We caught up with the brilliant and insightful business owners Amanda Evan and MaryAnn Chapman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda and MaryAnn, appreciate you joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Our name came about very organically. We are a fourth generation traditional row crop farm. Our first test plot for the hemp we planted outdoors. Our hemp plants were surrounded by our cotton crop, and Cotton Patch Hemp was born. We now grow all the beautiful ladies in a greenhouse where they get the controlled environment this plant needs to thrive.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Cotton Patch Hemp is a small family business owned and operated by sister-n-laws, MaryAnn Chapman and Amanda Evans. The farming operation is handled by Amanda’s brother and MaryAnn’s husband. Both MaryAnn and Amanda have been helped by this plant in different ways.

MaryAnn’s journey: I am a wife and mom to our 9 year old son. I am a ginger. I love to sing, listen to music, and attend live music performances. We love exploring the local creeks with our SUP’s and kayaks. We have a 2 year old Weimaraner who can open all the doors in our house and keeps us on our toes. We work hard and play even harder. My journey with CBD began because I was a sick “mystery.” Doctors did not know what to do me. Most medications made me worse. I’ve had experimental surgeries and treatments. Some provided occasional, albeit temporary relief. A friend of mine, whose daughter had seizures, asked me if I had tried CBD. My husband and I drove almost 3 hours to the only store I could fine that carried CBD. That fateful day changed my life for the better. After seeing how CBD helped me with my migraines, my husband being the farmer that he is said, “I can grow that.” Soon after we started investigating this plant a little more, Clemson Extension announced their pilot program. And here we are today. It’s been the most challenging thing we have ever set out to grow. Not just because the ladies are very particular about how they’re grown. Fighting stigma and non-education has been an even bigger challenge.

Amanda’s journey- I am a wife and mom to our 15 month old son. One of the things MaryAnn and I share is our love for music and attending concerts and festivals together. I was an Occupational Therapist for 11 years and my passion for helping people in their daily lives is what I love about this business. After seeing MaryAnn’s complete health turn around and learning more about the benefits of CBD, I started taking CBD myself to see if it would help with my anxiety and trouble sleeping. CBD worked! I truly believe this plant can help so many people where they have not been able to find solutions elsewhere.

Our Products: Our product line up includes 1500 mg full spectrum CBD oil, Trifecta oil that is our powerhouse with 1000mg each of CBD, CBG, and Delta 8, CBD gummies, Delta 8 gummies, a preroll which is 1 gram of our top flower buds already rolled up for you. For special events like farmers markets, MaryAnn makes homemade CBD cookies. She makes the butter from our plant material for this delicious homemade edible packed with approximately 90 mg of CBD.

Our Clients: We love helping people and hearing their personal stories. We treat each client individually by tailoring that persons CBD needs specifically for them. We have a cannabis nurse that we consult with if a clients needs are outside of our expertise. We pride ourselves on research based education.

What sets us apart: We actually grown this plant! Small batch, locally grown CBD products that are being tested many times throughout the grow process and beyond the grow process. We do this to ensure our CBD is the highest quality we can produce, giving our customers the best terpene profile and the most cannabinoids possible. We take these products everyday ourselves! When you purchase our products, you not only support a local farm, but you receive top quality all natural plant medicine.

We love that we get to help people feel better everyday. Our motto is “make life better” and that’s exactly what CBD has done for us and for our clients. We know people who have been able to really look at the pharmaceuticals that they are taking and come up with a plan with their doctor to move toward a more natural, healthy life. We all have an endocannabinoid system in our guts, lungs and brain. We were designed to use this plant!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When we were first getting started, we faced so many obstacles. We couldn’t find anyone in the state of South Carolina to insure our business. Luckily, our insurance broker worked and found us a great out of state policy months later. Three months into the pandemic our bank called and terminated our account because they didn’t want anything to do with a hemp business. A local bank heard about our troubles and reached out to us. This would only happen in small town South Carolina and for that we are extremely grateful. We have been banned on social media several times. And we are never allowed to “boost” a post with advertising. With this being a federally legal crop you could say not being able to advertise has been extremely frustrating. If we can’t use our social platforms to educate people then how do we do it….One client at a time.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

When we first started to even think about making CBD products and starting this business, MaryAnn was coming up with the first recipes in her kitchen through trial and error. Once we started to realize this is exactly what we want to do, it forced us to look into a larger facility that could produce our products but still maintain our consistency. With the exception of our gummies, every product is manufactured in South Carolina.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cottonpatchhemp.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cottonpatchhemp/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cottonpatchhemp
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLkk1f4b7rjtZIEl8HtVNag