Interview with TheFairyBudMother

Hi Family,

Do y'all know TheFairyBudMother? We've reached out to this awesome lady-grower and asked her a couple of questions about her life and GD experience. Please see the interview below and make sure to find some kind words for the comment!

Q: Hi TFBM How are you doing today? What’s on the agenda?

A: I can’t complain. Growing good weed, smoking it, celebrating friendships and making new ones, right?

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What do you do? Kids? Pups?

A: I am a 54 year old woman living in Ventura, California. I grew up the Detroit suburbs, moved to Santa Barbara at 17 and never looked back. I worked for a bit in the tech industry after college, then I did the mom thing, and then the divorce thing. I now work flexible hours from home where I get paid by the minute for adult conversation –sexy cough.

I share my home with my 21 year old kid and 2 cats. The kid thinks growing is a cool hobby for me, tends the plants when I go away, enjoys trimming, and very occasionally partakes. The cats are annoyed to share my attention with the plants. I share a lot of my time with a wonderful partner—my best friend for over 5 years, who turned me on to dispensary marijuana, hung my lights, and listens to me wax on like a crazy person about growing weed. He enjoys smoking it.

Q: How did you start growing weed? Can you describe your first experience?

A: Until cannabis moved towards becoming legal in California, I wasn't comfortable growing weed. Small nearby collectives were still being raided even 2 years ago. My first weed growing experience was documented on Grow Diaries, starting last May. I got clones from a well known dispensary and cultivator: Buds & Roses in LA—cuts of their Cannabis Cup winning veganic Lemon OG, Platinum Purple and Platinum Cookies. Their budtenders discouraged me from growing anything but Lemon OG because the other two are more challenging. I wanted a variety and was cocky about my gardening skills so I took them anyway. I didn’t have a TDS meter or PH meter, and my tap water has very high PPM so I burned the plants a bit until a few of the better growers like @B4RNS here got me on the right track. The weed came out pretty good despite my inexperience, gardening hubris, and lack of skill.

I first smoked weed when I was 13, in 1977. I was with a friend, and neither of us got high, but we listened to Cheech and Chong albums, laughed a lot and pretended that we were stoned. We probably stole the weed from my parents or her older brothers. About a year later, I must have actually inhaled, and then I understood what all the fuss was about.

Q: Why do you grow weed? Any particular reason?

I had been on opioids for many years for chronic nerve pain due to a spinal cord injury and used lots of hash candy in 2015 to help detox off of them. That’s when I became a true believer that this plant is medicine.

Cannabis really helps my pain and mood if it’s the right strain and ripeness.

I have had a California medical recommendation since 2013 so I have been buying dispensary weed for a few years. While dispensary shopping was a big improvement over calling all of my friends to find a connection, I could not consistently find bud that was right for me. Recreational legal weed became expensive at $8-20 gram plus 25% tax. So it became worth the tradeoff of time and expense to have better control over the quality and enjoy more quantity, and less risky in a permissive legal climate.

A buddy of mine was growing his own in a small closet. When I tried his weed about a year ago, I couldn't believe how good it was. I figured if he could grow great weed in a small space, I could probably do it. LED grow lights becoming affordable made it practical. It's also nice (and now legal in my state) to be able to give my friends weed.

Q: Why do you track your grow?

A: I find I can see how the changes I make affects my plants over time using my notes and pictures, but it's also helpful to get support and advice from other growers and I hope my trial and error might also help others learn.

Q: How do you take your weed?

A: I am an equal opportunity stoner. I primarily smoke joints in the evening and weekend, and I use commercial edibles like Korova or Kushy Punch if I have a lot of pain. I use a microdose pipe (OneHitOneDa!) in the daytime if I need to medicate and be functional. I use vaporizers like the Volcano and commercial CO2 oil vapor pens, and sometimes a pipe. I have tried transdermal patches, dabbing, hash, kief, tinctures, skin lotions, lube. It's all good but I generally prefer smoking flower. I just got a bong!

Q: Any edible recipe you can share?

I like the classic pot brownie as they freeze well, and chocolate complements weed flavor. I use 1 oz dried decarboxylated flower ground in a coffee grinder to 1 lb butter, and cook in a slow cooker on low for 2-6 hours. You can use coconut oil if you prefer. I don't strain out the plant matter, but you can.

One Bowl Pot Brownies

4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

3/4 cup weed butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup flour

Add up to 2 cups of whatever makes you happy such as:
1 cup coarsely chopped nuts and

1 cup chocolate, peanut butter or mint chips, M&Ms, coconut, raisins, toffee chips...

Grease a 13" x 9" pan. Preheat oven to 350F. Smoke a bowl. Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 1 min. or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and nuts; mix well. Pour into prepared pan. Lower temp to 325F and bake 40- 45 min or until toothpick inserted in center comes out with fudgy crumbs. Set a timer, stoner. Do not overbake (the brownies)! When set, invert pan onto cutting board and then flip right side up onto a rack to cool. Cut into 1" squares, as these are potent! Start with 1/2 brownie, wait 2 hours before having more to figure out your best dose, unless you're an experienced edibles loadie—then do what you need to do.

Q: What’s your favourite strain?

A: Oh my, do I have to pick one? I like pretty much anything with cookie or afghani genetics, but I believe in strain switching often because I think it helps keep your tolerance low. For daytime: Bruce Banner #3, Sour Diesel, Dela Haze, Lemon Haze, Blue Dream. For pain: Girl Scout Cookies, OG kush, Gorilla Glue #4, Gelato #43, The Truth, and the Ice Bomb I just grew. For sleep: GDP, LA Confidential or King Louis XIII. Don't get me started on @Farmerbrett's Durban Poison (it's the best!) I like to keep an apothecary of strains.

Q: How did you find GrowDiaries?

A:  was looking for an app for my iPhone to track my grow when I started, and Google turned up the site. I didn’t realize that not only would I get a space to log a diary, but a whole community to leverage for support!

Q: What do you think can be changed at GrowDiaries? What are our weak points and what are our strong points?

A: iPhone app, faster please?! Technically, it would be great if we could enter all the nutrients and supplements we use for the grow and have them stored, then be able to note how much was used on what date. I entered all mine in, but I put 0.1 ml if I am not using any of that nutrient. I might feed twice in a week with different products. Since I don't water daily, it would also be great to be able to calendar when and how much water/nutes gets used.

I would love to see more diversity on the site, so appealing to more to women and people of color you be great. It would help to make women more visible on the site because honestly when I first came here, I thought it was all dudes, buddies and bros.

I think the competitions are fun, and it's great that seed companies send genetics to try, but people need to be encouraged to show the reality of their grows because we learn through our mistakes and not everything is within the grower's control. The focus should be on keeping a good diary of what actually happened, not on having a perfect appearing grow to promote certain genetics or win prizes.

[I am happy to keep this comment private, and I did write you about this before: I believe you made a mistake for disqualifying Bigpun a while back from Grower of the Month. I

know him well enough to say that I am 100% certain that he didn't participate in any "suspicious activity" to win a contest--nothing in my experience of him says that he would derive any ego validation by cheating. He works his ass off to have what he has. I believe a public apology is long overdue. I would love to see him back on the site as he has helped me a lot with my grow, and I believe participating in the community was great for him and the community. It was sad to see him alienated from the site.]

Q: Who would you like to be interviewed next?

A: Well that would be Bigpun. But if that doesn't work out, I would love to know more about Jeff123fish. Or ThePhalanx420 and his perpetual cabinet.

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: If you're a new grower, try to relax! You will probably grow some decent weed.

 I am really happy to participate here with my diaries. I have to give a shout out to my friends from Grow Diaries who I chat with almost daily on Kik. We share grow issues, bud porn, have smoke sessions and crack each other up with gifs. I understand some people have sent other people Twinkies in countries where high levels of sugar and preservatives are banned. I have gotten some generous goodies myself! It's great to have friends in different countries from different backgrounds and discover what else we have in common besides a shared passion for cannabis. So thank you for helping to make that happen for me.

Many thanks to the sponsors on the site, who have been so generous with genetics and nutes and swaggy things.

Thanks a lot for sharing your story with us, TFBM! Bigpun, Jeff123fish, ThePhalanx420, are you up for an interview?

Peace,

GD Team