Llew Boyd made a rookie mistake when he got into the hemp farming business in 2018.
“I remember thinking people were going to come to the farm with a checkbook and just buy our entire crop,” says Boyd, who launched Haygood Farms with his brother, Cullom Boyd, and Jimmy Schwartz.
Boyd, now the CEO of Haygood Farms, quickly learned that the hemp business wasn’t quite that straightforward, but he says the business has managed to thrive in a market that’s both saturated with product and recovering from the global pandemic.
“We did about 10 times the revenue in 2021 that we did in 2020, and we’re looking to double that revenue again this year,” he says. “Nothing’s been easy about it – it’s been a tough market to penetrate these first three years.
“We started with a basic plan, but then had to figure some things out, dodging and weaving, making it work,” says Boyd, who adds that the company has just opened its first retail location, Haygood Market, on Chattanooga’s Southside.