All the packages are in the mail for all orders up through last night! Woo-hoo! (I can sleep again!!)
90% of the orders shipped yesterday, the rest this morning.
All of the cuttings were still really juicy (most had lots of leaves that I had to trim off, and were halfway dormant at best), so I didn't use any damp paper towels/newspaper/etc in the packaging, as that would be too much moisture imo. The cuttings of each variety were sealed in their own quart storage baggie, and all of the baggies for each order were then sealed in a gallon baggie, which was then sealed in a padded envelope or medium flat-rate box with a packing slip and a copy of my USDA inspection certificate. The cuttings all have plenty of moisture, so none of them should dry out on their journey.
I tried to cut the tops of the cuttings at an angle and the bottoms flat, for easy up/down reference, though some I didn't because up/down was already readily apparent or because I just happened to miss one.
I have a strip of tracking numbers a mile long, identified by zip code. It would take me all day to cross-reference them and then email them to everyone: 5 minutes per person x 120 orders = 600 minutes, i.e. 10 hours of additional work (on top of the estimated 35 hours I spent pruning and packaging). So what I propose is that you all give the mail system a week, and if you haven't received your cuttings after next weekend, then pm me your zip code and I'll send you your tracking number.
If anything goes wrong with the cuttings on their journey, or if you're not happy for any reason, just pm me and let me know, and we'll get things worked out. I want everyone to be happy and to have great success with their cuttings.
I tried very hard to make sure everyone's orders were accurate, but I do have 1 screwup to report: approximately 10% of the people who ordered MBVS got a mix of MBVS and Nero 600m. Here's how it happened. I had 3 gallon-size bags of MBVS cuttings, roughly separated by size, and I would pull 1 from each bag to fill orders of MBVS. At 3am on the last night of packaging, after 90% of the orders had already been done, one of the MBVS bags was empty. I got rid of the bag and scooted my Nero 600m bag close to where the empty MBVS bag had been. After having spent 15 hours doing things the old way, and maybe because it was 3am and I was more than a bit tired, I somehow fell back into the habit of pulling MBVS cuttings from 3 bags again: the 2 MBVS bags and, unfortunately, the Nero 600m bag. Extra unfortunately, I didn't catch the mistake until I was almost done and 100+ packages were sealed up and randomly packed in bins. Since I had counted and labeled the number of cuttings of each variety beforehand, I was able to determine that 8 Nero 600m cuttings got packaged as MBVS by mistake.
The good news regarding the MBVS/Nero 600m mixup is that they're extremely easy to tell apart, so when you're rooting your purported MBVS cuttings, if any of them start to grow leaves with long skinny fingers, you know it's Nero 600m.
The bad news, of course, is that I screwed up and didn't include the correct number of MBVS cuttings for some of you. I have more MBVS that I can ship out, but right now I don't know who to send them to or who would even want me to. If any of you figure out that you didn't get all your MBVS cuttings and you want more, I can send you more. It would be convenient to add them into a future order later this winter when I offer my potted cuttings, but that would only work if you were to order again, and I wouldn't want to require that. So if down the road you figure out that you didn't get all your MBVS cuttings and you're not placing another order, just let me know and I can ship you some replacements. I very much apologize for causing this problem.
This was my first time distributing cuttings, and I think the biggest thing I learned was just how naive I was with regard to how long it would take. I have a whole new level of respect and appreciation for all of the folks who have done this over the years, especially Jon. My best advice for anyone else doing this for the first time would be to take your estimated # of work hours and quadruple it.
Thanks everyone for being so patient! There were only a few hiccups in that regard, and those were really my fault for not realizing that my PayPal contact email was an old one that I hadn't used or checked in years. The few people who opened PayPal cases against me had first tried contacting me through that old email account.
I've still got some extras from a lot of varieties, so feel free to keep ordering. I'll keep the listings updated on availability, and will ship new orders as they come in, probably within 24 hours of being placed.
Best of luck on all your rooting!
James/GreenFin