Our Story
Welcome. We are truly glad you found us.
Banner Harvest Radio
A note from the farm: here is a song Yolanda wrote to capture the heart of our journey. We invite you to turn on the radio and listen along as you read our story.
— Paul
Why we are different
A Different Kind of Conversation
If you are unsure about CBD, if you have questions, concerns, or you simply want honest answers before trying something new, you are in exactly the right place. That is where many of the people we help began too. Before we tell you about our products, we want to tell you who we are, because when it comes to your health, the people behind the product matter.
My name is Paul. My co-founder and partner is my wife, Yolanda. Banner Harvest was never created to follow a trend or cash in on an industry boom. We built this company because we believe this plant can genuinely improve people’s lives when it is grown, formulated, and explained with honesty, care, and integrity.
That belief did not come from marketing. It came from lived experience.
The Journey to the Source
Yolanda’s Path
Questions, Care, and the Work of Listening
The work of guidance
Yolanda grew up Southern Baptist in Tennessee, raised to believe cannabis was dangerous, even wrong. It took years of personal health struggles, research, and careful reflection before she saw it differently. What changed her mind was not hype or advertising. It was honest information from people she trusted.
For more than fifteen years, Yolanda has worked directly with people looking for natural ways to improve their quality of life. She has spent countless hours sitting with customers one on one, listening carefully to what they are dealing with, answering questions honestly, and helping people feel comfortable again in their own bodies. She personally manages chronic pain and immune system conditions naturally, without pharmaceuticals, and has done so since she began using CBD products.
She understands hesitation because she once had it herself. And she understands the relief people feel when they finally find something that truly helps.
That experience became the foundation for the way she helps others today.
Forty Years of Conviction
Paul’s Path
The Roots, the Vow, and the Standard
Paul’s connection to this plant goes back more than forty years, to Jamaica. Long before cannabis became an industry, it was a personal conviction: that nature gives the body what it needs to heal, restore balance, and live better.
Over the years, that conviction became a career built on cultivation, formulation, education, and manufacturing at the highest levels of the cannabis world, including serving as Director of Cultivation for one of Willie’s Reserve select grows during the earliest days of Colorado’s legal cannabis movement. But for Paul, this was never about building hype around cannabis.
It was about helping people reclaim comfort, mobility, peace of mind, and a better daily life, especially those who felt overlooked, unheard, or exhausted by the traditional system.
Banner Harvest did not start in a corporate office or a marketing boardroom.
It began in a field with a stated mission to help people.
The Illinois Harvest
Then Banner, Illinois · 2019
We started our operation and farm in Banner, Illinois in 2019. Fifteen thousand hemp seedlings bred with genetics taken from the best CBD-dominant strains, planted entirely by hand: Paul, Yolanda, his mother Vicki, and his brother Luke, one by one, on farmland that had been lying fallow for years.
The purity of the ground where hemp is grown is very important. Hemp is a phytoremediator, which means it leaches everything from the soil.
No glyphosate. No heavy metals. Just the rich earth of America’s heartland.
The Journey in photos
From the Field, the Farm, and the Family
A few moments from the path that shaped Banner Harvest: the plant, the process, the people, and the place it all came from.
Starting seeds, Banner, Illinois
Paul in the field, Illinois
Flowering hemp, Illinois
Yolanda and Vicki in the hemp field, 2019
A farm day in Illinois
Harvest, Illinois
Hanging the harvest
The drying barn
Paul and Yolanda in the drying barn, 2020
The plant
From seed to oil
That field became Banner Harvest.
Our name comes from that small Illinois town, but the word banner represents something deeper: excellence. A higher standard. The very best the land and the people behind it can offer.
We brought those same values with us when we opened our wellness center in Leesburg, Florida.
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Grown with intention
The source matters before anything reaches a bottle. We start with soil quality and water purity.
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Formulation experience
Every product reflects years of cultivation, manufacturing, and customer guidance.
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Made with accountability
Our name stays on the work because standards matter after the harvest.From Our Family to Yours.
Accountability Over Marketing
Now Leesburg, Florida · Formulated and made in‑house
A Banner Harvest production
Today, many CBD brands are built around marketing first. Outsourced products. Generic formulas. Trend-driven promises. Companies selling products they did not grow, formulate, or fully understand.
That was never going to be us.
Every product we offer is made in-house, by us, with complete testing for potency, pesticides, heavy metals, residual solvents, and microbials, because if it is not safe enough for our own family, it does not belong on our shelves.
Our name is on every bottle because accountability still matters to us.
If you are new to CBD, welcome. We are happy to answer any question you have.
If you tried CBD before and it did not work for you, we would love to help you understand why. In our experience, it often comes down to quality, consistency, or proper guidance, and those are things we can help you with.
We may not be the largest CBD company in America. But we believe Banner Harvest represents what this industry was always supposed to be: knowledgeable, honest, compassionate people creating clean, trustworthy products for the people who genuinely need them.
No gimmicks. No pressure. No exaggerated promises.
Just real people helping other people feel better naturally.
If you have been looking for something that can help you, you found it.
The Stories Behind the Standard.
Banner Harvest was shaped by two lives, two paths, and one shared conviction: this plant deserves respect, and people deserve honest guidance.
Paul’s Story
The Roots, the Vow, and the Farm.
Paul’s story begins long before CBD became an industry: in faith, family, Jamaica, Colorado cultivation, and a promise made after his father’s illness. This is the authority behind Banner Harvest’s standards.
Read Paul’s Story
Yolanda’s Story
The Questions, the Work, and the Mission.
Yolanda’s story moves from a Southern Baptist upbringing in Tennessee and hard questions to nursing, patient advocacy, chronic pain, and a deep belief that people deserve truth, patience, love and hope.
Read Yolanda’s StoryTogether, their stories explain why Banner Harvest was never built to be average.
