Hello, Shroomery!
I’ve been a long time lurker, but today I am emerging from the shadows to share my experience as a first-time grower. I really dove in at the deep end of ambition with this grow, and I owe any success to the awesome and helpful people on this forum, especially the TC’s, before there even was a TC badge. My grow gleaned a little direction and pointers from several different TEKs and pieces of advice i picked up along the way in the many many months i spent learning about the hobby before deciding to participate. In short, I stand on the shoulders of giants.
I am living in Europe at the moment in a country with a militantly conservative drug policy and border control, and i am here on a temporary residence which does not allow me to work. So my grow needed to be stealthy, and cheap. Sclerotia presented itself as a natural fit because it needs next to no equipment, space, or attention.
Without going into detail, suffice to say that I was able to obtain a fresh specimen of Psilocybe Galindoi from the Netherlands (It had some other fancy name on the package but the attendant confirmed that it was in fact Galindoi). The piece I had was about half the size of the tip of my little finger, so I used a variation of the cardboard cloning tek to get some (hopefully) clean mycelium into a honey LC (i needed LC because i had to use an injection port for the bag), and from there into a pre-sterilized bag i bought from a sponsor. I used every ounce of sterile technique I could muster, but I knew there was still a YUGE possibility of contam.
Then, it was just a matter of patience. And luck.
Over the next few weeks I saw plenty of myc, but nothing I could identify as contamination.

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Small stone with nice, strong, lightning myc feeding it
I came across conflicting theories about mixing up the grains at 30% colonization, with some people saying it helped colonization, and others saying stone production suffered or it was unnecessary. i decided NOT to mix things up, mostly as a precaution - if my sterile technique was lacking, which i considered a probability just based on my inexperience, i did not want to risk exacerbating the problem by introducing contaminants to more nutrients, or possibly weakening the competing Galindoi mycelium. Next time I grow, however, I will definitely break up the grains. Not to speed up colonization, but to increase production. As it turned out, the middle of the bag was completely devoid of mycelium or stones, and so my harvest suffered dramatically. I do not have a proper scale, but I would estimate the weight of the wet harvest to be between 250-280 grams from a rather large bag of grains. Not as much as i was expecting, but for me it is still a thrilling result!

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First stone!

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Phone for scale lol the bowl holds 2.5 litres of leftover grain
The actual production may have been slightly higher, but since this was my first time sorting rocks from rye, I initially had a problem distinguishing actual sclerotia from thick clumps of grains. There were a few times i attempted to break up what i thought was a clump of grains, only to have it ‘pop’ in my hand, releasing a sweet nutty aroma that reminded me of roasting pine nuts in the oven around christmas time with my family. I guess i expected the sclerotia to be firmer and more dense than it is.

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One of the larger stones, a bit smaller than a golfball
I eventually solved this problem by putting a handful at a time into a bowl of water and letting the different densities of the grains and rocks do the sorting for me. I scooped the floating grains off the top of the water and smashed them gently in my hands. if there were any stones hiding out, they would still be firm and I could separate them easily. once the top was clear, all that remained were stones sitting on the bottom. This is a step i will be happy to eliminate once I get more experience harvesting sclerotia.

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Here you can see the how the grains float and the stones sink in the water
As for the leftover grains, I figure i have nothing to lose so I am going to try and get them to fruit. I am going to soak them in weak coffee for a few hours, drain, and return them to the bag with a casing layer and see what happens with daily misting and fanning. If i get even a single faint spore print, i will consider it a heroic, monumental success. And if It immediately turns green or spontaneously combusts, oh well. The fact that it has been even marginally successful is nothing short of miraculous, and I see it as a testament to the will of nature and life to thrive against the odds.

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This piece of myc is FIRMLY attached to the stone - it won't let go!
I would say the single best piece of advice that has helped me the most is “make friends with the search function”. I spent months poring over the information in this forum and elsewhere on the web before making the decision to grow. Getting to know the search tool has been a force multiplier in the learning process, allowing me to get the most up-to-date and relevant information.
On that note, let me say a big thanks to Roger Rabbit, Stonesun, Violet, Doc T, Rose, and I am sure SO MANY others i cant remember at the moment, for being an absolutely inexhaustible wealth of information and experience.
That is all I can think to say concerning my grow right now. If you have any questions or critiques, please let me know what is on your mind!

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What is this shiny stuff mixed in with the grains? The stones seem to love it
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