Nol van Schaik

Today I went on a roadtrip with my colleague Mark, he owns the Far Out coffeeshop and the Cheech&Chong bar/restaurant in Dedemsvaart, Holland. He loves the Spanish kitchen, so he is determined to have a spanish style menu in the C&C. For that, we went for a special place to buy the finest cured ham availlable in the area. Adrian wrote us a little map, so off we went, to Ronda, to find “El Cerdito Andaluz”, the place to go for fine hams. It was a beutiful ride of about an hour, would have loved to show you pics, but Mark did not bring a USB cable, you might find pics and vids later on www.cheechandchong.nl I did take a picture of Mark posing with his fine cured hams.

I am sure his customers are going to be pleased with these, Mark took a ham previously, which was well received. Here you see one Pata Negra, the ham with the black hoof, and two Jamon Reserva. The Black hoof ham is very exclusive, so very expensive, about 30 euros per kilo. worth every eurocent though, Jamon de Pata Negra is The Ham amongst hams.

Mark wants to try some Spanish Genetics in Holland, so he went to the “El punto eres tu’ growshop in Malaga to get some seeds. Spain is he country that is switching almost completely to feminised seeds, for many reasons, especially for guerilla growing, no risk of a male popping up during a long absence is one of them.                                                      Mark decided to go for Critical 47, from the revived Positronics seed bank, the winner of the 2008 Malaga Bella Flor Cup. Great bud, tasty, dense buds and a very nice mellow high. He also purchased some Power Kush and california Hash Plant from Dinafem seedbank. He gave me one seed of each, so I can try them outdoors.

Let’s see what Spanish femseeds will bring us, I will keep you informed…

My colleague Mark from coffeeshop Far Out gave me some of the Ice Hash he is going to enter in the next Highlife Cup In Holland. He asked us if we wanted to try, we did…

The hash was soft and plyable, mark told me they had been pressing it manually over and over again.

The hash was extracted fromSanta Maria budleafs, a south american indica.

Sticky as gum, hard to pull apart, it looks great, let’s try a few tokes.

Adrian and me both had a few bowls, it was a tasty and blasting experience, we were hit by a clear high with some blurry side effects.

Adrian is one of the club members, he will be our first eployee once we go official. He can hold his smoke, we agreed the hash was smooth, tasty and gave us a good high. We needed to go for a small snack after the session. Definately a contender, let’s see how it does in the Highlife Cup.

We are almost ready to open next April, the first guests have booked from April 17, our apartments and the pool are ready for action, although the water is still a bit chilly. We are finishing of the last jobs in and around our clubhouse, the place where our guests and ourselves can get together for fun and games. The interior looks like a mixture of one of our cofeeshops and the former Global Hemp Museum, and guess what, that’s what it is. We decorated the place with what we took from Holland, a truckload of hemp and cannabis products and old coffeeshop interior from Willie Wortel’s cannabisshops.

I am sure a lot of people and me are going to have many great meetings here, the presence of the furniture and the soccertable brought a vibe from their past spent in cannabis hotspots. After a few joints I do not know where I find myself anymore, all the familiar homely things around me make me feel like being in one of my shops, but looking outside tells me I am in the sunny hills of southern Spain.

Outside the club, at the back, we placed a nice barbecue, which we used on several ocasions in good company. We thought it would be nice to make a small roof over the bbq, in case of rain, and a little platform on the side. It came out nice…

We made it a bit bigger and nicer than planned, this bar can serve a nice crowd during parties and such, and for any volunteer cooks with volunteers to try their cooking. More pics once it has been decorated.

After more then two weeks in Haarlem it feels good to be back in Alora, Spain. My trip to Holland was meant to attend the monthly meeting of the BCD, the Coffeeshopowners Union. These meetings are more important then ever, it seems like our medieval-minded government is out to get us out of business, in any which way they can. One of our governments instruments to get us on our knees is the Tax-bureau, their employees just accuse basicly all of us of being frauds, by rejecting our administrations. The BCD meeting invited three lawyers to the last meeting, two of them experts in tax-law, the other the Union’s defense lawyer. All in all the meeting was very useful, most of us had quetions about how to adminstrate best, how to or not book stash expenses and other topics. The joined lawyers are going to make up a clear advice on how to administrate the books of coffeeshops, based on their experience in courtcases about similar conflicts. Our major problem in administrating would be solved if we were allowed to have licensed growers to work with, so we would get receipts after buying cannabis. Now, it seems like the tax money we are paying over our cannabis sales is being used to finance the police officers that hunt and close down our growers. Feels like sponsoring my own downfall….