High all…
OK, here’s my story and why I’m posting to this thread…
In 2002, I joined overgrow.com and became a lurker. After seeing the information that was available and the grows that were possible, I bought a few packs of beans from Gypsy (Neville’s Haze, White Widow and Serious AK-47). I decided I would use BushyOlderGrower’s (BOG) soil recipe and started my beans. It was at this time that I also started building my grow room, and that’s when I got super active with my OG posts. That grow room thread became very popular, which was extremely rewarding because I was learning at the same time I was helping others learn.
In a reasonably short period of time, soon after my room was mostly complete, something magical started to happen: my plants grew into large, spectacularly beautiful ladies. My posts showing pics of my girls were also rather popular and I ended up winning a bunch of “Photo of the Week” (POTW) contests because so many great people nominated and voted on my pictures.
My good fortune as a grower also drove a lot of attention to my Grow Room build thread, which is why it remained a popular thread for so long. I considered myself to be a disciple of BOG and regularly praised him for my success as a grower. He, in turn, would occasionally hit me up with his extremely powerful karma, and so did other leaders in the OG community that I looked up to.
Things were going so good for me on OG that I felt indebted to the site, so I went beyond helping people online, I started helping medical patients that were within a few hours of my home - at zero cost to them. Needless to say, good karma rewarded me for my efforts. So much so, that in 2004, I was voted as the “Best New Grower” of 2003. Considering how popular overgrow.com was at that time, I was stunned and overwhelmed.
In 2005, I bought and moved into a home that met my criteria for a new grow room that I wanted to build. It was at this point that I decided to stop posting my daily grow-oriented endeavors on OG, for security sake. Considering what happened with OG, I’m glad I did.
Unfortunately, I didn’t post anything about my new grow room build. I built a large room using cinder blocks and with a hidden door. Not only was it silent, but it blended into the structure of the basement, and it wasn’t obvious to anyone who came in the basement (unless they knew the layout prior to the build). I also didn’t post about my learning curve when dealing with a different water source. Going from pH balanced city water to highly acidic (4.7 pH) well water was a nightmare that lasted for a lot longer than I want to admit. This forced me to try a variety of growing mediums, nutes, methods and water treatments that I’m certain others could have learned from, too.
By 2006, everything was dialed in nicely. I had a variety of strains that I kept from my original Gypsy purchase (I was blessed with a Cherry AK-47!), some crosses of my own creation and a couple of strains that came from beans that one of the medical patients I had helped. Then life took a left turn…
In November of 2014, I got a call about my brother. He went to the hospital with a severe headache and they decided to take a scan. He had tumors. They had to operate immediately to save his life. They couldn’t remove them all, and they were growing. Rapidly. More scans and several biopsies revealed the whole story. It was stage IV lung cancer (adenosquamous carcinoma), and he also had tumors on his larynx and spine. The prognosis was poor. Dire.
So for the next 5 months, I was traveling 1300 miles/week to spend time with him because I knew his time was very limited. After he was released from the hospital, he discovered this thing called “Simpson Oil” and told me about it. I knew nothing about it, but when I got home after hearing about it, I did my own research. Needless to say, I would be an excellent source of the material needed to make it. In fact, I had about 3 pounds of quality trim in the freezer that I would make bubble hash from. Though my family may have suspected that I was growing a little weed at my home, I think all doubt was removed when I showed up with all that trim and made several ounces of oil in my brother’s garage.
For the record, I had no hope that Simpson Oil would save my brother’s life, but I was confident it would help him deal with the chemo and radiation therapy he was getting. My mother and I would put a big dab on a piece of bread and fold it in half, then wrap it in cellophane, and my brother would consume it throughout the day. It helped him maintain an appetite, keep his stress levels down and provided some pain relief. Sadly, my brother was gone by early April, 2015, and it was at that time that shit really hit the fan.
Without going into the details, there were extended family members that found out I was likely growing weed, and these same family members were causing a LOT of drama surrounding my brother’s death, how his estate and funeral would be handled, and lifelong family secrets that were revealed as my brother was dying. I no longer felt safe doing what I loved for so long, so I pulled all the plugs. I gave all my equipment to the grow shop I used, and had the cinder block walls removed from my basement.
It’s been 4 years since everything came to a halt. I feel confident now saying “the coast is clear”, so now I’m looking to start again. Only now I have no beans or access to clones to start with, and that’s why I’m posting to this thread. Unlike when I purchased my beans from Gypsy, when I was renting a home and was weeks away from moving into another rental property, I own my home and don’t feel comfortable going through a commercial seed bank.
BTW - I’m in the US - not far from the Appalachian Trail.
If someone is able to hook me up, and if I can get dialed in with security, I will post my progress here on OG.