This was the End,
The Garden of Weeden Final Chapter
I would like to kick off the final chapter by thanking everyone that has followed us on this journey. Weeden is one of my favorite places on earth. I hope I have presented it well enough for you and for you to get an idea on how special it was to us and also to everyone that has benefited from the medicine produced there.
October 15th
On this trip to Weeden it was a beehive of activity, with people trimming in one area. Bubblehash was being made in another area and down in the garden branches were being cut down and brought up to the trimmers.
Above everyone’s heads on hemp strings are long trimmed branches being dried by warm air. Dave likes to get all the harvested material up to 80 degrees for the first 24 hours to kill any spores that might remain on the buds. Now that ¾ of the plants has been harvested I was able to get better shots of some of the remaining plants. The Flav was the most impressive plant towering over our heads and as wide as a mini van is long; the weight of the cola’s made them curve overhead. Buds literally blocked out the sunlight. These last plants had been experiencing an Indian summer, so over the last few weeks they have swollen and matured into baseball bat sized branches. The Romulan didn’t hold up as well under her own weight and is now a sprawling mess laying almost horizontal to the ground and no amount of support or staking can help at this point. The Jacks Cleaner 2 originally tagged “Memorial Day Mix” was the tallest plant I have seen before in person and was every bit of 12 feet of solid bud. You could smell the lemon haze when you walked close to her and to brush up against her filled the air with a thick Lemon smell almost like lemonade. It was really cool to see buds curing in one area while plants still grew strong down in the garden.
Trash to Stash in 1 hour or less?
Our good friend Happy Hunter came up that final weekend and brought his large Bubble now machine and 15 gallon Bubblebags, I want to tell you about a technique we used but at the time we had no idea it would actually work. When we made Bubble we allowed the leaf to dry, reduce in size and then dry slightly before processing through the bags. This allowed the resins to cure somewhat and enabled us to fit more leaf matter in the machine while still using what we call damp frozen sugar leaf. So Dave starts tossing lower buds to small to trim into a pile and Hunter runs them through his set up. I am amazed after a few moments he drains the bags and there is a large pile of pristine lime green resin heads in the bottom of the bag. All that day the machine kept running and the ice kept melting and at the end of the day they had made a massive 69-gram pile of lemon smelling hash from the Choc Chunk plant. While it was a bit leafy all of the leaf was covered in large heads and produced a large ratio or hash to leaf. The quality of the hash was off the chart, which is why Dave may run several of these this year and just skip the trimming and hanging. This hash makes great medibles and tincture with almost no waiting for cured dry cannabis for meds.
October 29th
I returned to the garden once more to visit Dave and give him a signed copy of Dank that had just come out. We visited the now empty garden and I took a silly pic of Dave standing where massive plants used to grow but was now only a few yellow leaves that were surly composted over the winter. Dave showed me the last of the hanging bud and the massive plant skeletons that were now on the burn pile. They had cleaned up all but a few of the last plants and only a few lower buds remained for the late comers to pick from but still Dave was busy making sure everyone he knew that needed meds got a full limit.
This was also the first time in 4 months Dave didn’t look worn completely out. The guy works himself too hard, once I witnessed him having a seizure down in the trim room one day that scared me really bad. Dave has Bells palsy and when he doesn’t rest and eat properly he pays for it dearly. It was so nice to see him sit down and relax for a bit and I had brought him some nice cured indoor meds and we smoked 3 joints before I saw his face relax. After I left he called me and thanked me as he felt a whole lot better. Before leaving Dave had a surprise for me, seems he had been stashing nice buds of this and that for me to photograph and more importantly to enjoy and share with people I know that have cards and welcomed free bud. He gave me a full case of jars full of buds and I came home and took a few shots for you guys before diving into the samples.
It was a great season except for the early rains that came and I was told only about 35% was lost to mildew and mold. If you haven’t grown in the PNW don’t rush to judgment, it is not easy and one thing I learned is I will stay indoors with my growing. I am so lucky to have Dave as my friend to learn from and visit Weeden, but this was more work than I could have possibly imagined and he has done this for 19 years now. It has taken its toll on his health for sure but that’s just who he is, he cares much more about those around him than his own health and I have seen him to the point of exhaustion many days before noon working solo in the garden. To say I respect what this man does is the biggest understatement I could make! It is supposed to be nice this weekend here and I can guarantee Dave will be out tilling the soil bed working his butt off. I think I will visit him and drop off some meds I know he is out and no one deserves it more.
See ya Sunday Dave
Dave’s Not Here Man!
Tommy Chong
The End
By Subcool
Originally published in Weed World Magazine Issue 101
