Like Bamboo, Hemp is a sort of be-anything-you-like-me-to-be, an Al Capp Shmoo-like creature. There are two hemp shops in Grass Valley, and another right down the road in Roseville. If you’ve never worn a pair of hemp socks, you aren’t familiar with the phrase, “Life is too short to drink bad wine.”. I eat hemp seeds in my salads every day, and just bought some bamboo socks which are also amazingly soft and close-fitting. Hemp has so many industrial uses that it’s impossible to list them, and had it not gotten banned along racial lines back in the day, it would be a normal part of our national economy, as our Founding Fathers predicted:
“Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” – Abraham Lincoln (from a letter written by Lincoln during his presidency to the head of the Hohner Harmonica Company in Germany)
“Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.”
– Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
“Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.”
– George Washington, U.S. President
“We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.”
– John Adams, U.S. President