STRAIN HUNTERS LIVE THREAD! - TRINIDAD - St.VINCENT

[Chronmon]

So when will there be a green house island? With grower co-ops and weedy villages!

Attached files

[Spliff4]

let me do your life for only one day :DD Love Green House Seed Co

[Romeu9]

jjjj

[Dust]

Very nice franco thanks for the time shared, i can't wait to see the biggest bud of the island, Hoping there are the sweetest too

[Sixstring2021]

Absolutley wonderful Franco, Arjan and crew, keep up the great work

[elvis420]

we are all traveling with you in spirit ! you have the force with you at all times! peace and dirt! el.

[SuperSilverHaze78]

This is truely a great trip! Thanks for taking us all along with you!! Much love from the states bro!

[G_Starr]

thanks for the insights guys,was great to be able to see all those sativas in their natural habitat hehe. u do a great/important job much respect one love !!!!

sixstring yeah its a jamaican tabacum i have rustica aswell ;-)

[Talking Monkey]

All of this footage is so inspiring. Those boats are brilliant! looks like your having a good time.

ps,

Hope that blister isn't giving you too much trouble, I reccomend the "1000mile approach sock" for a hike in that climate, its very hard to damage your feet in those bad boys! lol.

Cheers,

TM

[KrystalPhoenix]

Namaste', Greetings & Hello StrainHunters, This has been one of the best trips to date!!! The warm weather will keep y'all smiling all winter long. Franco; WONDERFUL!!! The "GoPro Hero" has infinate uses for the team and other projects around Amsterdam. Arian can do "scooter rides" to show parts of the city and how to get around. You can use it as the "Head-Cam" for making videos on "GrowHD TV". Simon; Outstanding work keeping everything running smoothly!!! Arjan; All I can say is...."THANK YOU" for being all of us with you...AGAIN!!! The great works you have started touchs so very many as well as educates the "Seekers Of The Truth"!!! I want y'all to spread the truth while enjoying the life's y'all are so very "BLESSED" to have, My Friends!!! Maybe, I can see you later...Franco Take care, Stay safe, & Bless y'all!!! From your Appalachian Brother Rusty!!! Namaste'!!!

[tono420blaze]

Namaste broder! Great vibe.

[franco]

DAY 9

We wake up very excited, today we are going to a big field again, and it seemed it's gonna be a very good one. Dr. Green's contact is a very respected planter, and many guys from the boat crews said he's got really big buds, ready to harvest. We eat breakfast at the big table, and we talk about the day ahead. It's sunny, again, and it's going to be a hot day for walking.

Today we use just one boat, Jahash. We pack our bags for the walk, and we go down to the beach.

The boat-ride is fast, as usual, but we stop for a few minutes when we see a school of dolphins passing by fast. I cannot resist, I have to wear snorkeling gear and jump in. By the time I'm in the water most dolphins have passed but there are still few swimming away in the clear water. Amazing creatures they are, I always loved swimming near them.

I jump back onboard and the Captain pushes the engines to the max. We arrive at the landing spot around 9:30. It's the same beach where we started the volcano-walk few days ago.
This time we don't need to cross the river, because we approach the beach just past it.

We head inland, in the same caves and dry riverbed we walked days ago. Then we take a sharp detour, jumping over a small canyon, and straight into the thick bush. We climb a steep hill for over an hour, then finally we see cannabis plants. Lots of them, and big. It's surely the nicest field we saw during this whole expedition. Plants are huge, and flowers are thick and dense. We notice immediately that there are massive buds around, and that the genetics are very mixed. Half of the plants present traits from the local landrace, but there's an entire area on the highest part of the hill where plants of all kinds grow next to each others. There are real sativas, but also real indica crosses. Some remind of Kushes, others of the White family, others of fruity hazes. It's fun to walk plant by plant, not knowing what smell awaits in the next bud. We film some scenes, and talk about our feelings and sensorial experiences, then we need some shade and some rest.

We walk up to the shanti, overlooking the field, and we sit with the planters. They cook some fried banana for us, we eat and drink, and then we smoke some good bud.

These planters explain that it's the usually the boat owners that organize these fields. They pay for clearing the jungle, and for the crews tending the fields. At the end, they buy the whole crop for a cheap price, and transport it abroad. The business is very lucrative. And it ensures every single island in the Eastern Caribbean has good weed to smoke, "Vincy" quality.

When we feel rested we take another tour of the field, looking for special plants we missed. We collect seeds from several interesting crosses, then we gear up and start the walk back to the beach. It's a fast downhill, and I film the descent with a GoPro. Our boat is not at the beach, there have been reports of a Coast Guard vessel patrolling the area, and Captain Philip vanished. After a few minutes I reach him via radio, and he returns to pick us up.

We head towards the village of Leyou, where we meet our contacts J. and C., ready to join us for a good dinner and some party-time at the villa. After all, this is our last night here. Tomorrow night we will fly back to Europe; sad thought.

The boat-ride at sunset is awesome, the sky is on fire. We drink beer, smoke bud, and enjoy the view.

Once at home we find Gerry grilling fish on the bbq and mixing pina-coladas, and it's a delightful sight: we are tired and hungry.

After a splash in the swimming pool we sit for dinner, which is truly amazing as usual. The fish is fresh and tasty, and it is perfectly complemented by the local hot pepper sauce. After the food we just take it easy and enjoy the night. Music is blasting, booze is flowing, weed is burning, there's even a pool-tournament going on. The camera-crew shows us some of the footage of the last days, and it's amazing.

We realize how good this mission has been, and how sad we are to be leaving tomorrow. The people here are so relaxed, and so nice; we will miss them all.

By midnight we are all pretty much finished, and by 1 am there's just a few of us left standing, and smoking. I take pride in being the last one to put out his joint tonight (while I finish writing this update). And by the time I reach my bed it's really late, but it's all good.

The life of a strain hunter is truly intense, and I love it.

[Jimmy]

Love it so much bro! Thanks for make my week so much better =)! Have a safe trip home friends!

Peace & Love

Jimmy

[Flail]

AMAZING!!! the envy is seaping..

@ franco,

It appears from this thread that you seam to have had access to many more genetic lines then on previous expiditions.

would you agree? also would you attribute that to the close phsycal locations of the island cross polinating each other?

or would it be more so the introduction of aftermarket seeds to said area?

Thanks again for letting us live thru your thoughts, works, pictures and videos... you don't know what it means to US!

Cheers

[macca]

great job guys, fantastic expedition cant wait for the doc

[BuzzHunter]

These are some nice bud shots from the last field, whos that hairy fella wearing simons hat and glasses ?? ,)

its a beautiful place would love to see one of those sunsets myself.

Only happy faces in the evening must have been a great atmosphere.

Thx to everybody involved, the crew for doing a damn good job, the locals for being such cool cats they all look like directly out of a movie..

Thanks to Simon, love that guy hes so laid back & humble at the same time;

thank you franco your spirit and energy despite being a hardcore toker are impressive and inspiring! damn good writing 2.

Last but not least THANKS to the big boss arjan for spending that much money and making it all possible, wow 4 expeditions already must have cost a fortune.

btw how does he do it still looking like a poster boy on some shots with his almost 50 ? years...

i will not forget and continue supporting greenhouse by buying your stuff

[shiva boom]

thx for sharing and hunting love it all the way long, have all a save journey home ...................

bless

[alexbiologo]

Thanks for sharing!

[Dust]

snif snif, last day is coming, so is last update

Thanks a lot for the hardwork, much appreciate and respect, I love the green seedling carpet too! How do they seperate them when they wanna transplant them?

[scotthawk123]

this has been a great week, very envious of what you guys do. what a great job to have

[Spliff4]

ho ho ho christmass trees~~

[scotthawk123]

Looks like you guys hit the jackpot today, I liked the green carpet and the big exotic christmas trees haha. keep up the great work

[franco]

Not even 6 am and I'm wide awake. Must be the adrenaline of the last day, or the acquired rhythm: I have been sleeping an average of 5 hours per night for the last 9 days. And actually I'm still a bit drunk from last night, let's be honest.
Jah Bless, Gerry... I fell in your pina-colada-trap like an amateur, again.
What a great party we had with the crew! Everyone was so high... even the guys that don't smoke so much normally. Really funny.

Anyway, my morning joint is rolled, my coffee is ready, and I am online to see how many views we got on the LIVE THREAD. It's over 10000, amazing!!!

You guys rock, really!

So here we go with some comments:

@ drunkknucklehead & Dust - the green carpet is a germination-bed. The planters like to have spare seedlings when they plant a field. What they do is as follows:

- first they prepare a germination-bed, and germinate thousands of seeds.

- then they prepare the field (if it's a new field they clear the bush, otherwise they harvest the previous crop and clean up the mess).

- When the field is ready they make big piles of soil, at about 5 feet (1,5 meter) from each other, in rows. On top of each pile they transplant 10-20 seedlings, taking them out of the planting-bed. The seedlings are easy to rip out of the planting bed, without damaging the roots, because they are so close to each other that the tap-root goes straight down, and does not spread laterally.

- After a few weeks they select the strongest plant out of each pile, and kill the rest.

It's a very effective way of planting and selecting. But it requires loads of seeds available.

@ MapleLeaf_Flail - during this trip to Trinidad and St.Vincent we found only one landrace, present on both islands (and on all Eastern Caribbean islands). It's the Colombian Santa Marta sativa.
But on both the islands we visited there have been many people importing high-grade seeds from Amsterdam and from America, starting as far back as the 1970s (when mass-tourism in the Caribbean became a reality thanks to the diffusion of airplane travel).
Tourists and locals imported many strains for their personal breeding programs, and this keeps going on today. But the amount of high-grade seeds introduced is a micro-fraction of the seeds circulating for the production of local weed; the local landrace always dominates, there is just too much pollen flying around, so the growers always try to get their hands on some new high-grade seeds when they can. In order to keep adding genes to their gene-pool they have to plant some foreign seeds every 3-4 years, otherwise it all gets back to the local landrace.

In Trinidad and St.Vincent there are also many big loads of high-grade weed arriving from Jamaica regularly, and the seeds from these batches are always planted to enrich the local sativa. Local planters call anything that is slightly indica "high-grade", as opposed to the "low-grade" local bulk-produced sativa. (In reality the Santa Marta is a great landrace, very high, with a great taste. But the production process is rough, and aims at quantity over quality, making the final product less appealing than it should be).

The almost constant injection of external genetics allows the planters to get a very high variety of crosses on their fields, but it's always a small number of plants when compared with the local landrace. The majority of the large production crops are pretty uniform, showing few phenotypes, and it's all Santa Marta. Variations are mostly due to different soil, different fertilization, and different rainfall.

In my opinion it's very unlikely that cross-pollination can happen island-to-island (unless the rare cases where islands are really close to each other, in the order of a few miles) because the air is very humid all year round, and pollen gets heavy and precipitates in these conditions.

@ Buzzhunter - thanks for the kind words man, full respect! True soldiers like yourself have all our appreciation.

@ everyone online on our pages, all the people that I did not mention personally: thank you for following our adventures, and for forwarding our message. It means a lot to us.
We could never be doing this if it wasn't for the hundreds of thousands of people that buy our seeds every year, supporting our quest for research, for knowledge, and for preserving cannabis landraces. Together we stand, for a world where cannabis WILL be respected, and legal.

Now it's time I get my shit together for the last day of this amazing mission... tonight we will fly, so I will not be able to upload probably. Talk to you guys sometimes tomorrow, from cold Europe, for the last update.

Monday 24 October we will start with the competition associated with this thread, don't miss it! Instructions will come from Admin soon...

One Love

[Romeu9]

Thank you so much, Franco! You made the expedition very close to us by your writing and fellowship in your words!

Thank you Franco, Arjan! You guys rock!

We are proud Hunters and Green House Seed Company proud Lovers!!!

Take care

[Dust]

Great words, thanks a lot for the info on the germination bed, i was wondering if the roots didn't cross each other now i know ^^

Thanks again a lot for the entire thread, as everyone says you guys rock!!

I'll stay glued to the contest, i wanna go to that cup so bad ^^

Have a good last day and a nice flight back home