The Modern Moroccan
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For more than 100 years the Moroccan government has allowed
(ignored) kif cultivation near the pine-covered crest of the
otherwise barren Rif Mountains, in a limited area closely
surrounding the village of Ketama. However, the industry has
grown in the past 10 years and farms now nearly cover all the
upper mountain ranges and much lowland as far as 75 miles from the
once quiet Ketama. Fifteen years ago less than 500 sqaure miles
were under hashish cultivation. Before hashish cultivation, kif
cultivation used only approximatly 500 sqware miles. Now,
cultivation covers 10,000 square miles and nearly every terraced
field with a source of water is filled with kif plants from spring
to late summer. Hashish is the only major product of the region
and it is one of the only crops that will grow here. If the
incredible tonnage of hashish produced and its comparatively high
wholesale market value are used as indicators, it appears that
hashish must be Morocco's number one export.
Most of the kif is harvested in late July and early August
when the weather turns hottest and driest. The plants change from
medium green to golden yellow as they begin to wilt and die in the
baking sun. Some plants in well irrigated fields remain green
longer and are left until mid-September. Moroccan farmers don't
wait for the resin to build up on the flowers like sinsemilla
farmers do. All of these plants are completely seeded. Rather,
the Moroccan farmer decided to harvest when the plants run out of
water and begin to die. The longer the water holds out, the
longer the plants have to mature, and the more potent the resins
become andf the taller the plants. Unfortunatly, chemical
fertilizers are now commonly and extensivly used to increase yield
on exhausted land and absolutly every farmer agrees that chemical
fertilizers produce inferior taste, smell and high, and are not as
sticky either. Now that farmers are only growing for resin and
are not growing the whole plant for kif, the genetics are rapidly
declining. Now, unselected seeds from inferior plants are what
everone uses for planting. Old time kif farmers had a close
personal relationship with thier crops when they were growing for
flowers and not just for resin.
The single stalks from one to eight feet in lenght are
bundled for transport to the home compund where they are laid on
hot tin roofs to dry in the sun for about 5 days. After they are
fairly crisp the bundles are stacked in the cool shade inside of
thier homes and stored for one to six months until the resins are
collected for hashish production. Dry weight yield for plants is
approximatly 10 grams per square foot, 100 grams per sqaure meter.
Resin collection is very simply performed by stretching a
single layer of nylon scarf material across the mouth of a large
plastic wash tub. The entire plants are covered with a sheet of
plastic and flailed with a stick over the tub. The large stems
are thrown away and the crushed plant material is rubbed back and
forth across the cloth sieve. The coarse plant debris stays
behind while the resin glands, powdered plant material, dust and
dirt falls through the seieve and is collected in the wash tub.
The harder and longer the plant material is rubbed on the screen,
the more plant material goes through with the resin, This process
is repeated over and over up to a dozen times until nothing but
powdered green leaf is coming through the sieve. The first and
second extractions are mostly resin while the subsequent batches
are mostly debris. The Moroccans can market slmost any quality of
hashish and no resin is wasted as you shall see.
The first two or three sievings are combined to produce the
best commercial grade of Moroccan hashish known as "Zero-Zero."
They yield from 100 kilos of dried kif plants is approximatly 2 to
3 kilos (or 2,000 to 3,000 grams) of "Zero-Zero" quality hashish.
This quality is rarely available on the export market and is
usually the BEST quality you will be offered in Morocco.
Although, with diligent hunting in the farming area it is possible
to find higher quality (70 to 1000 grams from 100 kilos dry
plants), but only in small quantities of less than 100 grams.
Most exported comercial quality is 5 to 10 kilos hashish from 100
kilos of dried plant. We wouldn't smoke it.
However, the vast majority of hashish exported from Morocco
and found across Europe is manufactured from the lower grades of
green leafy resin powder. Binders are used to make the low grade
powder sticky so it can be pressed together to look like real nice
dark hashish. These sorts of practices are also carried out in
the Afghan-Pakistani border region, another major supplier of
hashish to Europe. Binders include butter, bananas, pine tar,
plant gums, sweetened condensed milk, henna, motor oil, and worst
of all, paraffin wax. Up to 10% of the weight of commercial
hashish can be accounted for by binders such as wax. Wax helps
poor quality resins stick together like good resin would, and when
a match is put to it, will keep a flame like superior hashish
would. Who knows what smoking petrolum wax does to your lungs,
but it can't be good for you! The idea behind making hashish is
to get a stronger, cleaner smoke so you consume less impurities,
and smoke less in total, than by using crude Marijuana. Adding
adulterants defeats the purpose, decieves the public, and
endangers health.
A fairly high grade of hashish can be produced from seedy
Morrocan kif, but only by rigorusly performing the proper
techniques as first taught to the Moroccans by Mustafa the
Algerian. First selected superior plants must be cleaned of all
leaf to remove any potential impurities. The leaves dont have any
resin on them anyways and are covered with dust. Then while
working over the sieve the flowering tops are carefully stripped
deom the stems are crushed without reducing the to powder. The
resin heads are shaken through the cloth by slapping the sides of
the plastic tub, but the cloth is never touched nor the flowers
rubbed across it. After shaking, the crushed flowers are dumped
to the side not brushed off by hand which pushed debris through
the screen. These crushed flowers are saved for later comercial
extraction and another portion of flowers is gingerly crushed over
the sieve. Only the resin glands and fine dust flass through the
cloth and is collected from the bottom of the tub. This already
potent can be further cleaned by lightly rubbing it across the top
of a double layer or slightly finer scarf material. This allows
most of the fine dirt and dust to fall though but few of the
coarser resin heads. The resin remaining on top of the sieve is
nearly pure cannabis resin free of most of the dirt and plant
debris. Pure hashish as it was originally intended to be prepared,
is easily hard pressed into what the Moroccans call chewing gum.
Before resin glands can be smoked the must be pressed into a
piece of hashish. The Moroccans use hydraulic jacks to press 250
grams comercial pieces. "Zero-Zero" powder is simply poured into
a cellophane bag and lightly squeezed with the press, since it is
naturally sticky enough to stay together. This produces a
yellowish blonde slab. The very best pieces can be hand pressed
with difficulty. The resins are very dry from baking in the sun so
they are not as easily to press as higher grade shade-dried
resins.
Lower grade powders are mixed with adulterants and binders,
heated, and hammer beaten to blend the ingredients thoroughly
before they are squeezed into molds under high pressure. A dark
reddish to deep brown slab of Modern Morrocan is the result, ready
for export. Most smokers assume what they are smoking is clean
hashish free from impurities. In factg most of it is tainted.
The hashish manufactures are crafty and it is difficult for the
average smoker to detect adulterants in hashish. Kif mixed with
tobacco is smoked one hit at a time in a long wooden-stemmed sibsi
pipe with a small red clay bowl. Hashish is smoked in the sam
fashion. However, we rolled thumb diameter joints with three to
five grams of the best (Personally made "Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero") on
a cardboard filter. This allowed much faster consumtion and
provided the rushes we traveled thousands of miles to enjoy.
While commerical techniques yield more than 3,00 grams of
mediocre hashish per 100 kilos of kif, traditional hashish
techniques yeild only 100 to 200 grams of super clean and pure
hashish. Because it is twice as good as thier best, we call it
"Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero."
As an experiment we had 100 kilos of whole, dried Moroccan
plants completely maicured and cleaned to various components. The
breakdown was:
15 kilos leaf
20 kilos stem
50 kilos seed
15 kilos flower
In Morocco, 100 kilos dried plants is really only 15 kilos
flowers and farmers extract up to 5 to 10 kilos of so-called
resin. No wonder the resin needs help to stick together! American
improved varieties such as Skunk #1 can yield up to 70 kilos of
pure flowers from 100 kilos of dried plant. There is much more
resin and the resins can be sinsemilla resins with little dirt or
dust. That's five to ten times the weight in resin! The older
farmers remember how to make fine hashish but they cannot get a
high enough price for it to make it worthwhile to produce. It
just isnt worth the twenty to thirty times the price to enough
connoisseur smokers. The moroccans make much more money by
selling lesser quality product.
The only answer to this dilemma is to make your own hashish.
Most smokers can't take the time to travel to the third world in
search of inexpensive marijuana as a source for thier own pieces
of hashish. However, along with the burgeoning marijuana
cultivating industry comes a ready supply of high-grade
domestically grown cannabis with resin suitble for making hashish.
Outdoor plants, greenhouse plants, and artifical light plants can
all be utilized to make high grade hashish.
Ending Note: Place silscreen under your work area while you
manicure, package, and roll doobies. A piece of black plexiglass
or a mirror under the screen makes collecting the separated resins
easy with a credit card. Correct screen size is 43 threads to the
centimeter, 100-120 to the inch, for most domestically grown resin
heads. Moroccan because of smaller resin heads requires 60-80 to
the centimeter, 150-200 to the inch. Also, Zero-Zero orginally
got its name from the hole size of the silk fabric that was the
finest, "00."
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