Skip: So there are grower snobs, then?

[Laughter]

Jorge: Definitely. Then again, some people are excellent growers. More than half are! I think there's a lot of production going on out there. That's what most people are concerned with. As far as drying and curing. Most people, espcially indoor growers have very little concern with that. Just dry it and smoke it.

Skip: That would disturb me a little bit. So are these growers actually processing their pot after it leaves the greenhouse? Are they doing their own curing and drying and trimming?

Jorge: No. See a greenhouse grower is usually bigger and they have their whole crop come at once. So they usually take better care of their plants than a small indoor grower. The large commercial indoor growers always take care of their pot the same, just dry it and sell it, dry it and sell it.

Skip: Aren't they processing a whole plant at a time? They have all these machines that strip off the leaves and to process it now. It's not so much of a careful manicuring that used to go on.

Jorge: It depends upon how big the place is. If you've got 50 acres of dope, you've gotta process it mechanically because physically you can't process it fast enough before it rots.

Skip: So my question then is; is that good for the consumer? Are they losing some of the potency because they're just throwing the pot around?

Jorge: No, it's a lower quality of pot that's grown outside in the field that's mechanically processed. You're gonna bruise the buds up a little more and that's going to bruise your resin glands. You have to stack this pot up and move it around and stack it on top of each other, so it's a little abusive. But if you take good care of it and cut it carefully with scissors and don't bruise the tricomes.

Skip: So at some point, with the biggest growers, are buds being handled by hand and given that extra care, or is it just mass production?

Jorge: It depends upon each individual. This one Swiss guy, for example, grows great big plants that are kinda gangly. He never fertilizes or waters or anything. I mentioned to him, you can do a lot better with your production. If you just fertilized or weeded once, you could pick up your production by 20-30%. He says "You know that's probably true, but then if I just put one more row in here, then I don't have to think about what you said, and I don't have to learn anything, so that makes me happier. Besides, I have about 3 tons here," [laughter] and I can't smoke it all...[more laughter] So I make it into hash and I give it for Christmas."

Skip: So how much pot is being converted into hash by these growers?

Jorge: Well in Switzerland, a lot of it. There's a lot of hash being made there. They like hash better in Switzerland. In most of Europe they like hash better. Probably Switzerland is the biggest country (for producing) hash. Second would be Netherlands for local hash. Third might be Canada. But you don't see hash that's made by growers that actually gets on the market. Maybe here (in Holland) you do.

Skip: Here you do because in the last year I've noticed a big increase in the variety of Nederhash. They don't even call it Nederhash anymore. They're starting to use trade names now like Ice-O-Later or Jelly Hash. There's competition here with brand names. Now the hashes are getting their own names. At first it seemed they were taking the name of the plant itself and just putting the word "hash" after it. So whatever variety they had they would just call it that plus hash (to set it apart from other Nederhash). But even that's a problem because if you had "Jack Herrer Hash", well then lots of people could make hash out of "Jack Herrer" but if you give it a certain name and trademark it, then you have a product that's unique.

I've always like the Nederhash because it's always kinda pure. But now they've gotten into processing it perfectly. It's become a connoisseur thing for the growers themselves, who are perhaps the biggest consumers of these hashes. Along with the coffeeshop owners and the people who work there, they seem to have developed quite the taste for their own hashes. As a result what we are seeing is so much more shaken buds for sale in the shops because most of it is being processed for hash first and the leftover is being sold as bud. And it's not what it used to be and everybody's noticing it because I'm getting lots of comments on our website now about it too. People come here from the states, who are used to smoking good shit like say in California where the buds are just crammed full of resin, and they come here, and they find it inferior. This is unusual because it used to be the reverse.

This is my own crusade. I'm trying to make the public aware of why this is happening and get them to confront the coffeeshops on this issue. I feel if you're a breeder, you breed this pot special to have this incredible potency or whatever. And then when the person actually buys it, they may go back home and say "You know I smoked a lot better than that shit. They've been writing it up as being great, but when I bought it in a coffeeshop it wasn't that good." That really reflects badly on the seed breeders who really have no control over how their stuff is finally marketed. They also need to get on the ball and start pressuring them (growers, coffeeshops).

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