Greetings, my name is Rick Webster and I am the Lead Grower at Turf Origins Hemp farm. The whole process, from sprouting seedlings to curing finely manicured flowers, I do it all with the help of the rest of the team. I spend my days out in the garden tending to our lovely hemp ladies and I love what I do and I believe in the cause. I have always loved the natural world and really enjoy being connected to it through my work on the farm. I take care of my hemp ladies the best I can so that they can give us back one of nature's best elixirs, CBD. I really believe that many of the harmful pharmaceuticals that people take over-the-counter could be replaced by CBD if it is high quality and dosed correctly. That said, I try to grow the best stuff around, because that is the only stuff that works. People have come to us with anxiety, pain, insomnia, stress, inflammation, et cetera and I am not even surprised anymore when they tell me that the flower I grow actually helps take the edge off some of the symptoms they experience. 

A long, long time ago while I was in college I began working at night in bars in downtown Orlando, bouncing and bartending. I also began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu(BJJ) after my high school wrestling coach opened his own BJJ school and invited me to train. In school I studied music, psychology and sociology. After graduating from UCF and Rollins College, I became a Professor at Seminole State College and taught there for over a decade, although I never stopped working at night in bars or training in BJJ. In the classroom though, I loved guiding and challenging young minds on topics that spurred the imagination, and pushed them to think critically about logic and ethics, and explore perspectives that show us new ways to understand things and people. By the end of the decade of teaching for the college I was burning out and standing at a fork in the road: either finish my doctorate degree and somehow pursue tenure, or, finish my black belt in BJJ and open my own school. I chose the latter. I left the college but kept my bartending job to pay the bills while I built my own BJJ school. Once again my passion for teaching was renewed and I was doing something that I believed really benefited those who I shared the art with. I opened my school and it was everything I hoped for. Just over a year later COVID-19 came around, quarantine began, and I closed up shop for good. 

Fast-forward to the quarantine ending and me slinging drinks from behind a bar again. Burning out. Again. Unfortunately, when you are down, it seems life thinks that is the best time to kick you. Over the next two years both of my parents got life-threateningly ill and I had to do whatever I could to take care of them. I knew the doctors had already prescribed them strong opiates to help with pain and benzos for sleep and anxiety but I knew I needed to find something different that could reduce their dependence on these drugs so they could put up a good fight. That is when a close friend of mine told me he knew a chemist with a certified laboratory that could make us the highest potency CBD products around. I know for a fact that when dosed correctly, CBD can do great things, even if it is just a supplement to comforting a terminally ill patient. At the very same time, I walked away from the service industry and took a few months to focus on family. 

Before I left the bartending life though, I had made friends with the Busters, and the Grahams, and started helping them out around the farm with their gardens. I had always been a hobbyist with horticulture since I was very young, and planted veggies and fruits everywhere I ever lived. Time on the farm tending the garden was a serene escape from the drunken debauchery at the bar, the stress of teaching lazy college students, and the reality of having to take care of sick loved ones. After the Busters and Grahams were ready to move away from bar-life too, it only made sense to me to come work for them full-time building the infrastructure and growing the elixir that really does make this life hurt just a little bit less.     

So these days I am out to pasture. Retired from teaching and bartending. Literally, I am out in the fields. Talking to plants. Making them home cooked organic food. Making friends with bats, goats, and ladybugs. Letting the dogs run the property. Training BJJ in my garage with my people. Rocking out with my indie cover band. Taking care of my family. Life is crazy but I am as happy as a pig in sh*t!