Last winter, the Glenville, N.Y. police, assisted by animal rights informers and activists and animal rescue workers, raided the farm of a young farmer named Joshua Rockwood. They impounded his three apparently healthy horses and charged him with 13 counts of animal cruelty for having frozen water tanks and unheated barns and feed that was not stored on the premises and visible to them.
They alleged that two of his many pigs had frostbitten ears and that his horses had overgrown hooves.
Hundreds of farmers and animal lovers were outraged by the accusations, the winter was the most brutal in a century, temperatures plunged to -27 for days on end. None of Rockwell’s animals died or were injured during the awful cold wave. Rockwood is a young and idealistic farmer, raising free range and pasture fed animals for food. His farm is called West Wind Acres. One of the people who rushed to support Joshua was Ken Norman, a friend and our long-time farrier.
Joshua is a quiet, polite, proud and stubborn farm geek.
He is almost obsessively preoccupied with learning everything he can know about farming, studying manual after manual about grazing, soil, light, nutrition and biology. He wishes to spend his life raising healthy animals who produce healthy food for local people. In a sane world, he ought to be going to a luncheon getting an award from the Glenville Chamber Of Commerce, rather than fighting for his very existence.
His hopes and dreams and livelihood are on the line, the people running his community are trying to put him in jail or out of business.
Joshua’s agonizing year speaks to the moral bankruptcy of many elements of the animal rights movement, who have abandoned their role as a defender of animals and in too many cases become a rogue and Orwellian militia. In this case and many others, they are simply out of control and without any rational agenda for saving animals or even helping them. They increasingly seem engaged in the business of harming and persecuting people, many completely innocent of wrongdoing. Just ask Joshua or the New York Carriage Drivers.
I have been talking with the Southern Poverty Law Center and am sorry to say the people who say they speak for the rights of animals are increasingly come to resemble a hate group, not a group with any idea about how to keep animals in our world as they are increasingly taken from us. You can read the definition of groups that promote hate and extremism here and draw your own conclusions.
Ken Norman has a far better right to speak for the welfare of animals than most animal rights organizations. He actually saves them and does not ask for money to do it. Ken and his wife Eli are life-long rescuers and caretakers for horses. They have 30 on their farm. They gave us Chloe, our pony after caring for her for years when she had no place to go.
Ken saved our donkey Simon’s life when he was found starving and near death on a farm. He helped him heal his wounds. He has treated our equines with love, skill and tenderness, kept them strong and healthy. He is worth listening to.
He has devoted his life to caring for horses and to saving them when they have been mistreated. Nobody asked him to join Joshua’s cause, he came running.
Ken studied the documents and photographs relating to the case that were made public and found them to be outrageously unfair and misguided. He called them “bullshit misdemeanors.” He came with me to the first several court hearings for Joshua. He contacted Joshua and offered to help. Ken had other things to do this year, he had both knees replaced surgically last December, he has been in physical therapy for months.
When Ken saw that Joshua was looking to install a series of tire water tanks – giant heat-absorbing tractor tires with gravel or cement base and fresh water – Ken scoured neighborhood quarries for old loader tractor tires to bring to him. He would not take any money for his time and trouble. He found five and brought them out to West Wind Acres not ever comfortable taking in public.
I thought it might be useful for people for people to hear Ken Norman speak in his own voice. So I recorded a short video this afternoon at Joshua’s farm. Ken is not a seeker of the limelight, he is a man of few words but those words count. He is incapable of guile or artifice and would never assist or support anyone who harmed a horse or other animal in any way. Neither would I.
Listen to Ken Norman yourself, the video is probably the longest speech Ken has given in his life. About 20 words. Ken is, after all, a Vermonter.
He is representative of the many good and honest people who have done in recent months what should have been done in the first place – reached out to Joshua in that difficult time and offered to help rather than spy on him, inform on him in secret, and nearly ruin his life and farm. I have been worried about Joshua, he seems exhausted to me, and overwhelmed by months of court hearings, legal conferences, and the awful disruptions the arrests have done to his farm. When his face was plastered all over local TV as an animal abuser, he lost many of the happy customers who were buying his safe and healthy food.
You do not get 300 people to show up at your court hearing in support if you have behaved badly or dishonestly.
Joshua needs for this to be over. He sometimes seems overwhelmed, he did today. He will not quit.
His wife is afraid to let their two children outside for fear the informers will come by and see that they are alone, and tell the police, who, she fears, may come and leave them alone. Getting to know Joshua, I know the toll it takes when you have to live in fear of every mistake, mishap or accident, knowing informers may be driving by with the power to ruin your life without much, if any, checks or due process.
Joshua has heard all of the horror stories from other farmers, as have I, and he has now lived them: farmers afraid to leave their cows out in snow, animal lovers afraid to let their horses take naps in an open field, herding dogs stolen from pastures because they are not confined or leashed. And now, trapped in this awful Catch-22. How to keep your water tanks from freezing when every water tank freezes in temperatures that cold. And now, a young and conscientious farmer is arrested and threatened with jail because his water tanks froze in Arctic temperatures.
This is the kind of fear Russians knew under Stalin, and the East Germans knew from the Stasi, who turned hundreds of thousands of citizens into informers. It is not the kind of fear Americans are supposed to know. We got rid of our secret informers long ago, we rebelled against them. Now, they seem to be back. And they are hurting people in the name of loving animals.
Joshua has spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees and is working feverishly to prepare his farm for the winter and make it raid-proof. People with long lenses still come by take photos of his farm, drive by at dusk or at night, eager to find evidence of abuse. They run and hide when they are spotted. He is a strong man, but how could he not live in fear? And why would we make him?
The informers are wasting their time. They won’t find any evidence there, there isn’t any abuse on Joshua’s farm. But life happens everywhere, and now farmers and animal lovers and carriage horse drivers have to fear life. As a culture, we are losing our ability to comprehend the difference between life and abuse. We are so disconnected from farms and the real lives of animals we no longer know what they need, what is healthy, what is the unavoidable nature of life itself.
I saw the animals there on Joshua’s farm days after his arrest, they were well-fed, hydrated, secure. They are still. There were no protruding ribs, sores, skittishness, sluggishness, or any signs of mistreatment, even in that awful weather. You can’t hide wanton abuse in a few hours or days. Before the arrest, two veterinarians came to West Wind Acres to examine Joshua’s animals, they were pronounced healthy and hydrated and well cared for.
Ken Norman says he saw photographs of Joshua’s horses, they looked “fine.” He wonders if the police or animal rights activists had ever seen horses that were truly abused.
Online, supporters of Joshua have raised thousands of dollars to help with his legal fees and his new shelters and tire water tanks. Joshua is still mired in legal preparation and negotiation, he hopes to get back the horses that were taken from him, some say stolen from him. The animal rescue farm and their veterinarian are asking for many thousands of dollars in payments for boarding and vet fees, whether he is found innocent or not.
This blatant conflict-of-interest makes everyone queasy, the people deciding to take animals from people should not be the ones charging lots of money to give them back.
Joshua has said he will not plead guilty to a single thing that he did not do and he is determined to stand on principle for his reputation. He has fought so hard, he says, in the hopes that what happened to him will not happen again to any other farmer in need. Good for him, but I see the toll it is taking on him. Nothing about his arrest and persecution seems just or right to me. It is an abuse of authority and judgment.
In a just world, the police and the animal welfare people should have done just what Ken Norman did today. Knock on the door. Offer to help. And help. Joshua would have been happy to accept. The taxpayers would have been saved a lot of wasted money.
For our part, I think we can soon help Joshua again. To cross the finish line in this sad drama. I do not care to surrender to anger and cynicism. Joshua is a good person. The truth matters.
He may need assistance to get his horses back. I am happy to help with that if I can. That might make him whole, depending on the legal proceedings. Stay tuned. And thanks for helping this much and for this long. Community does live, people want to do good, right is different from wrong, and can prevail.