The incredible story of the man who would become the king of cannabis

Originally published in High Times Magazine
Inside Cannabis Castle

Incredible story of the man who would become the king of cannabis

by Steven Hager /Photographs by Jeff Vaughn

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEDS

It is Thursday, November 6, 1986, and Nevil has just returned from his daily pilgrimage to a nearby post office. It's raining lightly and a cold breeze is blowing from the Rhine. Although the sun made a brief appearance at the start of the day, it has since been obliterated by massive, puffy clouds.
As Nevil enters his house, he is attacked by his guard dog, Elka. He walks up the stairs to his living room, plops down on an old couch, and starts opening his mail. “Breeding is about bending nature to your will,” he says, taking a drag on a joint of Skunk #1. “There is no coffee shop in Holland that can produce better weed than this. But I'm not selling it. I give it or I throw it away.

In a few years. Nevil has made an incredible transformation from penniless junkie to wealthy entrepreneur. Although he is an effective and efficient businessman, marijuana is his business, so things run a little differently here than in most businesses. For example, resinous buds of exotic types of cannabis are scattered randomly around the room, as are large chunks of hash and bags full of seeds..
Nevil is a displaced Australian of Dutch descent and has a quiet sense of humor. He lives in relative isolation on his estate, growing marijuana, playing pool, watching videos, patiently waiting for his many experiments with cannabis to bear fruit. He has doubts about the future of the Dutch marijuana business, but those doubts will likely disappear in a puff of smoke every time he tastes a new blockbuster hybrid.

“At first I really wanted people to come here and visit me, but I found it took up a lot of my time.”

he said.

“I have to sit and smoke with them. Now you have to be someone worthy, someone who has a big project in mind. Most American growers are looking for the same thing: a strong, crushing two-hit indica with huge yields. My best seller is Northern Lights.”

“Last year, Nevil supplied $500,000 worth of seeds to 15,000 U.S. growers.”

After the mail is sorted and delivered to the in-house accountant, Nevil visits the basement to inspect his prize-winning plants. The doors to four grow rooms are wide open, revealing the blinding glare of dozens of HPS and MH lamps. Powerful exhaust fans circulate the air and the smell of cannabis is overwhelming. Three of the rooms are devoted to young plants, while the largest contains 40 flowering females in their spectacular resinous splendor.

It's no secret that an explosion in the spread of indoor marijuana has taken place in the United States: grow shops are springing up across the country and HPS and MH lamps are selling faster than marijuana trees. Christmas in December. The reason for this sudden interest in indoor cultivation is also no secret: for the past two years, it has been almost impossible to find high-quality cannabis, unless, of course, you personally know a grower. But any pot enthusiast will tell you that good equipment does not guarantee a good harvest. In fact, the most important element is good seeds. And until recently, good seeds were as rare as a $15 pack of Colombia Gold.

But thanks to Nevil, this sad situation has changed. Every day, letters flow into his post office box, letters containing American dollars wrapped in carbon paper to avoid detection. The money is for seeds. These are no ordinary pot seeds. but the best and most potent seeds on the market, seeds that will yield gargantuan buds dripping with resin, seeds that cost between $2 and $5 each.

The Nevil seed factory has been in operation for three years and is perfectly legal. The Dutch government considers Nevil a legitimate, tax-paying businessman. Seed dealers are held in esteem in the Netherlands, and although Nevil is something of a small fry by seed dealer standards, he is nonetheless a protected national asset. Last year, his company supplied $500,000 worth of seeds to 15,000 U.S. growers. If you've smoked high-quality marijuana in the past three years, there's a good chance the buds were grown with the Nevil strain.

There is a big difference between growing marijuana and growing for quality. The best-known example of the long-term effects of breeding are the indica cannabis plants that arrived in the United States in the 1970s. For hundreds of years, Afghan farmers have grown indica plants for their disease resistance , their early flowering, their large buds and their wide leaves. The strain was developed for hash production, but it also proved useful for American growers who had difficulty with sativa strains, most of which require longer growing cycles.

Ever since indica arrived in this country, breeders have dealt with hybrids that take advantage of the hardiness of indica and the clear, bell-shaped high of sativa. The results of these experiments first appeared at secret harvest festivals in California, Oregon, and Washington. Then, in the early 1980s, a legendary underground organization called the Sacred Seed Company began distributing these remarkable hybrids. Nevil's company, The Seed Bank, sells many strains originally developed by Sacred Seed Company, including the popular Skunk #1, Early Girl, and California Orange. However, over the past three years, some of the most breathtaking strains have come out of the Pacific Northwest region: Northern Lights, University, Big Bud and Hash Plant are ample proof that Seattle and Portland now hold the crown of selection. Needless to say, Nevil’s Seed Bank has obtained cuttings and seeds from all of these varieties and will soon be offering them for sale. Who is Nevil and how did he start this incredible company? As usual, the truth is wilder than anything HIGH TIMES could make up.


CREATING A SEED MERCHANT

The man who would become the cannabis king was the son of Dutch immigrants who settled in Perth, Australia, in 1954. His father worked as an instructor for telephone technicians, while his mother became a counselor for single mothers. They were adventurous and hardworking Catholics, and they raised their six children strictly, sending them to Catholic schools.

“I wasn’t the most malleable child”, admit Nevil.

From a very young age, I had an aversion to authority. I was the firstborn and considered myself a sort of pioneer for the rest of the children. Despite his rebellious nature, Nevil was intelligent enough to be two years ahead of his peers, a leap that resulted in him being the shortest in class.

“I often got beaten up”

he admits. A typical day started with the teacher calling me to the front of the class to smell my breath.

«YES.» Elle disait: “You smoked.”

And I would immediately get six strappings. And it was just the right way to start the day! Usually this kind of thing put me in a bad mood, so the rest of the day wasn't very good either. In the end, I received the strap 900 times in one year, the school record.

Nevil was not a typical juvenile delinquent. At age seven, he began raising parakeets; two years later he joined the Parakeet Society of Western Australia. “My best friend across the street bought parakeets,” he explains. “and I became extremely jealous. After he started breeding, I became adamant that I would do the same.

He eventually became friends with one of Australia's leading parakeet breeders, Bob Graham. “I learned a lot from him“, he said. “He was quadriplegic and incredibly intelligent.” Nevil learned Mendel's laws of reproduction and began charting the dominant, recessive, and intermediate traits of his birds (something he would later do with cannabis plants). “I bought some of Graham's stock and got immediate results”, he said. “When you breed parakeets, you are breeding according to an ideal. It's like sculpting with genes . ”

At the age of 15, Nevil was sent to a public school and forced to repeat his third year of high school. Therefore, he caught up with his classmates in height.

“I fought a few times”, he said with a smile, “just to get revenge for all the times I had been beaten up.”

Although discipline at school was considered harsh, it turned out to be child's play after Catholic school. “The first time I was brought before the director to be punished, he made me hold out my hand and he hit it twice with a cane”, Nevil remembers. “I thought he was on target. I closed my eyes and waited for the real pain, but it never came.”

I was quite shocked. I thought.

“Well, now I can do whatever I want.”

I ignored the dress code and dressed how I wanted. It didn't go well and I managed to get deported within three months. He also discovered marijuana.

To be continued… Part 1/3

Source: HERE