Ten Thousand Marijuana Plants and a Community of Farmers

NACOGDOCHES COUNTY - Nearly 14-hundred pounds of marijuana was found in Nacogdoches County last weekend.

What shocked deputies more than the pot, was the way it was found, being grown in a sophisticated farm.

Nacogdoches County deputies received what seemed to be a routine, even mundane call.

A caller noticed something strange along County Road 425.

"She noticed a path of clothing scattered through a wooded area that usually wasn't there," Sheriff Thomas Kerss says.

When deputies went to check it out, they found about ten thousand marijuana plants.

"People, you could tell, were living on this property and were caring for the plants throughout their growth stages."

Deputies estimate about 25 people were living there. They had stock-piles of canned food, some hygiene products, and several camps set up throughout the property with hammocks and make-shift tents.

Deputies say it looks like the people living there were illegal immigrants, based on several items they found around the camps, but that's not all, this farm was a sophisticated operation.

The land chosen for this farm had a natural pond, from that pond, gasoline-powered water pumps took water from the pond through hoses to holding reservoirs where the water was mixed with plant-growing chemicals and spread on the plants.

Sheriff Kerss says it could be part of a new trend where instead of smuggling drugs over the border, cartels are smuggling people to grow their drugs.

"Because that's easier to do than try to smuggle the drugs across the border right now," Mr. Kerss says.