 Hey, what's up everyone just getting ready for everything. Hold on. I should have put on the hand phones first Too late. Hopefully it's not too bad Subject for today is going to be Eric from HBK farms. Gonna come talk with us it's one of my old friends and He's been around forever. He's made some killer strains won some awards Done some cool shit. So we're gonna bring him on What am I smoking on way? Oh, it's a professor P sent me some stuff. I've been smoking on some blue power from a buddy Lots of good stuff. Let's get stuff All right, hold on here Yo, yo What's the haps amigo? How goes it? All right, how's the connection there? Yeah, that seems like it's good so far. Holden We're good. What is that? What is that couch chair you're on? It's a it's a rocking chair. Oh lord. You get to chill while you're doing it. I do a little bit a little bit That's cool. That's cool. All right, waiting for HPK right now So for everyone just coming in we're gonna have on HPK farms. He's an old friend of mine He's been in the scene forever won awards at the Emerald Cup When I first met him he was making a killer killer topical one of the best and And and he won many awards for his topicals as well But one of the most one of the best and most effective CBD creams that were at the time I'm not sure if he still does it. I know he put a pause on for a while but he was winning awards and one of the The earliest guys to be doing stuff like that and really make effective CBD cream So we'll be bringing him on tonight Let's see if he's in here yet Okay, any HPK is in here there he is invite there we go So he should be joining us in a second He's still your pop pops lazy boy. Yeah, no doubt, right? It's pretty funny. It's a Hey, what's going on guys good to see you dude. Good. Thank you. Sorry for the smoky screen But my phone's kind of a piece of crap. It's all good as long as we can hear you we're good So be sure to speak up Okay, all right, so Who is HPK farms and where are you from brother? Originally Southern California. I grew up in San Diego on the border East County Yeah, Campo area. Yeah, and then for the last 25 30 years I've been in the Central Valley near Fresno, yeah, and then For the last 10 years I spend half the year in Southern Humboldt and half the year down here very cool and and When you started HPK farms was that when you were in San Diego or was that when you moved up to the Central Valley? No Central Valley. Yeah, I didn't really brand myself until God almost like 2014 2015 and that was yeah, I Got online and started talking to people and I realized I needed a name and I Was trying to get into the cannabis industry and so yeah, I came over HPK that was actually a name that came Prior when I was playing paintball. Yeah back in the day actually kind of before that and it was just for half-baked kids Is that what it's the ad for? Yeah, that's fine. I didn't know that's right now Yeah, I had a foreman at one point and he didn't really like me and He's always be like oh that stoner guy. He's fucking half-baked. Ah And it just kind of stuck and then when I was playing paintball for about 10 years Doing a lot of Tournament level ball. Yeah, we started some teams and yeah half-baked was the name of our team That's awesome. I didn't even know that all these years Yeah, thank you. What were you smoking and say like what yours in San Diego? Were you were you puffing back in San Diego when you were there? Yeah, so I grew up in the East County And I think when I was about 10th grade. I started smoking What kind of stuff did you see around then? Brick weed. Yeah. Yeah The brick weed Yeah, and then every great once in a while we would see some kind bud come through Yeah, that was usually we'd have to go down into like alcohol or maybe like Mission Beach Fact that down but that was so expensive back then that I couldn't like That's why I started growing. Yeah, well my dad was a grower he was kind of a hobbyist grower when I was a kid and His best friend who lived on our property was like a legit grower. He was a gorilla grower Yeah, and so when I started growing my dad kind of shut me down real quick But then Darryl my dad's best friend took me under his wing And then there were some other people in our town that were pretty heavy growers and so yeah I learned pretty early on that would have been like 89 89 I started growing yeah, and then 90 91 I was already producing seeds because Back then we couldn't find any seeds. Yeah, I got lucky and had some pretty good strains and was already Finding some males and so I started making seed and I had a Growing up on the border in Takate. I grew up with kids that parents were cartel growers Yeah, and they were like, can you get a seed like bags of seed and I was like, well, yeah And so I realized that it was easier to grow seed per sale And not risk as much than trying to grow pounds. Yeah, and well, that's what I started doing early on but then I Took a break from like 97 98 to 1004 or five I had a daughter and my life changed and kind of got out of it for a little while and then came back Been here ever since But yeah, so when you when I first met you you were heavy heavy heavy into the topical scene and I remember it like our first exchange You gave me some of your cream like hey try it out like real generous is I knew it sold for good money But you gave it to you that's right it and I tried so many different creams over the years and I Really genuinely dismissed every cream that I tried after that But when I tried yours and handed it off to my chick and my my mom at the time they were blown away Absolutely blown away and you started winning some big awards for your work Can you tell us how you got into that? I'm very interested in that Yes, so my daughter when she was born she was born with a rare skin condition called apple dermalysis bullosa It's like so they're missing a skin tissue layer and Called the butterfly disease. I think is what they call it. Yeah, I think like that and it's kind of like being burned every day Without being burned and so blitz there's sores the blisters once they start they don't stop They just keep like she would get a little blister on her knuckle and by the next morning it would take up her whole hand Oh, God, and you'd have to stop you'd have to lance it to stop it But you're not supposed to do but yeah because of the tissue layer issue She would get these infections so in 96 95 96 There were some local hippies Lady named Marion who is one of my elementary teachers and her husband were holistic old-school hippie growers at that time and She was like, oh, you know, you got to make these cannabis sad Yeah, sort of keeping me about cannabis sags and creams and then God I Kind of dabbled around was it for a little bit, but then when I came back into To growing again, I started trying to pick it up, but I wasn't getting the effects. I really wanted it wasn't really working for But then I came across CBD and him and working with Ringo Lawrence and he was like, hey, you know, we've got this stuff You should check it out. I've got crime that's making these creams and it's really helping and I was like, okay And so I got into it and yeah, I just decided I'm gonna make a good cream You know, like I wanted something that because with my daughter's condition It couldn't be too greasy. It couldn't get oily and it couldn't be too rough So a lot of the people that were making cannabis saw their bombs. It was like beeswax and Coconut oil and yeah, and that just made her skin problem worse. So I came up with a cocoa cream Seven ingredients and it started working for her and so I started kind of sell on it on the side a little bit Yeah, I said we'll get some feedback. Everybody's like dude. This is amazing And so yeah, I started getting it on the market and I started winning awards and then The CBD craze hit. Yeah, and all of us golden I don't went from like 10 or 20 of us that were making CBD creams or topical for feel like Thousands and big companies that were like dumping shit on the market and garbage Yeah, all of a sudden I went from everybody being like, oh, wow, who are you? What's this to all of a sudden everybody's like, oh, you're a CBD company. Fuck you. Yeah back down for a while and I kind of just Kept it available for people who wanted it needed it, but I stopped trying to go big with it because yeah, I Didn't have a million dollars to go up against the CBD companies that started coming out and So, yeah, I still make it. I still have it available Yeah, I just don't I just don't market it like I used to because it's just the people who know know and Anybody that wants to know it's still there. So that's good to know I mean like it's people that understand like with that market there was only a few people that were doing it right like really right and When CBD hit big and in the farm bill passed and shit like people started licensing hemp hemp products from from China that would and they grow they're paid to grow hemp over there to leech toxins from the soil like it's used to do that it's garbage and They know they can pass that out off and cheaply super cheap on dumbass Americans And that pretty much wrecked the whole industry for the few people who were doing this shit, right? And now you see it in gas stations everywhere. You don't know how it sourced You don't know how it's made and there's no regulation. So nobody gives it fuck. It's it's sad. That's sad It's one of those things that people don't seem to know very much about So when I went fully legal it seems to me like all those products you were talking about most of them Don't have like the amount you would want Right. They just want a splash CBD Cream or lip balm or this or that or whatever or gels and they don't really have a bunch of science behind What actually works what I was thinking when you were talking about all that stuff is like how interesting like your Weed path is because most people who start making seeds have been growing flour for a while Before they get like the know-how and the knowledge in the itch To make you know to like sell seed not to like make seed every year to grow flour But actually to like sell seed right and then to get into cream Cream has got to be one of the rarest things that anybody ever figured out how to do. Yeah like that like I pretty much nobody was Nobody was really making that kind of stuff. It wasn't common. I never met anyone really it was like And because I was dedicated to making seed I didn't have a lot of flour So I had a lot of byproduct from this the plant that I was breaking down for the seeds I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? Let's make hash or let's like let's figure out what we're gonna do with this Let's make edibles. I wasn't a good edible maker and I wasn't a great great hash maker And I didn't have a lot of material. So yeah, the topicals were like it instantly all just fell into place It was like, oh, yeah, okay. This is what we're gonna do. And yeah, those are the two things I focused on Yeah, I was it was it was wild times and and I'm glad to hear you're still making it And I know like instantly everybody in chat was like, where do we buy it? Is it available on a website? Is it available on a website anywhere? It is I have my own website. It's www.hvktopicals.com. All right, I'm gonna pin it in the in the chat room so people can see it while we're doing this and Go grab it and and I'm there are very few things that I will put my name behind but the Eric's Topicals have been always always been awesome. Always always been awesome. So I highly recommend it checking it out. I Have the cocoa cream which is designed for skin restoration or skin condition issues It works great for like bug bites takes the itch away, but then I also have a cinnamon fire bomb Which is based off of like a traditional tiger bomb and that's for muscle ligament You know, it's a menthol type based smells like cinnamon fire nice that available I do have tinctures up from time to time and I've been trying to get the chopsticks back, but I just haven't had the money for the labels Yeah, yeah My girlfriend loved the chapstick. That's the one she likes the most is the chapstick Dude that the chapsticks were like a big thing for a long time when I was doing the emerald cup Yeah, sell out I would go through like 500 containers and every year people would go back up at the booth and pull their stick out and be like Oh, this is the best. I still got it. I'm glad you're here. Yeah, I think it's cuz it's like super It's affordable and it's it's something everybody can afford, but it's highly effective at the same time you know So people are gonna want me to ask more about Ringo and your interactions I didn't know Ringo, so I didn't have any interactions with him or his crew. Can you talk about him a little bit? Yeah, so I knew Ringo kind of I Would go up to see him at every once in a while we had kind of like a phone conversation relationship in 2010 11 I can't remember when it was I wasn't doing too well. I decided I was gonna leave the valley I was gonna move to Humboldt. I went up there looking for work I wasn't like I got lauded in with all the immigrants and the homeless people and This dude pulled in you know, and I kind of looked at him and I'm like man I wonder if this guy can help me out I walked over started talking to him We kind of took a bond and he's like hey, you know, I got some work But if you can move some units for me, I'm like, okay And so yeah, I started talking with him and kind of formed a bond And I would just call him and go see him every now and then and then when the CBD thing for him He was kind of like the Godfather of the CBD. Yeah And then he got sick and passed away before I could really get a chance to spend a lot of time with him We were doing a little bit of CBD breeding work when I was doing all that Testing for Jaime with the while I wasn't really doing testing for Jaime. I got a lot of the early canotonic Yeah, yeah, and then when Ringo had all his sue lines. I started going through those and Then we started working on the lavender project and then yeah, he passed away And I tried to reach out to his kids, but his kids didn't really know me Yeah, and they were doing their own thing and so yeah, it's just kind of lost track of all that and Unfortunately, I'm not sure If any of his lines are still around from the family if they're still focusing on any of that or not I honestly don't know. Yeah, I can tell you his daughter Danielle and Levi were the ones that kind of Over I think they still have some stuff going on But I'm not sure but I still see Horrell Sue crosses everywhere. Oh, yeah. Yeah So that's that's his legacy that'll live on forever Yeah, that's cool when you get to to work with some of those guys who are maybe like Underground like like legends like that, you know, you get to just briefly rub elbows with them and have some of their magic rub off On you a little bit. That's that's special stuff and it sounds like he's a special dude Yeah, yeah, he was the one that got me to like start growing again. I Was still kind of like oh, I'll grow a couple little plants in my backyard and he was like no man You know like you live in a great area. You can go incognito like let's do this one like okay Yeah, okay, let's do this and so yeah, I miss that guy. He was he was really cool. He had a lot of Great stuff going on and you're a lot of really big plants and That's cool You have anything you want to ask not to I Mean the the weird idea. I was just thinking about like the whole the whole CBD thing because I think like For the probably the first 20 or for most people when they first encountered CBD Like they didn't know what it was and so they felt like it didn't work Like I come from the Midwest right and we used to get really beautiful ditch weed sometimes We call it pretendica and it would look like Unbelievably juicy so much better. You were talking about Mexican. We all started on you know, there was two kinds of weed There was brown Mexican and green Mexican and then every once in a while you'd find kind bud but then sometimes people would take that that gorgeous weed and Dry it and it would look so amazing and we'd spend all this money and we'd smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke And like oh, I'm like man. I'm not getting high You know and so it's interest. It's just interesting how like how for a long time We had like this relationship with hemp and CBD and then we went like 50 60 years with nothing and so even a lot of even a lot of like, you know like people on the THC side they're pretty knowledgeable like, you know CBD is supposed to do you know stuff everything from like miracle cures to like make nothing Yeah, right but it's really odd in that regard, you know, and so You know, it's kind of like and it's I think it's kind of like in its infancy And it seems like it got all big all quick like you were saying and so all these sharks jumped in and kind of like diluted Is really what I you know just well Yeah, everyone just jumped in and nobody knew anything and then you get to sell something cool and holistic to people that Don't know anything and they don't know how much doses are you supposed to be in there? Yeah, they don't know what an effective dose is Right and so it's kind of like yeah, it's weird. It's it's weird in that like it as soon as it went legal It like got doused in a sea of like ineffective CBD Yeah, the difference between the textile hemp style plants that are more for fiber Which is also carries some CBD which is hemp versus the more Traditional like CBD lines that we know now like canotonic. There was a big difference So when I first started smoking some of the early kind of tonic I picked up on a euphoric feeling from it. Oh, yeah, okay There's something here and then when we made the creams for it I made some really hot batches and I can feel my hands getting numb and I was like, oh, wow, okay You know, yeah, I Gotten I've gotten textiles type hemp Extraction and try to use it and it's completely useless. You know, it's interesting about that is like canotonic and stuff it seems like there's a there's not that much CBD that's like bred from drug cultivars Towards the CBD side and that's kind of what I was getting at what you were saying is like canotonic was sort of bred from Smoking weed not from the other side of like hemp fiber or anything like that which might have a bunch in it But if you remember When Jaime first sent those tester seeds out like we didn't know is a CBD line It was just canotonic and they just made the cry. It wasn't ever advertised. They didn't breed it as a CBD line Ended up that way. Yeah. Yeah, and if you look at the genetics behind canotonic You would think oh, this is going to be some flyer weed. Yeah, Bob THC weed because it's The genetics behind it, but then you know, it's primarily CBD only now when I was going through all those packs and I was having them tested I found one female that was a primarily THC carrier Fino It was like a 14 or 16 percent THC the very little THC or CBD Yeah, that's still one of my favorite plant that I ever smoked it was like rope easy And it got me so high and then when I was doing that work with plant speaker Jay I lost that cut I was trying to get it to Jay and while I was gone up there I lost that cut and but there are Some very rare THC phenos of canotonic. Yeah Yeah, I just I think it's funny because a lot of people weren't around when resin seeds came out and all their I remember they had the the fake HP 13 sour diesel So I remember thinking fuck they got the sour pussy and they're selling it Oh, yeah, I want to try that and it turned out not to be anything and they admitted it later on They're like, yeah, this isn't what we thought it was it was just cool of them Yeah, the canotonic. I remember remember when that came out to and it was not a CBD line It was like what MK ultra G 13 haze. Yep. Yep. Yeah There was probably honestly in the in the prohibition days. There was probably an enormous amount of CBD in Various cannabis strains that got selected away from because we weren't we were only testing by smoking And so you you know you're passing around different phenotypes and your friends are like no that one I don't think let's go with this one. Yeah, you know because without testing. It's really hard and like something That's one to one You know like 10 12% THC and 10 12% like CBD or something. That's high in that like without you know I mean, what was the first time you saw results like actual testing? When do you remember? that would have been 2011 I was just gonna say like 11 12 somewhere in there. So basically what you guys are saying is that we've had testing for a little longer than a decade Mm-hmm, right where it's like before that like we really weren't able to select for CBD very well No, and once I got my first few tests that came back. I was hooked on getting tests. Remember Matt I was just like every week. I was a testing testing All my money on that it was so fucking expensive back then too and I remember every time I'm like How does he fucking afford to test all this shit? I can't test one thing and he's like fucking 20 Yeah, I was doing literally like between two and five thousand dollars every other week on testing Just trying to go through all these and that's why I gained a lot of respect early on because I was actually doing the work Define these these cultivars. Yeah, you for sure were you were doing real testing At a time when it was totally just not advantageous financially to do it and it was it was very very cool It was very cool to watch and luckily you some of my shit So I was like, yeah, I can see the test looks on my shit too because I'm cheap. I'm cheap fellas So let's let's talk about some of these Strings you've seen over the years some of the ones you've worked with let's start from the beginning What was one of some of the first strange you were crossing at HPK? At HPK or the first strings. I was crossing the same first you mentioned that you were crossing like different Mexicans Right at the beginning Yeah, I was doing just like like the very first up was just like some regular old brickweed seed and then There was some a guy in Pine Valley that I was growing up with named Chris Ballman and he was Like going out and finding all the time But he was a trust fund kid and he had the money and he was bringing all this beat back And he was getting really good bad feet and he was collecting it and he was giving me some of that And I was popping those and out of those I had gotten this purple hair These little short plants super dark purple hairs and my buddies in the area and camp over there were like damn Like that's bomb. Yeah, and then one of our our friends in the neighborhood That hippie couple they traveled to Amsterdam met up with Neville brought back most of his seed bank and this was in I want to say My daughter wasn't born yet. So it would have been 394 They brought back a bunch of genetics and my best friend Jeff at the time was working with his people And he pulled a few cuts away from them and then got a few seeds from them after they had made some crosses And that's what I was working with and then there was another guy over in Barona By the Indian reservation, they were working with them Jamaicans Yeah Jamaican lines and we got a little bit of that and that's what I was working with early on and Then when my Wife at the time got busted for international trafficking We lost everything we moved and then I had to start over again in mid 2000 And in mid 2000 when you when you started working with making Strings again, what were you what were you growing? What were some of your selection criteria? The first few things I started working with was I was moving some weight for some mom growers in a valley and I got some heated pounds of some really great weed and I then got some bag seed from some kids that I was playing paintball with And that's when I was making that candy candy crack with what I was calling it And I ran that for a long time For two years and then I got into the CBD thing hard I was running some of your stuff and People have been asking about that candy crack green in the in the comments repeatedly Yeah That was something that Is kind of this convoluted bucked-up story that I I got tired of arguing with everybody about You know, I made that stuff back in like 2005 or six of dumping clones Just some kids in San Jose that were distributing them and I didn't realize like What it really was until about 2014 when I started seeing some of the flower come back and everybody's like, yeah, it's crack And I'm like, yeah, I I think that's my strain, you know I reached out to you. Yeah, and so I kind of came up with the name and then later on God like 2018 or 19 Kevin Started phylosing everything and so I threw in a phylos Run and it came back as green ribbon, but also green crack. It was also related to stunk hemp Colombian gold dream queen Yeah, all this shit. So I don't fucking know like I honestly don't know. I just kind of was like whatever Like if If it is it is cool, you know, like I knew I had some really good stuff But it was such a small run and I wasn't really shooting for anything at that point, but it turned out to be a bitch and strain And yeah, there's it it phylos is back to a bunch of stuff. So You know Yeah, phylos is a tough one. You never know like their their results were so Inconsistent like some of the times I'd see him and I'd be like, okay That makes sense genetically this related to that blah blah blah and then you go and see like that I don't know for example Let's say someone submitted a bubba Mendo perps and then they submitted bubba And then they submitted Mendo perps that they made it with and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, none of these are related Well, that's really weird. You know, yeah, right So, yeah, I kind of just stopped arguing that point But then the next thing that came up was the chili birdie The chili birdie was part of the the lavender project with rango yeah Rango had called me one night and he's like, hey, he's like you're running that Lavender, right? I'm like, yeah, I got in a cut here locally It was the same like the San Jose cut or whatever it was the lavender that everybody had in mid 2000 Little short stocky Super dense. Was it the early lavender? Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yes And um, he's like, hey, he's like I got all these seeds that I bought from stoma He goes, I don't Want to work this project to get straight lavender, but he's like if I give you the seeds and go through it Can you Come up with something? I'm like, yeah And he said that he had a mail already. So I went up about this piece got the mail Got some more lavender cuts from him brought him all back And I started trying to make because he wanted straight lavender Yeah, and so more of the straight lavender, but while I was doing that, I had a whole depth full of other stuff Yeah, I hit it through e-line pie. I hit it to girl scout. I hit it to Pineapple cheese from rango. Yeah, I hit it to a horosu. I hit it to a What was the other one? Crack baby. It was oh the the green candy. Yeah, and there was another one that I did and Harvested all that stuff took all the seeds back up to rango came to him and then he passed away And then the next season was a year when those kids ripped me off and yes I wanted that spot got all that breeder stock from me So I lost the lavender stock basically I kept one little I had one little shitty clone left And but I had all the other seeds and then I started dropping those chili birdies And when I dropped the chili birdie I got kind of a lot of pushback. Yeah, we're actually talking shit to me when I dropped them They were like you use key lime pie They're like that is a serious fucking plant in the world. Yeah, you're not a breeder and I'm like Well, I liked it. It was okay. You know none of them had even tried it. That's the fucked part Like it was it was in so few hands at the time. Yeah Yeah, and so I didn't I Kind of perceived it as oh, well, maybe I made a mistake And so I didn't really push it that hard And I sold some packs and then Kind of just set it aside and Two years like two years later two years later it popped a few more seeds and I had A through F cuts is what I was calling him. Yeah, and I was hanging out with with John And we were doing the breeder series with Kevin. Which one? If you pop up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so I took a bunch So I took some cuts up with me and I was like John like check this stuff out And he looked at the flower and he was like, he was like, wow, he's like, what is this? I'm like, he line pie lavender and he's like Like this is legit. He's like He's like, do you have cuts in this? I'm like, yep, I brought you one. I gave him one And he was like, he's like, man, he's like, we're gonna do some stuff with this He's like, we've got something here, man. He's like, you're on to something. I'm like, okay, cool And That was when I met not so dog. I think at the same exact event Mm-hmm That's a nice cut. I got to I grew that cut that you gave him multiple years in greenhouses In mendicino It it it was it was I liked it sungrown quite a bit Was that was that the the super Verde cut? Yeah, I mean wait, we had this chili bear. I have pictures of it on my phone. Uh, uh, we a bunch of them um, we did probably A couple years in a row probably half of like a 30 by 100 greenhouse of it There was one a good amount, huh? There was one when eric first brought it up that smelled like to a tea chili verde like just Wildest greasy meat chili verde smell That it does kind of it does kind of seem to like that weed came out Like a few years before the the like modern purple wave sort of swamped everything Yeah, you know, it really was like purple had not been popular for the most part for quite a long time So, um, you know, it it was one of the first cuts. I remember seeing That like, you know, kind of started that wave like that and the gelato and different things like that Like but it reminded me it definitely you can definitely taste the lavender in it It's it's you know, but I think it's maybe a little bit more potent So the cut that matt's referring to is one of the other cuts that I had it was more of that a straight chili now like the super chili which was coined by Um, lion bolt. I think which is the deed cut. That's the cut that I gave john one that won the emerald cup That one was heavy lavender. It was really grapey, but it still had like this og overtone to it Yeah, because it it was really different than the the cut that I smelled from you It was 90 like the one I smelled from you some of like me like chili verde on the the barbecue is good Yeah, the one I had was sweet so much sweeter Yeah, the one the one that that won the emerald cup was the one the reason I gave it out was because it had better uniformity Looking structure. It had more tighter nugs And it was a little bit easier to ground in depth for outdoor But it was really finicky indoors, especially if you were running the old school shitty Yeah, the pink ones. Yeah, it fucking does not like those like chili just doesn't like leds for some reason not sure why but um, yeah, so those were the two that I had a couple different cuts and then um John had the fire The cut got out got two a few different people and then yeah, I picked off and it won and I was a little bummed because I wasn't in position to be able to capitalize on getting cut out to the population when it won Yeah, and other people Instantly jumped on it and made sure Made a lot of money. Yeah, and I was just like, hey fuck, you know How am I gonna deal with this? How do I? How do I direct this in my direction? Yeah, so I'll start dropping seeds like I got seeds I got seeds like I don't have cuts but I got seeds and so I kind of tried to stay on top of it and Yeah, still kind of pushing that run, you know, it's turned out to be a really good greeter Um, I've gotten up into the f5 f6s now. Oh, awesome I've got the last batch of chili crosses that I did I did like I think it was seven crosses with an f5 and they turned out phenomenal every single jar you open is just so bomb Bitch in color because you get that red from the hairs and the purples and from the greens And I kind of did some hypo crosses a couple years ago before I went to work for emerald And I still haven't released them. I'm trying to get them out in the next couple weeks But there was a rungs chili a wedding crossers chili wedding cake chili josh d chili Dosey dough chili and swedish chili. Yeah, and every one of them turned out just amazing I was really happy with every single one of them One one of the things one of the things I like about the chili verde is that a lot of cookie hybrids Uh seemed to not like the sun and not like food very much You know like so I don't know. I felt like that one especially like you put it out in the sun and it thrived You fed it well and it thrived like it could eat it could grow There's certain aspects were like, you know I think sometimes like some of these some of some cookie selections were designed for like rockwell and to be two feet tall in an indoor situation And like the chili verde can grow You know like it's it can be a healthy happy vigorous plant Um and a lot of cookie hybrids aren't that way in my opinion You know that one was one that was you know, you could put it in the sun and it would you know You could put it in a greenhouse you could dep it like you said it did well It's like a medium-sized plant like something you want to get a half pound to a pound per plant off of And it gave you a lot of very very pretty weed like you were saying the Formation on it. It's extremely attractive when it's dry. It has a really nice aroma You know and it gives me hot It um, I always thought because of the lavender it wasn't going to be a big gilder But when I was working for Ben Up in Mendo we ran about 25 or 30 phenos of the f-fives Two they were we were pulling like between three to seven pounds off some of them plants and they were just Monsters, you know arm-sized colas from bottom to top They're a little pin from if you're in a pretty nasty area Which can kind of be a bummer, but if you're in a dry hot climate Like here in the valley they thrive They've got really good root structure really good nutrient and water uptake to them They have a good root. They have a good root system. Yeah, they're a little dangerous If you get some fog for sure because it's such thick buds You know, they're not like big buds, but they're very dense You know, it's one of those things when we're in drives when you put it on there. You're surprised at how much it weighs So it but it it the both of they are a little they are a little like a p.m. And And uh and grain mold sensitive, but that's like any I think all that lavender, urkel all those super dense lines Have that, you know plants have pluses and minuses But that was it was a good grower. I enjoyed growing it Yeah, it's like if you're if you're in a hot arid condition area, like especially like they are in arizona or Colorado, they do they do really well. They see here in the valley. They can be like 110 I'm with 108 today and they're just like You know bring it come on so Yeah, it's brutal right now dude in the valley Yeah, where are we going on like over 40 to 45 days of over 100 And I think we still got Like probably another 10 days at least at least that should start making me question my life choices You know it really is when it hits, I mean it it's it's a little much like plants I don't know but it is interesting in the sense that like The the hard part is you can get with like you're right in dry area conditions. You can get some monsters It's just about like keeping them hydrated and like and making sure they don't go B grade because it's too hot at night That's yeah, and you know shade cloth is you got to have some shade cloth on them They can't take 110 degree direct light for hours on end. They just they just don't like it It's way more light than they need Yeah, and so you get like a good 30 to 40 or 50 big cloth. I like the 30s Just keep that over them the whole summer and they they'd be fine. They thrive Yeah, hydration is the key man so Since you're going in the valley and you have a lot of experience with it. Yeah, someone asked a good question Are some Terps volatile to heat like are there some terps like some strange? You cannot grow in the valley because it gets so fucking hot during the summer There's no point because it gets terpless. Is that possible? Yeah, the terps will the terps will die. You'll get that kind of Like not hey, but it smells like old weed almost And what also happened that I've seen is I've actually seen trichrome heads melt Who out here? Yeah, the heads will just literally be like And then you're left with a fucking stalk of like Like a dead tree kind of thing. Yeah And then it's like you can see it where it's oozed down And then you start getting like rotitis type situation where it hurts the rock kind of yeah I have seen that before I actually think One of the one of the reasons why a bunch of Mendo and southern Humboldt Got so legendary for growing outdoor Is that even though it might be blazing hot in the daytime that ocean comes in And it cools it down at night and when that plant gets to cool down Like it preserves terps Like if it's 105 in the day, but it gets down to 55 degrees at night That makes an enormous difference in the quality of your plant And if you get too far inland like say grass valley grass valley you grow like some 10 or 15 pounders or the desert But that's what it's all about is trying to preserve your terps Because if it's 108 in the daytime and 85 at night You you run big risk of not like I said not quite hey But like not any other what your plant could be potential of you can definitely burn your terps off And I and and uh, yeah, it makes it it makes a big difference the key the key to growing in the central valley between like bakersfield and Sacramento is Realistically knowing your times of when to grow um, I always tell people if you're in brazil, I don't grow outdoor In between like july and the end of september. It's just unless you're gonna run a cool Dep it's not it's not fucking worth it. It's just no it's a battle You have you have to run a water wall and like in like in like a greenhouse and add a bunch of moisture and cool it down Yeah, and they're like well, it's it's it's warm and it's dry and I'm like, yeah But you have the whole rest of the year you can get away with growing in the valley Yeah, you know you can grow from september all the way through until june Yeah, but you don't really need to stop growing in that central valley from that time but july august september Take that time off like I even started taking summers off indoors because it was just such a fucking battle like even Trying to battle the air conditioner with indoors and all it was a fucking nightmare every year in summer No matter indoor or outdoor. It's why people call it summer bud. Yeah It's like a lot of times people have a hard time growing the best weed that they can in the middle of the summer They really do they you struggle with conditions Yeah, and I don't know if you've ever made seeds in that kind of condition But when you make seeds in over 100 degree weather, those motherfuckers are almost impossible to crack Yes. Yeah Like a rock Yeah, it's you need a lot of hand cracking with those too because they they develop so thick and and everything because they know that It's hot and they want to keep their their embryo alive. It's crazy. Yeah Yeah, I mean now that now that we're like You know things are getting Whether you want to call legal or more acceptable or whatever it might be It's like we all used to grow weed where we could get away with it For the most part and there's not been a lot of thought of like which type of strains grow well where Yeah, you know because like in america, it's like we grow citrus in florida, right or winter wheat montana Potatoes in idaho or corn in illinois like you figure out where it works And we haven't really done that with weed No, you know, but there's so there's certain like I was even in mendo. There's so many micro climates I'd have strains where like they did amazing in one part of the county And I'd get a different spot and I'd put them out and I'd be all in like stoke that I was going to crush it And they wouldn't do that good But then there were some other strains I had that did really well So there's aspects where I'm sure there's some strains that like Acclimate just like growing in british columbia or canada or something, right? There's probably some desert weed that's like more acclimated Uh, but we don't really think of things that way anymore Right like it's it's names and popularity and maybe it's runts and maybe it's this and so You know, um I think sativa's deal with the heat better than indica's Personally, no. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It's and they have they have better water absorption abilities They can hold water longer. They got thinner leaves, you know, they're not they don't have as much exposure Like and they and they come from places that are hot as fuck. Yeah a lot of them you know so one one thing I noticed this year was um people who are most moving clones from one end of the state to the other or experiencing Like it's almost like culture shock for the plants because they're used to one And then you're moving them all the way to another environment in the state and they're like But some are like, yeah, they love it. So it kind of falls into the thing A category do with the clones though That's something serious It's a serious thing people don't take into account But some strains definitely are more picky than others when acclimatizing even from One grow room to the next in the same city. It just that difference can really flip it You would like to think that like you can work with most nurseries And like get a you know, like tough and hardened off plants that are going to be suited for your environment But a lot of cases, you know clone companies or you know nurseries nowadays They have these plants under 24 7 light and they're just trying to keep them rooted and healthy until somebody buys them Yeah, and then they get taken from like 24 7 light Under fluorescence they get boxed up in the dark. Like he said they get shipped down from northern california to your desert They get opened up and then bam, they're in the desert And they're flowering and it's and it's and the light drops by eight hours in one night Yeah, right because you used to be able to like if you grew in mendo or southern humboldt or somewhere like that Like most people would acclimate their clones and plants for their own season. Yeah Nowadays you buy, you know people just want to buy them from somewhere But it's like I mean when I was working in southern california you would go The the longest day of the year down there is maybe 14 or 15 hours So you're getting you're going from 24 hours to 14 It's a 10 hour drop in one day. You could have a plant trigger just from the shock of the light cycle Yeah, well, it's kind of what happened to me this year is I had Some clone stock that I had in southern humboldt Spent two days three days Making the trip down here and I got here put them out here and everything was like Oh, no, we don't like this. Oh, no So, yeah, I kind of had a little bit of a rough transition this The last couple months and so I just kind of gave up and just That bucket I'll just wait until I can get back into another good position to be able to do some real work, you know Yeah, you know, it's also one of those things too where it's like a lot of the some of the stuff that's getting really popular right now Um indica style is probably best for like being grown more northern climate Right, um where you get way far south like where you guys are and you almost need some sativa mixed into your work If you wanted to grow outdoor and stretch Right because it's far enough south that it'll trigger fast That's kind of that's kind of the one of the things that I've seen and so people think that like, oh You know like figuring out what works well in your area is huge And uh, you know that it really is it's big Yeah, for sure I wanted to I wanted to keep going over a little bit more of the green crack stuff Because I know that's probably what people want to hear the most about because It's it's a strain like when we were working with it. It was it was the clone was a lot of places and then It was nowhere all of a sudden It's become a lot. It's become a lost legend and misnamed and all kinds of stuff, you know Lots of imposters lots of seed lines. It weren't real and right there with the lavender You don't see the lavender around anymore either not that oracle lavender. You really don't not anymore No, these were all strains that that so we had that we had that push for strains that were Um, like the blue dream. Yeah, everybody's like fuck blue dream Fuck the fucking lavender fuck You know these these strains that just hit a wall all of a sudden and we're gone Nobody wanted them so nobody kept them there might be some random dude around that has a cut of it But yeah, they're still healthy or not even fucking knows, you know, yeah So Yeah That is one of the biggest things is trying to be a collector and trying to keep genetics alive Is that everybody will help you back it up when it's flying out the door as flour and it's easy to sell And then as soon as the mood changes Your most of your best friends don't even want unless they can sell it to market and it's working for them right now They only want to keep clones of like what's currently popular Yeah, and so I mean I mean everyone and I mean everyone that was growing a decent amount of weed in humble and meadow In the 2004 0506 era They had one of those oracle or one of those lavender or one of those great vape or one of those cuts You know and you know green crack green cracks a great plant If you grow it small to medium sized It's got really nice turps, you know, it's got a nice buzz. It burns well Um, but people got burnt out on it because just like blue dream someone's like Oh, I can grow a 12 plound plant of this in grass valley And it's going to be bee weed and I'm going to ship it off and it's going to be endless amounts of boofy green crack Well, the the green crack too was like Half the plant was larv Yeah, and so and then the part that was tremble was usually the tremors fucking hated it They were like walk this plant and so yeah, I kind of just went by the wayside pretty quick But what's funny about that one is that you think about like the eras Imagine if that had had like its moment in the sun now When everyone's extracting and all that larfy stuff probably would dump Um Well, it was a great so Yeah, from my experience. It was a great Um, like you could blow it it would blow great, but if you tried to wash it it was um It was almost too greasy like yeah Yeah, it was just kind of fell into that category of it was just too hard to work with Um, and so yeah, that's kind of why that's kind of why I got away from it was I I've been trying to figure out what green crack is for a long time years and years and years and over the years Is my experience gets better with different strains, you know My opinion kind of changes on what I think it might be Early on I was like this has got to be some kind of so mango because it's so purple And it's super mango. So I was like, okay the mango purple. It's got to be that And as I went on, okay, maybe I see some skunk on in this. Okay, you know with the mango over time and And and the more I look at it and the more I figure it out the more I realize and that might even be a mendo purple something. Yeah Well, okay, so that's where the story kind of gets convoluted because A lot of people associate purple with green crack Yeah, well What I was running what I what I was calling the candy crack does not get purple I don't care when you can get it down to 20 degrees. It does not get purple Yeah, and it's more watermelon skunk than mango Interesting interesting that that lends more towards a skunk one side than the purge If it's a skunk, I mean You can look at it and just the way that it forms. It's it's spear buds all over itself You can definitely see some skunk influence in it I will say that if it is a skunk one feno It's definitely my favorite tasting feno of skunk one. Yeah You know, it has a night it has when it's done, right? It has nice turps Yeah, the original seeds I used to make the uh, the green craft stuff that like, uh, what would they call That company that made green crack s ones, but Spanish company sick mids sick mids. Yeah, they used they used our s ones to make the s twos and sold them as s ones but It was heavy purple like and it wasn't always purple But it was like the like three degrees of cold change It would just flip black almost like men and perps does and uh, yeah, it was super super overwrite mangoes Purple not not frosty like a cookies cut, but it was good resin for its time. It was good resin It was it was attractive weed done, right? Yeah, and it really sure fiery orange hairs and yeah, and I see people mentioning Cecil like Me and Cecil when we first met each other We tried to figure out if he had anything to do with it And what we determined he had nothing to do with san diego west coast green craft nothing at all It was just that when we received the cut Uh, but it was it was c ush and he sent a cut west that was also Spelled wrong c ush and that was it Somebody said better keeper than cheese. I would rather have real green crack than cheese, but that's like a personal preference Yeah, a personal preference for sure personal preference But my personal preference was I would I would rather smoke and you know, what's interesting is that we were talking about how You know, uh unreliable phylos was earlier Which is a bummer because all of us have these like great desires to know how things are related And I remember Caleb telling me that like, uh, when, uh DNA submitted their las vegas lemon skunk Mm-hmm that it came in exactly the same cut as green crack Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. Those guys are the worst for that. They're like dna's Their cantaloupe's was just the c99. I mean, but I just mean in the sense that it was a it was a good enough cut That they used it in all kinds of things Yeah, they just got rid of like the name connotation, you know, like oh, we won't call it green crack It'll be las vegas lemon skunk Right, and it is kind of lemon skunky That's why I was kind of leaning like when they started talking about the green ribbons What I know is my candy has more leans towards that. I believe than the green crack I always kind of was wondering if the green crack was just an offshoot from that or maybe I had an offshoot of The original green crack. That's where I don't know. Yeah, that's where it got convoluted and that's People will start hitting me up and then turns into an argument. I just started being like, okay I don't know anymore. Oh my god, dude. Somebody's mind just got blown in the comments And they just realized that cantaloupe haze was c99 So the story was soma and this this came from uh, I won't say what came from but it came from the Amsterdam dudes that were friends with all these guys and a part of the same crew And soma gave them a pack of c99 to start their company And sure enough that c99 became the eight week haze magical eight week haze 95 percent sativa and comes in eight weeks Yeah, yeah, no, I just thought that a comment just that just that just Well, because that they were they were some of the first people That they went around california and they took a bunch of famous cuts and they gave them different names and they started a seed company with it Yeah, and they did really well Isn't like brothers grim try to take the credit for the c99. Isn't he like the c99 guy or something like that? Yeah, well his partner was his partner was and now he's here. So that's what we're left with Okay, that's what I thought make more sense if after meeting him and then you learn he had a partner that did everything It's like, oh that makes sense then, okay Yeah, okay But yeah, I mean green crack it's got a in my opinion got a bad reputation because most of the time You could you could grow an eight or ten pound plant of green crack And it would kind of suck But if you grew like a four or five pound plant of green crack It was really nice and if you grew a one or two pound plant of it. It was killer Yeah, so most people just tried to blow it up into these like i'm gonna grow 99 green cracks And get just buku weed and i'm not gonna dry it that nice and then people are like, oh, I don't like green crack Yeah And so that's what happens to a lot of big yielding cuts like blue dream green crack You know very white these various ones that run through they get blown out by people that don't care chili birdies got kind of a bad rap Through the distros in california because of the dark heart cut So dark heart bucking jumped on a cut of chili birdie. They got From a friend of mine named moon gazer moon gazer kind of did a quick little fino hunt Dropped a chili cut on them real fast And it wasn't the greatest chili and it wasn't producing the best flour So all these growers have jumped on it right away Took all this flour to the distros and the distros are like, oh, we can't fucking do anything with this so it kind of like It's like depends on who you talk to and like who really likes the chili and because of which cut they had now The purple city cut or if they were running a cut for me Um, yeah, they Distros take it, but if you're running like a dark heart cut they might not take it What's nice about that is that You know and seems like in chili bear day that there's a number of people that found a number of cuts that had like a range of Terps and effects that they liked Well, that's that's because of the fact that I dumped all the seeds on the market I didn't leave it to be just a single clone only Cut right being just one or two cuts out there I made sure that I got enough seeds out to the farmers That there was some diversity that people could start actually fino hunting out some good stuff because there are There's a lot of good phenos in it. You know, there's a few duds here and there, but there's Fucking some fire and especially as you start working the line depending on which way you go Um, I started going with this like a pine. There's a pineapple fino in there that I can work in I really like that when the terpings profile is super high And then there's the the grape fino That kind of everybody knows that grape fino is really good And then there's kind of more of an unknown cheese fino that floats in there too And that cheese fino is bomb. Like it's really good. I gave um the humboldt local joey I gave him some of the cheese ones and he was like It turned out fire cheese chili bear a sweet lavender cheese Yeah, where the cheese comes out of it. I'm not really sure but So in like the key lime pie the key lime pie I was told originally it was durban poison og kush cherry pie But i'm not sure that does that sound like that still hold truth to it or not I mean the key lime pie is also like it was also going around is the green sherb the original sherb Um, also stardust sherb for a while as well Um, if I remember correctly, it's the mom of what became skittles is is is what people mostly tend to think that have been growing a Bunch of it. So you can find like the skittles type finos in in the out process and in the s ones Um, but yeah as far as what it actually is it's kind of like trying to peg down with cherry pie Actually is it's just like wow fuck they said a thousand things who you I think I think it's likely that all those things you mentioned Are in there in some form or another yeah Is you know that's like the cheese is the only one that kind of throws me off because there is a very distinctive cheese Be know that I did find in the f ones um and yeah, I was Like I didn't know if it came out of the durban side or maybe the og side or the cherry Yeah, it wasn't really like okay, so The durban that those dudes used was it was so different from like the norcal durb or the colorado durb It was nothing like it. It was it was it was not it was not turpentine Yeah, it wasn't the turpentine stuff at all. No And then you know, we're just in the infancy of figuring out how these different things flavor combine Yeah You know, so I you know, maybe it maybe it Uh, yeah, and then I also think too like when people smell It's like they relate it to things in their life So it's really weird like someone might get strong cheese and somebody else might like get a totally different impression Yeah, you know Totally I I see that all the time like almost like when you go to shows And you're showing people jars and they're you'll show maybe like 100 people the jar And you'll hear like 20 different comments of what they smell and they're all different You know, I actually really liked that a lot I used to do that with my trimmers where I would ask them away from the rest of the trimmers What they were smelling with what they were working on because I liked Unvarnished like opinions and then if I heard the same thing four or five times I'd start to accept that people got that turp or that aroma We didn't call it turps then or whatever. I just wanted to know what they related it to You know because because the language of it is so hard and so if somebody said You know and a lot of strains I grew over and over and over again And so I would ask different trimmers over the years like what do you think the Maui smells like? What do you think this this smells like and Sometimes their answers would be pretty surprising You know and you you wouldn't have seen that before they said it but then when they say it it clicks So I do I do think asking people's opinions like a show would be a really cool place to get a bunch of quick Back, you know, like feedback on what something smells like Yeah, yeah, somebody was telling me recently that uh, Zemedical farmer. He's got a chili that's like I think he said it was papaya or guava Something like that. I forget exactly what it was But yeah, it was like I've never I've never smelled that in it But then we were gone through some jars recently and somebody was like Oh, yeah, I smell it totally. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I get it now I think I think flan nailed it on the head. There might be some skunk one and cherry pie and keelan pie and all that It sounds like it. It's just the whole gamut of skunk one smells the grape the fucking cheese the All that is in there. I mean there's there's an aspect too where you know, it is possible that You know a lot of durban You know had skunk one in it because it came through sam Yeah, and and a lot of durban came through dutch passion later on They sold the durban poison and that had more skunk one in it added in so it was like, yeah So it's definitely it's definitely possible. I'm thinking that that the uh The f1 derb is probably a hybrid of the dutch passion one because it looks like some of the old pictures Of the old dust but just growing much better and now today times Yeah I mean durban's one of those strains that like is so old That most people don't have experience with what durban was like in the 80s and 90s Yeah, you know, and then what survived too, you know, and then Yeah With durban Yes, and but then that colorado cut and some of those other ones that got famous later were super turpinoline Yeah, you know and once you've got turpinoline in in a line it hangs out Yeah, it's hard to shake it out. It's hard to shake it out But I do like, you know, we I worked with a durban in the early 2000s and it was definitely More on that anise black licorice type of aroma and we didn't really get like this the type of turpinoline That seems good, huh? Did you say it was more like your black anise? Is that what she just said? You know So that you know it's indeed Indeed So what are you working on now Eric, what's cracking now? Okay, so For the last few years. I've been pushing a couple Couple lines my Durban or excuse me Durban my diamond master I've got an orange cream sickle Hell's angel cross. It's really good Um, I have some peanut butter stuff But right now currently what I'm working on is actually some fems So, okay, I've never really released fems. I did one little fem run a couple years Got six years ago. I think it was like 10 pounds Years ago. Um, it was um, a blue dream A blue dream to blueberry hash plant Awesome what I'm working on now Is um doing kind of a hypey run just for the market. Um, Everybody's been just Inundating me for fems And so I did a collaboration with a buddy of mine. Uh, Wyatt Turp 17 He did a chili berry skittles cross And so I'm feminized that and then I hit that to like 10 or 15 hypey strings like You'll fuel sunset cider chemistry one apple tart orange diesel Bubba kush Dirty skittles sv and l.a. kush cake very cool very cool. I'm hoping Like the normal market that comes to me may not be interested in that But the market that I haven't been tapping into because I only sell eggs I'm hoping they'll be like, yeah, we're we're on them, you know I've been trying I've been trying to explain this to people that, um What's going on with our market and that and a lot of people shit on when I say it But it's true like if to have a viable seed company you have to tap into that market or it just doesn't work There's not enough people to support Uh, the niche market of rare strains old strains unique strength. It's just not there anymore. Nobody gives a fuck Yeah, it's weird that in the last You know, I mean we went from four or five people doing feminized stuff 12 or 14 years ago To 99 of the market or more being feminized stuff and reg seeds Which was the standard for forever Are now like a a tiny little corner Yeah And the giddles and crybaby's right this giddles verity crosses will take off people give a chance especially because it's almost like a Uh, a back cross in a sense a back cross to the the key line pie by the skittles It probably be a terp explosion and it would probably grow better and look better than skittles I can't it's not hard. You know, no no skills is not a It's got chili structure. So it holds itself up. It doesn't want to fall over and fucking be like Yeah, you can smell you can smell the skittles in there, but the chili's there too. It's like And it's um, I don't know if you run the dirty skills or if you're familiar with that It's a new one from I think mica up at um peace and meds. He's got that farm Maybe has that lamo g or whatever it is. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah It's really similar to that But yeah, I'm I really dug it. I went through it my buddy Wyatt terps made it and I was kind of had three phenos to kind of slept through and I was like, wow, these are Fucking bomb. You were talking like you were talking like lempire farms, right? Yes, I think that's who did the dirty skittle. Yeah, lempire farms mica has a he has a dispensary in my town Very cool in yukia and stuff like that and he's you know, he's got a bunch of seeds that he's been making but That someone wants you to mention. Um electric boogaloo dog shit, Eric. Are you doing any work with that? The dog shit so, um, I have some of the last dog shit speeds that were given out I guess a core of genetics gave me some dog shit, but I haven't had a chance to get to them I'm just kind of sitting on them at the moment Oh, that sounds cool. Is that who's supposedly breading? Uh, no a guy out of organ No, a gentleman out of organ bread. I can't remember the name of the person who who bred the dog shit Yeah, yeah, I was at an event. Um, we did a session up in southern humble a few months back Uh, Joey from Humboldt local and I ran into to Eric from forever flowering Oh, yeah, uh, like that Eric and Eric and for genetics and He was like, hey take these that got the last dog shit. Like these are the last ones formal breeder And I wanted to get into them, but I just I'm not in a spot right now where I can do anything. I'm just Like yeah, I should that gives not so a major boner. He's a he's a electric boogaloo dog. Shit fucking I like that. I like that. It's got it's got nice flavor. It's pretty it's got an up high You know, yeah, hi lonesome loves that one too. That's what his face too. Yeah, no, it's a it's a nice sativa And I think I think a lot of people are in that same boat. There's a lot of breeders Right now that are looking around at like what should I like what would I like to do? And then they're trying to figure out. Well, what should I do to make it? You know, why and it's it's kind of a hard thing to navigate like you were talking about growing hypesy things and trying to figure out where you fit in and all that so Um, you know, there's a lot of breeders in the game right now, but it's it takes It's kind of a lot There's a lot of seed makers in the game right there's a lot of a lot of breeders I can't even put myself in the breeding category anymore. I can't remember the last time I worked like worked a line several generations It's just it's hard to it's hard to do that nowadays and know that It's probably not gonna sell Yeah, it's crazy. There's there's two distinct markets that have broken out that you kind of like if you're making seeds You have to be making washers Something that washes. Yeah The hash guys are gonna want because the extract thing that's where it's all seem to be going to or Your hypey market Because the hypey market once the hypey guys get a hold of that shit They're the ones that find that cut and then that cut gets taken over to the commercial growers and then the commercial growers blow it up Yeah, and so if you're not tapping into those two You're you're kind of like Well, what am I like what the fuck am I gonna do, you know? Because I was stuck in the middle for the longest time where I had dedicated lines of regulars that I was making I have Certain growers that like to run those lines and they're willing to to go through my stuff but The hype market which is the general consumer who grows six or ten plants She doesn't want anything to do with mail. They don't want anything to do with fino hunting Stuff that they don't know And so if they recognize it and they can pop it and we can grow it real quick and smoke it and they like it That seems to be where it's at. So the washers Yeah Yeah, that's for real. I mean people people only see what we present like out front and I always talk about this like a lot of it is smoking mirrors Like there's a few of us who don't care to front like we're rich or famous, you know, that are just farmers But a lot of people it's all smoking mirrors and they present like they're fucking flexing fucking Blinging chains and shit if you're wearing a gold chain and like going to all these events everywhere You're probably not doing much growing because most of us are tired of the fucking row, you know what I mean um Yeah, smoking mirrors is a lot and behind the scenes ever since kovat There are there are seed makers and breeders alike, you know They'll message me and tell me that this is they're scared for their future And they don't know who to talk to and it's it's hard because I don't have any answers because I fuck I'm I'm the same spot as all them, you know But it is what it is and people get the market that they pay for and eventually the people that that Have that small niche market of the the 2% that want something unique that like running seeds to find their own unique thing That's not enough to hold over the whole market. So eventually some something's gonna have to change or or we have to change to Reflect the market Yeah, no, I know I'm I'm struggling like really bad right now. Like yeah I'm kind of worried like if I'll have enough money for my bills next month kind of thing You know, and There's there's a lot going on in the world There's a lot of potential in the world right now What's going on with all these countries coming online? and I'm just like man, I hope I can just Get by long enough to where I can get to a spot where I can be okay, but yeah I don't even know if I'll ever make make it for that, you know yeah There's definitely a lot of soul searching going on In the weed community right now You know about what what works and you know, I think there's a natural human instinct To like get good at a certain niche or a certain aspect of something and keep doing it and you just want that to continue Right because it works for you and you're good at it and then life throws you curveballs and You know, um, one of the cool things about like the 215 era was how diverse it was How many different people could be involved on different levels and make a living and now it's getting consolidated and you know The amount of people that used to make a living off it are probably not going to make a living off it that that time So how do you fit in? How do you work? How do you survive? How do you make it happen? You know, and that's the point is I'm noticing that I don't fit into the new world Like I've tried to get jobs numerous times at these new Facilities or these new operations that are licensed and I'm either not getting hired or I'm getting ghosted once I get there Or I show up and it's so fucked up. I leave Yeah, and so Yeah, I I'm to the point now or I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna go take a job doing delivery or doing something else and Just grow my hobby weed on my own and just be like fuck the weed world But I'm still like Still trying to hold on, you know, I I've retired from the fact that I will not be a licensed company Yeah, Alton's cannabis company That's what that video a few months back was if I'm I'm retiring I'm getting the fuck out of this. I'm done with it and I kind of Misled people in the fact that I was getting out of the weed world I was just saying I'm retiring from Trying to be a company like a licensed company Oh, yeah, it it it sounded great like really on you know, like oh the weed people can finally the one who've been Once who've been fighting for this to make it legal fighting for legalization finally get to grow We finally get to grow safely not get guns put to our head not end up in prison And that's rad and then that was all just yanked out from under us I mean, there's a there's an aspect too with that where you know, I mean, maybe some of the pricing was risk factor And a and a willingness to take risks and a willingness to have some balls to do some of that stuff and You know and so as the risk goes out so does some of the probability And then the margins get tighter on things and you know the other part of it is you know when we're talking about hype things is part of it for older growers is that All of the skill sets that kept us alive and safe for a long time are starting to change So we wanted to be invisible. We wanted to be low-key. I mean when you when we were talking earlier on the beginning of the show I mean, he's he basically you crawled out from under your rock like 2014 2015 Right not that long, you know like so you were growing a long time and hiding And staying quiet and now the people that are doing You know somewhat better Are really loud and really out there really promoting themselves and that's not the skill set most of us had Yeah, right self promotion like we wanted the work to speak for you And then people were like well fuck the work. I'll just say I have it Yeah, and then I'll get people believing it's I do Right and you see my gold chain, right? You see my gold chain shows I did the work But you know honestly that type of thing where you let you go to like a cookies opening or something like that And there's various people standing there and like they you know, they want to think like they want their breeder hero to be a baller Yeah, there's an aspect of that people do that because they're making money off The image of being a baller breeder Yeah It's the car salesman mentality is most people want to be sold on something and be convinced that It's gonna change their life And that way they can go then do the Kardashian thing and show it the fuck off and be like look what I fucking got You know, you know, it's you know, it's what I'll give you guys a good story that I heard the other day So one of our close friends, um his his property almost burned down up in humble area And he he's he's he's he's more rotund like me shorter And um that motherfucker was swimming across lakes to water his plants rivers Like a madman like and and this is probably one of the most successful people in our in our industry And he didn't think twice about going and jumping in a fucking river to go water his plants daily Just because it was all you know sectioned off. He couldn't drive up there Now that's and like I heard you say too like yeah, if it's all done then I'll just grow my hobby growing. That's that like We don't stop but the the people who love weed it's not gonna stop The thing is Is on that level, right? It's that the part that annoys the fuck out of me Is like the the way that they've You know, it almost makes me like talk about like maybe I'll get on my soapbox here for a second get pissed off But there's an aspect where it's to me. It's not really been made legal It's been made like taxed and regulated, right? Yes, because Like if it was fully legal then You know theoretically speak let's say like all the money went out of it Okay, for whatever reason and all three of us on this podcast that I had to go out and get different jobs But if I could grow half my backyard With a bunch of different things from my seeds and make seeds and trade amongst other friends and enthusiasts and share cuttings and all that Not commercially, but just because we cared, right? Yeah Now you're talking about like the heirloom vegetable market before it got popular Yeah When it was just a bunch of enthusiasts with going to like weird shows that nobody went to About we about about tomatoes or about zucchinis or about squash now. It's all the rage heirlooms Yeah, but then you know think about how many decades those people kept all of those old heirloom You know varieties before the popularity came back So, you know the way I look at it is like six plants is an insult because that means that you can't breed at home That's exactly what that means. You need a license to breed weed. You can't be I mean, if you're going to be a hobby breeder, you can probably get away with it realistically speaking, but like it's not legal Where you can just like, you know control the sale of it if you want Yeah, right, but think about how much cool shit you could do. There's a lot of there's a lot of weed people that just love weed And they would grow weed even if it didn't have a financial benefit Like a summer garden Yeah You know for for real, but you can't because you can only have six fucking plants So they want you to go to a dispensary and buy them Yeah You know any breeder knows you can't crack six seeds and get anywhere on any kind of project you want to do No, not really not if you really care not if you want to make progress. Yeah Not if you really care want to make progress. No, so it's not really like I've gotten to the point where I don't even really like discussing it as legal weed Because I look there's no I'm I can go to the liquor store And how much money I have in my pocket. I can buy as much liquor as I want Yeah, right I can buy Beer I can buy Dom Perignon. I can buy kegs and kegs and kegs I can fill a whole garage in my house with it I can give it out to friends. I can share I can throw a party in my backyard and have 100 people over and give it away for free So like when weed it gets treated like alcohol or vegetables, I'll start thinking of it as legal Yeah, I like what ring said right here. He said the lack of cash is only reinforced how much everyone who is getting out of it It was into it to begin with. Yeah We him and I have been joking about it actually because we don't we don't live very far for each other at all And we both moved to Mendo when it was kind of like depressed and weird And so you saw this enormous green rush rush in for the money Yeah, and now as the money's been really hard the last two or three years you see like the reverse green rush Where most of them didn't want to live there unless they could make a bunch of easy money Yeah, yeah for sure You know so humble. Oh my god southern humble is Making such bad shape right it is it makes me nervous like for the first time ever Like I think the the triangle might get has been cut off to the point where it could actually suffocate Yeah, it's coming. It goes right there Trinity southern humble Mendo the way that everything got built up the structure of how people Cut deals with each other and grew weed and all the various aspects. It's an enormous danger Anybody see the dark horse breeding facility. What the fuck are they gonna do with that? He buys all these seeds from breeders Sorry, I mean people might people might not want to know this or whatever and this might be dissing them or whatnot But I'll say it anyway dark heart is one of them and But there was a number of early nurseries That became nurseries because they were so bad at growing flower that their flower even in the 215 era was hard to move through anywhere And so when you're when you're growing a bunch of warehouses in the bay of b and c grade indoor Like a few of these companies flipped into clones because that was just easier Right because they couldn't grow good bud and then they take bad health practices And they spread Viruses and diseases all over california before anybody had an idea of what was going on Yeah, speaking of which speaking of which let me let me plug this in real quick on september 9th. We are going to be having The people I'm not gonna say their name because people just sniked everyone on shows I guess but The the foremost experts on the hops late and viroid Doing studies out of prune and they they're fucking killing it So we're gonna have them on to cover and try to Figure out all this shit and it's gonna it's gonna be a really cool show Because there's a lot of of Maybe we'll call it we've called it bro science. Yes, there's a lot of ineffective sterilization ideas out there And there's a lot of ways that people don't understand how it moves around and how clean practices work And you know when we all got started in the 90s You could have one razor blade. It was like the most unprotected like carefree You basically use the razor blade until it got dull Yeah, and now it's almost like you want to be like a tattoo artist Where you've got clean clean tools for every single every single tattoo you're giving so every single plan Right if you really don't want to spread things you have to kind of take that sort of like that new approach Yeah, and we're still learning a bunch about it honestly Yeah, so I just wanted to put that in there. It's it'll be an excellent episode and um We'll try to uncover some of the myths going around like it being transmissible and seed if that's a fact if it's not, you know there's all kinds of stuff I was working with a a plant scientist from brazil on at a nursery in redwood valley last year and she was Working on hops byroid And other plants for quite a few years prior to getting into cannabis And she was saying that it was a 20 percent transmissible through breeding into seeds in other varieties of plant species And so she was assuming that it would also transfer over into cannabis as well From what they've seen there's been zero transmission in cannabis as far as uh the the cannabis species It was and and with hemp it was eight percent transmissibility or six or something It's something very low But in cannabis for some reason it's not they're not seeing any so we can hope that it's going to stay that way or Maybe it's just undetectable with what our tools are currently But I guess we're going to see I mean a viroid is even tinier than a virus Yes, but you're really that's what makes it so hard to kill. You're really talking hard It's not even like a living thing. It's almost like a cult It's like a collection of it's like a little piece of data floating around waiting to attach to the right thing Yeah, um a district. I just watched it this morning and they're the experts and they said eight percent. So suck my dick Did I hear correctly that um Dark heart dark partners or dark? Of course. Yeah, and not so trans drive dark horse for dark heart. I did I did I said I was slow I I don't know what happened, but that's where I went. I'm getting beginning the faster scientist district That's that's dark. I heard they're going out of business. Is that correct? Oh, I I did hear that but I'm not sure but yeah, I did hear that Okay, yeah, I wasn't sure I didn't know if that was a rumor if that was for real or not They said they came up. They said they came up with a cure Or a treatment program. Yes And then other you know other opposing nurseries bought plants from them and still had and still had the viroid Well, I mean they supplied the viroid and passed the viroid Massively so they had to come up with the solution so they could make money off it again, and then it got fucked. Yeah Well, I knew promoting that new Non-breedable clone stock There's yeah Kind of like like corn were All the corn farmers you can't breed that corn you've got to buy a seed every year Yeah, because it's not breedable and I heard that's what dark heart was doing They just announced that like a month ago. There's a there's an aspect right now And I think this is probably going to be like a big deal in the next 10 to 20 years Where like if you're going to have this industry that's going to be worth billions and billions of dollars nationwide They just can't accept that like all of these strains right now are basically open source People are going to want to lock that shit in And they're going to want to control things And they're because you guys know everybody every breeder knows right You can make chili verde or nl5 haze or punchy blue whatever, you know any any straight name as soon as you sell it It's out Right and you don't control it anymore People can buy it from you people can make their own seeds people can sell their own seeds You know people could he you know, uh, he can make a deal with a nursery to like have verified chili verde And another nursery could buy a hundred of clones and grow up all those moms And start selling them and he has nothing to do with it So once you release things into the into the world, they're gone Oh, yeah, you know in that regard and so people don't like you know corporations and big companies They don't like that. They like like, uh, you know, uh, they intellectual property if you will And so it's really weird because you know, you know, there's an argument where it's like There's companies going around right now trying to make like, uh, Marketing deals with various collectors and breeders to get old stock Yeah, right and then that person would get kickbacks, but who should get a kickback for it This person a lot of that talks about but I've I've never seen anybody really be paid a kickback. Yeah But I'm just saying like there people are kicking around ideas But all that is all that's coming all that's going to try to be more standardized You know, you know, maybe I was offered royalties on chili birdie through like dark heart a few other places And but it was on the stipulation that I had state license And that I was then going to sell them the one clone first and then From then they could give me royalties back on everything. Yeah, but you better be licensed You better be licensed, huh? But that's what I mean, right? So let's say they make a deal with you and every clone that they sell of that thing may give you a percentage But I buy 500 clones from them and I take it to my nursery and I don't have any deal with that And I start selling thousands of clones of chili bear day a month and none of that residual goes to him Because I don't have a deal with him. I just bought this thing from a nursery. I don't owe anybody anything I own it now. It's mine You can suck it So that's been a problem the whole time and it actually is like Back in the day It's it's to some degree why one of the reasons why a lot of breeders started not wanting to tell you what's in their work Because they didn't want people to know That it's like they wanted it to be secret sauce because they didn't have any control over it Once you release it It's out there. It's gone You know in the last few seed sessions that we've had Seed swaps up in southern humble Um, I've seen an influx of people coming in that are from out of the area And they literally go and buy seed from every single fucking person at the whole entire place And they buy everything of what that person has and then they walk out with a whole box full of seeds and I'm like That's not what you normally see. Yeah, like you know what I mean Yeah, um, because we've been running those swaps up there for a couple. Yeah, that's an anomaly dude Yeah, three or four years We were doing these swaps and then it was always locals come in doing a little bit trading Maybe buying a few seeds here and there But nothing like that and then this last this last six months or so I was just watching these people come in and I'm like They're they're collecting for Somebody big Yeah, what the fuck, you know one of these big farms out there that are just getting geared up to go to you know go public Yeah But it's that it's that thing where it's like it we've got decades of I hope it all stays open source I hope it's pretty punk rock in that regard and it's like I'm not saying that like in the future They might not lock things in where they can put like genetic markers into certain breeding lines where you can tell It's from that But I basically think that like everything from the beginning of cannabis to 2018 or 19 should be It's it's just out there Yeah, that's honestly, you know, and it might be shitty for some people But it's like otherwise everyone's gonna lock it in and control it and then people are sure that's that's what'll happen Is people will get sued like monsanto, you know Right now the us is like gonna be more of a like We're way behind because like if you look at like columbia right now Columbia is already on the move to do that They're already looking at licensing and and holding on to these genetics and calling them there being set up for worldwide distribution and so The us is lagging and yeah in more regard of Being on top of licensing needs genetics and we are we will stay open sourced here for a long time because of the lack of the government Wanting to really open up ganja here I think the entire market in columbia is just kind of kicking around getting started hoping that america opens up You know that that's where I think I think that a lot of these people that are going to third world countries right now And these other places trying to set up shop Are trying to have their roots in If it goes federal so they can they can export From this place that doesn't have osha and doesn't have this and doesn't have that I think that's really what it is is that they're not down there to try to make a bunch of money in columbia Like that's cool if it happens, but they're hoping that our market opens Yeah, you know thailand's kind of interesting right now to see what's going on there because they've just opened up hemp and Um, they're letting everybody sell it just open up anywhere and there's no age limit on it But everybody's already growing ganja. They're using like kind of how we did with the cvd thing They're selling weed as hemp and so But it's supposed to be for export only We're really not supposed to be consuming it And yeah, so kind of curious to see how that's going to go But i'm already seeing i've already seen two or three u.s. Companies Feed companies that are already there and i'm like, yeah, how does how does that work out? How did you do that? So Well get get us there buddy get us there Yeah, you know, um I can make some money over the next two months or so I want to go to thailand for a while my wife or my fiance is there waiting for me And uh, yeah It could be something big for me, you know I'm looking forward to that. I haven't seen so everyone watching. Let's support our homeboy and get him to thailand See what's up there? I mean, this is one of the dudes who will actually go chase down land races and stuff So it's beneficial to all of us to get in there Yeah, yeah, i'm looking at getting over there. Um So I have a fiance that's from thailand a couple years ago She lost her visa because mostly because of what I do and who I am Yeah And so they sent her back and I haven't seen her in almost three years, but that's sad Yeah, and getting my passport was a nightmare Um, I had some problems when I was younger living on the border Yeah, and the first time I applied for my passport. They denied me Then they gave me covid bullshit. They got lost And so it took me almost two years to get my passport and I finally got it and now I'm ready to go But yeah, now I just have to make a little bit of money if I can afford to go Yeah finances moving at moving in in state moving in cities expensive as fuck I can't even imagine moving out of the country how expensive that is Yeah, um, I'm not sure if I can actually move full time because I have to go over there We'll get married then I can apply for a marriage visa Yeah, I'll open it up for trying to get dual citizenship And then I could move there, but I wouldn't be able to stay there full time Um, unless the Thai government approved it and like heard that's kind of really difficult Yeah, um, well, yeah, we'll see how it goes Yeah, I do I watch 90 day fiance man That's it's crazy with the the passports and the immigration and all that stuff between countries. It's insane, dude Yeah, you know, everybody keeps telling me I need to watch that show, but I don't But I'm like I'm living it. So yeah, dude Yeah, a lot of it on that show is sex tourism So it's just like the craziest motherfuckers doing the craziest shit But every once in a while there's good people on there and it's it's crazy what they put them through Yeah, awesome cool Yeah, you know my my fiance she's amazing I'm looking forward to getting over there. She's Who's a good woman? Yeah, she sounds like especially if you took such a big hit for you like that's That's a partner man. That's a partner. Yeah. Yeah, we made the mistake of I sent her some pictures on her phone of the farm when she was gonna come stay with me And when she got the customs they went through her phone and found the pictures and were like, oh, yeah, no Oh Something that small really. Oh, yeah, yeah I had I I've had I've had Trimmers that would fly in that work that that worked a long time that worked for me for years and sometimes when the smartphone era happened Um, they can absolutely look through everything they want Uh, and and see if they want to let you in Yeah, not so used to flying men in from Amsterdam constantly and they would take their phones Man horrible horrible but yeah, they they will look I mean it's it's uh, uh You know, american is sort of like the gold standard passport to travel around But we're not the easiest most welcoming place to get into for lots of countries No, I don't know especially in the last two three years. It's gotten to where they don't They don't want to let anybody in It's really difficult. Yeah, so freedom free movement of people hasn't been the easiest Yeah But was there anything else you want to want to cover tonight? Like is there any projects? We haven't talked about that you want to talk about um I've been doing some collaborations with uh, ryan over at wallflower nursery Ryan's been helping me out tremendously. I mean eva are amazing people. Um, they're kind of basically holding my My genetics for me because I have they got all our shit, man I love them. I do love them. They've been right ryan is a good person. They are yes. They they're they're good people And this is radio ridge that I refer to often wallflower radio ridge, right? Yeah wallflower radio wallflower is radio ridge. Yes. Yes. Yeah so So yeah, I've been working with ryan. He um, it's helping me on this collaboration with these fans and So, yeah, it's been really good. Um, but like I said, just the last few months have been really difficult financially Well, yeah, that's what it is. I try not to get down too much, but I'm one of those depressed kind of people already. So Dude this far into the weed game if you're not jaded then you're not realistic what you're saying I mean it uh, it's positive failure No matter what you do Well, you know, if I was if I was More into being self promoting and being one of these guys who's on the internet Like just blowing myself up and constantly Being there. Oh, I'd be way better off, but I'm one of those guys that like I haven't been online and when people come at me. I'm like it is what it is. This is buy it or don't buy it I don't give a fuck. Yeah. Yeah, so that's not the greatest sale Yeah, I have that issue too. Yeah, like trying to trying to like push yourself You feel like you used to our salesmen like these seeds are great. Uh, I feel like a fucking slime ball So what's a fucking point? Yeah, it's hard man. It's hard Yeah And um, yeah, so But yeah, that's that's pretty much what's going on with me. I'm just focused on trying to to get to thailand and then After that, I don't I don't know do you after that? It's kind of up in the air. So Someone real quick someone asked if your uh cream is good for eczema his son has eczema It is it's very good for eczema Depending on the condition of the eczema it can take anywhere from A couple weeks to a couple months to see improvement But yeah, I've had very good success with eczema Very cool. Very cool. Hopefully that helps his son. Yeah, the cocoa cream not not the tiger Not the not the cinnamon. There you go. Coco cream. Coco remember that You want to do you want to do your end of the night spiel mat? Yeah, um, and you can find all that hpktopples.com. Is there a good place for people to find your seeds? Seeds, yeah, so there's a couple couple seed banks that sell my stuff. Um, Or you can go through me directly, but if you want to go through a bank, there's immaculate seeds There's penal paradise um, there's daggis dagalove and then, um Neptune some of Neptune's Sub banks carry my stuff, but I'm not sure exactly which ones Okay, and so yeah, or just contact me directly and from time to time. I'll throw some stuff up on my website as well um You're more more likely to get cool extras and shit if you buy from breeders direct like breeders directly like they you know So hit them up Yeah, yeah, I'm always pretty good about throwing in a bunch of extras and Yeah, but I'm old school like it's still You gotta call me Yeah, indeed All right, and we have our breeder syndicate patreon where we all hang out Come join us. We have three different chairs. We have like a five 15 and 50 They all come with different stuff the five gets you into the discord and that's where we all hang out and shoot the shit I think there's some fights. We're watching tomorrow. Um, he has instagram handle. It's hbk genetics. Uh, isn't that right? Yes hbk genetics on instagram Everybody give the man a follow. He's been a good friend of mine for a long time Um, I appreciate having him here. Uh, it's good to see you eric and thank you for spending time with everyone Yeah, and we we appreciate everybody's friday night. We appreciate everybody chatting come chat with us on the discord Uh, you can always dm and reach out to us And we're always appreciative for listening Yep, that's about it. Yeah, uh Check you guys later. Thanks for coming eric. You guys have a good night. Thank you