M.:
It all started with the death of my father or maybe before, or maybe it was all already written. I do not remember the little details on how i came across this plant. Sure thing i smoked it when i was in my late teens and some years after that. The last years of my smoking life were dull and uninteresting because i would always fall asleep on a bench and i guess people thought i was a heroin addict! The body was telling me it was time to give up, the body simply could not take it anymore. Probably the quality was poor or heavily narcotic.
Anyhow, back to my father’s cancers. I read so many positive stories that i decided to give it a try. My father’s mood unexpectedly changed in just one day. My father was a very quiet and reserved man. After the first administration he started to talk, laugh, to put up shows, like those you see in theatres, so much so that my mum rang me asking what i had given to him. I like to keep those those moments of my father with a positive attitude, a smile on his face, making jokes, chilled out and relaxed.
So during those years of his sickness I was researching a lot, getting acquainted with the plant, indica vs sativa, pros and cons, talking to doctors, professors and all i could take in and get to know. After my father returned to spirit, i gave the oil to a woman who was diagnosed with skin cancer. Her doctor told her she would need to have an operation but she refused.She applied the oil on the affected spot over one month and then told me that the cancer had shrunk to her doctor’s disbelief
I was really glad and surprised to know about the outcome. I then researched all the ailments that the oil can be used for, and the list is quite long. I’ve come to know that landraces, cultivars and natural plants (as opposed to hybrids) have a richer and at times more balanced content of thc and cbd making them more suitable for extractions, especially cultivars from Egypt,Lebanon,Uzbekistan,Afghanistan,Northern India. Landraces have a wider genetic variability which give them flexibility to cope with a range of environmental pressures such as diseases, droughts and other threats. They also need a low input and maintainance. In today’s world where man’s tendency is to standardize everything and make anything and everything look the same we want to strive and give options to the people, especially to those who love and want to cherish the flavours and aromas of old genetics and preserve them for future generations to come. This is our mission and this is what we want to preserve and offer to the world.
I’ve always had a keen interest in travelling and always been drawn to faraway lands and cultures. I travel whenever i can, drawn by a mix of curiosity, vitality and spirit of adventure. I have an intense love for nature and a great respect for its phenomena. Combining this love with the recollection of local plants, grown by local farmers, produced locally, in their places of origin using natural practices.
A.:
It all started in 1999. When I first saw a cannabis flower I fell in love, the smell emanated from these buds was of mangoes and fruits, it was irresistible. The flowers were sticky with few leaves, my fingers were glued together, I was facing a local genetics called Mango Biche from the south of San Agustin Colombia.
I had a good experience, a feeling of great well-being, I felt very happy and motivated, grateful for everything that surrounded me, my family, nature. I felt so much comfort in myself that I thought it was not a bad plant despite what everyone thought.
After a few days, I was even more surprised to see another cannabis bud. Coming also from the south but this time it was from the department of Cauca. There were buds, buds and some leaves, but with their beautiful orange-brown pistils and their chalices of light yellow green color, beautiful and with a lot of resin too, their aroma was sweet, fruity, of soft and sweet lemons. I fell in love with this wonderful plant again, knowing that there was so much diversity in it.
I understood that the variations of Cannabis depended on the place of origin, so I asked myself if there were more cannabis plants in other regions of Colombia and, over time, I came to know that sativas had been planted in every corner of Colombia. Choco, Amazonas, Casanare, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Cauca, Arauca and all with great potential and differences.
From that day my passion for cannabis began and I began to collect seeds from the flowers that passed through my hands. I started growing outdoors with a 12/12 natural photoperiod from seeds and I was discovering great things in these plants, all very sativa, some very aromatic, others with a pleasant effect, some active and narcotic at the end, others with purple flowers, others with beautiful pink and red pistils, some with wheat structures, some giant, up to 4 meters, some smaller with rich aromas of incense, others with fruity aromas, of cedars, lemons, citrus aromas, others of flowers of pollen, something I did not know.
Big questions began to arise because these plants had a lot of diversity. Then I understood that the cannabis plant can show both masculine and feminine traits, there was great ignorance and I did not have sources to investigate and I did not have friends interested in the subject, they just wanted to smoke.
I started with a photographic follow-up to take pictures of my plants every 8 days, then I had access to the Internet and started participating in forums and it was like a dream for me to meet other people from other parts of the world who were also passionate about the subject as I was. I knew I was not the only madman and I learned that not only Colombia is full of treasures, but also many places in the world that have great genetics.
Over the years, I met several breeders and cannabis lovers around the world with whom I have been interacting all this time. With native varieties from all corners of the planet, I have expanded and diversified my collection, which is really what I’m passionate about, the conservation of cannabis in its purest state, I like the genetics of different parts of the world.
Currently part of the M.A.D. group part of The Landrace Team seedbank (www.tltseeds.com)
D.:
I fell in love with cannabis since I smoked it for the first time in 1993 in a small coffee shop in Amsterdam. Just a couple of years later, and as a grown-up, I set up my first indoor cultivation, a small built-in cupboard that made me discover a new world hitherto unknown to me. The passion for cultivation soon appeared, although I soon felt much more interested in issues of breeding and genetics than simply growing and smoking my plants.
As the years went by, and as usual, I was getting to know more people with my same interests and having more and more genetics within my reach. Although many of the varieties that I cultivated (and still grow) were hybrids, I always felt a special attraction towards the pure varieties, native treasures of every corner of the planet that, after all, were the parents of the incredible hybrid varieties that were developed in the US and Europe. Then began a task of collecting different genetics from around the world, often thanks to the generosity of friends who returned from their travels with a few seeds of the best plants they could find. To use these seeds is an enormous privilege for me, and I am grateful for the trust that all those cultivators and cannabis enthusiasts have placed in me.
I consider the pure varieties as a treasure that must be kept and preserved, it is our responsibility that these wonders are not lost, because we have the possibility of reproducing them and ensuring that they do not fall into oblivion, or a pleasant memory in the best of cases. Preserving endangered animal and plant species should be a priority of utmost importance to human beings, and pure cannabis strains should not be an exception in any case.
I also want to thank all the pioneers of the breeding of this wonderful plant, that, after all, have been our inspiration and whom we have taken as an example in this amazing task.