Hemptress is a name that just seemed right for a woman who owns a hemp business. When owning any business, the affirmation must be “no stress.” What remained is tress, hemptress. We know that hemp hair (decorticated fiber) can make the most fabulous Rasta-Ire-wigs on the planet. What tresses! It seems fun to have a title. It isn’t Queen, Princess, Duchess, or Madame, it’s Hemptress! Who is this Hemptress anyway? My roots (a nickname for Ruth actually) are in Wisconsin soils: hardy Midwestern stock. There is still a defunct hemp factory in Sun Prairie, near Madison, Wisconsin. Volunteer crops of hemp grow throughout the Midwest states.

Initiating Taos Hemp balanced good Karma with not so good Karma. In 1977 I had worked on the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline for the infamous Brown & Root now linked with Halliburton. Hemp can save the planet from destruction, the wars of corruption and greed, lies in the name of democracy.

In 1974, I began my life out West. Sheepherding for a few ranchers in Utah and Colorado in the early 1980's before heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1983 to study massage therapy at the Dr. Scherer Academy of Natural Healing. Thank you Dr.Jay for your inspiration.

Travels to India, Thailand, Nepal and Tibet taught me much about the value of a simple life. When I returned from Thailand in 1999, it was to meet my first grandchild, Kyra Morgan and to begin the hemp business of making the travel bags like the one I had found in Bodhgaya, India. Thus began the Dharma Bags of 100% Romanian hemp: hand dyed, cut and sewn, and marketed in craft shows.

It is a journey of meeting hemptresses and hempsters with the vision of this world, this global economy, being rich in the production of the strongest fiber crop on the planet. Hemp is the natural winner, the true giver of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and fuel. It is the tool to propel us into the age of self reliant, self sustaining livelihoods.

Hemp makes me rhetorical, theoretical, practical, enthused and passionate. Why not plant the seeds of such a plant that can only give so much to the cause of Life for Life?

Ruth hemptress