximately 300-400 acres annually, and also sources from other local hemp farms. Once harvested, the hemp stalks are turned into lumber and any hemp waste is recycled as a heat source for production.
In August 2025, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) performed the ceremonial “board-cutting” to celebrate the company’s addition of a second factory on the Murray campus—one for the creation, sawing and drying of HempWood (the block mill, 16,450 sq. ft.) and one for transforming the wood into flooring, panels, tables and custom mill work (the flooring mill, 12,840 sq. ft.). Even so, HempWood is only at the beginning of its story. “We’re still the new kid on the block,” Wilson says. “Only about six percent of America has ever heard of HempWood.” But for Wilson, who first developed a successful hemp wood material in 2010, it feels like forever.
The HempWood product has a lot going for it. It’s healthy, sustainable, eco-friendly, US-made, 20 percent stronger than hickory, is billed as a “100-year floor” and costs about the same as domestic lumber to manufacture. Yet it faces unique challenges because it’s derived from a plant with ‘cannabis’ in its name. “This is much more stressful than bamboo was,” Wilson says.
Wilson, who says he mostly abstains from politics, identifying as a “libertarian more than anything,” finds himself in an industry regularly triggered by political domino effects that make people uncertain of hemp’s favorability.
Public schools were big customers for a while (the VOC-free nature of the wood makes it a safer option for schoolchildren) but those projects have been paused since the Department of Education froze Kentucky schools’ $87 million funding this past summer. HempWood was also specified for two USDA buildings, but the federal government froze the project due to budgetary constraints. “Everything got frozen and shocked,” Wilson says, revealing his farming mind. “But it’ll come back.”
And why shouldn’t it? Hemp can go from seed to lumber in less than six months. There’s no arguing here—trees, even softwood trees that grow faster than hardwood, need decades to grow mature enough to create lumber. Bamboo is much faster but still takes about three to five years.
“About 30 percent of the population hate it because it’s hemp,” Wilson says. “Another 30 percent love it for that reason—he estimates their wood is in about 200 dispensaries nationwide—and the rest are only motivated by price and quality. And what Wilson’s created is unquestionably quality. The long strands of hemp bestow the wood with a meandering “grain” that allows woodworkers to achieve a groovy, almost cork-like look to their projects.
So, no, you can’t smoke it—but imagine what else you can do with it.
HempWood founder Gregory Wilson loves to showcase the projects that woodworkers make from his product—just check their Instagram account. Two years ago, Wilson placed an order with Marc Lauver, a customer who makes bows and arrows from HempWood. Wilson sent Marc extra wood with the order and asked him how much a bow would cost for himself. But shortly after, Marc took a hiatus from making bows after a health issue. When he found out, Wilson sent a care package while Lauver was in recovery. This year, on his birthday, Wilson opened a package from Lauver—it was this bow. “It’s the coolest thing that happened to me this year,” Wilson says.
This story was originally published in issue 52 of the print edition of Cannabis Now.
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