Merriejayne Parties

This year GoHerbal! Nursery is available to stop in at your party! Anyone in Southern California, Los Angeles to Orange County (south county as well), is welcome to host a party. There will be incentives for the host as well as something for every attendant. The party will cost you nothing other than what you wish to provide for your guests and your own purchase. This is a great opportunity to sample all of the nursery's products from concentrates to flower and everything in between in the comfort of your place with your friends. If you are tired of rude dispensaries with subpar product and not a fan of the usual deal this might be something for you. It is a wonderful, enjoyable way to try various goodies with no purchase required. No one is required to purchase anything but they are more than welcome to come and enjoy for the night. There are some great options of incentives for the host or hostess to choose from. If you think you might like to host a party feel free to contact the nursery! The only thing the host really has to do is invite people and provide refreshment if they so wish. Everything else will be handled by the nursery. 

Run Reviews

From Jan. 13, 2014 bubba, shaman, northern lights, gscXop, and pink kush. Light in the mouth, floral and sweet, fruity hints with a creamy undertone. Mellow and softer on the lungs, a nice back of the head high with legs, steady and long. A happy light feeling, a bit of spice on the exhale. A good hitting high while still allowing function for those heavier tokers with a high tolerance. Indica feel without the 'couch lock' or weighing/weighed down feeling. Good for neck and back pain, depression, blood pressure, stress, pms, and anxiety. Equal parts of each strain used. 

From Jan. 15, 2014 bubba, shaman, northern lights, pink kush, and panama red. Warm, heavier in the mouth with deep earthy, vanilla, dark sweet almost molasses like tone in the throat. Lung opening sieze, an all over head feel. Nice body feel. Soft and mellow, comes up slow with very shapely, well rounded legs. Tasty and smooth. Good for pain, depression, anxiety, blood pressure, inflammation, and insomnia. Also helps with pms and stress. Mix is heavy on the panama red.

From Jan. 16, 2014 bubba, shaman, northern lights, and pink kush. Very smooth, creamy, sweet, and fruity. Uplifting 'sparkly' nose feeling, a very nice effervescence through the lungs and sinuses. Slight lung sieze. Happy and floaty feeling with good legs, nice and steady, hearty mix. Will get you to 'couch lock' sooner than you think. Good for depression, anxiety, insomnia, pms, stress, and pain. Will give you a good appetite. Mix is heavy on the pink kush. 

From Jan. 16, 2014 shaman, pink kush, and panama red. Warm, spicy, creamy, soft, earthy sweetness. Light, floating high with long, happy legs. Lung opening, perfect for light tokers with lower tolerances. Good for depression, irritability, discomfort, tummy troubles, pain, and stress. A good choice if you want to be able to function throughout your day. Equal parts of each strain used.  

Recent Runs

Jan. 13, 2014

~ 1.5oz total

       ~ bubba, shaman, northern lights, gscXop, pink kush

~ 3 cans

       ~ newport butane gas

~ total return

       ~ 3.8 grams

Jan. 15, 2014

~ 1.5oz total

       ~ bubba, shaman, northern lights, pink kush, panama red

~ 3 cans

       ~ newport butane gas

~ total return

       ~ 5 grams

Jan. 16, 2014

~ 1.5oz total

       ~  bubba, shaman, northern lights, pink kush

~ 3 cans

       ~  newport butane gas

~ total return

       ~  5.5 grams

Jan. 16, 2014

~ 1.5oz total

       ~ shaman, pink kush, panama red

~ 3 cans

       ~ newport butane gas

~ total return

       ~ 4.8 grams

Sugar leaf is stored in paper bags after curing to allow a dry, brittle finish. After which it is cut up into small pieces, a portion of it a fine powder like consistency. Temperature of water bath purge never exceeds 90 degrees. Purged with heat only a short time then finished in vacuum chamber with a 6cfm pump. Air drying allowed for at least 4 days, to assure all water and carbons purged, after at least 4 days in chamber, pressure released and reinstated in tandem, allowing as much gas to purge as possible. To discourage merging of elements on a molecular level the purging process is slow with minimal heat as well as no irritation or whipping of product during purging. 

Flowers used are never chemically treated at any point whatsoever in their lives. Chemically treated material is always rejected for any extracting process. The plant cannot process these chemicals nor can human beings. Any chemically treated flowers given to consumers is irresponsible on the providers part whatever their role in conjunction with it is. Always ask if the flowers you are purchasing were treated with chemicals. If this knowledge is unknown it is suggested you purchase at your own risk. GoHerbal! Nursery does not condone any chemical treatments. Absolutely all of them are unacceptable for human consumption. Any treatment that clearly state it is for Ornamental plants only should be passed over by any mmj grower and/or provider. 

Canna Peanut Seafoam

When the holidays come around there is always a ton of sweets. It seems the baking never ceases! Therefore it would be such a shame to not have some great canna treats as well! Peanut Seafoam is a great tradition in my family. Every holiday season we make it by the ton it seems and it goes faster than we can crack it! It is my family's recipe of brittle, you can use whatever nut you like really but peanut is quite tasty. After making a few regular batches it occurred to me that this might be a very tasty canna sweet. You see I hate the taste of edibles, can't stand it! As much as I love the herb I just can't get past the taste whenever I try an edible. Each recipe I do on my own I tweak and make it to my liking and after 15 years of experimenting I think I have come up with some pretty yummy things! I just knew I could take the Seafoam and make it deliciously potent. With baking you always have to be careful, cooking is an art while baking is a science, and you could very easily add or take away something that will change chemical reactions and flavor! You also want to be financially efficient so as to not have to charge an extreme price just to make back what it cost to produce. I have found that using the fat in the recipe and extracting with that you don't compromise taste or potency, each piece will be just as potent as the next and uniform. You won't have any inconsistencies while baking or heating. Brittle being a hard candy I decided to create my extract with the corn syrup itself. The suggestion of using bho was brought up yet the expense was beyond what I felt necessary for the recipe, I didn't want to charge anyone too much and using bho would force me to up my price. That is just one reason, another being I didn't want to compromise the reaction I was looking for once I added the final ingredients. Much less worry about stability and potency of the final product if I just used the corn syrup to extract. I was able to get a very nice canna-corn syrup together and finish my recipe. It came out brilliant! Very tasty, nice and consistent, steady high for a good 6 hours, and it is actually very nice looking! I have yet to decide on whether or not I am going to share the recipe. Maybe someday, if the requests pour in, but for now I am happy to make it by request or share what I have made! This batch was made with Northern Lights.

Bho, wax, earwax, amber glass, shatter, crumble....

So I finally decided to record my runs and see exactly what I am getting versus what I put in. I have a medium sized tube I guess I would say, it holds roughly 1.5 oz depending on the strain or mix. I like to play with mixes as well as do individual strain runs. Lately I have had an abundance of pink sugar so I have been running a lot of pink, which is not a bad thing as she is a favorite of the nursery's oldest members. More often than not I use Newport gas. I have been looking into Lucienne as the residual ppms seem to test lower than the Newport yet I have found if you are a super anal purger like myself the difference is minimal. I do tend to purge and allow the final product to dry for a minimum of 14 days. I have always been paranoid and purged for a very long time with all my extracts. I try to be thorough. There are some winterization techniques applied and there are batches that are done using different techniques yet our standard purging is in a chamber with a 6cfm pump. It is rare that I make crumble, more often than not my final product is shatter. Retaining terpenes for flavor and aroma is important for our product as each flower the nursery runs is sweet and tasty in its own way. We like to play with all our different extracts to find the best final product within our ability with the equipment we have. Please look forward to some peeks into all of our different products! This past week I ran pink kush, the house mix, and the house red mix. GoHerbal! Nursery's standard house mix consists of Shaman, Northern Lights, Bubba Kush (circa 1995), and Pink Kush. The house red mix is the standard house mix with the addition of Panama Red. Currently I am only extracting the strains the nursery is running of which I mix together to create different bho mixes. We have a sativa mix, an indica mix, a knock out mix, and a motivated mix. We'll go further into those as I post results from their runs. 

Here are the results of the most recent run the finished product is great and potent. 

Tube:

~ 1.4-1.5 oz of material

Gas:

~ 3 300ml cans Newport 

Strain: Final Product:

~ pink kush - 2.6 grams 

~ house mix* - 3.7 grams 

~ house red mix** - 3.7 grams

I am quite pleased with the ratio I am attaining at this point. :) There will be a review up soon as well as more results. 

The customer isn't always right... You get what you pay for

We hear this phrase tossed around a lot in every industry. Unfortunately for the customer this is very much a falicy. It is true and correct in a few industries, where the phrase actually originates from, yet beyond that it loses steam. In a service industry, like restuarants or hotels, this is very much the case as only the customer and the customer alone can decide what is satisfactory for their own taste buds and/or comfort. In any other case the customer is lacking far too much information to be able to comment on what is proper or correct. A lack of information is also why the wholesaler will always give the retailer a "suggested retail price" or "minimum purchasing price". But I am getting a head of myself. The right to refuse service is one that every provider, no matter the industry, is entitled to invoke. In no way is any provider of any product or service obligated to give, sell, or provide what they proffer. They can, in fact, decide to do nothing with any given customer at any given time within the transaction for any given reason. Once the transaction is completed, however, they are very much obligated to fulfill their end of the bargain. This notion that the customer is in control is quite damaging and can set an entire industry *ahem* on it's head. There are many ways we can go from here so let us start with a little basic economics and pricing guidelines. With better understanding of why products are given their tickets and how supply and demand affect pricing, we might have much smoother transactions, on the way from functioning like a drug dealer to sound legit business. You cannot insist on legalization while continuing to function like drug dealers. 

Supply and demand have great impact on the market. Price is derived by the interaction of supply and demand. The resultant market price is dependent on both of theses fundamental components of a market. A market price is NOT a fair price to all participants in the marketplace. It does not guarantee total satisfaction on the part of both buyer and seller or all buyers and all sellers. This will depend on their individual competitive positions within the market. Quality is a huge part of pricing decisions within the competitive market. When dealing with agriculture type products the cost of production, maintaining, and distribution are important factors of pricing. Seasonal products will vary in quality which will also affect market price. More than likely seasons will also affect production costs, which will include any unforeseen treatments or issues that may arise. One crop might be higher in quality but less expensive due to maintanence or production costs being less or lower than the higher quality crop. Take winter melons, they tend to be more expensive even if quality is lower due to manufacturing and being distributed from farther away. Since it costs more to produce and distribute from a far away country it will cost us more to purchase the melon than if it were summertime and we could get them more locally, the quality will probably be much better in the summer as well. Supply is also a factor here. If there are an abundance of melons that season the cost of them may dip down a bit if not too many people demand them.

Let's dig a little further, when either supply or demand changes, the equilibrium price will change. Changes in supply and demand can be short run or long run in nature. If demand goes up, for example, and supply is unchanged then it leads to a higher equilibrium price and lower quantity. If supply goes up and demand is unchanged then it is safe to say it leads to a lower price and higher quantity. There are four basic laws of supply and demand to bear in mind:

1. If demand increases and supply remains unchanged then it leads to higher prices and possibly lower quantity.

2. If demand decreases and supply remains unchanged then it leads to lower prices and lower quantity.

3. If supply increases and demand remains unchanged then it leads to lower prices and higher quantity.

4. If supply decreases and demand remains unchanged then it leads to higher prices and lower quantity.

Economics assumes the consumer is a rational decision maker and has perfect information.

This brings us to pricing. What are the factors to consider and how do they affect how products are priced? As I am sure you have deduced on your own, pricing is the process of determining what a company will receive in exchange for it's products. There are factors to consider when pricing and these factors will come into play in the final price. As quality and different ways to produce the "same" product will determine the end sale price that would explain why one company's product may be more expensive than their competitors. Pricing factors are manufacturing costs, market place, competition, market condition, brand, and quality of product. Pricing is the manual, or automated, process of applying prices to purchase and sales orders, based on factors such as; fixed amount, quantity break, promotion or sales campaign, specific vendor quote, price prevailing on entry, shipment or invoice date, combination of multiple orders or lines, and many others. The automated method is fast improving across an aray of industries and will surely become something of great use as a tool, if not a standard, once it can compete across the board. Manual is our most all encompassing reliable method for many industries at this time. How flexible can we be in pricing? The more competitive the industry the less flexibility we have. The price floor is determined by production factors like costs, economies of scale, marginal costs, and degree of operating leverage. The price ceiling is determined by demand factors like price elasticity and price points. What are non monetary costs of purchasing the products? These are also things that will tend to influence end sale prices. They include time taken to travel, preparation time, time spent in store (with client), in term clarification and discussion. Price is influenced by the type of distribution channel used, the type of promotion used, and the quality of the product. Price will usually need to be relatively high if manufacturing is expensive and distribution is exclusive. A low cost price can be a viable substitute for product quality. The price/quality relationship refers to the perception by most consumers that a relatively high price is a sign of good quality. The belief in this relationship is most important with complex products that are hard to test accurately and experiential products that cannot be tested until used, as is most services. The greater the uncertainty surrounding a product, the more consumers depend on price/quality hypothesis and the greater premium they are prepared to pay. 

Pricing is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Microeconomics is the study of the smaller units of the whole economy. The study of microeconomics is based on the terms of supply and demand. The study of economics at the level of individual consumers, groups of consumers, or firms. The encyclopedia of economics gives the realizations of multiple definitions of microeconomics. This definition is the most all encompassing and can accurately define microeconomics, it reads as follows; "the general concern of microeconomics is the efficient allocation of scarce resources between alternative uses but more specifically it involves the determination of price through the optimizing behaviors of economic agents with consumers maximizing utility." The strength of microeconomics comes from the simplicity of it's underlying structure and it's close touch with the real, outside, world. Supply and demand is the core of microeconomics and how they interact in a various markets. 

The field of industrial organization with the different mechanisms by which goods and services are sold, for examples sake these would be cartels, monopolies, and different types of competitive behavior. Agriculture economics deals with the demand of farmland, farm labor, and other factors of production involved in and around agriculture. The great unifying principles of microeconomics are, ever, and always, supply and demand. 

If all parties involved, suppliers and consumers, have a good understanding of these simple and straightforward underpinnings the success of coming to a fair price for all would logically be higher. Again, this is assuming all consumers are rational decision makers with perfect information. What we see, clearly, is suppliers being unaware of their actual costs and other major factors as well as consumers being unaware of pricing factors.