Once upon a time in Morocco

[FattyRoots]

Going back around 6 years ago I worked and lived in the hash region of Morocco, I was hired as a head grower and thought after working in Northern California there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen… I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Going from 2000 to 100,000 plants is a fair indication of the difference and magnitude of the average Moroccan farm compared to a typical NorCal set-up.

Trying to introduce things like IPM and mildew prevention wasn’t really what the locals wanted to hear and to be honest I don’t blame them, there are many generations of farming families who have passed down knowledge so why should they listen to a white boy from Australia… but saying that at least they took a few things on board, for example we built drying rooms(in empty houses) instead of the normal drying on rooves in the sun. Also we built a walk-in deep freezer room so production could start in September instead of January(when the weather is around freezing point). The advantage of this is firstly to start the hash production immediately but the main reason was to try to get the product in to the Spanish market(then in to Europe) first before it got flooded by the competition and in turn getting a better price.

All of my photos except one I found yesterday on an old phone are on a crashed laptop which I’m planning on getting all the data removed(closest computer shop is about 500km away) asap.

Who else has visited or lived in the Rif Mountains? I would love to see your pics and hear your stories.

This was about a 1/20th of the farm in early veg
:view from my bedroom window

More pics to come

[anonymous4289]

awesome. i hope you manage to recover other pictures.

[anon20530495]

This is dope. Are you able to share what part of the country you were in? I was in Chef and heard the stories of these fields in the Rif. Smoked some amazing hash in that country. God, it was so hot there. I bet you have some great stories

[G-paS]

I was lucky when I crashed mine. A friend of the family lives 5 miles/8km away and saved all photos and files I generated.

[Floyd]

You really get around. Very cool!

[MidwestMover]

I’m planning on taking the ferry over sometime this next year. I would love to see a field like this!

[ELG]

A question that I have is where haven’t you been! Can’t wait for the pics! I also have another question, do they generally cut the hash with other stuff? I keep hearing that from a Moroccan friend.

[SaintAliasKnife]

yank that drive out and get one of these IDE/SATA to usb. link

$15 bucks could save you a long drive.

[FattyRoots]

@anonymous4289

awesome. i hope you manage to recover other pictures.

Me too mate, all my indoor grow photos from Spain are on there too

@anon20530495

Are you able to share what part of the country you were in?

About 40 minutes drive east of Chefchaouen. Just inside the royal land parameter. The king gives immunity to farms inside this area and takes a cut for keeping the police away.

@anon20530495

God, it was so hot there.

Scorching man, during the hottest part of the year it’s also Ramadan and the locals can’t drink or eat while the sun is up. Normally transplanting is done by then but we were late getting them in the ground so we were working through 45c(113f) weather. Seeing the team walking up and down a 45 degree angle incline all day in the heat with no water made me respect them on a whole another level. I was hiding behind a bush everytime I needed to drink water which was about every 15min, feeling guilty as hell.

@anon20530495

I bet you have some great stories

Plenty man… it defiantly wasn’t all hash spliffs and Tajines though, lots of ups and downs.

The week before I got there the Spanish guys who were hired before me tried to pop 60,000 seeds in paper towels and maybe 20,000 max survived(hence the late transplanting), the Moroccans got a good laugh at that as they had never seen that method before… at €1 a seed that was a pretty pricey fuck up and fair to say those boys got the ass and were on a ferry back to Spain shortly after. This also started the lack of trust the locals had from then on towards the foreigners who were meant to be their bosses. It was definitely an up hill challenge from then on!

@G-paS

I was lucky when I crashed mine.

Mine didn’t technically crash, the charging port stopped working which has happened to all my Apple products… so I’m hoping they can use an external power source to turn it on and extract my files.

@Floyd

You really get around

There are two types of nomads in this world, the ones who are Unwanted(by friends and family) and those who are Wanted(by the law)… I won’t go in to details of which one I fall under

@MidwestMover

I’m planning on taking the ferry over sometime this next year

You should, beautiful country and people

@ELG

A question that I have is where haven’t you been!

My two occupations being a chef and a canna farmer have definitely allowed this, plus I’ve always followed the waves and powder(snow not cocaine ) around the world.

@ELG

do they generally cut the hash with other stuff?

In Morocco they don’t from my experience but once it hits Europe all types of toxic shit gets mixed in with it, anything from glass to sand… even plastic. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons @Swe-can grows his own meds with the subpar stuff that gets around Sweden. Mix some soap bar hash with bootleg tobacco from Eastern Europe and you’ve got one of the worst tasting spliffs you’ll ever try, nasty shit!

@SaintAliasKnife

yank that drive out and get one of these IDE/SATA to usb

It’s a macbook air mate so not sure that will work, I tried to replace one of the usb ports a couple of years back but it’s attached to the motherboard so I was going to have to replace the MB just to fix the port which I obviously passed on. Also ordering things online isn’t an option here in Costa Rica unfortunately.

[Swe-can]

@FattyRoots

In Morocco they don’t from my experience but once it hits Europe all types of toxic shit gets mixed in with it, anything from glass to sand… even plastic. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons @Swe-can grows his own meds with the subpar stuff that gets around Sweden. Mix some soap bar hash with bootleg tobacco from Eastern Europe and you’ve got one of the worst tasting spliffs you’ll ever try, nasty shit!

We used to have a lot of Grit Weed around here before and that shit did kill your throat and lungs. And then we had a shit storm with meds from Albania that came with some synthetic thc from China… don’t remember the substance but it made people go crazy, highest amount of people in psych ward under that year…

The hash that usually comes by are good but
Sometimes we get the black tar… smells and burns like rubber, black dirty smoke and the shit isn’t getting you high… they always say it’s from Afghanistan or India but I don’t know

so yeeah @FattyRoots you’re 100% correct… It’s better to grow your own then risk that shit

[SaintAliasKnife]

can’t trust those albs, man…I tell ya…

[Swe-can]

Hahaha right !!

[anon20530495]

@FattyRoots

Scorching man, during the hottest part of the year it’s also Ramadan and the locals can’t drink or eat while the sun is up.

Lived and traveled through some very hot countries during this time of the year. I don’t know how they do it either (can’t say I can pinpoint why either. Well, I know the why, but I guess it’s more the logic). Either way, yeah. It’s quite impressive.

Would love to have a beer one day and be regaled with tales. I have some of my own, but I think your’s may be more epic.

[FattyRoots]

@anon20530495

Would love to have a beer one day and be regaled with tales. I have some of my own, but I think your’s may be more epic.

That would be nice mate, I’m sure mine are different but no more epic than your own. I can tell with your diverse cuisine knowledge that you’ve seen plenty that I haven’t.

Just don’t bring those nasty ‘ball sack’ egg things you love to chow down on

[BarefootAndBlazed]

In 1989 I was a naive 19 year old living in France for a semester of college. They gave us 2 weeks for Easter/Spring break so a buddy and I hopped a train that took us all the way to the tip of Spain where we caught a ferry to Morocco. It wasn’t long before we made the acquaintance of a gentleman who offered us hashish and a chance to visit his family’s farm. We declined the trip up into the mountains, but shot the shit with him for the afternoon while we smoked our ‘Easter egg’ sized lump of light brown hash.

He told us about his process: You place the herb on a window screen supported by two chairs with a tarp underneath. You take a stick and very lightly go tap, tap tap to knock off the resin. That makes the best quality hashish that you keep for yourself. Then you go back and hit it harder which produces the hashish we sell in Morocco. Finally, you hit the herb very hard! Thrash away at it to get all the crystals you can. That’s the stuff we sell to the Spaniards!

I literally LOLed!

We eventually parted ways and bummed around Tangiers, Asilah, and Rabat for a week or so. From there we headed north again. We spent some time with Peace Corps volunteers in Tetouan - where we were warned not to go out on the beaches alone at night due to the packs of feral dogs - then eventually made it to Chefchaouen in the mountains. We didn’t conduct any business which was good since our bus was stopped by the military upon descent where we were hassled for papers while looking down the barrel of a machine gun. Things could have gone so wrong… Remember that this was before cell phones and internet. It would have been too easy to disappear without a trace.

That was not the only time we saw police/military using threats and violence. Morocco was wild. It was my first visit to a country with that level of poverty. It was also my first time in a Muslim nation. Reading about Islam is very different from seeing how it is put into practice. All those beautiful beaches, but the women were forced to huddle in the shade fully covered while the men enjoyed the surf and played soccer. I’d like to think things have changed in the 30+ years since my visit, but I get the feeling things are slow to evolve there.

[FattyRoots]

Sounds like an amazing adventure mate, in 89 I bet it was really wild.

Yeah the police can be pretty heavy coming out of the mountains especially during the period you were there, a lot of smuggling by foreigners was going on then. We would give our stash to the driver of the transport and he’d put it in his sock, he’d also tell us when we could or couldn’t light up in the car… he knew all the check points. I bet that was scary as hell for you guys, you definitely don’t want to be in a Moroccan jail.

@BarefootAndBlazed

He told us about his process: You place the herb on a window screen supported by two chairs with a tarp underneath. You take a stick and very lightly go tap, tap tap to knock off the resin

They do use sticks where I was working but it’s wrapped in thick plastic so they beat the shit out of it for hours like a drum but there is definitely different grades.

@BarefootAndBlazed

That’s the stuff we sell to the Spaniards!

That’s funny as shit haha.

We had a huge Rosin press so the top grade stuff got squished and sold for a higher price to Spain. We smoked a fair amount of it too

@BarefootAndBlazed

All those beautiful beaches, but the women were forced to huddle in the shade fully covered while the men enjoyed the surf and played soccer. I’d like to think things have changed in the 30+ years since my visit

Unfortunately not, the women worked the field too but always separate from the men and completely covered in sweltering heat. Then back in to the house, never seen or socialising. I respect all cultures but that’s completely oppressive so it’s impossible not to see the wrong in it. And saying that, Morocco is one of the most “progressive” Muslim nations… for example they have a brewery but it’s still dark ages to us.

The coast line is really nice with some great waves to surf too.

I’ve always described the country that it feels like you went back in time, in 89 it must of been nuts.

Thanks for sharing mate

[FattyRoots]

Thought I should update this thread, unfortunately I had some bad news with trying to recover all my lost pictures from my laptop. I wanted to try all options before taking the L, I first tried the only Apple repair place in Costa Rica and they told me the drive is damaged so data recovery is not possible but being the stubborn fucker I am I wasnt having that so I got my wife to take the laptop with her while she was visiting family in LA hoping she would have a different result but once again I was told ‘not possible’ so that’s that, faaark!

One last option is trying to do a data recovery on the original iphone that took the photos, it also has all the pics from my time working/growing in Barcelona but that phone’s battery died so I just threw it in my daughter’s toy box at her grandmas about 2 years ago for her to make pretend calls, where it is now is anyone’s guess.

On the positive maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, both those periods(Morocco and Barcelona) in my life were full of trauma and have left me with PTSD and this is not even in relation to still being owed tens of 1000’s of Euros(which I kisssed goodbye years ago after too much anxiety and headaches)

Fuck there’s some shady fuckers in this “industry” but luckily majority are good souls like most of the OG fam.

I highly recommend everyone visiting Morocco but living there is a whole another story, it’s another world out there.

Bless

Fatty

[Gpaw]

Sorry for your loss, but thanks for posting that.
It’s the right sort of ‘kick in the pants’ I need to get my computer files backed up…

Cheers
G

[FattyRoots]

I found one more pic the other day from out there, unfortunately it’s not of the fields but definitely reminded me of how hardcore Morocco really is. This pup used to sleep in my bedroom, it was chained up all day so I’d sneak it off every night. The following season when the non Moroccan crew came back to the mountains her and another dog were found drowned in one of the huge reservoirs . The fact it was 2 dogs shows it was definitely no accident. Life is cheap in these parts of the world and it’s not uncommon for humans to go missing too. As I’ve mentioned beautiful county and people but I will never live and work there again. Too gnarly

There is actually gunja in this picture it’s just off in the distance.

PTSD is so real from that time I can’t even remember the pups name, RIP

[BarefootAndBlazed]

Thanks for sharing even if the memory is tainted. I have similar feelings from my time in Morocco. The culture is so different and I witnessed violence and oppression that I still remember over 30 years later. There is beauty and joy but you have to look for it.