I spent some time with Joshua Rockwood yesterday, and I want to be honest and say I am worried about him.
Joshua is the kind of person who will never admit to being worried about himself, but I could see the weariness and concern in his face, his eyes, hear it in his voice. When he left me, he went to the butchers and picked up some meat. Then two of the planned buyers backed out without warning. One said the reason was the controversy surrounding his farm.
He has to make more room for frozen and now unsold meat. It never happened before his arrest on charges of animal cruelty. He was picking up new customers every day. But it has happened since.
A government that should be helping his farm grow and prosper is trying to destroy it.
So let’s think about Joshua.
It is an awful thing for you and your family to wonder if you will have to leave your business and your children and go to jail because your farm water tanks froze in -27 degrees, and because you are young and inexperienced, because you store your food and hay a mile from your farm.
It is an awful thing when the government that is supposed to protect your property and freedom decides to try and take both away.
It is an awful then when your reputation is savaged in the public media for weeks and months before you ever have a chance to defend yourself, and knowing that most journalists and most people will never know or care that you did nothing wrong, even if you are found innocent.
It is an awful thing to be a life-long lover of animals, a farmer whose livelihood depends on healthy animals, and to be accused of being cruel and abusive to your animals, when not a single one has died or suffered any kind of serious injury.
It is an awful thing to see the police and town government, upon whom you depend for safety and protection, co-opted by wealthy ideologues and drawn into a deepening conflict that has nothing to do with justice or the well being of animals.
It is an awful thing to see that government waste hundreds of thousands of dollars and precious resources on a prosecution that should never have occurred, and occurs only in the name of being politically correct and joining a mob hysteria. It is a dangerous thing when people who are utterly ignorant of farming or animals presume to regulate both.
It is an awful thing to have your life upended by ideological extremists speaking for the love and rights of animals while serving neither.
It is an awful thing to have your horses taken from you by people who demand tens of thousands of dollars to return them, even if you are found innocent of any wrongdoing.
It is an awful thing to see your hard work and growing business stymied, bled and threatened by legal fees, judicial delays and technicalities, the distractions of a legal proceeding, shallow and cruel publicity, and an Orwellian system that places the rights and well-being of animals far above the rights and well-being of human beings.
It is an awful thing to live in fear and uncertainty. To hear your children ask why their are now living in a prison rather than a home. To tell your spouse and family every day that it will be all right, that nobody can take your children away, that no one can take your home away, that the secret informers driving by your home and farm day and night with their cellphone and video cameras cannot harm you, cannot find you making a mistaken, or coming upon a sick animal, or seeing a frozen water bucket in the middle of winter.
And then wonder if all of those assurances are true.
It is an awful thing when your mind, plans, and ambition are all sacrificed to hundreds of hours of meetings, research, strategies and possibilities. When your customers say they will no longer buy your meat because they saw you on the news that you were arrested.
I’ll tell you something. It is nearly impossible for Joshua Rockwood, a man who is suffering from all of these things, to ask for help. He is stubborn and convinced he has already asked for enough help. I am more stubborn and am working to persuade him that he should ask for as much help as it takes for him to triumph, get his life back, and stand in the name of the growing number of victims of this kind of cruel persecution – I hear from them every day.
I am a long-time supporter of the rights of animals, I imagine if I must be labeled, it would be as a person whose politics are progressive. I can say with conviction that this case is an outrage, a brutal attack on a good citizen, his family, and his livelihood. It is also a tragic distortion of the idea of animal rights. While nine billion animals suffer and die on corporate industrial animal farms throughout the country, including Joshua’s home state of New York, the powerful apparatus of the animal rights movement, a town police department, and a county prosecutor’s office bring the full weight of their power to bear on a young man working hard day and night to raise healthy animals who produce healthy food, grown locally.
And who did not lose a single one of his hundreds of animals to one of the worst winters in the history of the Northeast.
Joshua can tell you where the meat you buy from him is coming from.
All of his animals are free-range and pasture fed. Every one of them leads a better and healthier life than any one of the animals whose meat you buy at your local supermarket, or whose awful lives exist only inside animal farm factories, or who languish in the backyards and basements of people without the resources to care for them. There are no teams of police and secret informers pursuing them.
In our hysteria over animal abuse, and our disenchantment with human beings, we have lost perspective. Joshua Rockwood has been abused in a far crueler and more destructive way than any of his animals were.
He and I are going at it about this question of help, and I believe there are ways to help him that he can accept. One is to e-mail him at [email protected] and let him know he is not alone, he has many friends, admirers and supporters. Another is to watch for the gofundme project he is putting together – reluctantly – this week on his website. I will also post about it here, as will many other people.
I believe that will be ready by the end of this week or early next week.
Joshua needs to win this struggle, for him, his family, for us, for our lives with animals, for our lives as free citizens. He needs to join the New York Carriage Trade in it’s successful struggle to keep the mayor of New York City from destroying their historic business and sending 200 draft horses out into peril. This is a new social awakening, a new movement.
Joshua needs and wants to stand up for what he thinks is right, and I will stand up for what I think is right. Government has no business destroying a citizens’ life in this way.
What has happened to Joshua is not about the rights of animals, or their welfare. It is a much older story. It is about arrogance, ignorance and the abuse of power. I believe he can win and will win. If it comes down to it, I cannot imagine any jury would convict him on the lazy and politicized evidence gathered against him.
I can’t imagine it even getting that far, even though it never should have gotten this far.
In March, the police – secular and animal – arrested Joshua Rockwood and accused him of starving, freezing, and neglecting his pigs, cows. Curious that in the six months since his arrest, none of them have returned to his farm to see how the animals are doing. I wonder why, if his animals were being treated so badly, they have left them all there on their free-range, pasture-fed farm to suffer.
I suppose I know the answer. If they did return, they would not find much. Joshua’s animals are alert, fat and busy.
I met Joshua Rockwood at the Round House Cafe in Cambridge this morning, we have become friends, I hadn’t seen him for a month or so. He is engulfed in the legal and psychological detritus of his arrest in March on 13 counts of animal abuse and cruelty, he will not use the word, but he is struggling, his life and plans and farm in limbo, the fear and uncertainty nagging at him and his family in a number of different and frightening ways.
We spent a couple of hours talking, I realized I need to keep writing about his case, it is important, and he needs help, even as he is loathe to admit it.
Joshua’s life and business are struggling. Both are on hold as he navigates motions, hearings, money, testimony and records and prepared to go to trial, and he says, possibly to jail. He won’t let his children outdoors alone now, he visits his animals at all hours of the day and night to make sure no one is informing on him. People come by all of the time to take photos, he is living under a microscope.
He refuses to take the advice of farmers who say they hide their animals out of sight of the road because the new informers drive by all the time and call the police if they see horses napping or cows with snow on their backs.
He says he has nothing to hide, and will not hide his animals.
I believe that Joshua is hurting and will need some more help getting through this, and soon. He seems resolute, but also discouraged, sometimes depressed. I trust he will ask for help and that he will get it. He needs to get ready for the next winter. I, for one, am committed to his cause. He is not a perfect man any more than I am, but he is a good one, a loving father, husband and friend. He is also an animal lover, in almost every sense of the term.
I believe it is quite apparent now that Joshua’s arrest was an exercise in ignorance and arrogance, a clear injustice. Farmers, animal lovers, vets, farriers have been to see West Wind Acres, no one apart from the police have found anything wrong. It is a farm, much like any other. Joshua is a young farmer, just like many others. There are things for him to learn, but he is no criminal or animal abuser. We have lost perspective and rationality in dealing with the domesticated animals of our world. Joshua should never have been arrested.
He is doing what we wish so many young farmers would do, raising food and produce locally, treating his free-range animals well.
But this is all taking it’s toll on his life.
Earlier this year an Albany journalist named Chris Churchill asked this question in a newspaper column: “Is Joshua Rockwood A Hero?”
According to Wickipedia, a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. A hero is a person who is brave. So yes, Joshua is a hero to me. You don’t have to stand in front of enemy machine-guns to be a hero. Joshua could have settled the case a long time ago, the prosecution’s case is made of rice paper,. He had the chance to have all of the charges against him dropped.
He refused, he says he wants to be able to tell his son to stand up for what he believes is right, and if he doesn’t do it, how can he expect his son to do it?
He will not, he says, plead guilty to something he did not do.
I would define hero more narrowly than the dictionary. To me, a hero is a person who responds to great fear, injustice or danger with grace, humility and courage. Joshua is a hero to me.
The police raided Joshua’s 90-acre farm in Glenville, N.Y. in March. They said his animals – cows, pigs, sheep, chickens – were out in the cold or in unheated shelters. Some didn’t have food, police say. And the water, though frozen, may have been tainted by feces.
The bitter cold wave – the temperatures dropped to – 27 degrees – froze water tanks all over farms in the Northeast, including mine. Joshua’s food and hay are stored at his home, a mile away from the farm. At Glenville Police headquarters, the sewage pipes leading to the bathrooms froze, the toilets were backed up. No one was charged or arrested.
The police said if they couldn’t see the food, then they had to assume it wasn’t there. Joshua had fed his dogs earlier in the day, and the food bowls were empty. The police and animal rights workers who came to the farm did not know that there are hardly any heated barns on farms – it is neither safe nor healthy for livestock – or that few animal shelters on farms are heated. Two veterinarians had come to the farm just before the raids and will testify that his animals were healthy, well-fed and hydrated. Their reports were ignored, three of Joshua’s horses were seized and remain on animal rescue farms, which are demanding tens of thousands of dollars for their return.
It is common for some feces to be found in agricultural water tanks, as animals like sheep and chickens are not particular about how and where they defecate. Farmers everywhere know all this, that’s why more than 200 of them showed up at his first court hearing.
In the Orwellian world of animal rescue and animal rights, a new kind of national Inquisition, secret informers patrol the lives of people who work with animals, reporting them to the police if they see anything that disturbs them. It seems that no one in the process knows much about farms, animals, or real life.
I am no hater of government, but Joshua is not only living a horror, it is an Orwellian one in almost every respect.
Orwellianis an adjective describing the situation, idea, or societal condition that the author George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of suffocating control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the the branding of the “unperson,” someone who is arrested and vilified before his community, and whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory.
That is Joshua’s experience.
Although confronting one’s accusers is a staple of the criminal justice system, it does not apply to the secret informers of the animal world. They function more like the Stasi, the dread East German secret police, reporting and condemning sometimes innocent people and then melting away without accountability, transparency or challenge. In this world, if you are accused, you are guilty. The charges do not have to be true or credible or make any sense, you are plunged into a costly and shattering process, humiliated before your neighbors and friends, your sustenance, finances and livelihood threatened.
For the farmer, and for many others, like the New York carriage drivers, the hammer always hangs over their head. It might be a frost-bitten ear, or a frozen water tank, or a horse that stumbles in a hole, or horse taking a nap, or a sheep with rheumy eyes. In the new and surreal world of so-called animal abuse, it can be anything anybody driving by thinks it is. It seems, sadly enough, that the police too often no longer know the difference, or care much.
The idea of animal welfare, an important social issue, has been distorted beyond all reason to advance impossible and costly standards for animals that hardly any humans have, and to make the people who love and work with them vulnerable to sudden persecution.
People like Joshua, an idealistic young farmer committed to growing and healthy and locally-produced food, find their lives shattered, overwhelmed by legal fees and proceedings, their reputations attacked on the Internet, local TV stations and newspapers. Joshua has always practiced and argued for a transparent and open life. It may cost him his farm.
Everyone with animals or a farm knows that the police could have come for anyone of us, and devastated our lives and reputations as well. We have lost perspective on what it means to protect animals. A farm is not an easy, pretty or simple place. We have lost touch with farmers and with the real lives of real animals, we routinely claim to be saving them while abusing and destroying the lives of people.
Joshua’s wife was terrified by his arrest, he says, convinced that the police could break into their home at any moment and seize their children. The fear has challenged their relationship, invaded their lives. If they could take the loved and healthy horses, she said, why couldn’t they take the children? Joshua says he no longer lets the children play anywhere – even in their backyard – alone, people come by all the time trying to take photos of him, them, and his animals. He says his son Hunter keeps asking him why their home is now a prison. He rushes back and forth to his farm, making sure everything is perfect in case the police show up again.
Living under threat of trial and jail is an unnatural way to live, no innocent person should ever have to endure Joshua’s ordeal.
Joshua said since he had nothing to hide, he opened his farm up to the police when they came. He didn’t know he didn’t have to, and probably should not have. When they told him they were going to get a search warrant, he was confused. Why did they need a warrant, when they could come anytime?
Joshua didn’t get their license plates or videotape them or call a lawyer or make them wait for his vet to come, things he is entitled to do under the law. He couldn’t imagine that they would look at an empty food bowl for a dog and accuse him of starving his dogs. He never thought they could simply take his horses away because their hooves needed trimming (my farrier looked at the photos and said it was quite common for hooves to get long in the winter, he called it a “bullshit misdemeanor.”)
In the future, Joshua said, he will follow the advice of the Farmer-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, formed to help farmers survive the waves of arrests, raids and sometimes bizarre accusations against them during what has become a national hysteria over animal abuse. How sad, but so many farmers have told me the greatest threat to their farms and their futures have come from people and organizations who believe they are protecting the rights of animals, while increasingly trampling on the rights of people. Every farmer I know asks the same question: Where to most Americans, the fattest and best fed people on the earth, think their food comes from?
Joshua is allergic to complaining, raging bitterly against the system, or asking for help. But he admits he is trapped in a nightmare, the strongest word he will use. We are good friends now, but it took me a long time to pry the truth out of him this morning, he is stubbornly stoic. His business is struggling now, not because his meats are not good or popular, but because he is profoundly distracted by legal preparations, meetings, and the work caused by his arrest. He has spent hundreds of hours on the paperwork spawned by his case. He has dropped or suspended plans to expand his customer base, to open a farm store, to market his meats more effectively.
“The truth is,” he says, “I don’t have time to think.”
He says he is too busy, and he is, to focus on his business, and I suspect, he is running out of money. Joshua’s Legal Defense Fund raised more than $58,000. If he goes o trial, as expected right of now, that money will vanish in a heartbeat. “I don’t like to ask for help,” he says, “people have helped me so much already.” And his tractor just broke down.
I asked Joshua if he needed help, financial or otherwise. He looked sad and discouraged to me, he smiled but did not answer.
“Will you ask for help if you need it?,” I pressed. “I don’t know,” he said, “I”m not good at it.” I will stay on him about this.
When we got up to leave the care, my friend Scott Carrino, the owner, came over to meet Joshua and talk with him. Afterwards, Scott came over to my car and grabbed my arm. “How awful,” he said, “what a nice kid.”
So these are the trying times, I think, for Joshua, the times that try men’s souls. As Thomas Paine wrote about hard times: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
This is a small tyranny, not a big one like a Revolution. But it is a tyranny still, an abuse of authority and power, by government, but the people who say they speak for the rights of animals.
I urged Joshua not to despair, easy for me to say. I believe his cause is just and that he will prevail, and win a clear victory over a new kind of modern tyranny, the kind that thoughtfully invades the life of an honest and hard-working man and devastates it without thought or reason.
Joshua needs about $15,000 to get ready for another winter, to make sure no police raids will put him in peril again when the temperature drops to -27. He needs to build more shelters and he needs a new frost-tree winter water system. Would he ask for help for that, I asked him? He shrugged. Joshua has a lot of pride. He will have to decide, but I told him many of us are ready to help him raise this money if he gives the word.
Is Joshua a hero? Should he have been better prepared for winter? Probably. Were his animals abused, did a one of them die or suffer grievous wounds? No. Is he cruel? No.
He does not need to be a hero, just a good man and a conscientious farmer.
He is a good person, he is not criminal or animal abuser. In a just world, the police would have offered to help him get fresh water during that brutal cold wave, not bury him in this cruel maze. I have been to his farm a number of times, his animals are all big and alert and shiny and healthy.
So his case drags on, pulling his life along with it. I am getting ready to try and help him, as so many others did, I hope some of you can come along for the ride.
Every week, Joshua’s lawyer reminds him that he could go to jail. I assume that anyone with a loving wife and two small children can imagine just how awful a cloud that is to live under. It is an awful thing for an animal lover to be secretly accused of animal cruelty and face a terrifying assault by the police and the machinery of government. It is even worse if you are clearly and provably innocent of the charges.
It is easy to read about people accused of awful things, it is sometimes very difficult to grasp what they really means, how awful it is, how long it can last, how destructive it can be to love and work.
I was very happy to see Joshua Rockwood arrive at the open house on Sunday, and to see that he came with his wife Stephanie and their two children. Everyone there knew Joshua, came up to him, thanked him for his courage, asked if they could help, patted him on the back, cheered him on.
Joshua is part of the local food movement, he raises cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep for food. His animals eat on pasture, he is open and authentic about his work. I am proud to call him a friend and stand with him, as so many others are. He is a sweet man, an honest man, a caring father and husband, and I have visited his farm several times and walked every inch of it with him. His animals are healthy and content, well fed and attentively cared for. He has been cruelly abused by our system of justice.
Joshua is also shy, he is not easy in the awful spotlight that shines every day on him and his family. We had talked about him giving a talk at the farm, but he seemed to be looking for some peace and enjoying his time with his family. We decided he should just hang around a bit and try and relax. As some of you know, Joshua is an idealistic young farmer from Glenville, N.Y. In March, after one of the bitterest cold waves in American history, the police and humane society officers raided his 90 acre farm, seized three of his horses, and accused him of between 13 and 17 counts of animal cruelty and neglect, including having an unheated barn, storing hay out of sight of the officers, and having frozen streams and water receptacles.
I went to see Joshua and visit his farm, and I was saddened and surprised to discover the same thing I discovered when I first went to see the New York Carriage Horses. Joshua had done nothing wrong, his animals were healthy and well cared for – two different vets had come to his farm and certified that. What happened to his farm in that brutish cold could have happened to any small farmer in America, and happened to many – including me.
But a secret informer, part of the new army of the righteous who call themselves supporters of animal rights, had reported him to the police. And without any warning or due process, his life suddenly changed. He was fingerprinted and photographed, the prosecutors claimed that Joshua- a many with a 90 acre farm and two children – a flight risk. They wanted bail. His lawyer couldn’t believe it.
The horse rescue farm where his horses were taken wants tens of thousands of dollars in order for them to be returned.
Joshua always says he is fine when asked, he does not ever whine or complain. But I do see the sadness in his eyes, and the concern on the face of his mother and wife, and sometimes there is weariness and confusion. Nobody wants to live like this. It is a hard time for him. He is open and authentic, from the first he concedes his inexperience and mistakes, none of them are criminal, none of them were cruel.
He is the latest victim of what has become an ugly and well-funded hysteria revolving around notions of animal and cruelty and abuse, increasingly familiar to farmers and other victims of this new social inquisition.
Instead of offering to help Joshua, or making a telephone call to talk to him, the police and humane society officials chose to raid his farm, take his horses, humiliate him in public, damage his reputation and threaten his farm and his livelihood. He faces months, if not years, of expensive legal fees and worry and uncertainty.
His lawyer reminds him every week that he could go to jail, he says it is his duty to remind him. Joshua has refused any plea bargain, he says he will never admit to something he didn’t do. Joshua is the victim of a great injustice, and I was very proud to help suppor support him. More than 300 people, many of them farmers and friends and neighbors, came to his first court hearings – they will go on for months – he raised more than $57,000 on gofundme. You can add to it here.
There is a lot at stake in Joshua Rockwood’s case, issues of law, decency, community and humanity.
“Everything is related,” wrote Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato Si.” We human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, he wro\ites, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.”
Joshua Rockwood is my brother, and the brother of anyone who loves animals, supports healthy food grown on nearby farms, and takes great care of Mother Earth. Many people are united in fond affection for him, and for his cause. I was much honored to see him at Bedlam Farm. His court hearings resume in July at the Glenville, N.Y. Town Court.
The open house was a sweet and upbeat affair, it felt so good to be here. Joshua Rockwood reminds us that life goes on outside of our circles, and it is not always easy or sweet. I look forward to next year when he and his family can come and visit the next open house, a free and successful and vindicated man.
Last week, Joshua Rockwood took his five-year-old son Hunter along when he went to pick up some geese someone had offered him for his farm. They pulled into a parking lot to go and buy something at a convenience store and Hunter noticed a car with blue lights on top. They were not flashing. It was a volunteer fireman sitting inside of his car.
Hunter turned to his father, “Dad, they are cops,” he said. “We have geese in the car! They will take our geese!” Joshua assured his son that no one would be taking their geese. The volunteer firemen saw that Hunter was upset. “I’m not a cop,” he assured the boy, “and it’s not against the law to have geese in your truck.”
It was difficult for Joshua to see his son think of the police in that way. “He’s five years old,” he said, “It hurts to see him thinking that way.” But there is no much in Joshua’s life that is normal these days, his is a life on hold.
It is not a simple thing to be fighting for your life and family and work at the age of 34 when your only crime seems to be having a farm during an awful winter, and having some things to learn.
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These are the long hard days for Joshua Rockwood and for his family. Next Tuesday, June 2, yet another hearing is scheduled on the accusations of animal cruelty and neglect that were filed against him in March. He is not sure how many counts he faces – somewhere between 12 and 17 – and he reluctantly admits that the process is taking a toll. He says it is difficult not to be able to go on with his life.
Joshua Rockwood lives in the new world of hysteria over animal cruelty, where secret informers with their own very new ideas about animal abuse have the power to turn his life – and the life of many others – upside down, in a heartbeat, and with a single, often anonymous, phone call.
When he started his farm full-time less than a year ago (he’s owned it for seven years), Joshua Rockwood did not expect one of the coldest winters in history. Nor did he expect to facing 17 years in jail. He knows, he says, that he is not likely to be sent to jail on these charges – our farrier calls them “Bullshit Misdemeanors.”
He thought if he was open and co-operative – he had nothing to hide, and hid nothing – the system would work for him. It did not.
He has not found it easy to ignore these very dark shadows hanging over his head, his family and his life. There is a very human side to being accused of awful crimes, when almost no one with any experience or sense of responsibility believes he is guilty of anything, when even the threat of going to jail hangs heavy over the life of a young and very idealistic farmer who was excited about offering healthy food to local people.
He is a proud part of a new local/healthy food movement sparked by young people that is sweeping the country. Six years ago, Joshua was diagnosed with a serious heart disease, doctors wanted to put him on medication for the rest of his life, he chose to study nutrition and change his diet as well, and his illness receded.
As a result, he decided to produce healthy food and sell it to people in his community. He was beginning to put it all together when the police and some animal rescue groups raided his home, took his horses and branded him an animal abuser.
He says it is hard for him to keep focus sometimes since the arrest, he was always up and out of bed by 4:30, sometimes he finds that he has trouble getting up that early now. Because of meetings and court appearances, Joshua had to miss several butchering appointments, he could not get his animals to slaughter, so he is behind his sales goals – and Joshua is very serious about goals, he has goals for every aspect of his farm. Then there is the ugly publicity surrounding his arrest, and the removal of three horses from his farm. When his mug shot was broadcast by local TV channels – he looked like a thug in the mug shot – he lost more than 10 per cent of his customers.
He is working hard to get them back, but it is hard to launch any sustained kind of marketing campaign when he faces so much distraction, so many meetings, decisions, concerns. Thursday, I spent the afternoon with Joshua at his farm once again, we walked all around his 90 acres, to the pigs, the cows, the hens, the sheep and goats, we climbed up hills, over fences, hiked around ponds, through mud and much.
Joshua is a farm geek, he knows every inch of the farm, keeps a count of the animals in his head. He has elaborate systems in place for rotational grazing, he moves the animals every day or to keep the shrubs down and the grass growing. He even moves the chickens around so that will eat the fly larvae in the cowpies which gives them protein and keeps the fly population in check.
Joshua is a careful man, a soft-spoken and very open man. He does not ever admit to feeling anger and fear, yet I can see and hear traces of both in him at times, and how could he not feel those things? Running a 90-acre farm with sheep, cattle, pigs, chickens, goats and working dogs takes an enormous amount of energy and drive and focus, and those are not easy things to feel and do when the state is seeking to put you on trial for things almost everyone – surely including me – believes he did not do. He fears being late for a feeding – the police might show up.
He is afraid to leave the farm unattended – secret informers might drive by often, he says, looking for a hole in a shelter, poor fencing, an animal wandering in the woods. These are not paranoid ravings, he says, they have happened to him. He won’t buy a new truck because he thinks it would be unfair to the many people who contributed to his legal defense fund. He is afraid of taking time off, what if he is raided again? Plus, he says, the government hopes to put him in jail.
“It’s a frightening thing,” he said, in a very rare comment on his life now. “You think that the police and other people can’t just come crashing into your life, take your property, accuse you of all kinds of things when you are not guilty, and then your life is turned upside down and you are threatened with jail and this long and expensive process…” He paused for a minute, and said, “I guess I wonder if some day they can’t just come and take my children away.”
If Joshua feels any anger, he does not show it. Sometimes, there is a sadness in his eyes. I asked him yesterday what it was that he most wanted in the world, and he answered without thinking too long that it was this: he wanted to be able to never say no to his wife, to make sure she had everything she wanted or asked for.
He thinks that is no longer possible for him, all of his money goes to surviving.
There are many thousands of Joshua Rockwood’s in America right now, swept up in the new and very Orwellian hysteria over the abuse of animals. Some seem guilty, many are found to not be guilty, but in the long and frightening time between their accusations and disgrace and the resolution of their cases, the human toll on them and their lives is often staggering – shame and humiliation, enormous legal fees, the loss of their animals or businesses or farms.
The movement to curb the abuse of animals is becoming justice-by-mob, ranks of untrained, non-elected or sworn officers, non-professional, anti-science ideologues passing judgement on farmers and people who live, work and love animals. This new animal militia is often tied to the police and the courts in an ill-defined and quasi-legal way. They have a new and unscientific notion of what animal abuse, neglect and cruelty is, and their ideas about animals and abuse differs radically from the traditional definitions of the law, from common sense, from the experience of people who know and work with animals.
According to the online dictionary Wickipedia, “Orwellian is an adjective describing the situation, idea or social condition that the author George Orwell wrote about as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society, and to due process of law.
It describes a legal system controlled by propaganda, surveillance, secret informers, misinformation, denial of truth and the manipulation of facts, the past and the law. People who run afoul of this system are destroyed, they become “unpersons,” someone whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory.
The people who came to Joshua’s farm and up-ended his life – unknown accusers and informers, police officers, politicized veterinarians and animal welfare organizations – seem to have no real idea about what farms are like, or how farm animals live. Farm animals do not live in heated barns, their water sources often freeze when the temperature plunges well below zero, and farm shelters are much more adequate than the life in nature that so many people insist is the proper place for all animals to live.
Joshua is among the more fortunate, if you can call anyone in his position fortunate. Hundreds, if not thousands of farmers and animal lovers – sensing and seeing the injustice that hangs over this case like a dark cloud – have come to his aid, flocking the court hearings, contributing to his legal defense fund, offering his support and good wishes.
Joshua seems like a tough and resilient human being to me. But I can see the cost and potential harm, too. Joshua contains his emotions, but he can’t hide them. He hurts sometimes. I wonder if the people who do this to people have any idea how much suffering they cause? They seem not to care, the targets are so dehumanized they are rarely considered fit subjects for empathy or compassion.
Joshua is young and idealistic, he loves farming and loves a life with animals, he is not an animal abuser, he is just a young man living with the very real possibility that his farm, his animals and his livelihood will be taken a way from him. He is worried about the toll on his wife and two children. He admits to losing energy and concentration, struggling to concentrate on his business, having the time to draw new customers to replace the ones he lost. Unfortunately, there are many people in our culture who believe what they see on television, another Orwellian trait is that the accused are presumed to be guilty, not innocent.
There is no justice for “unpersons.” Just ask the New York Carriage Horse drivers, they have been living this Orwellian nightmare for years.
Joshua and I have an agreement that we will not discuss the details of his case. Sometimes, when I talk to Joshua, there is a sadness and weariness about him. Today, his mood had brightened a bit, it was a cool and beautiful Spring day, he seems to love nothing more than dragging visitors around every inch of his farm, describing most of the hundreds of animal – who is pregnant, who is too fat, who is approachable, who is not, which fences go where, which grass is rich, which weed the cows love to eat.
He is nearly obsessed with animal nutrition – grass and feed, body weight, color and tone. He has Italian Maremma animal guard dogs he moves from baby goats to sheep to meat hens each night to make sure they are safe. He wants his pork and beef and meat to be healthy and appreciated. He studies weight and talks in detail about transportation costs, butchering appointments (they have to be made a year in advance), online marketing and storage. He has joined a business group to learn more about how real businesses operate. He is planning for next winter, if he gets that far.
But he can’t plan too much or too far or too long, his future is uncertain, his time and money limited, legal fees are eating up his savings, and his life revolves around court appearances and legal conferences whose schedules are not in his hands. “I want to get my life back,” he says. His life is on hold, and may be for months. Because his water systems froze in -27 degrees, his barns and shelters – very typical of animal shelters on farms – did not please the police officers or humane society, a horse rescue farm recommended seizing his horses, his hay was in storage away from his animals, and two pigs had gray matter on their ears.
It is troubling for me to think about about his children and how this will affect them, it is painful to think about how it might affect him. What kind of people, I keep wondering, do this sort of thing to other people with such relish and thoughtlessness and cruelty? And then claim to be protecting animals from abuse?
It is an awful thing, as many people can testify, when someone spies on your life and informs on you secretly, when someone takes your animals and demands many thousands of dollars in order to get them back, when you are dragged into a nightmarish system that can invade your life on the reports of anonymous passersby and informers, take your animals and property, arrest and jail and fingerprint you and ruin your life. A system that claims to be equal for all, but which costs tens of thousands of dollars in order for people to navigate and defend themselves, while people far snipe away at the accused on their blogs and Facebook pages, leak ugly stories to reporters and hint at past evils and transgressions.
This is the hard time for Joshua, the crowds are gone, the media has moved on, it is just grinding and testing and difficult. It is so easy to accuse people of awful things in our world, it is as easy as typing a few words on Facebook or driving by someone’s farm or backyard or making a phone call to the police.
In our world, there are legions of people eager to pass judgment, criticize and judge, this is becoming a permanent part of the national psyche and culture, it has created a shadow legal and police system without accountability or restraint when it comes to animals. It is difficult to consider the meaning of compassion and empathy and to try and gauge the human toll of injustice and cruelty. That, it seems to me, is the real abuse.
Joshua is entitled to get his life back and his farm back. He is the victim of a true injustice, as are many others in the animal world. You can help him in several ways. You can contribute to his legal defense fund (I am encouraging him to buy a truck if he needs one, and take a vacation if he so chooses). If you live near him, you can buy CSA shares in his farm, his customers were very happy and very loyal. You can read about his ideas on feeding and healthy, locally-produced food on his blog.
You can e-mail him in support at [email protected]. If you are one of the many people traveling to the court to support Joshua (caution: this hearing may be about legal procedure, not the criminal charges) , his next hearing is scheduled for June 2, the time has not yet been announced by the court, it will be announced on town website.
Good news from the heart of the animal wars for farmers, animal lovers, sanity and for truth and justice. Early this morning, a judge denied a horse sanctuary owner’s attempt to be reimbursed nearly $8,000 for caring for three of Joshua Rockwood’s impounded horses for 30 days.
I believe this is the beginning of the unraveling of the unjust assault on Rockwood, a turning point in the increasingly cruel and irrational conflict all over the country between people who have animals and people who only know animals as pets. It isn’t over, the criminal charges against him still stand, a hearing is set for Glenville Town Court for June 2. I told him he ought to be proud of himself, he has accomplished something that is extraordinary.
Judge Paul Davenport ruled that Peaceful Acres Farm, the horse rescue facility that helped the police seized Rockwood’s horses, did not prove that any animal cruelty took place on his farm. On March 15, Rockwood was charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty and neglect – failing to provide proper food and shelter to his animals – and his horses were taken away. Nanci Beyerl, the owner of Peaceful Acres, was seeking $7,750 for the first months’ care. The horses have now been at Peaceful Acres for nearly three months.
I am still talking to people about the ruling, but I believe it is significant, even precedent-setting. I can find no evidence of any other case in which a judge has ruled that people do not have to pay impound fees for animals who are seized without compelling evidence of abuse or mistreatment.
The name of the original complainant remains a secret. The raid on Rockwood’s farm followed one of the worst cold waves in the modern history of the Northeast, the water streams and bowls on his farm froze. He was accused of having an unheated barn and of not providing shelter for the pigs that was warm enough for -27 temperatures.
I have met Joshua, been to his farm, seen his animals more than once, he is guilty of this: being part of a local foods movement farm during a brutal cold wave, and for being inexperienced in farm infrastructure. Despite the historically cold winter, he kept his animals fed and cared for. Two different veterinarians have certified – right before the police raid – that Rockwood’s cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and horses were healthy and hydrated. His shelter is adequate and typical of livestock shelters for sheep, pigs, horses and cows.
The charges embodied the lunacy surround the many conflicts sprouting up between people who live with animals and self-appointed advocates for animals who seem to know nothing about them. Joshua’s animals all are free-range, they are treated far better than almost any of the billions of animals kept on gigantic and inhumane industrial corporate farms. And they are all fed natural and pasture food.
Around the time Rockwood was arrested – the authorities tried to set bail, claiming he was a flight risk – the sewage pipes at the Glenville Town Building froze, and the pipes backed up.
No one was arrested or charged with cruelty.
But there is what is different about this case:
Hundreds of farmers and animal lovers from all over the country seemed to decide that enough was enough, they gathered together to support Rockwood, mostly through social media, and to raise more than $56,000 for his legal fees. Hundreds of people came to his hearings. They will be there on June 2 as well. Before social media, these people had no simple way of connecting with one another, or supporting one another. Rockwood has introduced a new dynamic to the deepening confusion over what is abuse for animals and how they can remain in our world.
I can also share this: I am told that Joshua was offered a plea deal just before his last hearing in which virtually all of the charges against him would be dropped if he would agree to pay the fees for the transport and boarding of his horses.
He declined, he has told friends that he will never plead guilty to something he didn’t do.
This was a good offer for him to walk away from these troubles, he could have simply made the deal. Most people would have, I think I would have. It took strength and courage for him to refuse, and it appears that his own sense of right and wrong was vindicated last night. Not many people would have done that. Rockwood is an inspiration to the growing numbers of younger people seeking to return to nature and to help find new and healthy ways of raising and selling food locally. When you buy food from Joshua, you know where it comes from and how the animals have been treated.
I can tell you as one who loves animals and has lived with them for some time that Joshua’s animals are among the most fortunate ones, they are treated well.
Judge Davenport ruled that because the Glenville police officer and small animal veterinarian who participated in the raid were not called to testify or made available for cross-examination, the evidence had to be considered hearsay and therefore inadmissible.
Rockwood’s lawyer argued that the horses should never have been seized and that the reimbursement costs were not justifiable or reasonable. All over the country, thousands of animals on farms and in private homes are being seized by people – often anonymously – claiming they are neglected or abused. When the animals are seized by the police and sent to rescue farms and preserves, the owners are billed for their care and boarding, whether or not they are found guilty. People arrested are routinely humiliated and disgraced on television and in local media, the final outcomes of the cases are almost never reported. Many are found innocent, or see the charges dropped.
As the Rockwood case reveals, the people lobbying for arrests and prosecutions do not always know how farmers or animals live, or what abuse really is, they often argue that all animals should be returned to nature, but when they are – Rockwood’s animals live very close to nature – the people who own them are often arrested.
Rockwood’s animals could not have been denied food, they are all healthy and vigorous, food farmers do not starve their livestock, they would have no meat to sell. I showed three different pig farmers photos of the shelter for Rockwood’s pigs (two out of 100 had gray matter on their ears) and none could begin to fathom why he was charged with cruelty.
Rockwood, an idealistic young farmer who left construction work to start a CSA farm (CSA farms sell shares to consumers, they get produce and meat in return, they share the risk and bounties of farming) and to sell healthy, locally grown food from naturally fed animals, found himself struggling for his farm and his reputation. A lot of people who knew him and many who did not decided enough was enough, they supported Rockwood in an unprecedented and powerful way, perhaps setting a new kind of model for the victims of this kind of persecution.
And make no mistake about it, this was a persecution. There is almost nothing to these charges. The judge seemed to me to be making that very statement in his ruling yesterday.
Rockwood’s animals were well cared for, any farmer in the Northeastern United States this February could have been arrested just as easily, and had their animals hauled away for no reason, and then face enormous legal and boarding costs whether or not they were guilty of any wrongdoing.
The national hysteria over animal abuse and animal rights has become a new kind of social mob action, it seems much more Orwellian – secret informers, outrageous demands of money made against innocent people who seem almost without rights, a hysterical and unbalanced news media, damaged businesses and reputations, a way of life that is being destroyed, and a civic culture that has lost any connected with the natural world, or any real understanding of farmers, farming or the needs and lives of animals who are not pets.
But Joshua Rockwood’s trials are not yet over. It is not clear how and when he might get horses back. A June 2 hearing has been set for the criminal charges against. I imagine he will be offered a deal again, my guess is that he will never take a deal. One of the cruelest things about this story is that Joshua Rockwood is the last person who should be fighting for his life on the basis of absurd charges like this. It is important to protect the rights and welfare of animals, but not by trading their well-being off against the rights and freedom and dignity of human beings.
Joshua still needs support for people care about keeping animals in our every day lives, who wish animals to remain in our lives, who support new and humane ways of farming and who believe that people and animals both have the right to be treated with compassion and dignity.
You can help: People in the Glenville, N.Y., area can buy his healthy and popular food offerings.
People elsewhere can contribute to his legal defense fund. As one farmer told me, “this time, they came for him, next time they will come for me, and so I am going to do everything I can to support him.”
