HEMPTASTIC!!!

Hoot hoot! Welcome to the seventh post on The Green Daisy. I've got a feeling that I'm going to have a lot of fun writing today's post, because it's on a topic that I'm really getting into - all things HEMP. So... what do you think of when you hear the word 'hemp'? Probably a lot of different things, but a few major visions are bound to come up.. marijuana... maybe a burlap-sack-like fabric... maybe some filthy guy with burrs caught in his beard at a folk festival. Well, forget all that. Except for maybe the folk festival guy. He needs some help getting those burrs out before he bad-trips. Anyways, the point is, that there's a lot more to hemp than meets the eye, and a lot of the time, I think that common associations with the word and materials distract us from the REAL information that's out there about hemp and why it's so effing great. It's got a long, long history providing valuable resources for us humans, and today, more than ever, it's a highly important source of materials - it's renewable, extremely useful, and fantastic for the planet!

Let's get to the juicy... ahem... hempy stuff, shall we?

Get this: hemp was probably among the very first fibres cultivated by human beings, way, way back in our species' infancy, when we were just figuring out how to use the things that grow out of the Earth to make our lives easier. There's actual evidence that humans across Asia were well on their way to making simple ropes and such from hemp stalks as long as 30 000 years ago, and it shows up in Indian and Chinese texts 5000 years ago, being praised for its use in medicine and as a fibre for nets, ropes, and baskets.
Why was this plant so highly valued for its practical uses? A lot of reasons. Although it grows the tallest in hot and humid environments, the plant is in fact highly adaptable.. high altitudes and cold winter seasons only deter its growth minimally. In can be spun very coarsely, to be used as rope, twine, baskets, sturdy sacks, or boat sails - or it can be spun extraordinarily fine for clothing and linens.. when very fine, it can rival silk. It's highly absorbant, so it makes a way better material for clothing than synthetics, which just make you clammy instead of helping your body out. It holds dye incredibly well, making rich colours and sturdy shades possible.. the fashionable person's dream come true. It doesn't wrinkle easily, and clothing moths hate it. It dries quickly, reducing living quarters for mold and mildew, and it's also highly resistant to the severe cold, heat, dampness, wetness, sunlight, salt and chemicals. Neat! Hemp fibre is extremely strong too, which is why everything from paper to the grand sails of ships were made from it. It's all-purpose and has a million-and-one uses. (There are more benefits to using hemp, but we'll get to those later, as they're the most relevant reasons for using hemp in today's world. )
So... why the heck did it fall out of favor in many parts of the world? There are a lot of different arguments. What a lot of people believe, is that in the 1930's, prohibition was trying to stamp out intoxicants.. and guess what was one of them? Pot. But wait! Are hemp and marijuana both from the same plant? Not quite. Let's get some truthiness going here. Hemp and pot are actually cousins of the same variety of plant, with the big differences being that if you smoke pot, you get high, and if you smoke a hemp plant, you just get a headache. It simply doesn't have enough of the good (ahem) stuff in it that makes cannabis such a sought-after dried herb. On the reverso though, if you try to spin fibre from a pot plant, you'll get a crappy, low-quality result. So, the bottom line is, pot plant = pot, hemp plant = hemp. That's it. Unfortunately, not everyone saw it that way, and the whole shebang got outlawed in America. Crummy. You may have heard this before, but it's true: even George Washington grew hemp. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, so it would keep! At the same time, cotton production in North America started to boom without hemp as a rival, and people began to favor it over the 'evil weed' as it was sadly called. Hemp was grown again briefly during WWII because they needed it for emergency ropes and such, but ultimately it seemed like hemp had gone the way of the dinosaur. Handy, healthy hemp oil was replaced by synthetic, petroleum-based substitutes, and then we started destroying ancient forests for paper instead of using the super-quick-growing, quickly-replaces-itself hemp plant. What were we thinking?! Cotton, unless certified organic these days, is the crop that uses the most pesticide in the entire world. Oh, and those ancient forests? Yeah. They don't grow back in a single season, like hemp does. You need about two thousand seasons. Crappy.

But don't despair - it's time for the best part.

Hemp is enjoying a newfound popularity lately for a number of very, very good reasons. Put very simply, we've mined our planet's precious resources to the limit, and we need a realistic alternative.. right now. Here are some fantastic facts about hemp that makes it such a blim blammin' good idea to invest in, in these sketchy times.

- Hemp grows incredibly fast. Faster than trees. Faster than your little brother. It's really neat. One plant can grow up to 18 feet in a single year... that's a lot of hemp!! With the demand for paper, textiles, and foodstuffs, that the human race requires, we need something that can bust it that fast.
- Unlike cotton and lots of other crops, hemp actually leaves the soil replenished with nutrients instead of depleted! It makes its own fertilizer for the next generation of baby hemp plants! Think of the resources that can be saved on that alone. Growing hemp is good for the soil and for the other plant-life around it.
- Hemp doesn't need pesticides to grow like crazy and meet our demand, unlike cotton and many other crops. It's hardy and crazy that way.
- Hemp produces a huge seed yield, so you get more, more, more.
- As mentioned before, the hemp plant is highly adaptive, and can follow humans wherever they go. Plant it all over the place! Wherever we go, hemp can go too.

The bottom line: Hemp is a sustainable, renewable resource for a million things that we really need. It we grow more hemp, we CAN limit the destruction of ancient forests and eco-systems that make our planet breathable.

Alright! Now that I'm feeling fabulous about hemp, I'd like to share a few awesome things with you - lots of awesome, fair-trade companies are churning out incredible, happily hempily products right now, and they're not all tye-dyed. Seriously!!! They're practical, beautiful, economical, and hemptastic. Check out:
www.hoodlamb.com (sexy, fashionable hemp clothing for guys and ladies)
www.rawganique.com (clothes and a home section too!)
www.ecolution.com (my personal recommendation.. fair-trade for sure!!!)
www.adbusters.org (hemp SHOES! They're amazing! See the link on right on their site)
www.spiritstream.com (has everything. Everything.)

A ton of stuff in your daily life is available in hemp-form. Clothes, fabric, towels, washcloths, belts, jewellery, footwear, shower curtains, blankets, bags, backpacks, wallets, coffee filters, rope, toys... the list goes on and on. I have a hemp backpack from Ecolution that I bought about three years ago, and let me tell you something about it: it's been tossed about from one end of Canada to the other, all over Vancouver, across the ocean, from one end of Ireland to the other, on countless trips to Montreal, to Toronto, New York City, and on about a zillion grocery and day-trips, and after a wash, it still looks as good as the day I bought it.

Before I bring this post to a close, I'd like to give a quick hoorah to a few of the places in Ottawa that supply hemp stuff: find it at Arbour (800 Bank St.) and Karma Wear (110 Parent St. in the Market). Lots of other places are carrying it now too.. snoop around and send me your hemp sightings!

We hear a lot of the time that perhaps the biggest tool for making change in our lives is our wallets. Be careful who you give your money to, and what you're supporting. If we demand sustainable, and we demand fair-trade, then it'll happen. And finally, if you're the lucky owner of some hemp stuffs, or are thinking about supporting it next time you purchase something hempable, feel proud about it, and tell all your friends the facts! So long 'til next time!