FARMINGTON – A Jay man accused of growing marijuana and trafficking in drugs denied related charges Monday in Franklin County Superior Court.

Robert Whittemore, 57, pleaded not guilty to felony charges of aggravated trafficking in marijuana and aggravated marijuana cultivation.

Whittemore surrendered to police on Sept. 26, 2007, after Jay police, Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and deputies with the Franklin and Oxford county sheriff’s departments raided Whittemore’s Barking Dog Mill on Route 140 in Jay and say they found a marijuana growing operation on Sept. 24.

A law enforcement officer in a helicopter spotted the marijuana after returning from a pot plant eradication mission in Oxford County, police said at the time.

Before turning himself in, Whittemore denied the police allegations and said the marijuana was not his. Whittemore said he leases the property his mill is on from National Retail Systems Inc. of New Jersey, and the raid occurred while he was away.

Jay police Chief Larry White Sr. said in September that officers seized 90 plants with a street value of $90,000 near a pig pen on the property. They also confiscated a pound of processed marijuana packaged in 1 ounce bags for distribution, he said.

An indoor growing room was found on the second floor of the property, and a drying room was in a second building attached to a large sawmill building, White had said.

Several pounds of hanging marijuana plants were found drying in the room in preparation for stripping the buds off the stalks for weighing and distribution, White said.

Police also said they found handwritten ledgers that established the marijuana for sale at $200 per ounce, or $3,200 per pound.

The marijuana was estimated to have been worth $300,000.

Whittemore’s attorney, Margot Joly, asked the court Monday that bail conditions be amended by deleting “no use of alcohol.”

The judge granted that amendment.