TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s first legal harvest of marijuana is stored in multiple vacuum-packed, 441-gram bags in a freezer on the outskirts of Tallahassee.

Each is the result of months of careful growing, monitoring, coaxing and cultivating scores of plants in a hidden farm overseen by horticulturalists and protected by armed guards.

This is one of two production facilities operated by Surterra Therapeutics, the first of six companies to win state approval to grow and harvest medical marijuana for the seriously ill and dying.

It is part pharmaceutical production facility, part grow house. Its operators say it is just the start of new business they hope will bring high-quality, and formerly unavailable, medicine to patients who need it the most. [Read more at Naples Daily News]