Page 4 - Florida Sentinel 10-1-21

Feature
Serious Illness Led Businessman To Create His Own Brand Of Hemp
BY MONIQUE STAMPS Sentinel Staff Writer
Rodney Walker grew up in excit- ing places, including the country of Panama courtesy of his military dad. In high school, Walker divided his time between Florida and Georgia. He ended up in Palmetto, Florida with his grandmother. There, he graduated from Palmetto High School.
After high school, Walker moved to Tampa to attend the International Academy of Design and Technology (IADT). He later completed his MBA with DeVry University in the Keller School of Graduate Studies.
After working a white collar job for
a year, he decided that working for someone else wasn’t the life he wanted.
During this same time, Walker be- came seriously ill due to his kidneys. He was a kidney transplant recipient at the age of 14 and was still suffering from complications.
Knowing that an early transplant can fail, Walker wanted to ensure his future financially and needed a plan in place.
Walker returned briefly to work- ing for others. He worked in IT sales, finance, and IT support. However, his passion at the time was music.
He invested money in a studio, Rebel Lane Studios. After building out his home stu- dio, he ex- panded to a commercial space. Unfortu- nately, what he feared came true and he ended up on
dialysis.
He had to
shut down his recording stu- dio, so he could deal with his health issues.
With his fi- nance and busi- ness background, Walker ended up in real es- tate, flipping houses in 2018 at his new com- pany, New Chain of Invest-
seed shop. He researched whether this strain could help him with his health journey.
He then learned he could grow his own hemp legally in addition to the CBD seeds.
He went online and read every sin- gle statute regarding hemp production and sales in Florida. Walker opted to reclassify his home garden as a nursery so that he could grow hemp legally.
To be compliant with other laws, he had to choose the type of hemp he would grow according to Florida law. He decided to go with seeds from the Florida pilot program because they were affordable.
Walker’s nursery is 100% organic. All products are grown with no pesti- cides, fungicides, or heavy metals.
His first attempt at growing hemp did not turn out well, so Walker began researching some more, tilled his land again and replanted. The sec- ond time was a charm.
Walker’s brand is called “Droski” hemp and CDB. Droski is a street name for a smooth, hydroponic type of marijuana.
Not happy to be complacent, Walker began splicing samples from other growers with his own strains. The result is a unique blend.
Those new strains have similar names to street marijuana, encourag- ing people to know that they can pur- chase the products they like the legal way. “Dat Gas,” “Loud Pack,” and “Dat Purp” are some of the strains Walker offers
Prominent hip hop producer, artist, and actor Redman recently gave the Droski brand a shout out on the site https://www.droski.us, where the Droski strains can be purchased.
RODNEY WALKER
ments, Inc.
After moving into a new house,
Walker started gardening in the large backyard as a form of therapy. He began spending time at garden shops. He also raised some beds to expand his growing project. It was a process of ex- perimentation to find what and when to plant.
Back in those early days, he had to plant and learn. Some of the early yields were not the best.
In a short time, he was successfully planting tomatoes, lettuces, herbs, cu- cumbers among other things. He also became a vegan.
Before becoming a vegan, Walker had numerous issues with dialysis. Along with becoming a vegan and growing most of his food, Walker found hemp and CBD seeds at his local
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