Hi I’m Jason! I have three degrees in Mathematics, and I love helping people who want to learn mathematics and statistics. I am currently the president of Old Crow, LLC, the parent company for Old Crow Hemp Company, and our new venture Grateful Living which will offer sprouts and microgreens to residents near Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina starting in 2024! I enjoy making kombucha, and have even been called a “SCOBY Daddy” because I’ve shared so many SCOBYs! Recently I’ve been making hard kombucha and hard ginger beer, which is a similar process.
Mathematics
Oh there’s a lot I could say here about my long history studying a variety of mathematics and statistics. I earned my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia with Dr. Ted Shifrin and Dr. Ed Azoff in 1996. In 2003, emboldened by success tutoring mathematics, I wanted to learn more about teaching, so I enrolled in the Master’s program at Appalachian State University. After that I taught there as adjunct faculty for a few years before entering the PhD program in Applied Mathematics at North Carolina State University. It is a tough program, and I did not choose an easy route to PhD. Basically Partial Differential Equations kicked my ass, and I settled for professional Master’s in Financial Mathematics, which delightfully blended the Calculus I loved and the Probability and Statistics that I’d studied so much as the Ito Calculus.
I’ve tutored everything from 4th grade mathematics to Differential Equations and PhD-level statistics, but most of my tutoring experience is in College Algebra and Differential Calculus.
Old Crow Hemp Co.
The mission of Old Crow Hemp Company is to deliver legal, medicinal cannabis products and cannabis awareness to North Carolina and beyond. Old Crow was formed in the summer of 2018 when the definition of “hemp” was still in Pilot Program status in the United States. We aligned with Adrian of the International Hemp Exchange out of Longmont, CO and High Grade Hemp Seed to promote hemp and educate North Carolina farmers about hemp production, especially those with experience growing tobacco, while providing access to quality high-CBD hemp genetics.
The US Hemp Pilot Program was established by the 2014 Farm Bill, defining hemp as cannabis with less than 0.3% THC (∆9-tetrahydracannibinol) by dry weight. In December 2018, the President officially made THC legal in all 50 states for the first time since 1937 when he signed the 2018 Farm Bill that removed hemp from Pilot Program status, and added the words “post decarboxylation” to the 2014 Farm Bill describing how cannabis testing would determine the legality of a cannabis harvest.
Hemp has come a long way from hempseed oil and textiles as we’ve been able to finally access this family of terpenes that are unique to cannabis! We first got access to the medicinal value of CBD, then CBG and many other cannabinoids, and now that all states allow hemp production within the USDA guidelines, residents of states that do not have medical or recreational marijuana can still get access to THC-A hemp, that is cannabis with less than 0.3% THC but high amounts of THC-A, also known as potential THC, yielding flowers with total-THC at or above 20% in complete consistency with US and state laws.
Grateful Living – Eat the Living!
We are currently in a pre-market R&D phase to develop internal SOPs that will allow us to reliable deliver living sprouts and microgreens to health-minded individuals in 2024.
Grateful Dawgs
2023 has been a tough year here for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was losing two family dogs. Ivy had been our family dog since I brought him home as a small pup in about 2014. She developed a degenerative maleopathy that quickly debilitated her. It was tough, but with the help of our local veterinarian, we made it as easy as we could on her until it was clear that she was suffering more than she was enjoying her life. She was the first dog I had to put down. It was really hard when a couple months later Sir Augustine “Auggie” was diagnosed with cancer when we brought him to the vet to examine why he had not been eating. We were glad that we were able to rejuvenate him from what seemed like the edge of death twice by calming his nausea and providing him with subcutaneous fluids for 2-3 days. After the first time, knowing that his days were limited, we were glad to be gifted with a magnificent Pyredoodle pup, Hairy “Cash” Garcia that our friends at Busy B&D Farms in Swansboro bred. Auggie perked up a lot, resumed eating, drinking, and taking walks regularly. Unfortunately is was only another month or so until he lost his appetite again, but we brought him back with fluids for another couple months. However, the third time he stopped eating, fluids didn’t revive him, and he passed comfortable within a couple days.
Those were sad times, but on the brighter side, we’ve been wanting to create a Canine Hospice facility for a while, and now we’re feeling more prepared for what caring for older dogs will entail. We are excited about establishing Grateful Dawgs as a 401(c)3 organization in 2024 and converting our back yard into a haven for old or unwanted dogs in our area.
Fermentation
While we’ve had extensive experience making kombucha in the past, we have upped our game significantly after making a couple of 5-gallon batches of beer from kits we purchased from Amazon. Now we’re making 5-gallon batches of booch in a 6-gallon fermenter which allows us to save the entire SCOBY each time. I’ve been pleased to share SCOBYs with a couple people in my neighborhood, one to BariJoy in Charlotte, NC and I even sent one to Pennsylvania! Now I’m also fermenting hard ginger beer similarly and loving it!