7 May

Report From Bedlam Farm. Loving And Letting Go. When The Soul Tears.

by Jon Katz
Report From Bedlam Farm
Report From Bedlam Farm

Maria and I went to the first Bedlam Farm today to take some things out, it looks like a number of people are getting interested in the property and may soon make competing offers to buy it. I only know about one of them, and they sound very nice, almost perfect for this place, so special to me.

Maria loved the farm, she loved her first studio there, the special safety and beauty of the place, of the path. But it was never our place, as this new farm is, it was always my place, and that was one of the reasons it was so important that we moved. The other was that we could no longer afford to live there, my world had changed.

It is hard for me to go there, I love the place, so much happened to me there. Our friend Jack Metzger came by to take some furniture out and sell it in his antique store. There wasn’t much, but we wanted him to have it. Every book I’ve written up here has been written on a desk Jack sold to me. But it hurts to see the farm, I admit it. My blood is in every acre, every barn.   It marked the start of my search for life, my hero journey, it sealed the end of my long marriage, my leaving all that was familiar and safe.

That farm brought me to nature, to Maria, to a life with animals, to seven books and two children’s books, to Rose, Orson, Izzy, Lenore, and Red, to a dreadful breakdown in the midst of my own madness, a recession and the disintegration of modern publishing. It was a wonderful place, and an awful place, I felt the worst pain of my life there, and the greatest joy and understanding.

I faced myself up there in that beautiful place, and I survived it, even if just barely. It made me and it broke me.  The house has been on the market for four years, it was originally listed for $475,000 and is now listed at $249,000, that seems to have finally brought serious buyers rushing. Finally, the farm is getting what it deserves. I love to go down to the bottom of the hill and look up at this magical place. On the left, the old carriage barn where the horses were kept, in the center, the big old farmhouse, a spacious and idiosyncratic and graceful place, built in 1861 by James Patterson. To the right, the big old hay and cow barn, and around, several outbuildings to shade sheep or horses, or goats.

There is a mile long path through the woods where Maria and I and the dogs walked every day, where Rose took off after the animals on my first night there in the midst of an awful blizzard and brought them home. She was six months old, we set off on this great and creative and amazing adventure together, they made a movie – “A Dog Year” of my trip upstate, but the real fireworks came later, the first year was nothing compared to the next few.

We have tried to be faithful to the farm, to support and maintain it. We rented it when we could, hired people to care for it when we couldn’t rent it.  We fixed everything that broke or blew away or got rained on. These four years have tested us financially in painful and unrelenting ways, I will be honest and say that no money paid for the purchase of the house will go to me or to Maria, it is mine now in name only.  I will still honor our commitment it to the end, or at least as long as I can, whichever comes first.

That makes me sad, the house deserves better,  it is hard for me to go there, and I will never understand why such a beautiful and wonderful a place could be rejected so many times for so many reasons.

But I think that period is over. Change is, in fact, the only constant.

I only want one thing for the farm now, for it to come into the hands of someone who loves it.  That will give me light and healing. Our realtor, Kristen Preble, has been nothing less than heroic. So many people told us, as the years went by, oh, get another agent, try another agent. We did not, we would not. Kristen has become like a member of our family, she has walked those grounds 1,000 times, most often for people who had little interest in the property, they wanted to know where Rose worked or Izzy slept.

Two weeks ago, Kristen called me and she was near tears, she said she had lost the house key for the first time, she was mortified. “Don’t be sad, Kristen,” I said, “this could happen to anybody. We love you.”  Thanks, she said, “I love you guys, too.” That kind of connection could never be replaced, not by anyone in the corporate world. Kristen deserves some reward for her faithfulness to this place, and I think she will get it. She has worked so hard, been through so much.  I will get mine too, just not in money. I can never repay what Bedlam Farm gave me or did for me, for the creative joy in sitting on that screened in porch, looking out over the beautiful valley and singing my song.

Today, going to the farm for one of the last times – I am thinking it will be sold soon, and even if it isn’t, my connection to it is broken and nearly over, except in my heart  – that heart was heavy, yet also somehow growing lighter. I feel the place is letting loose it’s grip on me, is ready to move ahead, and I can feel people who will love it moving our way, moving closer. It is such a steal now,  people are appearing almost every day. It’s time has come. Financially, this will mean nothing to me, what is lost is lost.

And I love our new home, we love our new home. It is our house, in every way. It is where we belong now, both of us.This afternoon, I was  fantasizing about a move into the deep woods one day, and Maria looked at me and said “I am never leaving this house, not ever, until the day I can’t live here any more.” She meant it. That is how one should feel about a house, it is how I felt about the first Bedlam Farm. She will perhaps never know how happy I was to hear her say that, with such conviction and strength.

What I want is for people who care about it to take it over, to love it and care for it and appreciate it. That is all I want, all I need. I am over the frustration and the bewilderment and thinking about all the money I spent there to fix it up, and the nest egg that melted away, the debt that built up, about  how astoundingly creative a place that was for me, and how important to Maria. She fulfilled her dream to be an artist there. We both came into our lives and came of age there, so much pain, so much glory, so much love. There is no looking back, no more trying to understand. A time for acceptance and grace.

So this week, a time hopefully for liberation and separation, for saying goodbye to this amazing home and beautiful piece of land,  and moving forward. I think there will be some news, at long last.  I will never forget Bedlam Farm or ever completely leave it. But I have and will move on already, my spirit and my heart have already moved.  A piece of my souls is in the ground there, is in those barns, it rips whenever I come and go.

Standing in the big barn where Maria and I got married, I felt hot tears streaming down my face. I could not tell you what I was crying about. Sometimes you love something the most by letting it go.

 

 

 

7 May

The Joshua Rockwood Files: The Cruelest Animal Of All

by Jon Katz
What It Means To Be Cruel
What It Means To Be Cruel

 

The writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote that even though people sometimes speak about the bestial cruelty of man, it is unjust and offensive to animals to use those words, because no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so unthinkingly cruel.

It is sad to say, as someone who loves animals, that it sometimes seems that no people can ever be so cruel to other people as those who claim to speak for the rights of animals and in their name.

There is no evidence of any kind that Joshua Rockwood intended to be cruel to his animals or was, in fact, cruel to them.  There are many witnesses – a score or more –  of his concern for the well being of his animals.  They live in better circumstances than many farm animals, and almost every one of the nine billion animals who live and die on corporate industrial farms.

Even his persecutors don’t argue that his animals were abused or subject to abusive treatment. His crime is that he is a young and inexperienced farmer who found himself and his new farm nearly overwhelmed by one of the worst winter cold waves in American history. Almost every one of the accusations against him is a technical one, if anyone had given him a day or two, or any kind of assistance,  they would all have been simply gone a way.

If there is no evidence that Rockwood is cruel, there is overwhelming evidence that he was treated brutally, that secret informers, animal rescue workers and government officials set out to willfully and knowingly cause him pain and distress, to take his animals away, to charge him with ridiculously simple-minded and almost comically – in other circumstances – and unknowing violations of the law, and thus to ruin his reputation and destroy his new and fragile business.

So this is what is at stake in the case of Joshua Rockwood:

His arrest and persecution challenge us to ask ourselves what it means to be cruel, and to consider one of the most fundamental questions a society can ask about itself: it is really right to obsess on the welfare of animals beyond reason or justice or common sense while we trample on the rights and welfare of human beings and treat them in cruel and humiliating ways?

What Is Cruelty?

It is cruelty, according to the law and the dictionary, when a human being willfully or knowingly causes pain or distress to other people or to animals in his or her care. Animal cruelty charges can involve abuse or the failure to care properly for an animal. In March, Joshua Rockwood, a young farmer in Glenville, N.Y. was arrested and charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty.

His water tanks had frozen in sub-zero temperatures and he was charged with failure to provide potable water. He was late bringing water to some of his animals. He was also charged with having unheated barns, inadequate shelter and bedding for his pigs, and inadequate feed and water for the horses.

Joshua’s story is both troubling and uplifting. It is sad and unjust that he was arrested at all, uplifting in his grace and determination to defend himself, and reassuring to see the support he has drawn. It is frightening to see how mindless and void of reason – and wasteful –  the legal process can be.

To understand what has happened to our increasingly displaced and inverted ideas of cruelty, it is important to know that two veterinarians have certified that Joshua’s animals were all healthy and hydrated just before the police raided his farm, seized his three horses and may very well have destroyed his young farm and his ambitions.

West Wind Acres is a part of the new and very welcome CSA local foods movement  sweeping parts of the country in which people buy shares in a farm and it’s food, and the animals are treated well, fed in a healthy way, so people can know where their food is coming from and how the animals they are eating were treated. Joshua Rockwood is one of the most transparent and honest people I have ever met, you can see this for yourself. Farms like his are an alternative now only to corporate animal farms but to the corporate system of food distribution, which keeps prices high and many foods laced with chemicals and preservatives.

It is important to know that local CSA farms are a powerful antidote to the catastrophe befalling farm animals in many corporate industrial farms, where cows, pigs, chickens and sheep are raised in horrific circumstances of abuse beyond anything Joshua Rockwood has been accused of, or perhaps could even conceive. Unlike many of those animals, Joshua’s animals are given free range, access to the sun and pasture, open air and a life in nature before they are taken to slaughter and offered as grass-fed meats. Farms like his are the best hope of many farm animals living good lives.

The Real Cruelty

Rockwood’s animals live on a 90-acre leased farm, aside from the fact that they are all fed and watered daily (the cattle drink from streams), they live as close to nature as it is possible to get in the populated regions of New York State. His farm is the very antithesis of cruel.

Joshua is passionate about raising healthy food to sell locally, his animals all range freely and are fed on pasture grass and feed.

There is no evidence of any kind that Joshua, a husband and father to two small children,  intended to harm the animals in his care – cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs and horses. None of his animals were suffering grievously, had sores or wounds, or died during the awful winter or were in any way abused. He has been faithfully honest about what he knows, seeks to learn and has learned. As Americans move away from farms and animals, his arrest reminds us that we have lost any sense of reality about the lives of farmers or the animals in their care.

But this is what we know about cruelty and what happened to Joshua Rockwood:

– The police came to his farm with an open warrant, which means they can return at any time. There were police officers, Humane Society representatives, trailers from horse rescue farms, a small animal veterinarian with no experience working on farms.

Secret Informers

– A secret informer called the police to say they had concerns about Joshua’s dogs. He does not really know, even now,  why they seized his horses. They say it was because there was no visible feed. He has said there were unrolled bales of hay on his farm, they were not yet cut open and brought to the horses.

– He was charged with 13 counts of cruelty and neglect. Two pigs out of scores had gray matter on their ears, of course farmers know that when the temperature gets to -27 degrees, as it did in Glenville, N.Y., this February, animals like cows and pigs and sheep can suffer frostbite on their ears if they are inside or out.

Farmers also know something the animal police on Joshua’s farm did not know, that farm animals are never kept in heated barns, it is both unnecessary and unhealthy.

– His horses were taken to a nearby horse rescue farm, the same farm that was present during the police raid. To even consider getting his horses back, the rescue farm is asking for $7,500 in boarding and administrative and medical costs for the first 30 days alone. Since they have been on the rescue farm for nearly three months, it may cost him more than $22,000 to get his three horses returned, even if he is found innocent of all of the charges.

He is challenging the fees in court.  The horses, he said, had been given food and water continuously. This claim was supported by the two veterinarians who examined the horses days before they were seized and said they were healthy and well fed and of good weight and body. Obviously, they could not have been either if they were being starved or denied adequate food.

(I would add it makes little sense for Joshua to starve any of his animals, as he sells them for meat, and their value is determined by the quality and volume of the food they eat. No one, not even the police or the animal rights veterinarian who showed up to help them claimed any of the animals on  his farm were malnourished or emaciated.)

– Joshua was treated as a dangerous  criminal. He was arrested, photographed, his mug shot released to local newspapers and television stations. Prosecutors wanted bail set, they said he might be a flight risk.  The image of him as an animal abuser was disseminated all over the state. Many of his previously satisfied customers stopped buying meat from him.

–  During the cold wave, or their visits to his farm, no one in the police, animal rescue movement, or local government offered to assist him in any way, to help break the frozen ice on his stream or heat the water bowls and tanks he was using. (On the day he was arrested, the sewage pipes in the town hall froze, backing sewage up for several days. No one was arrested or charged with cruelty or neglect.)

It is fair to say that most, if not all, of the small farmers in the Northeastern United States had water lines or tanks freeze in this winter (including me), hundreds have sent Joshua money, come to his hearings, offered help and support. It could have been me, they say, almost every one.

– Before he could even speak on his own behalf, Rockwood’s reputation was severely damaged. The media is much better at reporting accusations than findings of innocence. He if fighting hard, but he may end up losing his farm and his sustenance. He has raised more than $56,000 in a gofundme site online for legal costs, he will need at least that much to defend himself.

– Joshua has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and lives under a dark and fearful cloud (as do the New York Horse Carriage drivers). He has had three court appearances already, and the criminal phase of his ordeal has not yet even been scheduled.

Who Is Guilty Of Cruelty?

– Joshua is strong and grounded, but he and his family have suffered extreme stress, anxiety and disruption. They are not certain whether or not they will keep their farm or lose their livelihood and way of life.

I have not yet seen any evidence that Rockwood’s animals were treated cruelly. But he was treated cruelty.  It is illegal to be cruel to animals, but not apparently, to people if they are accused of being cruel to animals.

in a truly just world, the people who informed on him, who arrested him, who did not offer to help him, who do not understand that barns are not heated on farms, or that animals can get frostbite in winter, or that healthy and hydrated animals cannot have been underfed, or that water tanks freeze in bitter cold, or that small independent farmers don’t have $21,000 lying around to buy back the animals that should never have been taken in the first place, ought to be in a lot of trouble.

They are guilty of people cruelty.

They have behaved in a much crueler and neglect way than Joshua Rockwood did.

It makes no sense legally or morally to seize animals who are well cared for during an intense weather crisis and use the weight of the courts, prosecutors, animal rights organizations and the police to invade a farm, seize valuable and much loved property to destroy the reputation, work and way of life of an idealistic and hard-working young farmer.

I recently returned from a speaking trip to Iowa, an agricultural state, many farmers came to hear me talk and meet with me. I told them the story of Joshua Rockwood and his arrest and everyone one of them, in three different towns and cities, said the very same thing to me: “why didn’t someone help Joshua get some water out to his animals?” Every year, said the farmers, in almost every winter in Iowa, water tanks freeze and when they do, the farmers and the police and fire departments and Granges and farm associations all rush to the struggling farms and bring potable water and portable propane heaters.

“What,” I asked the farmers over and over again, would happen if one of those farmers in Iowa was arrested for animal cruelty? In one way or another, each of the farmers and their husbands or wives said the same thing: “why, that would be outrageous. Whoever arrested Joshua Rockwood ought to be charged with cruelty and neglect.”

It is a noble thing to be concerned about the welfare of animals, to protect their rights and their welfare. It is a perversion of justice and morality to use the love of animals as a pretext and justification for abusing human beings. It is always wrong for people to abuse their power, against animals, against their own citizens.

The fact is that none of Rockwood’s animals suffered nearly as much as he has, or as cruelly, or for nearly as long. I am struggling to see the justice in that.

Joshua Rockwood was already fighting for his farm, it seems unconscionable to me that he has to fight for his life as well. Freidrich Nietzche was right. We  can talk about animal cruelty all we wish, but the moral of the Rockwood case is that man is the cruelest animal of them all.

 

7 May

Talking To Animals: The Wonder Of Visualization

by Jon Katz
Visualizing
Visualizing

More and more, behaviorists and biologists and trainers and people who live with domesticated animals like dogs and donkeys and horses and (some) elephants are coming to understand that they think in terms of visual images and communicate with one another and the world in that way, much like autistic children. This is what I am writing my next book, “Talking To Animals” about. We are always throwing words at animals like dogs, we think that is communication, but it most often is not. They don’t have our words, our language.

I communicate with animals using food, emotion, body language, voice and visualization. Maria has always done this with the donkeys, I have always done it with dogs, for many years and long before I came to Bedlam Farm. When Maria came home from Iowa yesterday, she immediately went out to the pasture. She stood still, Lulu and Fanny came right over to her, each on a different side of her, and they leaned into her and stood still.

She had the sense that they wanted to know where she had been, and so she showed them, in images and not in words. They seemed rapt and attentive, when she was done, they moved away. Visualization with animals is the most powerful spiritual experience I have had in my life, it has altered my consciousness and sensitivity. Here, once again, I saw it happening.  It is something anyone can do, if they are open to it.

7 May

Be Amazing. Try New Things. Words From The Activity Plaque.

by Jon Katz
Be Amazing
Be Amazing

Maria and I were walking in the East Village neighborhood of Des Moines, in the shadow of the Florentine State Capital dome. We came across a gallery called “Sticks” and went in. The store sells beautiful painted and wood carved activity plaques.

There were about a hundred of them, they covered all kinds of different themes and subjects.

I stopped to read them and my eye caught this one, I thought it perfected captured the spirit and drive of Maria. She is amazing. She tries new things. She inspires others. She is learning to love herself, to work hard. She laughs (and cries) easily and often, her spirit is an open heart. She lives for the moment and she loves to learn and grow.

Wow, I thought, how beautiful. I bought it for her and she loves it, it captures what we both share, a drive to be creative and amazing, to encourage others, to try new things and to learn to love ourselves, perhaps the hardest of all of them. We are living now and grown, and I knew I had to take this home from Iowa. She is trying to figure out where to put it.

And this neat thing: E.J., the very wonderful owner of the shop, actually recognized my name and said I was a bit deal!

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