Cannabis farmers upend rural tranquility in Calif.
HAYFORK, Calif. - Education has long been preached as a way to keep children away from drugs. It is the walk to school that has Superintendent Tom Barnett worried.
This Northern California town has become a hotbed for medical marijuana farming. Children stroll much of the year past pungent plants flourishing in gardens and alleys. The Timberjacks football team moved its halftime huddle on a recent Friday night to avoid the marijuana smoke wafting over the gridiron from nearby houses. Some students talk openly of farming marijuana after graduation - about the only opportunity in this depressed timber town.
“It’s not a subculture here,’’ said Barnett. “Marijuana is drying in their houses. It’s falling out of their pockets.’’
Here in Trinity County, cannabis cultivation is upending the rural culture and economy of one of the state’s hard-luck regions.
Drawn by the sunny, cool climate - and a local ordinance permissive of medical marijuana farming and possession - big- city refugees have brought a decidedly urban edge to hamlets such as Hayfork, about 250 miles north of San Francisco.
Nearly a quarter of its 1,900 residents are poor. But that hasn’t stopped outsiders from bidding up the price of real estate with sun-soaked southern exposures, all the better to cultivate plants that can grow 12 feet high.
The sheriff’s office estimates 10,000 plants are growing in a single remote subdivision known as Trinity Pines. Lots on its southwest-facing slope sell for as much as $50,000, up from about $3,500 five years ago, according to broker Steven Hanover.
Fall brings strangers with cash boxes. Some farmers guard their crops with electric fences, razor wire, and snarling dogs.
“It’s just torn the fabric of our society,’’ said Judy Stewart, 69, a retiree who has lived in the county more than 50 years. “It’s pitted people against one another.’’
How Trinity County, a lightly populated area twice the size of Rhode Island, came to be dubbed “Northern California’s pot paradise’’ by High Times is a story of law, lawlessness, and geography.
Just a little more than 14,000 residents are spread across its 3,000 square miles.
Trinity County has “always been a pot county. Our climate in these little mountain valleys is conducive to great cannabis,’’ said Mike Boutin, who runs Grace Farm, a collective in the western part of the county. He originally moved there to grow and sell on the black market. He now cultivates it legally because of California’s Proposition 215.
California law permits cooperatives where patients can, in effect, pool individual plant limits. That opened the way for large growing operations like Grace Farm, which has 20 members.
Among them is Jacqueline Patterson, 31, who uses marijuana to treat her cerebral palsy and a severe stutter. She travels to Trinity twice a year to pick up 3 pounds of marijuana, which she gets free in exchange for working for the co-op. The collective charges most patients about $170 an ounce.
The arrangement has allowed her “to acquire medicine affordably,’’ said Patterson, who moved in 2007 from Missouri, where medical marijuana is illegal.
