Point Reyes Light - September 16, 2004

 Deputies raid pot patch in the Chileno Valley

By Liz Fox

An unknown marijuana grower last week lost his crop of 50 plants that were in a remote area of a large Chileno Valley ranch.

Sheriff's Office deputies spotted the pot patch during an air patrol and on Friday cut down and burned the budding plants. Three county firefighters using flame throwers torched the plants at the county corporation yard in Nicasio.

The pot patch was on the Kleiser Ranch, but deputies said Dr. Jim and Grace Kleiser of Chileno Valley Road were unaware of it. "I don't think [the pot patch] was going to jump out and hurt anybody," Grace Kleiser said, but "we certainly didn’t want it there."

The Kleisers gave deputies permission to cross the ranch in four-wheel-drive vehicles, Sheriff’s Sgt. Hugh Baker said. A pot patch such as this is "usually ... grown on private property – on a rancher’s land who had nothing to do with it," Baker said. "Unless the guy [who planted the marijuana] happens to be there when we show up, [arrests are] very rare."

Beginning at 8 a.m. Friday, authorities had to clear away dense brush and poison oak to reach the patch where they uprooted tall plants, Baker said. Deputies transferred the plants to the Point Reyes sheriff's substation at 4:30 p.m. to make a record of the evidence and then hauled it to Nicasio for burning.

But firefighters, like pot smokers before them, learned it is difficult to get green marijuana to burn. They then hauled the "grass" to a pile of roadside debris, which had been collected, and set fire to all of it with flame throwers.

Armed with point-and-shoot digital cameras, deputies recorded the blaze with glee. "Don't stand down wind of that," they joked. While deputies described the haul as "pretty big," the county seized a total of 1,200 plants last year.

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