Here is a map showing the parcel lines for both parcels. I did the best I could get it to zoomed in. It was super sensitive. I have also included a map I made previously, showing one of the houses is actually on the parcel line of the 2 properties. Hopefully this helps as well for understanding and visual purposes!
Thanks SO much, NorCal, for humoring my curiosity!
This clearly shows that the cleared growing areas I saw are on another piece of land, not particularly close. Looking around the property Jeff rented, there are several areas that appear to have or have had greenhouses, if it was the same in 2014. The "house" on the property line may be a greenhouse also, or even an indoor grow house, since it has numerous roof vents. How interesting that it straddles the border of the property owned by the person Jeff rented from. That could cause a dispute, although I imagine that detail was addressed when Jeff rented the property.
So it appears to me that Jeff's operation was not a large outdoor grow, but a less obvious grow using greenhouses and possibly (although less likely) indoor grow houses.
I'm curious how many years Jeff had been growing on this property. How did he meet the property owner and his partners? How long had he known them? I believe he had known the partners for some years. Did he start growing here before he moved to Louisiana? Do we know why he moved? Does it have any bearing on his disappearance?
This article from 2014 talks about the shift from indoor grows to greenhouses, a much more economical method of growing. It could be he was doing both.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/19/5618624/weed-greenhouses-popularity-increase
The link below describes greenhouse growing in detail. There are methods that can yield two or even three harvests during the growing season. This made me wonder if they were harvesting a crop when Jeff was there in June. It's more likely that he was just there to see how things were going though.
I do wonder who transported the final product to wherever it went, and where its destination was (commercial or medicinal sales, for example). There are opportunities for betrayal at any point in the growing, harvesting, drying, trimming, transportation and sale processes. Hiring the wrong people can be deadly, as the recently solved murder in Mendocino county posted by burblestein shows. Had any new people joined "the team?"
http://www.ilovegrowingmarijuana.com/growing-marijuana-greenhouse/
Here the searchable link to Jeff's property as shown in the photo you attached. His parcel number is
534-195-011-000. It allowed me to look at other properties and see relationships. As you mentioned, it doesn't zoom in well, so I bounced back and forth to Google maps to get a better view.
http://webgis.co.humboldt.ca.us/HCEGIS2.0m/
The pin on google maps is on or near the bright white greenhouse or growhouse on the property line.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/4..."W/@41.2802784,-123.7612607,18z/data=!3m1!1e3
I post all this information and ask questions trying to get a sense of what Jeff was doing and how he was going about it. We probably won't get closer to learning what happened to Jeff, but it doesn't hurt to know as much as possible to put the pieces together. But one thing we do know is that Jeff was in a very dangerous business and not everyone makes it out alive, no matter how careful they are.