Even as Testers, the pressure & commitment to produce timely DANK...is high as fuck.
breeders send these beans out to TRUSTED people for the sake of solid feedback.
It takes time to build up that status...
When you see breeders piss & moan about sending beans...& shipping cost...Just to get a NO GROW SHOW.
It changes the way you see the $100 pack.
Anyone in the "know" that has seen the test runs from a very talented tester~...yeah, they know.
That guy can make a breeders sales explode off of a photo op.
Strain after strain...he rocks it.
Its a tight rope walk selling beans,,,
foreign seeds in mass production can create issues in the market place...
& there goes your BRAND name.
The power of the little guy is in his ability to keep the breeder honest by improving the standard of their own grow skills.
Just my 0.02
Here we have an issue that I have become aware of lately. Testers can really take the piss. The amount of half-finished or merely started and abandoned logs is astounding. As you say, it costs bucks and effort to get these test beans out. The way in which I receive them show the utmost care and consideration with packaging, the Mug Shop can learn a thing or 10 from breeders.
This is insanely sad. And I think a big mistake on the testers behalf. I have a theory that people think they are the first person to run it, and the smallest little issue and they chuck 'em out and flower their other gear. Few realize that the beans in their hands already had several runs in dirty rooms and have had severe stress thrown at them. What the breeder (not the pollen-chucker) wants is to get feedback on real-world scenarios, something they can only reserve for their best cuts, the rest of their space is taken up by moms, dads, seeded ladies, dirty rooms, etc.
Another factor is ignorance. Testers expect prompt and detailed feedback from the breeder. This is NOT usually the case. If you try contact B, he WILL respond. It might take a week, when his son was born 2 weeks was not out of the ordinary before he had a gap to send one of those super-sweet and considerate replies. This does not mean he has no interest, it means he is running on his red line and the fact I got a gap should be appreciated. One man show.
Try and contact m4k, and half the time he is on the road to go run another booth at another cup or expo. Those guys travel insane amounts. They do ALL their own work, planting, cropping, running mothers and cuts for dispensaries, they do all their own design, print all the packs themselves. If you plant one of their beans, one of the two breeders put them in that bag themselves. For it to take time to respond is par for the course. These people work insanely hard.
Between B and m4k, I have been offered enough gear to run for a lifetime. I have started declining offers now. Why do they like sending me gear, because I am a good grower? NO. I can sure hold my own, but I am nowhere near the level of people like Calicat, Genuity, GandalfdaGreen, etc etc etc. Here is why:
1- When I find it difficult to connect, I keep trying. This shows that it is as important to me for feedback to reach the breeder as it is to them, and that I am willing to make it a priority. Not only that, it shows that I am considerate of the fact they live high-intensity lifestyles, smoke weed, and forget stuff every now and then.
2- I am excited about everything, and genuinely so. This shows that I will not waste their time and get the beans in the ground ASAP.
3-When things go wrong, I don't just quit. I try and figure out why it went wrong. I consult with the breeder and then I have another go. The Deadly G gear as example: Clusterfunk Remix was a herm bomb, and also B decided to not use the DeadlyG male anyhow. I have a pack of Dank Sinatra RMX and Dank Zappa each. Am I abandoning those and asking for something else? Nope, I am taking the long road, raising them till I can clone, cloning, mothering clones and then cloning off those again to go to flower. I am making an attempt at using little bits of theory I got from Gen and Calicat and the community at large to see if a stable mother or 5 can be had from some Deadly G gear.
It took 3 goes to fully manage declining B's offer of BUYING me a pack of Strawblock x Aruba with two 'free' packs thrown in, Zombie Dong and Dirty Queen. He knows how much I love the Beaver, so he was going to buy me beans on auction to spend his credit he has at the Bay... I had to go make an order at the Mug Shop and tell him 'no, really, we are now sorted with B gear'. It makes one realize how many people just grab the test packs and run.
4- When things go well, I go out and announce it to the entire planet, showing everybody the fantastic buds that can be had from these fellas. And I try return their favor by doing little things like making an info thread or hitting the Frostiest Buds thread and promoting their name a little.
I fully believe this is how I make myself useful. It takes some effort every now and then when the working day was long, your wife or kid are sick and you can't seem to find the time to even take some pics. But during those times, I light a fat joint, and I think about my friends having to travel all the time to promote their good work, I pray for their safety, and I am grateful that my lifestyle is nowhere near THAT high-powered. I get off my ass, I log in, and I upload the shots. I zip open the tent, get under the canopy and clean up possible inter-sexing sites. I e-mail Gen to ask about a particular little niggle to ensure good pics a week or two from now. I get hold of Munkie to help me annoy m4k into a response. And I have fun with it.
5- Finally, and most importantly really, I do not suffer from 'expectonite' which is a term a mate coined for 'the sum total potential for disappointment, directly proportional to your level of expectation'. I don't expect a good yield, flavor, high or anything. So every single little good thing, I notice, and I mention.
It is such simple, easy stuff. All those empty and abandoned logs, man, those are the saddest things I have ever seen.