Eddie Velez and his wife, Martha, are among the first crop of legal hemp farmers in Texas. Their company, Oak Cliff Cultivators, has a farm in Brady, Texas, but they were both born and raised in Oak Cliff, and they now live in Kiestwood.
“I grew up with a big stigma,” Martha says. “I was like, ‘You don’t do that. Weed is bad.’” Yet she was sold on cannabis when she started taking it for early-onset menopause in 2018 and found that it helped with migraines and sleeping.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and was an educator for 16 years in the Irving and Denton school districts. Now she puts education at the forefront of their business. She organizes events to get Oak Cliff Cultivators’ product out there, along with a message about the benefits of legal, medicinal cannabis use.
Read more about their farm and how it started at oakcliff.advocatemag.com.