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No way to do it But it's just a simple handshake deal Got the idea for this from another youtuber named Jesse on fire, and I felt like it was a fair It was fair for him to ask so I figured I'd do the same honor system reengaged in cannabis Welcome to Breeders Syndicate 2.0 where we explore the history of a clandestine scene Researching everything from cannabis strain history old smuggling tales from the first person perspective to breeding science and news on current subculture I'm your host Matthew and I'll occasionally be joined by my homey not so dog breeder and grower for Mendocino to speak on these subjects and sometimes interview other Participants our goal is to document this history before it's written by corporations and others who just weren't there Let's start writing some wrongs Welcome to the underground. Hey everyone. Welcome to Breeders Syndicate This is going to be part two of the Mad Jag and Raho series and I'm of course joined here by My friend not so dog Peace everyone. So yeah, everybody. We really had a good time recording the show last time I think it was probably the largest response. We've ever gotten for any show as far as the positive positivity that we received it really really resonated with a lot of people and Yeah, I'm really excited to start with round two so to speak we tried to go in a more linear pattern and We covered some of the canyon era But I know we after after we recorded last time we spoke a little bit and you have some notes and in a good direction So I'm gonna let you go ahead and start mad Jag. Where do you want to start the tail? The 1978 map that I drew It says oh gee stands for original garden there we go Here's the 1978 map if you want to explain it a little bit and break it down. Well, the key is at the bottom This is before Before skunk number one. This is the very first we had a friend in Kauai who Who had well Hawken Hawaiian crosses. Yeah, and they're the h10 h9 hk and then We had somehow some a few tie seeds I don't know where they came from the Colombian came from my friend and they're the ones that on Thanksgiving while it was snowing above us on the rim Weren't even close to being finished. So this was the Layout of that garden that you showed photos of last time that's right in so well It's surrounded by pine trees and Lots of heavy dark green brush This garden was probably I'm thinking 100 feet long and 50 feet wide it that was the size This is from the old notebooks that you have it was strong Can like at the time you were drawing this as you were looking on or how did it work? That's amazing It's amazing Just all of them every year I did one This was at the middle part of our canyon the subsequent years 80 79 80 and 81 were about Two or three miles further up the canyon And this one so this one was closer to 1800 feet down It was a longer hike more difficult And the others were anywhere from 14 to 1600 feet down in Wow, which makes a difference at the end of the year, of course when you're carrying this here you're Harvest out That's why we did as much as possible down inside the canyon later by having friends come down in and camp with us because It wasn't feasible to carry out whole plants or branches or anything like that Did you find that any of these grew any different in these little microclimates in the canyon like any of these strains from like 78 between 78 and 79 If you moved or grew any of the same exact strains in different little locations in the canyon. Did you find any phenotypic variations? I don't really think so it was it was just more the size and ripeness because this particular garden was Got the sun east to west So it had the most sun in 10 11 hours at some days, you know in the summer Yeah, so they grew much larger plants. I mean there some of these plants were 13 14 feet tall My friend my partner is six foot seven. There's a photo of him reaching up In in his um wizard outfit. That's right. His reach is at nine feet And there are four or five feet beyond his reach. So Yeah, they were the they were the hawaiians h10 in eight over here where it says h10 Yeah, if you Right, let's see right over in this region h10 left of this photo Or this drawing versus h10 and also in the middle there h10. They they were just massive plants Beautiful and it was good smoke too It was will hawken again cross with whatever they were calling hawaiian which Yeah, has a a tie background just because hawai Probably in the 40s and 50s People from the far east that visited there that it'd be very easy to see those sorts of varieties Showing up in another tropical area. Sure And this is great. This is crazy magic because I used to um You know, I drew a plot like this for you know a map like this for just about every outdoor plot I ever did And it's crazy to see, you know that two people on, you know, other sides of the country At the same time or doing the same stuff But you know beyond the fact that I did it yours is the level of detail and artistry Is way beyond anything I ever did man. This is really cool to see it really is Yeah One thing I might I might want to ask Just because I I remember something you mentioned last time Which was basically like you kind of averaged about 6.8 or 7 ounces of plant or something Um, and then I just heard you say that like you had these 9 to 13 foot tall plants these giants Um, so maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the different stuff that you grew Um, was a 9 or 3 was a 9 foot or 10 foot tall plant only giving you that amount of flower because of how loose it was Did you have some that were a lot denser and they were smaller plants but yielded more? Um, because I have old timers that would tell me that back in the day, you know They would get ounces that were like the size of my forearm Just because the the weed wasn't as dense And so I'm curious as to like Uh, was the 6.8 ounces the stuff that happened in in subsequent years when you were doing like the skunk one Did you get a massive variance of of weights and sizes these first couple years when you were experiencing them? Just curious The 6.8 ounces average across the entire two gardens that we did later Were all almost all skunk number one and the tallest plants were six seven eight feet and The hawaiian in this particular Um drawing that were so tall. They were multi-pound plants We didn't have a scale at the time down in there in the area if we brought a diagram down Oh house Good old diagram and it it would go up to two pounds. I think I forget But um this plant in particular It it was obviously pounds of weeds. Yeah, and they were tight buds. They aren't rock buds, you know, like some Um, especially the ones I know of friends who grow Heavily indica backgrounds. Yeah, those buds just get rock hard. Thanks. It is. Yeah, right. Um these A pound of this herb probably was twice the size of the of the um Later skunk number one the skunk number one were denser Dev yeah I have a quick question that that I've just been as going through the picture and stuff Which wizard were you which which color? We all played it out. Um, did you this this was not This was not me. This was my friend dug Yeah Seven the the light blue one was my uk partner That you have in a photo where he's pointing off in well actually you used it in this advertisement Yes pointing out into the distance. Um The garden is actually right below him, but we had him pointing in a direction that wouldn't be Um as easy to figure out if you got to that canyon Yeah, and I I was never I never wore the light blue one because I think it was a smaller um robe, so we had a Oh, what is the one I'm wearing? There's one of me and in my tall partner walking across the rug There is the white one. Hey, all right. I'm the one in front and you can just see my beard back then showing a little bit my My ex-wife My kid's mom. She's the one who sewed these up for us. She made all of these and uh that red bag there was particularly colorful so She was up with the idea too and it was great. I don't know whatever happened to these costumes Yeah, I was gonna ask that was why I didn't keep at least one around but I think um 45 years later, you know It's it's what really pulled me to your story when I first like I first like I said heard about or even Found out what mad jag was going through sam's old posts And going through the kilo art and I kept seeing this really pretty kilo art and said mad jag on it And that's what started that journey and then when I saw these pictures of the robes is when I was like These are my people. These are my people. I gotta find out who they are, you know Yeah Yeah that log right there that we're walking across There was a storm I was camped On on the side that this photo was taken from by our third friend and water was almost touching the bottom of this This log and I had to sit on it and scoot across with a bag of weed in front of me and scoot across It ran for like three days from this massive fall storm like in October and um It's a good thing that thing was there else I would have been stuck on the other side and as it was I was in a silly Old army tent and in water was it had didn't have a built-in bottom and the water was flowing through So I had to get out in the pouring rain and cut a trench around it like you do in Boy Scouts to funnel the water away and um, it's funny It was okay Wilderness experience You know MJ, uh, you remember last week we were talking about how the um How growing these plants kind of turns you into an instant young entrepreneur And the inspiration, you know, I've I've often wondered, you know, what kind of What what were your intentions? You know when you guys came up with this whole madjag branding idea and started sending stuff into high times You know, what was what was going through your head when you were? um, when you were Starting that thing it looks like it looks like, you know early viral marketing Stuff is what it looks like. That's fun Yeah viral didn't even exist that term, right? That's right um We were inspired by high times magazine by the grower's guide Um, and then later robert clark's book It just seemed like Let's make our own legend, you know, and maybe someday we'll be doing a photo a movie about it or It was it was kind of with that in mind Uh, it wasn't that it would make us richer and we would get paid more for the herb. It was just It was set us apart. So that's why we went and had labels made The crack and peel labels. I'll be glad to send you guys some Because I've kept a lot of them over the years. Oh, wow They uh, there's no work we would I would go through like an airport I remember I was going up the escalator and I had one cracked and open. I just slapped it on the side of the paper magazine dispenser in los angeles and One of my friends the guy in in tempi his brother who was A bigger dealer even than he Said did you put one of your stickers in the airport in la and I said, yeah, I did Yeah, it's not That that reminds me so much of like early skateboarding culture, you know in the 70s um, and that that was you know, some of the earliest kind of uh Viral marketing like you said viral marketing absolutely it the things that they that they pioneered back then and in skateboarding with skateboarder magazine You know is is absolutely the foundation of of viral internet marketing today You know social media influencers Um, all that stuff has roots going directly back to that and I see a lot of that in in your mag eggs stuff too, jim Yeah, yeah I see I see a lot of that like in the haze poster the cosmic boogie poster You know that was like why I chased that so hard was because as a person who sells seeds And has made that my passion breeding and all that to me. That was the first time that I could find Uh a a physical tangible representation of something I could possess That was a perfect example of the first strain marketing that I could find, you know And and the madjag label I put it in that same kind of category. It's one of those early Just things that it's striking imagery that you never forget and it was done so well But I I never forgot it and always chased it It's almost it's almost like a pre reagan era of freedom where everyone thought things were about to loosen up Yep, and then they were kind of loose for a bit and then they went in a totally different direction for 15 more years There's still these old posters that you can I found them a few times and I never bought one But there's an old poster where it's like they made them declaring Like that. Ah, we finally did it, you know, like prohibitions over posters, but they were just a little bit too early, you know Yeah, they're really yeah like 40 years. Yeah, just a little bit One thing I'm curious about and like the actual growing part of it is since It sounds like you were basically this first season you were just collecting seeds from friends and people you could get access to What were the things that you liked and disliked about the first crop? Like did you look at those things when you were trying to get away with it and you were like, oh my god This 13 foot plant is blowing past all the bushes and everything else that we were trying to contain it and like Make it look like it was normal I don't want to do that giant again because It it makes me nervous or like what was the what were the thoughts there? Because obviously like this is the first time that you were seeing a lot of these things grown, correct? Yeah Definitely So you had no idea what to expect really Like you just oh, this is what Hawkin and this is why in and this is this and this is that and it was kind of like Plant spacing and how big they were going to get and what they were going to do was all kind of a mystery I would imagine Oh, yeah, we were I had had the one year before this with my dealer friend from tempi in a neighboring canyon and that's the first time I Got a chance to see plants actually reach harvest time and they were all mexican strains like you said, but In the next over the next year which the next year We tried a garden in that canyon that was massive. It was so Huge we had to get a we had to pump up 200 feet to the alluvial plateau We had found and It wasn't really smart. It's a good thing it failed, but we we got us We got a submersible pump that weighed like 40 pounds and hosed going up and the first time we watered We laid a hose on the ground and it just went it disappeared into the soil Is it this already we moved it another 50 feet? It just Made a hole and went down in we couldn't flood irrigate If it just it was so loose with boulders and stuff below even though it was this beautiful smooth garden on top that It it just didn't work. It was like dredging Yeah, and then the following year we had collected all these other seeds thai columbian and we and I knew From that very first year how to do it and We just went on a larger scale these The columbian though that we had no idea like we discovered that how long it took to finish We just knew it was super great weed that we had smoked and we kept the seeds and So these On this garden, I'd say 30% of it failed Because oh no, it was just it wasn't ready. Is this the garden that's up here, correct? I'm showing this in the year you're speaking about this. No, this one is 1980 it's We were looking at the 78 earlier that had the key at the bottom. Which one are you speaking about currently? That's one that I want to hit um the original one 1978. Oh, so that's the one that 30 failed Yeah, and by failed you mean just didn't finish Right, they were huge plants that one photo that he has from last episode They were beautiful plants in slightly different colors because they were different columbian seeds, but the c10 here Uh c9 Wherever the c shows up They were big big plants That make it easier to see right there if I zoom out and it might be too much, but So eventually did you just end up having to chop them down? Uh, did you just and and you just realized they weren't done? They weren't they weren't real weed yet and and can I compost them down there? No, we took them out. They're they're the ones that I had to scoot across that boulder within a bag um Once we cut them down to branch size and they were the size of my little fingertip floods And they were kind of tight and nice And we sold them actually they they were just a very mild smoke They they had resin but not not like they would have been Super killer weed if they've gotten a month and a half more or two Like to end of december or early january like they would in the tropics But it was so let me let me maybe ask you this because I didn't I don't think we talked about this last time in the area that you were in What month or around what date was it safe to plant? And then what was kind of like the ladder part of your harvest window where after that it was cold and rainy And you were in fear of losing um Luckily those giant hawaiian plants they because they were willhaken crosses too They were ready in october and like no later than mid october I'd say probably and the rains and cold didn't really Hit us october traditionally in arizona's the second driest month of the year June is the driest october and this is in the 70s. It has changed since then But we had a beautiful fall so down in the canyon to have cool nights, but the days would be warm and nice um, so It it just we harvested everything out of this can't out of this garden except those columbian And we were going back and watering them and back and watering them Then finally in thanksgiving when it was snowing up above and we had to go out on the maces in Inches of snow and big quads of mud on our feet It was just we decided we have to take them now because We didn't want to come back any colder and wetter Yeah and so, you know it It just what it just never reached maturity But the earlier ones all these others the hawaiians were They came out wonderful And we were able to hang them there in the shade dry them And I don't remember actually We didn't have breakdown boxes like we did in following years We just um, I think put them in our in big bags, you know Garbage bags and carried them up Top of the rim with our um pack frames We had metal pack frames kelties and we would just strap everything to them So they didn't get handled as well That's another thing that when we had breakdown boxes after they were man after the skunk number one was manicured It was put right into these wonderful cardboard boxes that we bought stacks of and brought them down and then we assembled them down in the canyon taped them and You could carry six or seven stacked on a pack frame Any more than that they would be catching on branches and and it wasn't feasible. So Yeah That came out very nice. They they didn't get crushed. They didn't get smashed Pound at the time and roughly in each box Was that just that that 1979 harvest was that the one that ended up in the high times? Is that what was referred to in that high times that is up here on the page? And you'll see here it says Columbian stock killer purple 2000 We it was It was funny because one guy actually paid us 2000 a pound for it Yeah, it was just Seeded and they loved it, you know and then we had some lightly seated Hawaiian One branch out of all this garden. We came back after As we traditionally did every week We were looking through inspecting and then we found one branch that was seated it had You know hermit back. Yeah. Yeah We took a garbage bag and put it over quickly Cut that branch off But it had enough time to lightly seed a few of the plants neighboring to it but People love finding those few seeds and they were like Do you have any more of this? They like the smoke and um It was the wohaq in hawaiian kind of Wow And so how many of these in this list are from you guys? On this yes in this particular list just the one that says magic hawaiian magic So cinemia and um all these others were current things on the market, you know, I mean like downtown That that's something we didn't actually chat about last time but it's pretty interesting when you guys were doing your gorilla um You know, obviously like you can get a wildly divergent amount of males and females off a batch of seeds Um, did you plant everything in your alluvial planes and all that and then just cut males as they appeared Did you plant them in pot you did? Yep And um, did you go out there more than once a week when things were turning from Veg to flowers so that you didn't show up and all of a sudden a stray male It like nuked a whole patch with seed or how did you handle the transition when you were worried about Maybe we haven't caught all the males yet Right well The next garden that was 19 marked as 1979 as the double e The reason we called it the double e is it Was on a topo map right under the word creek where the double e's were And so we went oh, that's an easy way to spot it. So we called it the double e We spent three nights. I mean three days and two nights every week On the next three years. We didn't just go out overnight and water and then leave the next day. So we were there three days out of seven and we Anything that was even remotely Spooky looking like wow, this might be a male Change in here. We then I don't know. We might have just prematurely cut them out but everything was grown from seed and The the year we ran two gardens our big big year the one Garden good thing I bought 3 000 seeds because the plants were about a foot tall and we came back a week Three days later four days later and grasshoppers had eaten them down every single one Unbelievable. We had to replant on the first of june Oh, yeah, we put them in a tiny seed garden area where we could put screening over it and They were super crowded and we were just digging them out with wet In our palm in our hands and plugging them in plugging them in plugging them in and replacing everything that had been eaten by And what was weird? There was a few plants that made it through from the grasshopper plague And the ones that we planted And they were like a month Month earlier than the ones we had to replant in june Maybe more than a month and the june one's caught up with them It it was amazing because of the hundred degree weather and the sun and the watering By the time End of the summer like let's say august was around. They were all equal Yeah, that was good, but having that little Six foot by 10 foot garden Full of seeds. Luckily we we were able to replant. Otherwise it would have been catastrophic Oh, I bet I mean maybe maybe another angle is Where did you first learn about what an early female or an early male even looked like back then? Was it rob clark's book? Was it high times? Was it people telling you? You know because obviously like now you know like you look at it and like two pistols mean a female And a little claw looking thing means a male But back then did you have that kind of knowledge beforehand? Did they get kind of advanced before you realized what they were? um well I i'm not exactly sure. I know from the first year in 1976 that we grew I got to see what males look like and females But not till they were probably more advanced and invisible I think rob clark. I mean his early book Uh the one that he did in 77 on pod press that was actually his dissertation. Yeah Yeah, that he he hand drew all the drawings in there Oh, wow. Yeah, it's cover every single plant he hand drew those So he's not only Yeah, he's a he's a good artist plus his photography later Man, he says when he would travel around and did that book on hashish The photos are just excellent, you know watering and The growers guide by mel frank that I think Showed I don't know if they were photos but It was a learning curve, but by this year this I had already grown for two years before this So not the original garden, but by 1980 So when we went for two gardens at once We had enough experience to know what to look for plus we were spending three days a week in the garden and I think maybe even at the time when the males had to be separated. We might have Just had one of her we had a third partner who Helped us part time and he was from switzerland He's still a good friend of mine. I I saw him when I went to spandibus in 2019 and stated his house That's nice house and He's he's five years older than I am. He's he still smokes hash Mixed with tobacco. He's been doing it for 50 years as the custom over there. Yeah And he's an artist of course Swiss artists and he may have just been down there and as Because I know what you're saying We ended up it was almost 50 50 with the skunk 50 50 males 50 50 females It was wow, we didn't end up with big huge empty sections of the garden and We also transplanted into any open sections if we had to we would dig up a plant that was four feet tall With a big ruble. Oh, wow and Slide it over five more feet to get it into a hole that had more sun and and was empty because a male had been removed Yeah, we did a lot of transplanting and movements It was experimental to see if it would work and they they're very hearty plants Yeah, there was resilience The term weed is is accurate. I mean wow. Yeah You know, you know jaggy we last week we talked about the turps and flavors of columbia and and You know, you were just talking about that first year where the columbians didn't finish But you got a few purple ones out of there that were you know that were made good smoke But you know, I wasn't really satisfied with my answer last week when when I was asked what What did I you know describe those those flavors and smells coming off of columbian? And you know, I realized as I thought back on it that you know The most of my experience and what I know about columbian is more about what came imported You know and and was bought than what I grew because it just it was just so difficult to pull those things off Um, and so, you know for me, it's it's such a treat that we have You know, we have it's The the essence of it captured in in the ohays um As as sam shared it, you know That that because otherwise it's so hard to grow, you know growers all over the country were like they tried and It didn't turn out well and then they found something better and the stuff just kind of disappeared so Um, but you know, can can you talk about that that columbian the the smells? I mean did the anthocyanin or whatever the the purple? Yeah, um, did that really take over and dominate the one that you managed to to harvest and or you know No, they were they Yeah, because it was like, you know, it was Thanksgiving um, and as you know when the light starts dropping down the purple tends to happen more and It it didn't really Have a characteristic the Hawaiians that were will hawken crosses. They had a wonderful scent growing but the columbian Because they didn't even have the tiny buds till like late october um beginning of november they they didn't it wasn't warm like the hot summer end of the summer They didn't have really much scent at all until they were dried and then you crushed them but the uh I know what you're talking about the piney. That's how you would, you know, focus on the piney last week and and that's You know, I had a lot of that too that and and you know, like I said all my school All my friends at school everybody was growing these columbian plants and Christmas trees everybody had these little Christmas trees out there, but Some people they got more mature and you know, you got you got a really nice buds um But the pine was was dominant for sure um But you know that the diversity of what we got in the imported smoke was just above and beyond You know, because the golds and the reds and Yeah, yeah, just some amazing stuff, you know and And distinctive, you know each one just such a unique distinctive thing Just like Mexico all of them, you know, whether it's Sinaloa or Guerrero or Oaxaca Yeah, distinctive entirely the way they looked they smelled and the highs too Yeah, of course, Mexico is a long country columbia. It's pretty big, but there's in columbia. It was like tropical versus Yeah, 5 000 foot level versus santa marta way up at 8 000 9 000 feet So it they were um land races that didn't really get mixed up too much back in the old days at least until the 60s maybe Yeah And the impact of the processing and transport to you know, whatever it was in columbia before it went on the boat or In the in the case of the high-grade stuff like the golds and the reds, you know, maybe on an airplane um, you know that that had such an impact on it too, but So I think a lot about the commercial stuff that that you know, we used to buy on the street or sell even and You know What what I think is interesting is that the essence of that You know that it was a shadow of what it was when they when they finished it. Yeah Yeah, but the essence of it point um One thing that we could throw in there is that a number of people that have talked to matt and I about growing in that era When they first grew green marijuana, they got scared Because they didn't think people would want it because all the stuff they got was brown or yellow or gold That's why that's why I asked last week. Um, if they if they Sun dried because that tends to be the way that the the mexicans and stuff are getting their golds It's like girdling or sun drying But we've heard that consistently that a lot of times the first home grows are the first Outdoors that people did in different regions. They're like, oh my god. It's such a weird color. It's green Are people gonna like it? They've never seen it before and like Obviously like now it's shifted But I i'm curious is when you did your when you did your uh, your shade drying and stuff like that What kind of colors were you getting was it staying green? Was it turning golds and yellows and browns? No gold yellows or browns just greens or dark greens that the scunt number one was super dark green Uh, interesting Yeah, interesting. They but even in 76 when we my dealer friend and I grew that first year The the proof was in the pudding. We would give people a smoke just one puff or two and they were overwhelmed if they were used to commercial stuff and Seedless they had not seen seedless really unless they had gotten tie sticks Tie sticks were pretty much always seedless and the tie sticks back then were not green They were brown or you know Right always colored Olive yeah, maybe But the light green you're right. I didn't even give that a thought because once our few people that bought from us Smoked it that that's all they cared man. They bought everything two people bought everything we grew basically That's okay because we heard we heard people telling us stories about how when they first grew green weed. They tried to brown it up Because they were like, oh man, no one's gonna want this. It's not the right color. It doesn't look right Doesn't look like anything we've ever had we need to do something. It's it's this is wrong Well, and not only that but some of the earliest, you know When people have a bad experience with green weeds So, you know the the guy who grows a you know a patch full of columbia and and it doesn't finish and He harvest this leafy stuff with just a few white hairs and mostly tops And and you know, he handles it poorly It's loaded with chlorophyll and he tries he sells it to people and and you know, all of a sudden There's this bad reputation green weed is bad Right and then the next year people grow different seeds. This shit gets mature They handle it better, you know and all of a sudden there's there's high quality green weed But people's perception of the color is that it's a turnoff. So you got to try and overcome that Getting them to you know, try it listen. This is different or whatever or or the thing about Renaming or changing the appearance. I mean a lot of people would You know, we we knew that the stuff Molded you know that the columbian that turned it brown It was some sort of mold from being pressed when it was still wet or carried in the In the cargo bay of the ship or whatever and and so Since we've been smoking that stuff for years and and you know People thought that was okay And uh, they might try and you know, they might try and press some other wet homegrown And uh, get a different appearance, but it never turned out like the columbians, you know And uh, it only wound up making it worse But that chlorophyll was pretty horrible to smoke if you had those unfinished tops that somebody was trying to pass off as smoke and You know and plus high times was you know was was becoming really popular and people were hearing about green from hawaii in california At least by the time I was in it. So the the thing for us was, you know I mean, I would I had produced some amazing freaking indica buds But I would say it was hawaiian, you know or from california Just because you know your homegrown isn't you know, because I was charging 200 an ounce for this stuff And um and people were happy to pay it even though, you know, as kids they didn't have a lot of money. They would find a way I had a guy I had a guy trade me a pa system with you know with a beautiful mic and And a fender backstage 20 for um for a half ounce of tie purple tie And he loved it. He loved it so much. He came back for more and unfortunately I was out of that And all I had was the green feno, which didn't finish at all and I I was like, okay Well, you know, I knew it wasn't the same stuff, but I wanted the money. So I Sold him that second bag and and he was so pissed off I wound up giving his money back because it wasn't even close to the same thing as the purple one Man, so with with the skunk one. Did you notice any um Like solely broadleaf expressions stuff that looked just pure afghani in the skunk one cop Well, one of the photos that you posted asked me I think What was interesting about the skunk was it it Grew like long colas And they were almost self pruning in the fall The the sun leaves would all turn yellow and you could just shake the plant They would fall off and leave these long green colas and I have one photo and from that I took That is just slightly blurry, but it's just a series of the Four Four to six foot tall colas, you know like one cola coming out of the ground and Those are the ones that were 6.8 ounces, you know on average It was dense and nice Very deep deep green, but there was no Indica fat leaf Expressions solely it was uniform It was truly true breeding at that time what Robert and sam had accomplished. I think Robert was more the geneticist in doing it, but there's some Some place in the history where they said they had 10 000 things going In red cups and they chose from that and I don't know if that's accurate, but I'm not sure. Yeah it it really um When we planted it it grew the way it looked each plant They had a little bit wider Leaves certainly then like a capocal gold or santa martin. They're tropical thin leaf, but Nothing like the deep chunk or Maple leaf in because that you know people had on on ic mag that look Just like, you know umbrellas almost you could yeah your head if it's raining Dinosaur leaves. Yeah Exactly was it your impression then I mean obviously you said before that you reached out to um, you reached out to to rob through a letter and contacted him Um, and he brought you the seeds is what you said previously um when Did you meet sam back then did he talk about their partnership? Did he Did they did he tell you any of the work that he had done to get to skunk one? Um, did he share all my info came from robert? I never met sam I've never talked to him personally. I've I've private message with him on ic mag in 2012 but nothing um I've I've sent him some labels for his collection But I don't I've never met him. It was all second hand from robert when he described um, and I I don't know if rob was when I got on when I got on there sam was very big that's where I saw all of his collection of Of you know, essentially breeder art and grower art that they would that they would make and attach to their pounds He would post a lot and something called I was was it called the breeder's lab Maybe sound like that. Yeah something along those lines, but he was pretty active in that um, and so I was just I'm just always curious as to about like what You know had did rob tell you how long he'd been working on skunk one when he gave it to you or Any kind of like any info along those lines? Yeah, that you know He worked in ben loman, which is a little town up in the redwoods just above um Santa Cruz You you might go through ben loman for instance if you're going to go up Further up to like le honda where neil young lived it still a distance from san francisco and He told me that that's where he they had the little underground greenhouse going and and But he made it sound like They had been doing it for a year or two before He never went into the history of these other neighbors and santa cruz that sam knew that were the two brothers and yeah All those stories those I read more about later In on icmag and people disputing it and one person saying oh, no it was this and that so um Yeah, he he he mentioned though that he had been working on it. I bought his 1977 treatise um Not from him. I don't know where I found it but somewhere online And then when he came out with marijuana botany, you know, everyone bought it But if it wasn't for the grower's guide mel francs, we would have failed because When we had that year the second year Where we got this twist on the end of all of our plants And they were already six foot seven foot plants We were like freaking out because they were supposed to be getting Flowers instead they had the leaves twisting and we He talked about micronutrients and how you could have a you could be short and uh Couple micronutrients in your soil and that could make the world a difference. So we got some concentrated um Seaweed extract yeah, which has 90 different Sure and yeah minerals from the ocean nothing even comes close and we bought a big backpack pump sprayer Filled it with water I think it held two gallons and just walked around and sprayed the plants and I think we did it Once and waited three or four days and then we did it again And but by the end of a week or eight or nine days, they were all untwisting So whatever what they were missing and it was because of no franc's book about my talking about micronutrient problems We kind of zoned it down to being molybdenum Lack of molybdenum, you know, what's what's amazing about that to me is that uh Many years later in 1993 when I was planning on growing for the first time Two of the three books that taught me things was Uh rob Clark's uh marijuana botany and mel franc's growers guide. Yeah You know, there were different editions by then obviously they'd been through some revisions and things as time had gone on But the same knowledge Uh to a young kid desperate for it. So that's pretty cool That that growers guide there was nothing that even came close when it first came out. I mean Yeah, they really was really was fantastic. Mine got so dog-eared I I put some like rings through it Uh to hold it together and I I passed it on to you know, another another guy that You know wound up growing and Breeding and taking seeds to dead concerts and stuff which was pretty pretty foreign to me as a Skateboard punk rocker, you know, yeah Interesting mel. It was I think I can't remember. There was three people involved in that book mel franc and ed Rosenfall of the two I remember off the top of my head But there was a third author Uh that was that contributed to it to some degree. I still have the books at my house was angley. No, he's another photographer Yeah, that's it right there. Yeah, that's one Yeah, that book that book I've probably read a hundred times In that in the six or eight months before I set up my first indoor Because I had no idea what I was doing See when you You got it not so it was probably called the indoor outdoor marijuana growers guide, but the original one was just growers guide growers guide. Yeah indeed I index my books So that I can go in there and find whatever page I needed to really quickly And Then on the marijuana spirits guide Yeah More stuff, you know five hours I think it's probably hard for young people today to like conceive of just how sparse and hard to come by some of this information was Because they're used to the internet and typing things in and forums and resources But it was really limited back then Um in terms of what you could access and you know and how to learn And so those books played um, I obviously even with you guys they played a massive role in uh In teaching people exactly how to pull off a successful crop This is the first first year came out 1978. This is the first edition and or press in berkeley and Mine is kind of falling apart. So I understand what you're talking about Um, oh look what's one of my book markers in here. I didn't even remember Oh, yeah, look at that That's another one. So I have at least two of them. Um and We used to we used to go to the library and I mean I would search for everything on hydroponics because I Even growing outdoors. I was doing outdoor hydroponics in in 1981, you know five-gallon buckets filled with peat moss cow shit perlite and vermiculite And then, you know fed with eco grow You know granular two-part mix and uh Yeah, so I went to the library and I started started researching hydroponics and basically I stole any good book from the library that hydroponics and uh kept it, you know That was uh Very much So study. This is the book. Um, what we are referring to the the rob Clark thesis. It's called the botany and ecology of cannabis This is my copy that I scanned in Is it loaded on the screen? They're numbered Mine's not mine's actually not. No, it's one of the few that's not um Clark actually the one of the few times that he's ever responded about anything was to give me the print run on it And apparently there were I think 1500 total Um There was a first print of 500 and a second print of a thousand, but you can't tell the difference between the two some are numbered some are not But another example, this is he drew this by hand and all through the book. This book are his drawings Yeah, ordinary. I can just imagine them getting wasted and just sitting and just digging drawing I could not draw that by hand No, they're they're beautiful drawings in here like and and that's one of the things like I've been sitting on it forever And you know, it's not really out there for people to see but There are some of the most beautiful drawings of cannabis in the in the cannabis part of the part of the cannabis plant That's a little sexy ever seen. Yeah, it's it's crazy. He did such an amazing job back then To me it Yeah It kind of it kind of you know It kind of reminds me of early early botanists and explorers geneticists. They travel around, you know Different islands and stuff and discovering dodo birds and things like that and sitting around drawing in their sketchbooks describing the Fauna and flora of these these exotic locations. It's just gorgeous and he got it so Accurately, I mean just they looked exactly right the the indica plants that he he drew in marijuana botany were just spot on, you know Yeah And the elegant the elegance of the branches and the leaves that he drew I I just I I always I didn't know if he drew them or somebody else did but I he did I asked him Yeah, he drew him. I just thought they were gorgeous Yeah, there's another book he did called hence That was released in germany that has some beautiful illustrations of his And um, but it's not available in the united states But if you guys can trace trace down a copy of hanf, which is german for him There's more beautiful drawings from him in there cool If you zoom over to the humbled Up here on your list The article that I found on humble growing I thought not the dog would find this interesting It has a it has rob clark in the corner here when he's 29 years old Oh, wow sure does holding a bud And it's in color, but I I only scan in black and white because I Might I'm running low on the other. Well, actually I could have scanned it. That's true It's okay. This works. I wasn't thinking about it, but I I met him I Think this article is from about 1982 because they mentioned something the price of marijuana in 82 So yeah right up here. Yeah, I mentioned so In 82 an estimated 1.8 billion dollars the street value Yeah, so he was 29 in 82 if so you can go backwards and figure that out how old he is and and I met rob He came down to negril once with his wife at the time And I was we hung out together for a few days in the grill And the concept was he was going to look for some You know land races there jamaican. I yeah, I didn't see him after those first few days But I think he traveled around a bit But this is great because it talks about The helicopters and in humbled and at this time I'm so glad you saved this second photo um I figure where it is oh One of the one of the interesting things about when helicopters first started flying Is that people were growing all these giant sativas and the hills and humbled and mendicino And nobody as long as you were tucked away Nobody cared how big they were because no one was looking for them And so there's articles. I've read where like the very first Gardens that got busted by helicopters. They actually chopped down most of the gardens with chainsaws Because the the stocks were like this They were so big and thick and the people weren't worried about About getting caught. Um, so they just had these ginormous Uh, you know these huge sativa plants Um, oh goodness. Look at that. Yeah, right Gangster Oh, that's that that's that's pushing a certain narrative. Not at all You go a k That old chainsaw thing uh was that's that was coming down and where I was living to you know, the national guard helicopters were flying uh looking Looking for the crop and you know when we would go out when I went out to my gardens I was always dressed in camouflage um You know the the whole guerrilla mindset leaving no trail You would create a trail to your spot where you would go from step to step Always putting your foot in exactly the same spot that you did the time before You know crawling under bushes and stuff to it was um Yeah, you're probably familiar rajo. We have we have a bunch of manzanitas Yeah in mendicino county, which are for people that aren't familiar. They're kind of these like smooth limbed bushes that get anywhere from six to 12 feet tall And you can kind of thin them out underneath and a lot of people grew in manzanita patches because you could still get some filtered light But it wasn't going to be totally exposed so uh crawling around in manzanita patches and and cutting off lower branches to make spots for gardens is Is like my first outdoor experiences. What are you holding up there right there, sir? Can you zoom in on this? This is these are humble photos from that same article Let's see here. I'm gonna try to zoom in a little bit No, he's holding up something on his thing matt. Oh, okay. Let me see you over here on uh It's not easy to get back to you. Hold on. There we go. There we go. Um Damn it matt. Oh look at that Here's some guys pruning their a father and son pruning some big leaf plants, too Yeah And they both have 38 caliber weapons in their back pocket that they point out in this article And the guard dog and then here's an aerial shot of a huge garden Like the chance uh you're just grabbing Um people took that risk, but it didn't always work once the helicopters came The helicopters dramatically changed people's approaches I'd go yeah to a huge degree because most of these things were grown in in like like, you know I mean that's super easily visible from the air, but like not there is not from driving around. That's him Yeah, that's the other color Yep, the color difference is just so obvious from the air, you know, it did The tactics for hiding this stuff became you know, pretty Well, look at those bastards creative. These are your humble sheriffs. Yeah in the garden that they just was mantle You know that news week magazine um mad jag the That came out that at the same time there was another article I can't remember if it was time or it was a national publication where they came out with an article talking about this new High potency kind of super weed that was that was you know, flooding the streets called skunk Yeah, and I've been I've been I've been looking for this magazine or this article ever since and I honestly I thought the reference was in that news week that had the guy with the mask And I'm in the in the m16 but um It's it wasn't you know, I've read that article since and I don't think there's a reference to it But they described the effects of skunk In that article it's it's classic reefer madness, you know writing Yeah, um, you know, but they honestly they got it right and they they described the appearance of it they described the effects And uh, it was pretty spot on for what I thought skunk was tears What is this one a reason for tears? Look at that. This is um From the state of of utah, and it's a it's an entire basically um about You know, what's really bizarre is this High school undercover. It's an article about guys Who look at he's got a heavy metal t-shirt, but he's shown his badge And it's a whole article about going undercover in the various high schools in utah like 21 jump street like the tv show I mean, i'll tell you this is obviously so much later But the first time that I ever saw a guy with waist long dreadlocks tackle someone and then put cuffs on them Oh, wow and on dead tour. I was like, oh man You know, are these buds labeled in this picture? They do look labeled don't I can't read what they are But they do look labeled. Yeah. Yeah ones They're labeled like poin mowie stickless tie orange columbian. They spell columbian wrong too They always fell wrong Michoacan mowie. So they had some really good Photos here of different things that they had confiscated. Well, hawken red columbian red Guerrero gold wow I always love those pictures the reference pictures from point of origin and time are so valuable so so so valuable But it's hard when it's cops, you know taking the pictures and you got to hope that they got your bag Right and got this kept the strain name with it I think if it's your bag, you probably got other things to worry about then Indeed freaking provenance, you know I mean One thing one thing that I think is kind of interesting too and it's it's it's obviously we don't need to dwell on it Too much, but I do think that like from what I'm listening to and you guys are talking about all these different Highland and lowland columbians and all these different regions and stuff like that and all these different mexicans and what they were I kind of think that like the cocaine trade and profitability with that Sort of blocked off the next generation of americans from being able to experience that Because the groups that we're all bringing in those columbians and bringing in those mexicans They shifted to a more profitable thing And then it also became unsafe for people a lot of times that looked like us to go down to those regions and get those things So there was this era It was two things that were happening at the same time. Yes the cocaine, you know Became much more profitable for the same people that you know were formerly smuggling cannabis But at the same time the american, you know homegrown market Had had happened And and that product was just such a higher level of quality than what what the imports had because of the freshness and You know the introduction of hard hitting Hard hitting indexes and in their hybrids. Tell me what what what year do you think that was? 80 82 83 Oh, wow Yeah Because I mean we don't need to sidetrack on it But there's been an interplay between like what mexico and down south does versus what's going on in america And like each one responding to the other in terms of cannabis that's been going on for I guess That's not it. That's not a sidetrack at all as a matter of fact. It's another mad jag story. Yeah Can we dive on into that I think that's a good idea I would love to I mean that the the story about you know how you know mad jags contribution to the To the the the the mexican Cannabis gene pool my people's you represent my people's in mexico. All right So how did they how did this start happening? What era did the um, the mexico stuff start occurring mad jag and how well the last year I Grew in mad jag canyon was 81 So by 82 I I knew a guy who was a pilot And it's not the pilot I wrote about like That you know when we talked about 60 tons of packy hatch. Yeah, this is a guy I met him when I was working a regular job at a truck Loading place. I worked for georgia pacific for two years in phoenix in the late 70s and this guy One day he walked up to me I was loading his truck up with empty plastic bottles, which is what they produce at georgia pacific and he said uh Hey, if if I Found a whole bunch of of weed out in the desert. Um, could you sell it? what He had short hair too, but he just figured he felt that vibe And and I said what do you mean? He says well I was flying over this area and I see where someone jettisoned One an empty fuel canister and it's stuck in the ground and I'm going to go out there and check it and it I think it's they were smuggling weed and I went Sure, man. Just Let me know He came back a week later and he was all disappointed because it was just an empty fuel canister And it was actually air force that had dropped it and it was stuck in the ground. It looked like a bomb, you know Yeah, it didn't explode, but then he started talking about other things and then all of a sudden Like two months later. He comes back and I'm loading his truck and he says um I I met the people in mexico and and I said what and so He's he stole a twin engine sesna from scott's hill airport flew it to wallahara and gave it to the cartel To prove to them that he was not a narc that is a gangster. I love it. I know Later, he stole a helicopter out of a patchy junction and flew it down But he only got 20 miles into mexico before something went wrong mechanically and he had to crash land and Take his way back and the fbi came to his house because he found his fingerprints in mexico on this and he denied everything So they couldn't do anything scared the shit out of him, but I bet The They brought several loads of of weed. I found an airstrip in Along the mogan rim in a small town area way out by itself And they were like within five minutes. They said they would be there at one o'clock. They were like they're at 105 kicking out bales onto the airstrip And they would they would bring 500 quilos each flight And that's where one of two of the flights had labels already in them From someone who was supposed to get them in california, but something went wrong and we got them instead I'm still hunting for those labels. I've got them somewhere but um anyway So you had a connection with those guys. Yeah, it was 82 and 83 El Bufalo that rafael caro cintero You could see it from space. It was the square couple miles. You know, they show it in that tv show Narco mexico. Yeah, so that's that's the name of the garden or the farm el bufalo Rancho bufalo And was this at the beginning of the the um, guayardo era of the Yeah development. Well, this is when they were just doing weed. Yeah, exactly What happened was they they grew thousands and thousands of hectares of of uh Weed but they didn't have anyone growing seeds seed crops So they they were desperate for seeds and so my pilot friend Along with my other friend who was the Weed dealer in tempi. We filled two quart-sized bags Half full and he stuck one on each of his cowboy boots Alahar and gave it to them and they were so grateful because it They they had no seeds. Yeah, so unfortunately I was part of this because Seeds from five different zones in mexico ended up in their hands and became the new hybrid and um, oh well Why would you say unfortunately in 1980s? Dutch genetics were already in the grill of jamaica and the people go wild over them They were growing them up in orange hill and all this so land races were getting squeezed out and um to find true jamaican I don't think it's There anymore. Yeah, so there's probably some land races still in stash spots and certainly in colombia, but boy Jamaica being a little island So maybe you could clarify for a second then those seeds that you brought down or he brought down smuggled in his boots What were they a mix of? They were a mix of gurarin sin alone michoacan Well, hawken that my dealer friend in tempi had hydrated over the course of like two or three years He had bags the best of the loads that had passed through loads And so that's why you were like oh you were a little bummed about it because you kind of mixed the strains And then they started growing it and then instead of it being like a regional thing where these specific kinds were coming from It was sort of a blend coming back Right, and we have no idea El Buflo got discovered. Um, I wrote down this November 14th of 84 is when they found it and burned it and it actually The smoke affected people within a hundred mile radius Because they burned 500 hectares and they estimate that it was worth 2.5 billion dollars at that time in 84 So there's a famous million. It's a famous scene in narcos where he um, I can't I think it was it was guyard's brother raff Is that his brother it produces in the in the in the series like this is the super the super strain that the cinza media um right Was this before or after you met him that or is this the the hybrid that you're talking about Well, we gave them seeds in 82 and 83 and El Buflo was captured and burned I don't know if it ran for years before that but just in general they King terror was growing weed in other places, but Buflo was like their Huge place. They had their own wells drilled there. Um, it was in sinola Um, and I've I've read about it in a book called the underground. I forget. I've got the book it's like 900 pages long and it's um Written by a dea agent who is in charge of all the stuff going on then And it has three chapters one on heroin one on cocaine and one on weed and the one on weeds about El Buflo being spotted by a twa pilot or something They're flying over and they went what in the world and they just mentioned it casually That's where kiki Camarino got a job and went and actually penetrated it and in the second movie of sicario So popular it's kind of similar because he's dressed up as a compass, you know, and he gets a job Kiki is the is that the that's the name of the de agent that got killed. Yeah. Yeah later. Yeah Camarino and that caused a huge amount of problems. Oh, yeah, that was it left it alone, you know, but they didn't And that's when they were switching over to cocaine just about 84 85 I think that being burned king taro um from what I read just became Addict of you know drug addict of whatever um, because he was He was sad. He didn't want to see them go into cocaine, but rafael Um, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo He went ahead and went, you know, he became he formed the first cartel with all these loose plazas that were existing guys over here and guys over there and I stayed at his hotel in 84 one of his many he owned apparently a lot And my friend who is the pilot? We went down there and my friend from columbia Found his way there from columbia and we all had a big party and They were hoping that my friend from columbia would Be able to turn them on to newer connections and stuff I don't know really what happened because he loved to do coke But he and I both decided we didn't want to be in that business. Yeah, and the pilot this guy he he kept going They were using our airstrip the one that we had found for weed 1600 to 2,000 pounds of coke at a time They did nine loads and then the an off-duty sheriff who was cutting wood saw them landing and Loading and they got busted and um, I have no idea what happened. It was in the newspaper. I've got a clip I've I've posted before I think on ic mag but I I never I never met miguel felix, but um, my partners did I did enjoy his hospitality because We went in this hotel room and there was a just like in the movies a plate with a four ounce pile of cocaine on it And two other guys who did nothing, but just bring cases of beer all through the Hey, that's nice of them. Yeah Sounds like a weekend at not so's place. I guess. Yeah, it is it is except except there's a lot more men a lot Matt loves it if he doesn't at least wants a show Throw me off my game with something like that. He's upset. So You know just opening and he took it Yeah, that's what she said But I mean just just, you know raho to that that whole thing is just crazy but When I when I was when I was starting to do gorilla in california one of the things that the mexicans did was that Even with the cocaine I was told that like still 70 of their profits was marijuana And so they really didn't like All this homegrown in the west coast sort of taking their Taking their you know their their sales really well and so they started sending these teams All from down by where matt is all the way up to the organ border And going in the national forests and just growing a huge amount as much as they could get away with in all the national forests So that way they didn't have to smuggle it over the border Yeah You know and that's that was kind of so there's been this obviously this like that's what I was saying before about like How one one country influences the other? Is the homegrown movement has dramatically changed how the how the mexicans approach growing weed because You know for a long time. They were sort of the primary weed people Yeah, yeah Yeah, for sure Especially in arizona with the border here Tucson was like the capital of smugglers and And dealers and then it moved up to phoenix and tempi and scott stale But they they busted a big row in the canyon next to us just 10 15 years ago and it was a gang from from mexico Operating out of phoenix and they had a spring that they had found up on the side of this mountain And they had a system of drip irrigation that ran a mile down Yeah, they just went too big these guys they just didn't even think about hunters and ranchers and they just threw a team at it group all this stuff and then they all got busted blew it out. Yeah I mean to some degree on a spring on a hillside model That's that's the way it was done in norcal when I was out there that summer. I'm sure you see lots of that right, I mean the I think the cartels kind of had a They viewed there a lot of their workers as semi disposable And so they sort of expected a certain amount to get in trouble And they just threw a lot of people out there in a lot of different regions And they figured most of them will be successful and some of them won't Yep, and that's kind of how they went about it. I think just a numbers game. Yeah, I mean they had money But you know when the when the powder came in, you know, I think a lot of that columbian Import just disappeared stopped entirely. Yeah, and the mexican commercial became they probably filled the gap For that for that tier of product quality around the country I can tell you that You know, I mean I started smoking in the 90s There was brown mexican and green mexican. I didn't see tie. I didn't see columbian. I didn't see panamanian I didn't see any of those of those famous things that people lacks poetic about It was mexican. Yeah, I saw And I have a decade later and all I saw was mexican too, you know, just I never saw tie Never saw anything other than just mexican Yep Yeah, it was gone. Okay. So we got a little bit into mexico Just just a hair. Do you want to go more into that? Is there some more details you want to add in there? Not really. It's just Rubbing shoulders with these famous people was kind of weird. I didn't know who they were at the time they were just Guys exporting weed from wallahara area, but then when we found out it was miguel anhel And we were like, whoa shit, man. Yeah, I bet We I'm so glad we didn't get sucked into the cocaine deal because The this guy who who was a truck driver. He could fly helicopters. He could fly planes He he went that direction and He sold 10 kilos to the undercover agent North of phoenix in the biggest hand-to-hand sale buy in arizona history at the time and he got I think was seven kilos and he got 10 years in prison His brother kept going and did those loads on our airs our the airstrip that we found um And they got nine of them before they got busted and we calculated at the price Of coke at the time that it was it came to around a quarter billion dollars Whoa Million dollars of coke that they successfully brought in before they got busted And I have no idea what happened to those boys boy jays Yeah preselda Blanco I had never heard her name until I read about it in newsweek or time But that's who my columbian friend was actually working for and his job was to count money And he would go to ask them where they bring in dc-9s or something like six tons at a time of columbian and he would just His fingers he could barely move them after a week because they didn't have machines yet then she's I can imagine Hand counting five million dollars, you know in 20s and 10s And And that's where the stories started happening About how they weighed their their money because in florida he went to a apartment building once and he said There'd be like five apartments and they'd have a secret door in the closet That would link it to the next apartment into the next apartment so that if they had to bail they could just disappear and He went into one apartment and he said it was florida sealing With tiny passageways in the hallways of just money piled florida sealing every single room And he said there was millions of millions of dollars and and that was one of the kind of places where they would just weigh money Yeah, wait, you know and then Send it back to columbia That's so wild and the responsibility of being the due to s to count it because like you get that you're wrong You're gonna be the first person they look at Right Yeah, when you're making friends in brooklyn The guy who was in charge he goes by the nickname sata He overpaid us once two thousand dollars And I know him and he did it as a trick to see if we were gonna tell him and be honest Oh, interesting. We counted the money a second time and I I said In his house in brownsville and I said, you know Sadat, you're over by two thousand dollars. He goes what no no not even possible And he was just messing with us because he wanted this We were it was early in our relationship and he wanted to see if we were honest enough and we passed We passed the test so that was good Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, I used to do that with my spray Like my reversal spray. I'd give it to different people and you know give them different life Yeah, you know for this exchange or this exchange and I knowing mostly that I was never going to get anything But just kind of get a good gauge of who is Going to just take it run with it use it to make themselves a bunch of money or who would do You know what they said It's a good way I mean It's it's a small loss, but it's a good way to judge a potential future lifelong friend too Yeah Cheap way to to figure out who you can trust Absolutely and to them and to the other person. It's almost like From a greedy person's angle. It's like well this one bottle could potentially make me You know several thousand dollars worth of feminite seeds. So is it worth the burn? You know and a lot of times it is worth the burn to people Yeah, magic magic always says if there is a doubt About a person then there is no doubt It's a good quote. That's a line from the movie. Um Ronin and running. Yep. And um, he says if there's a doubt there is no doubt And it's near the end of the movie and that's when you find out that he never quit and he was still working for the CIA or something. Yeah, um, Robert De Niro Right the classical movie, but it's true It if you I treat my life that way if I have a doubt about something I just go I'll wait and see what the universe said. I I didn't do that when I was younger You seem to have jumped in the both feet, you know, you seem to have a very magical touched life though I mean a lot of people You know only live a fraction Or see a fraction of what what you managed to get yourself Wound up in time and time again And and the fact is you guys weren't outlaws as far as carrying guns and being cowboys and stuff like that You carried this very humble attitude Yeah, I had a great big throwing knife on my hip when I was doing the canyon and you know, I don't know what good that would do Um, but we we specifically didn't we knew other people some of the guys from Jerome They were all heavily armed and they would have barbed wire in the bushes and weird stuff You read about this in magazines and yeah, and I was just going that's That makes them instantly Dangerous criminals. Yeah, we were just hippies. I am dangerous criminals That's an important distinction to make because I think Uh, we've chatted for long enough now that I can safely say that everybody on on this, uh This little this little call that we're doing is is a weed nerd. You know, yeah in that regard and so for me Um having been in a bunch of counterculture kind of my whole life I totally differentiate between like people who do certain substances But are otherwise like honorable and very good people It's just some of the things they decided to get into happened to not be societally acceptable, right? Yeah, and then people that are like actual criminals You know where it's and there's a big difference there because there's a lot of weed people that are wonderful people Um, and the only thing that they do wrong really they could get them into significant trouble Is marijuana? Yeah, you know and I and I was when I was listening to you guys talk about some of the The the transition into powders and stuff like that one of the things that I've always thought about is that Like the weed game or the weed scene is inherently just like less dangerous Than that other world like when that other world started happening Maybe it's because of the way it makes people think or the way people act or the money was so much bigger But it seemed to bring out a lot of Like negative qualities and people that when you were in the weed game Existed but maybe weren't like maybe weren't like accented quite so much Right, you know Yeah Well, my friends in brooklyn they would Sato would open the door. He'd have a mac nine in his hand You know and he'd look around and make sure it was cool to let us in But they had they had plenty of weapons But my friend ricky who he's still my friend. I see him when I go to new york He lives in brooklyn in the same apartment since 74. He uh never Ever had a gun the other rastas did and but he was he's a philosopher. He's a real gentle guy He's a Good brother of mine. I've known him 40 years now and he uh He's wonderful. I go have curry goat with him whenever we're there. He takes me to a different restaurant I love curry goat and Aki and saltfish they have in those those Caribbean neighborhoods, you know, you can still get all that the restaurants They cater to the people who live there. So it's very cool. I love that stuff I would say too like for mendicino county There's definitely people that have guns that had the intention on using them You know if they were accosted by other humans, but there was a lot of growers That had guns on them Simply because they were in some remote ass spot on the hill and if they came across a bear with cubs or a mountain lion They didn't want to just die Right. They wanted to have a fighting chance. So there was there was this idea of i'm alone in the deep woods by myself And this is not my territory And there's bear and mountain lion and other things that that uh, i'm a lot weaker than Even jaguars Even jaguars. Yeah, I mean even that I mean mountain lions. You know bears usually hear Um mountain lions, they they've been watching you for a while if you ever even know that they're there You know But we would encounter all that that kind of stuff like a lot of times all of a sudden something would go wrong with our water And we'd have to walk the water line back to like the the cat You know the the spring box that we had made or something, right? And you're walking through deep woods Totally alone You know and you're in the deep woods and you know, you don't have teeth or claws and you're not super strong So some people would have pistols or shotguns or something just to make themselves feel okay when they're out there in sticks Yeah dual dobermans is is popular with some people. I knew they had two dobermans and they were you know, they went wherever they went they had their dobermans and One's name was tor and the other one was tia tor tia. I know This one guy and you know, they they were not quite command dogs, but they were close He would tell them to do something and they would just do it Yeah, so and they'd sniff out a bear or a bear would you know, it better let your dogs fight the bear than you yeah, I mean in my era too, it became uncomfortable because um The penalty for getting caught with a gun at a at a at a row was actually like quite a bit worse than the grow itself Yeah, then it was kind of like a Do you risk it even? Because even if even if you were going to beat the case on a medical thing or something like that later on with the grow They'd be like, oh no, he's a hardened criminal armed Right. He was ready to hurt people and we caught him Well, you know that's what this is from that Humboldt article and they're they're pointing out this machine gun Yeah, it says it says Humboldt deputies Sees this menacing array of weaponry including an uzi and an ak-47 along with marijuana in raids on growers You know, they love to point those out and make everybody think that that's what most growers are doing. They do absolutely They do and some people sadly, I mean Wherever there's profit involved people get into it for different reasons Yeah, you know and and some of the people involved certainly were that I wouldn't classify it as the majority, but certainly a percentage You know, yeah Well humans or humans I didn't feel real comfortable and waddle hard to tell you the truth because everyone was packing in those the guys carrying the beer were packing the I don't know just they that's their job They took us out to sushi in malahari and it was some of the best sushi. I've ever had in my life and they They were it was a lieutenant of migels He went by the name of wapo, which means handsome and they took us out And it was amazing because the guy who ran it He'd speak in japanese to his crew Then he turned to us and speak in english perfectly and then he turned and talked to these guys in spanish It was quite quite amazing Yeah, it doesn't doesn't fit in with the stereotype of the dump of the the dumb stoner, right? Yeah Oh, I mean, I think americans are uh We're very we're very isolated because we've got uh canadians who also speak english for the most part Besides the people in quebec Above us And we've got two oceans next to us But I think a lot of parts of the world are multilingual just because they encounter so many different languages As part of their daily life and in america we are we're kind of broken from that in a bit, you know My switch friend that speaks five languages perfectly. Yeah, I have an aunt who's swiss and she speaks four You know And and and so much so yes very much so and I I actually kind of regret that because I think the Younger you learn language the more fluent and fluid you are in in speaking and reading it Um, and I think americans a lot of times like uh, it does something to your brain to be able to speak multiple languages And communicate, you know, I I think it's super cool Um, yeah, so we have the the story of the peyote prince Can you Briefly or maybe not even briefly. Can you tell us what a peyote prince is? Um One of their they're both. I don't know how they came into this but they both knew sam and Sam was a road chief in the native american church on the navajo reservation And he had a license that allowed him to go to northern mexico across the border from texas And he'd come back with a quarter million or a half a million of peyote buttons. Yeah for the church where actually 90 of it wasn't going to the church. It was going to these two guys. Yeah, and they would one ribbed in tempi two blocks from the police station and the other one in cottonwood, arizona and That's where I lived at the time And these were fresh buttons so they had to dry them it so the guy in tempi had date Date racks that they dry dates in and it was perfect for peyote If you went into his little old house in tempi You had to turn sideways to go down the hallways or go into any room In this case that wasn't stacks of money. It was just stacks of date trays Drying 200 000 buttons And once they dried as you've if you've seen them they look like little flat discs and Almost like jerky, you know like a little piece of jerky But don't be fooled but until you take And they would just sell This was 1973 when I was first in arizona and um You could get them as low as a nickel a button if you bought a certain amount Yeah, and then you could sell them for a quarter so In illinois and cago all over United states these two guys had friends who who would come to arizona and get them I don't think they shipped in the ups or in the mail people always took them one of my friends Gave a guy 200 and he was going through Custom or through the gate to go to his air his flight this was about 19 80 I'm thinking in phoenix or maybe it was 78 somewhere in there And he looked back to see his friend leaving and one of the security guys was holding the bag of peyote up in the air and looking at it And and the and he asked him what are these and he said their peyotes their um cactus seeds and the guy Oh, okay, and he came back to them. They they didn't even had it wasn't even on their radar and their training yet Yeah, at that point Sure The princes were amazing I know both of them still they're still both alive And one of them isn't as healthy as the other but they were you know it was just a Amazing thing that millions and millions of buttons they sold and some of them were diverted to redway To the guy there two of my friends would drive 50 to 70 thousand buttons to up to Northern california and they would get turned into mescaline sulfate pure Wow And mescaline is only like 40 percent. I think some number like that of the alkaloids In a peyote, that's the one that everyone knows Then they even call it mescaline, you know or whatever, but there's many other alkaloids that are significant in a peyote journey, but when you extract just The mescaline sulfate then it's a different journey And I would I did them both and I I compared it to The mescaline sulfate was like peyote without the teacher Because we all we take peyote or experience it. There's this inner voice It's it's hard to describe but you it seems like it's someone else, but it's you actually It's your inner consciousness. You're hearing your thoughts in a way that it sounds like it's an external word Yeah, I've never done peyote. It's it's I'm terrified of throwing up. So well Let me let me interject something here my My experience with peyote is probably a lot less than yours But I will say that the buttons were some of the more bitter things that I ever intentionally swallowed in my life So I can see how the mescaline pills might might go down a little smoother for some people because You really have to be like, okay. This is going to be good for me Because they don't taste good It's not as bitter as wormwood, but it's right up there. It's pretty intense bitter I mean, I remember that was that's my strongest memory Of trying to consume them was like man Yeah Yeah, there was people doing peyote elements to avoid it going into their gut. That was big in the area mostly Lots of people trying to get me to do that Yeah, they would make tea and then just do an animal and then You would have this wonderful trip and you never throw up. You don't get any discomfort because you skip your gut You're stuck. Yeah. I mean like I I've I've done ayahuasca in brazil booths all the time. Good lord. I do not but That when you when you are like, you know meeting your creator or whatever and you're and you're super fired up Um, having your stomach hurt and having to purge any which way you have to purge is pretty intense Yeah, and I remember when I did it in brazil. I had to run out and I had to do it I had to get rid of some things out outside of myself in the jungle And I really wanted a bright american clean bathroom because I felt so exposed just like running in the dark And and I've heard that experience of other people Yeah, south america very intense and you know peyote. It doesn't it doesn't feel good digesting some of those alkaloids You were discussing your body is not ready to digest them comfortably Yeah, so sometimes Chocolate mescaline and the stuff that was being sold on the hill in bolder was not mescaline Even at the low price of five or six or eight cents a button when this was being made by that That um wizard chemist in northern california it it Enough to get you high would cost you ten dollars So these one and two dollar hits of chocolate mescaline were just um lsd. Yeah Mixed in because unless you paid her ten fifteen dollars And It's photos on my one of my um Chronicles they look like pickup sticks about an inch long Sharp needles if you poured them out of a bottle. They would just Pile up in these sharp needle looks and they'd have to be crushed into a powder to put them in a cap We um just ate some of the crystals once and but the guy who said you know if you're measuring this out a good trip It'd be ten to fifteen dollars So very few people have actually even seen or done mescaline sulfate. This is the point I I agree with you. I would even say in my era when I was experimenting with that stuff It's almost all relabeled lsd Um, you know, it just was Yep, uh, it most people haven't experienced it because the the buttons are hard to come by and they taste gross Um, and and people are just marketing to a different thing. So they're like, oh, yeah, here's some mescaline, but it um There's some really good advice you gave and one of your stories uh adjag About juicing buttons If you talk about that a little bit Well, the last time I did peyote, I Juiced 50 buttons fresh buttons And I have a lot Yes Ten is you eat 10 fresh buttons if you could get those down you will have a really strong journey Oh, wow, we took 50 and juiced them and I had a quart bottle of beautiful Emerald green liquid and my friend who is the tall fellow my first girl partner He drank a third of the bottle and I drank two thirds of the bottle and he spent the whole night face down on his sleeping bag um He never moved for like 10 hours and I would ask him a question and he wouldn't answer and then about three or four minutes later He'd go no It was a time lag. It was really funny and I had a fire going and I was saying let's go for a hike Let's do this and he just he was immobilized But he had a good when he woke up in the morning. He said, uh, I had the strangest dreams So he did enjoy it though like the If you ever see movie young gums with Emilio Estavez and all those young kids stars that were There's a scene in there where they eat peyote. Yeah, and they're the one guy shooting his gun wildly out at this mining claim and and The what other guy is talking and you hear his voice but he's not talking and Whoever produced that movie Has done peyote because they knew about the voice It's so clear in that scene. I I was just amazed that someone had um, or they had a technical advisor that knew that That's how they would do it because he was stumbling around and you could hear this voice talking to him Yeah, it was good I man has tried to get me to talk about psychedelics on the show and I've kind of kept it weed focused but I will say that sometimes When when things get very intense Um, you're kind of locked in your own mind Like if your friend was laying down What they're experiencing and feeling and thinking and is so intense You just lose track of the fact that you have legs and arms and you can you can't really interact with the world Because you have so much sensory data that's coming into your brain And you're thinking about so many things that like all that other stuff is extraneous To some degree, you know and that that's common. I've seen that on mushrooms on lsd on high doses of different things Where you just end up kind of in your own head You know, it's not a very physical thing. It's a very inward thing Yeah, you know and so Um, sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad, but it usually is is is positive long term You know, as long as you got a safe space and you're with friends Yep set and setting is everything Yeah, and I think I think for uh episode three we might adventure Maybe if you're open to it, maybe make that more of the um full expansive psychological Psychedelic aspect of your life the spiritual journey that that has brought magic to this point Because we're button up against the end and I know like for those that are watching this We recorded this around right around christmas time Everybody's kind of squeezing in hours to get them in so I also wanted to to really thank you guys for spending your time with us and every everyone in the audience I'm on christmas, so Yeah, it's it's an honor man and a pleasure and i'm so glad that we um, I was able to convince rajo to um join in the way he has because Uh, I met him for the first time last year I've been We've been faced on yeah face to face, but we've been friends for Since round 2012 on the forums And uh, it was just a gas to meet him And oh, I bet i'm glad and to see him sit with people talking about strains and and varieties There is only one other person a guy who goes by the name satva who's in boulder who's Can tell you about 30 different types of columbian And he's been growing columbian in boulder for like 30 years. Oh man Like 10 different punta roja strains I mean he and he goes to these places. He's his wife speaks fluent Spanish He speaks some and they go down to guerrero a lot along the coast in little towns that you can only get to by boat Oh, wow. Yeah, and he's posted some photos Yeah, he's he was amazing Join us too I Yeah, I can say from my perspective that first matt'll tell you it takes a lot to shut me up Um, and I try to talk as little as possible But I burn with questions almost every third sentence that you or rajo talk about And I try to afterwards write down various questions and ideas that I have and so It's really cool that we're having like this multi-stage thing because An hour or two after we do these things I get I'm like, oh my god. Why didn't I I want to follow up on that so bad. I got to remember We'll do it, you know, because there's this off-handed comment and you know conversations go in different directions And you don't always get to follow up on stuff um, and we like free flowing but, um, there's a wealth There's a wealth of uh of of information and just enjoyable convo here. So I'm I'm super stoked Well, remember this for next time. Payphones and quarters Payphones and quarters it is Because that's how we had to communicate. I'd call my phone That's that was my that was my if we ever talk about the psychedelic aspect. That was my era payphones and quarters Do you know what a chinger is? Yeah, yeah, it's a black box. It's it's to make it. Yeah So what we did when we were on dead tour is we someone discovered that when you put quarters into a payphone the pay the pay the company actually knows what Coin you're putting in by the tone So a dime is one tone and nickel is one tone a quarter is one tone Somebody got the clever idea that you could get these little recorders from radio shack that recorded about 30 seconds And you could record them and you could just push In quarters into the thing and record Right and then when you go to make a long-distance call Yep, you know you we would so we would use payphones and and and all these different things and like, you know Tell each other where we're going to be at what time of day and what hour and call us Not as a boomer. He calls them chiners As young and calling black boxes You hold it up to the Mouthpiece of the phone and hit play and it would make the sound of the coins falling into the machine, right? And eventually eventually the phone company caught on to it and you would get an operator going sir. Hello. Hello Yeah, and you would have to bail but You know, yeah, it uh, that was that was before cell phones When it pay phones were everywhere $9.90 for three minutes to Cali, Colombia from in 1982 and The operators were going what and you know I yeah, it was I used a lot of quarters, but my friend in Manhattan One of the three brothers of the weed people He would buy a thousand dollars worth at a time at a bank and he had a cart and he'd bring them out He'd load up his car and whenever he'd go out. He just put like 10 rolls in his pockets because You know, never know how many phone calls you're gonna have to make and how long because he was always calling to different states Um, yeah pay phones. Wow Yeah Uh, it was a little spy versus spy on that level. They were safer, you know They were safer, especially if you rotated and didn't use the same ones all the time It always sucked Following not so though after a pay phone because they're just so sticky. I just cannot do with that man Indeed see he's got two in this episode. He didn't get one in the last time. So he's bummed It's really practically three with the whole boofing thing. Yeah Yeah, I'm glad someone remembered that one Especially all the other old messages at the bottom. We're at almost two hours here. Yeah So matt if you want to plug anything and um, and we'll keep we'll keep this thing going I mean, there's a lot of of pads we can go down And we still only scratch the surface on some of it. Yeah, I mean we made it to map one 1979 said I think yeah next round. We're gonna go to 1980 map and then continue on um, but We have our merch up go check out syndicate gear dot com You guys raho anything Uh, you know, this was a great episode I like we kind of focused on the mad jag stuff and you know, if we maybe we can organize or You know get a little bit of a a game plan To limit or focus discussions that way we won't spin off so much. We'll be able to drill down I'm on the upcoming ones, but um, no, you know, maybe with all this discussion about old mexicans I maybe give a shout out to one of my boys cryptic labs Who has a great reputation for his walk-in lines that these are stuff that he's collected back in the 80s and has preserved and shared and and uh Is is turning out great lines today. Um, he's just done a Kind of a dug out a fresh batch of old seeds and has done a selection on him It has found a couple of amazing phenos that I think he'll be coming out with soon. So cryptic labs For the old max, um, awesome Yeah, but besides that just looking forward to more and yeah, some of my own stuff to throw in there What was your link to the uh Clothing and stuff. We said syndicate is syndicate gear dot com. Oh Yep, excellent, and I um, I was going to toss in a quick thing to zomia collective out of thailand They have some amazing old land race ties Um, the squirrel tail the the red string tie the dye ding or I don't want to mispronounce it anyways Um, yeah, they ship very fast and I got myself which is not always Easy when you know sending money out of the country. So props to them people looking for land race stuff. It's a legit place Not so All I have to say is that uh, uh, I'm excited on these conversations And as always I'm very happy for anyone that takes the time to listen to us Ramble on about a weed and history and culture and all that. So thank you all very much All right Our pleasure from all of us guys. Yeah. Have a great holidays. We'll see you right out. Yeah, happy holidays for sure Happy holidays. We want to sit at the table with a syndicate party. Check out our patreon and our link tree or description below Our merch site is officially live We have all sorts of shirts hoodies and goodies to sort you out and shipping is super fast and most importantly the quality is top notch I've been saving old designs for years for this purpose. So please check it out syndicate gear dot com We also have an underground syndicate discord where we get together and solve old strain history together daily It's an amazing community of learning away from ig and it's an amazing resource for old catalogs and knowledge We hope you join our union of breeders and growers come check it out