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\u201cThe first thing a lot of people ask me is \u2018can you smoke it?\u2019\u201d laughs HempWood founder Gregory Wilson. But he doesn\u2019t have any interest in farming the cannabis sativa plant as a commercial intoxicant. In fact, it\u2019s kind of the opposite reason he started working with hemp.<\/p>\n
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\u2014and he thinks the same level of caution and care should factor into what goes into your home and its building materials.<\/p>\n
He spent 14 years in China engineering wood flooring from bamboo\u2014a process that uses formaldehyde to bind the filaments together. \u201cI\u2019ve got all sorts of health problems because of that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Wilson, who\u2019s an inventor as much as he\u2019s 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<\/a> uses a soy-based adhesive which didn\u2019t work as well with bamboo\u2014a plant with a waxy, oily outer layer.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cCoolest Thing Made in Kentucky<\/a>\u201d in 2024 by the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers: a carbon-negative, zero-waste, zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) hemp lumber and flooring product that\u2019s both beautiful and of high quality.\u00a0<\/p>\n HempWood grows their own hemp\u2014approximately 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.<\/p>\n In August 2025, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) performed the ceremonial \u201cboard-cutting\u201d<\/a> to celebrate the company\u2019s addition of a second factory on the Murray campus\u2014one 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. \u201cWe\u2019re still the new kid on the block,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cOnly about six percent of America has ever heard of HempWood.\u201d But for Wilson, who first developed a successful hemp wood material in 2010, it feels like forever.<\/p>\n The HempWood product has a lot going for it. It\u2019s healthy, sustainable, eco-friendly, US-made, 20 percent stronger than hickory, is billed as a \u201c100-year floor\u201d and costs about the same as domestic lumber to manufacture. Yet it faces unique challenges because it\u2019s derived from a plant with \u2018cannabis\u2019 in its name. \u201cThis is much more stressful than bamboo was,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n Wilson, who says he mostly abstains from politics, identifying as a \u201clibertarian more than anything,\u201d finds himself in an industry regularly triggered by political domino effects that make people uncertain of hemp\u2019s favorability.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 $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. \u201cEverything got frozen and shocked,\u201d Wilson says, revealing his farming mind. \u201cBut it\u2019ll come back.\u201d<\/p>\n And why shouldn\u2019t it? Hemp can go from seed to lumber in less than six months. There\u2019s no arguing here\u2014trees, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout 30 percent of the population hate it because it\u2019s hemp,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cAnother 30 percent love it for that reason\u2014he estimates their wood is in about 200 dispensaries nationwide\u2014and the rest are only motivated by price and quality. And what Wilson\u2019s created is unquestionably quality. The long strands of hemp bestow the wood with a meandering \u201cgrain\u201d that allows woodworkers to achieve a groovy, almost cork-like look to their projects.<\/p>\n So, no, you can\u2019t smoke it\u2014but imagine what else you can do with it.<\/p>\n HempWood founder Gregory Wilson loves to showcase the projects that woodworkers make from his product\u2014just check their Instagram account<\/a>. 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\u2014it was this bow. \u201cIt\u2019s the coolest thing that happened to me this year,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n This story was originally published in issue 52 of the\u00a0print edition<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.<\/em><\/p>\n The post HempWood: The Future of Sustainable Building<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing a lot of people ask me is \u2018can you smoke it?\u2019\u201d laughs HempWood founder Gregory Wilson. But he doesn\u2019t have any interest in farming the cannabis sativa plant as a commercial intoxicant. In fact, it\u2019s kind of the opposite reason he started working with hemp. Wilson livesContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":519,"featured_media":85363,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,296,19743,85,19631,699],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85364,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85362\/revisions\/85364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/hempwood-2.jpg\")
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\nRead More: HempWood: The Future of Sustainable Building<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"