It begins on a farm in the small town of Neeses, S.C., overseen by a family that’s been working the earth since the 1940s. Andy Fogle and his staff cultivate the big, bushy mother hemp plants in a greenhouse, before cloning them by snipping off tips that are transplanted into small trays. After they take root, the new, little plants are moved outside. Eventually, they’ll all produce CBD oil. But first, the 3-inch-high hemp plants are grown by the thousands under the warm Palmetto State sun.

“There are so many products, you don’t know where they came from,” says Fogle, a partner in Nature’s Highway and also CEO of Carolina Fresh Farms.

When it came to horticulture, “Papa” Tony Fogle was always open to trying something new. After World War II, he started growing cotton, corn and soybeans. Next was hay and timber, and a facility for growing white button mushrooms.

In the 1980s, his company began growing sod, which eventually became the farm’s calling card. Then the federal Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp in 2018, creating a cannabidiol industry that’s quickly becoming a billion-dollar business.

Fogle toured some cannabis-growing facilities, while his horticulturists researched building greenhouses and cloning plants.

The current Nature’s Highway operation involves cultivating the mother plants in a greenhouse, cloning them by transplanting their tips, and replanting them in rows outside once they’ve taken root. The farm will plant 80,000 clones this year, in two different varieties, and all of them female.

Interested in learning more about Nature’s Highway and its products? Reach us by phone at (833) 649-9223, or by email at contact@natureshighwaycbd.com.