Talking to Animals

by Jon Katz

  9

  Joshua Rockwood

  In March 2015, the northeastern United States, and its many farms, were hit with one of the worst cold spells in history. In some places temperatures plunged to as low as minus-30 degrees at night. Tens of thousands of water pipes, sewer lines, feeding tanks, streams, and brooks froze over.

  It was an awful time, especially for farmers, and it was a very hard time for Bedlam Farm. The frost-free water line we had dug the previous autumn—it was five feet deep—froze in late February. Our donkeys and sheep were confined to the Pole Barn, the drifts and ice blocked them in. They had shelter, but nowhere to walk or forage. The ground was covered in several feet of rock-hard ice and snow. We could not get to the hay feeders for weeks, and had to dump the hay in the barn and sometimes on the frozen ground.

  We hauled buckets from the farmhouse to the heated water tank outside two or three times a day, and sometimes, when the power went out, or even if it didn’t, the tanks froze and the animals had to wait a few hours before we could get water to them. They had to drink it in a hurry, and they did.

  We checked each day to make sure they were healthy and as comfortable as possible. They did fine. We reminded ourselves that these conditions were common in nature. Animals know how to deal with it better than we do.

  But things did not go so smoothly for a young and idealistic farmer named Joshua Rockwood, who leases a ninety-acre farm in Glenville, New York, where he raises cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens. He lives right down the road from his farm with his wife and two young children. Joshua’s mission is to raise healthy meat on the farm and sell it to local people.

  His farm is called West Wind Acres. His cows are usually up on the hill, and there are freshwater streams running year round. The pigs and sheep graze on a big, wide pasture. The chickens have a stylish two-story henhouse in a large open field; they too are free-range. The Maremma guard dogs live with the sheep. In the barn, there are huge pens for dogs and for the goats when the animals need to shelter inside.

  Joshua is a sort of farm geek. He’s obsessed with nutrition, and feed, and aspires to sell the best meat, raised in the healthiest and most environmentally sound way. His business is new, but he’s attracting a growing list of customers happy with the quality of his food. He has many detailed plans to expand his business in the region.

  West Wind Acres is very much a newcomer’s farm. It is a patchwork of tin huts, homemade shelters, and trailers; equipment, water pans, and buckets are strewn everywhere. Joshua is the first to say he is inexperienced, that he is learning as he goes. He also points out—correctly—that all of his animals are very well cared for: in good (healthy) coat, alert, active, healthy.

  Joshua doesn’t have much room in the outbuildings of his farm, so he keeps hay and food down the road near his house. He was not prepared for February temperatures that plunged so far below zero. Neither was I. Neither were any of the farmers I know.

  One night, someone—he will probably never know who—drove by Joshua’s farm and saw his Maremma sheepdogs running loose in the field, as guard dogs do. This person called the police and said they were concerned about the well-being of the dogs, running around in the cold.

  Maremmas are famed sheepdogs who, in all weather, live outside with the sheep, fending off coyotes, wolves, and stray dogs. They have thick, curly white coats, and suffer greatly when confined indoors. Joshua also had two draft horses and a pony; their hooves, he knew, were overgrown by about two months. In the bitter cold, many farriers skipped their rounds for a few weeks, or even a month or two. It does not harm horses for their hooves to be overgrown for a few months.

  The police notified the local Humane Society and also contacted a local horse rescue farm. They came by Joshua’s house and said they wanted to see his farm; they were seeking a warrant to inspect his animals. Joshua was shocked, but happy to cooperate with the police. He answered their questions about his water tanks and whether or not they were frozen.

  When the police left, Joshua, concerned, called two local vets he had worked with and asked them to come out to the farm and examine all of his animals. They did. Both vets found the animals to be healthy, hydrated, and well cared for. They each signed reports testifying to that.

  In a day or so, the police returned. With them were an officer from the local Humane Society and two trailers from two different rescue farms.

  Joshua had been late getting to his farm that morning. He had taken his son to see his grandmother. He knew that his water buckets had frozen, as they had on almost every farm in the Northeast, and that the streams in the hill where his cattle drank had been covered over with ice. Each day, he had chipped holes in the ice cover and brought water from the farmhouse for the dogs and sheep and pigs.

  None of his animals had died, or become dehydrated. His pigs did what pigs do: they gathered up in huddles and burrowed into hay and compost. All the animals slept under shelters with roofs.

  The officers asked Joshua where the hay and feed were for the pigs and sheep. He said they were stored at his house, that he had no room in the barn. He told the officers he made sure there was fresh water each day. The officers found animal feces frozen into the water bowls and buckets. Joshua explained to them that animals had poor toilet hygiene and that he cleaned the buckets out regularly.

  The officers examined the hooves of the horses and conferred with the horse rescue people. They seized all three of his horses and ordered them shipped to a horse rescue farm.

  By the time the police left that morning, Joshua had not only had his horses seized, he also had been cited thirteen times for animal cruelty. The charges included having an unheated barn, horses with overgrown hooves, frozen water receptacles, and two pigs with gray matter on the tips of one ear that might have been frostbite.

  The police asked a judge to set bail for Joshua. They said they considered him a flight risk, even with a ninety-acre farm, more than one hundred animals, and a wife and two kids.

  The police refused to say who had informed on him. Under the law in New York and many other states, that information can be kept permanently confidential in an animal cruelty investigation. The idea is to make it easy and comfortable to report animal abuse, without fear of confrontation, retaliation, or challenge. It also, it seems, makes it easy and comfortable to inform on neighbors and strangers and farmers without any kind of accountability.

  I know a lot of farmers. Almost any small farmer will be happy to talk to you about informers. Farming was once one of those difficult but obsessive ways of life that celebrated individuality, freedom, and privacy. Nowadays, though, almost any farmer you meet will have stories about the police or sheriff pulling up because somebody drove by and saw a horse or cow lying down, or a cow out in the pasture with some snow on her back, or a horse pulling a wagon on a warm day, or a border collie running alongside sheep with his tongue hanging out.

  Those were once considered common, even beautiful sights on a farm. City people loved to ride out into the country to see such scenes.

  Today, the context of farming has changed. Small farms are struggling, unable to compete with the giant corporate industrial farms. And those iconic scenes of animals working and living outside are often reasons to call the police and have animals seized. The farmer is forced to try to explain why work is not abuse for big horses, and working dogs need to work and run, and cows with their thick hides have no problem standing out in the snow to enjoy some fresh air.

  The farmers live with their animals and know them. People driving by with their cell phones at night and calling the police usually do not.

  This is why nearly three hundred farmers showed up to support Joshua Rockwood at his first—and second and third—court hearing. It could have been me, they said to themselves, and quite often it was.

  As I stood in line with the farmers waiting to be searched by the police before entering the courtroom, I heard story after story. Abuse seems to be undergoing a radical redefinition. The far
mers all say that the people who used to regulate them came from farming families, grew up in rural areas with animals, and knew animals.

  They all report that this no longer true. The people regulating animals now are ideologues and activists, who seem to know nothing about farming or the real needs of animals.

  What is important about Joshua Rockwood’s case isn’t that he is a saint or perfect; it’s that his arrest highlights the fearful new reality for animals in America. It is becoming increasingly difficult, fraught, and expensive to adopt or acquire them, or to live with them in peace and privacy.

  The police found a healthy working farm when they arrived at West Wind Acres. There were no sick or dying animals who had to be rushed to treatment. At the same time that Joshua’s water tanks froze, the town hall’s sewage pipes froze, spilling waste onto the floors of the municipal building. No one was arrested.

  It was moving to see the outrage and outpouring of support for Joshua—farmers sent money via crowdsourcing sites, took precious time away from work to attend his hearings, sent letters and messages of support. Farmers from all over the country told Joshua the same thing had happened to them. Many had been put out of business due to legal fees; others settled because they couldn’t afford the long and costly process of a trial. Still others were publicly shamed; many lost their farms.

  I didn’t get to see their farms, so I can’t say what condition their animals were in, but I did get to see Joshua Rockwood’s, and I can tell you his animals were healthy, alert, and well cared for.

  As I mentioned earlier, abused or starved animals are easy to spot—they are sluggish, wary, weak. Their eyes are runny or rheumy, their ears back, their movements unsteady, unsure. No animal in Joshua’s care displayed these signs.

  Joshua’s farm is not a pristine vision out of a children’s picture book. His animals huddle under aluminum sheds, wooden cabins, and one big barn. Farm shelters often look liked abandoned refugee camps to the uninitiated, but they do what they are supposed to: they shelter the animals from the elements. They do the job. But one of the curious anomalies about shelter arrests is that the people arresting the farmers tend to believe that animals ought to live in the wild, in nature. They seem to forget that animals in the wild do not have shelters. They gather under trees and bushes in storms and bad weather; they huddle together in the cold.

  Few animals anywhere have heated barns. In fact, domesticated animals like sheep and donkeys and cows dislike heated barns; they are bred to live outside all year round. In nature, they suffer from bugs, heat, cold, mud, predators, the scarcity of food, and battles with one another. Joshua’s animals, however rickety his shelters, are treated better than any animal in the wild has ever been treated.

  Among the accusations made against Joshua was a citation for having inadequate shelters because an officer saw patches of gray on the ears of two pigs. The police consulted with a vet who said she thought it might be frostbite.

  Joshua has more than one hundred pigs at any given time; he makes sure they are fat and healthy because he sells the meat to discriminating customers who want to know where the pigs come from and how they are fed and treated. He is admirably transparent. His blog, Westwindacres.com, provides details on the feeding and care of all of his animals, and the nutritional values of the meat he sells.

  A small army of pig farmers showed up at his first court hearing. None of them had expensive shelters. Pigs, they told me, huddle together with one another and crawl into compost and muck to stay warm.

  “When it’s minus-twenty-seven degrees,” Stan, a pig farmer from Massachusetts, told me, “some will get frostbite anywhere, even inside of a barn. Usually it’s the tip of an ear. They don’t feel it much there, and it doesn’t affect their health.”

  This has been my experience, too. I’ve had sheep get frostbite on the tip of an ear when the windchill brought the temperatures down to minus-30. The sheep were inside a well-built cow barn with thick windows and doors. A month or so later, almost all of the ear had grown back. The ewe lived for a number of years. She had four babies, and she ran so fast she gave the border collies fits.

  Why were the farmers so upset? Almost all of them are animal lovers; they live with animals every day. They have no patience for abuse or animal cruelty. But the new and sometimes hysterical obsession with animal abuse and cruelty is criminalizing farming.

  Few farmers have money for big new fences and fancy shelters; they always patch things together with whatever they have on hand. Farms can look like bomb sites, their yards and barns filled with junk. Farmers are resourceful—they throw nothing away, and they can always recycle some leftover piece of scrap wood or metal. They live by their milk checks or corn and alfalfa crop, and no two years are alike. They always have to be prepared for a drought, or a long heat wave, or a brutal winter, or rainstorms and flood. Their lives can be upended at any moment. They fight government regulators, bureaucrats who control much of their lives, animal rights activists who hound them with informers, and ridiculous laws that cost them money and do animals little good.

  When the police come and raid their farms and take some of their animals away, almost always based on the whispers of secret informers, and their photos are put on television, it is very often more—much more—than they can afford or absorb.

  Joshua was just getting started with his business, beginning to build up a client base that was signing up for shares in his farm, that wanted his poultry, beef, pork, eggs, and lamb. He was signing up outlets and potential distributors, figuring out rotational grazing, nutrition, and water. Here is a hardworking farmer whose animals are healthier and happier than any one of the nine billion animals on industrial factory farms. None of his animals had died; none were sick or injured. Two pigs out of one hundred had a sliver of gray tissue on their ears and his horses’ hooves were slightly overgrown, a couple of months behind their regular trimming time.

  Touring Joshua’s farm shortly after his arrest, I grew angry at the people and forces who were trying destroy yet another farmer. Don’t these people know anything about farms? Don’t they know that streams freeze outdoors all the time and the animals eat snow—there was plenty on the ground—or poke around the edges of the ice to get water? In Joshua’s case, his animals didn’t have to wait very long since he came out every day to break the ice and fill the bowls with water.

  This is farm life, and the police, many of whom have never set foot on a farm, are being drawn into the middle of the deepening social conflict between the animal rights movement, farmers, and many animal lovers.

  Joshua said it was very clear to him that the police who came to his farm had no real idea how animals lived or were treated on farms. They deferred to the Humane Society officer, who seemed to find violations everywhere, and a small animal vet and some horse rescue people who came in two trailers, obviously prepared to take his horses away.

  It’s also worth nothing that when this happens, the people whose animals are taken away often have to pay staggering boarding and administrative fees to get them back, whether they are found guilty or not. In Joshua’s case, he was asked to pay $28,000 for one month of boarding and veterinary fees for his three horses, long before his trial even began.

  Almost everyone in his community saw photos of Joshua as he was fingerprinted and booked in the town police department, and his mug shot was all over local television, along with some footage of his horses’ hooves. He lost many customers right away. Who wants to buy meat from a farmer who has been branded as an animal abuser? Who would take the time to question the claims or hear both sides of the story? Joshua’s customers were not given that opportunity wince the news media did not report that two different vets found the animals at West Wind Acres to be healthy and hydrated. It seems these findings will never make the news.

  Joshua is determined to survive, and to keep his farm going and fulfill his dream of selling the healthiest possible food to his neighbors and local people. It’s going to be hard. As of
this writing, Joshua and his lawyer had been offered a deal by the prosecutor. All of the charges but one were dismissed, and the last will be stricken from the record by the end of 2016. In effect, Joshua was exonerated. A columnist for the Albany Times-Union wrote that Joshua should never have been arrested.

  Joshua raised $8,000 online in order to get his horses back. Joshua will never know who the secret informer was who nearly ruined his life or have an opportunity to confront him or her in court.

  Joshua had been offered a plea deal several times. He refused, saying he would never plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. Farmers and animal lovers raised more than $70,000 online to help Joshua fight a case that seemed patently unjust. Without them, he would almost surely have lost his farm and perhaps also his court battle.

  Several things about the police case against Joshua were troubling to me. If Joshua’s animals were treated so cruelly and abusively as to warrant thirteen separate charges, why drop almost all of them without even going to trial? Also, after the raids and seizure of Joshua’s animals, no police officer, horse rescue person, or Humane Society official ever returned to the farm. Not even once. Nobody came back to see if there was enough water, feed, and shelter.

  If the concern about the animals was serious enough to warrant disrupting someone’s entire livelihood and life, then why not come back even once to see how the animals were doing? And if the farm was so inhospitable as to warrant thirteen different charges, why leave animals there at all? Why not remove all of them to safety or better care?

  Through no fault of his own, Joshua Rockwood was drawn into an Orwellian nightmare of informers, dogma, and propaganda disseminated by a lazy and pliant media. It seems shortsighted for the animal rights movement to target farmers rather than to reach out to them and help support their work.

  Like the carriage drivers in New York, farmers are essential to the future of animals and their survival in a changing world. The animal rights movement—and the police and legislators who have become entangled with the movement and its lobbying—have turned farmers into enemies. In fact, farmers are the best hope of survival for many animals in our world.