The Gray family has a long history with plants. When they were kids, brothers Joshua and Cameron worked with their father landscaping and their grandfather gardening in sunny San Diego.
Cameron started his own California-legal medical-cannabis cultivation and delivery service "High Tide Deliveries" in 2007. High Tide Deliveries helped people deal with everything from cancers and AIDS palliative care, traumatic brain injuries, back pain and insomnia.
Working as an artist and construction contractor, Joshua broke his leg and fell into a deep depression. His brother re-introduced him to the family business and the cannabis plant, and Joshua found healing through the work. In 2014 they expanded their operations to a few acres of land that included cannabis, a garden vegetables, an herb garden and an orchard of fruit trees.
California cannabis law changed in 2018 and legal medical collectives that had been legal were banned by conservative local towns. High Tide Deliveries was forced to dissolve and Graystone Farms took shape. Graystone, named after the large gray boulders found in the local mountains, and also a wordplay on the Gray family's reputation as cannabis aficionados, aka "stoners," shifted its focus to legal CBD-based plant medicine and health products. Joshua Gray, who got a degree in East Asian Studies and spent a year teaching English in Japan, thought his friends overseas should be able to access the products that helped him recover from his physical and mental traumas.
Under the current legal parameters, the closest to whole cannabis medicine the Japanese people can experience is CBD refined from the stalks of the plant. To offer these products, in 2021 Graystone Farms partnered with Folium, the largest hemp stalk grower and processor in North America.