Who are East Yorkshire Hemp?

History

Nick Voase’s grandfather, Ken moved to Baswick Steer in 1943 – the farmland and house were very run down and he had his work cut out to improve them both. He often said that there was only one tree on the farm when he moved in! Over the years Ken added five neighbouring small farms to the original land and by 1971 he was farming 600 acres. He planted many hundreds of trees around the farm, long before tree planting became fashionable. A six-acre area of trees is now called Ken’s Wood on O.S maps. Today, 77 years later, continual improvement is still the aim of the Voase family.

We grew our first crop of hemp in 2002 on contract to a processor. The crop suited our land and we thought we had found a good break crop. But as the two companies we supplied both encountered processing and financial problems we found ourselves with a considerable quantity of hemp straw and no potential buyers. The only way that we could see any return from our crop was to process the straw ourselves.

In 2007 we lost our potato crop during the catastrophic East Yorkshire floods, so we decided to concentrate on hemp. Since then we have made considerable investments of time and money into building and adapting machines to separate the woody core (shiv) from the fibre. Hemp is the strongest of all the plant fibres, it is very tough on man and machine and just loves to catch and wrap-up around any moving part, so we had our work cut out. Nick designed and built a hemp cutter because we could not find an available machine that met our requirements. We now grow up to 500 acres of hemp each year and process and pack all our homegrown hemp on the farm.

We produce HempBedz animal bedding. Canaries, budgies, parrots, homing pigeons, hamsters, guinea pigs, reptiles, rabbits, poultry, dogs and horses are a few examples of pets that are enjoying the benefits of a luxurious, warm dust-free hemp bed. Their owners also appreciate the ease and convenience of hemp.

HempBuild is our building grade shiv; which when combined with a lime-based binder produces hempcrete.
HempBuild-Fine can be mixed with lime putty to make insulating plasters and with added sand to make renders.
One hectare (2.5 acres) of hemp will provide enough shiv to build a medium-sized house and it grows in just one summer.

Why not try our HempLogz briquettes for log burning stoves made from 100% hemp – all the small bits of shiv and fibre that fall out of the processing line.

Hemp fibre is sold to manufacturers for further processing into textiles, roof insulation batts or as a filling for mattresses; in most cases, it is used as a replacement for man-made fibres. We also supply rolls of hemp fibre grow mats for horticultural use.