Dear Friends,
For me, at least, reality is setting in: with Covid, we are in for the long haul, until there is a widely available and effective vaccine. Having just started new businesses to complete our circular economy, particularly Wildcat Willy’s farm-to-table restaurant, the stressors on me and our teams are obvious.
I have two antidotes: CBD extract for a good night’s sleep and imagining the future we want and working toward it.
CBD is the easy one. For me, it helps, and there is plenty of evidence of hemp’s calming effect. (See our blog about CBD and sleep here.)
Imagining the future might seem harder, especially when things are unclear. But that is exactly the time when there is leverage, so imagining the future in times of turmoil is critical.
I well remember being in a leadership training class and being asked by the coach, “Do you vision?” I looked at the instructor thinking she was nuts, held my tongue, then asked what she meant.
It turned out she was asking if I held a picture in my mind of what I was trying to create. Yes, I do, and that’s what gives me hope. It’s also what gives we the will to move forward, no matter what.
So here I want to share three pictures of the vision, the first a lowly roller-crimper, designed for organic farms to make a mulch of rye cover crops at planting; the second of the completed and re-opened Homestead cabin; the third an artist’s rendering of our new downtown store.
The roller-crimper is important because it will help us make Mt. Folly a carbon sink. The re-opened Homestead cabin is important because it lets us host people from whom we can learn and with whom we can share the ways of organic farming and hemp.
The new building downtown tells us that we’ll all be together at some point. It is to be “headquarters” for all we do, with a Laura’s Mercantile store, offices, our pick and ship department for mail order, and two apartments upstairs.
While we are completing this, we are welcoming visitors to our 18th-century Homestead Log cabin. Indeed, Laura’s Mercantile is running monthly drawings for our good customers.
Let’s see you soon!
P. S. – The FDA has delivered its first report to congress about CBD. The core of the report is that, when tested, a majority of CBD products were misbranded, and contained more or less CBD than advertised, and other, unlabeled ingredients frequently. To learn more, click here.
We at Laura’s pride ourselves in accuracy of formulation and USDA-certified organic hemp. We publish our results for every batch. You can see the results by typing in your batch number…