BLUECHEESE and CHEESE SMOKERS ONLY!

The True Origin of UK Cheese

I recently went on holiday to the Canary Islands, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Weed World magazine to read while I was there (issue 56). To my surprise, was the article by Big Buddha Cheese? On reading this I decide to tell the story from the beginning.

Back in the late 80’s early 90’s, a friend-of-a-friend of mine came back from the Sensi Seed Bank in Amsterdam with some seeds.Most of the plants were males but 4 of them were girls – 3 of the 4 were wankers and one was kind of OK. This plant was cloned and passed on to 3 or 4 different people who grew it alongside some Northern Lights and Silver Pearl plants in their well built grow rooms.

I am 45 years old now and have been growing my own weed for about 25 years, 10 of them outside in the wild. My best friend and I decided that we would build ourselves our own grow rooms but didn’t see the need for getting too technical so, we made them out of anything we could lay our hands on – we called them “orange crates” coz that’s what they looked like. As for lighting, we went on a commando raid to a local disused cement factory and helped ourselves to some Sodium and Metal Halide 400’s. We made our own shades from some aluminium sheeting from a local scrap yard. Now all we needed was some nice cuttings. I managed to get some N/L and S/P plants and also one of the Skunks. Most of the other growers concentrated on the N/L and S/P because they are good all rounders.

I think one of the Skunks went to Crewe and another to Cornwall. I quite liked the Skunk so I kept it going. Now over the next 7 or 8 years of constant cloning, the Skunk started changing – don’t know why – it just did. It started to get really smelly – I mean really stink. The smell would get everywhere and I was often creosoting the fence to try and mask the smell (a little tip there for Cheese farmers, creosote or burnt toast). Cropping was a nightmare and I wouldn’t even go out because people would often say “you stink”.

I was giving some of this weed to my close friends and they all loved it and, as the taste was changing it seemed the strength was too. This weed had become so strong and so smelly that it reminded me of something I had smelt before, but I couldn’t think what it was. Then one day the penny dropped.

When I was 17 or 18 and living at home with my parents, I would go out a lot with a friend who worked in a food essence factory. Some days I would see him and he would stink of all different kind of things: fish, beef, vanilla etc. He would bring me small test tubes of concentrated liquids home and use them in my fishing bait (the carp loved the vanilla). One day he put one under my nose and said “smell this one, its called blue cheese, and it’s a real minger”. This was the smell I had been trying to remember. The weed smelt just like it and so she was born. I gave the weed the name “Cheese”. The only cuttings I let out were to people who were incapable of doing their own cloning and only wanted a plant for their own garden in the summer months. Another close friend of mine, known as “Of the Hill”, came to me one day and asked me if I would do him 21 cuttings as he was building a big lab for the Exodus people in Luton. I was a bit unsure of this as I didn’t know ay of these people but, I did it for him because he is a good egg and has dug me out of plenty of holes over the years. Anyway, off he went with his cuttings and I didn’t here too much more about it, other than a good harvest festival was had.

“Of the Hill” arranged for a cutting to make it’s way to a coffee shop in Amsterdam in 2003 (Home Grown Fantasy). It was cloned and put on the menu as ‘Cheese’ and went on to claim 3rd place in the cannabis cup in 2004. I recently met an American at a Hawkwind gig in London who had heard of the Cheese in Washington. He had come to the UK to see Hawkwind and smoke Cheese. His face lit up when I pulled a big fat Cheese straw out of my pocket! It’s kind of annoying really – I wish I could have put a patent on the word “Cheese” in the context of marijuana but, it’s kind of difficult when things are illegal. All over the place now I hear people calling all sorts of weed “Cheese” and I say to them “no mate, this is Cheese”.

As for Mr Big Buddha? I have plenty of respect for him, but the Cheese is not yours no matter what you call it and, as for crossing her? She does need help –over the years she has started to show signs of stress. Growers will notice that some plants get brown spotty leaves during growing & flowering that results I leaf drop. I don’t know what the cause is, it’s not the soil, the water, the food, or the air quality (possibly a virus of some kind), so I suppose a cross of some kind to introduce some new vigour to her would be a good thing so, like I said, respect to Big Buddha for trying.

So for nearly 14 years, the Cheese was living at only a couple of places but now it seems to be everywhere for people to enjoy. I don’t know what she has become – some sort of mutant freak, but she sure hits the spot and everyone who smokes her loves her to pieces.

So there you have it – the truth about the origin of Cheese. You can all rejoice that I kept her going for all these years and now you all know how it came about its name. In the grand scheme of things it’s not very much, but I wanted to set the record straight.
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