Search Results for: joshua rockwood

 

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.

 

it is always a shocking thing for me to see an innocent person treated like a criminal in his own community, I think when a culture criminalizes farming in the name of loving animals, it is turning to the dark side. Farmers are part of a nation’s soul, we fare as they fare, we suffer as they suffer, even if we rarely realize it. A country that forgets where it’s food comes from and what the real l lives of animals are like is losing itself in a different way.

Today, another hearing in the saga of Joshua Rockwood, a young farmer caught in a brutal winter, now facing 13 charges of animal cruelty and neglect in a community that seems to know nothing about farms or animals any longer. It’s  hard to imagine anyone having a good day in the midst of this long, painful, expensive and arduous ordeal. But Joshua has set about proving that there is justice for an honest man, that the legal system can work for him as well as against him.

He had a good day today.

Unlike so many of the people caught up in the hysteria over animal cruelty and abuse, Rockwood knows how to use his blog and the Internet, he has raised $55,000 online for his legal fees and drawn a powerful  army of supporters to his side. They are loyal and loving people, I am very happy to sit among them.

The judge announced the case today as “West Wind Acres Farm versus the complainant,  Peaceful Acres Sanctuary,”  so it has at least become clear who the complainant was and is. Today’s hearing – delayed from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. was not about the charges of animal cruelty, it is about how much Joshua is being asked to pay by the Peaceful Acres rescue farm in order to get his two draft horses and pony back, should that become possible.

To date, the bill for boarding the three horses is $7,500, according to Nanci Beyerl, director of Peaceful Acres. That is for the first 30 days only, it does not include the last month. Beyerl  was called to testify about the costs of caring for Joshua’s seized horses, and Joshua’s attorney, Andrew SaFranko was eager to question her about her charges and fees. About 30 of Joshua’s friends, family and supporters came to the hearing, even mid-day, some came long distances to show support for him.

Real courtroom scenes are not like Law & Order or Perry Mason. Smart  modern lawyers speak slowly and carefully, take notes, reference files, there are no fireworks, little drama. I’ve covered a lot of trials, SaFranko had done his homework, and knew his stuff. Court proceedings are almost uniformly boring, not exciting. There are lots of conferences, delays, reading of statutes.  Still, the cross-examination of  Beyerl was, I thought, both revealing and disturbing. It was something of a surprise to me.

And it did shed some light on some of the very troubling issues raised by the Rockwood case. First, Rockwood is accused of nothing that doesn’t happen on almost every real farm in America, especially in a brutal cold wave. Then, there is the increasingly incestuous relationship between some animal rights organizations and the police, who are  being drawn into the deepening conflict over the future of animals in our world and the true nature of farming. Americans have, in fact, forgotten where their food comes from and they have forgotten the people who make their food possible.

There are issues relating to conflicts of interest involving people given great authority over other people, and who often have a financial stake in the outcome of their actions and accusations. As the animals of the world disappear in the new Inquisition over animal abuse, the fate of every one becomes more precious. No one is opposed to animal rescue or animal abuse, and so no one thinks to question animal rights organizations and some rescue operations about their procedures. But the Rockwood case is raising a number of questions.

And then, there is the powerless and frightening position many farmers and animal lovers – especially poor ones – find themselves in when confronted with the Orwellian power and aggression of the contemporary animal rights movement and its growing links to local governments. Joshua Rockwood knows how different his story might have been if he had not been able to raise all that money on his gofundme site.

I have three good friends who operate horse and animal rescue farms and sanctuaries – one of them, Ken Norman, our friend and farrier – was sitting right next to me in the courtroom, and in the interests of fairness, I cannot believe how hard they work, how little money they have or earn, or how open they are about what they do. It is all about the horses for them, I don’t think any of them know what a management fee is.

So I was interested in hearing Nanci Beyerl’s testimony.

Beyerl was part of the convoy that came to Joshua Rockwood’s farm in March – she testified that she was asked by the police. The raiding party seized the three horses, and left a large paper trail of charges and accusations, none of which have yet to be addressed in court.

Beyerl conceded that she charges twice as much money for impounded horses – those seized in cruelty cases – as she does for rescue horses who are not impounded. She is asking Joshua to pay for more than $800 a month for the care of his horses if he wishes to get them back, or even if he never gets them back. For rescued horses who are not impounded, she says, she charges $400.  In addition, she is charging a daily management fee of $104.

She surprised the farriers and horse rescue people present when she testified that she does not charge for “loaded miles” in the way most animal carriers do, she charged by time and distance for transporting the horses. She is seeking $600 in reimbursement for transporting the three horses to her farm from his – a distance of nine miles.

Beyerl said her boarding rates for Rockwood’s horses are $28 a day, $13 more than her fees for horses that are not impounded. She is also charging Rockwood more than $1,000 for veterinary care – one of the horses is pregnant and about to foal.

She said impounded horses require more time and care than other horses, including talking regularly to the police and the DA’s office. I don’t know  Beyerl, she seems to have saved a lot of horses, but she seemed angry to me and at times defensive. Once or twice, she appeared almost outraged that her expenses were even being questioned. She said impounded horses are expensive in part because she doesn’t allow her volunteer staff to handle them or care for them for insurance reasons. Yet she conceded that she brought eight people – all but one volunteers – along on the raid of Joshua’s farm that resulted in the seizure of his horses.

SaFranko pressed her on  just how much time she spent managing two draft horses and a pony for $104 a day. She said caring for his horses took her away from her regular duties. She also said she was submitting invoices for $600 for transporting the horses – $400 from her and $200 from a second rescue farm whose trailer was used.

SaFranko then called Wes Laraway as a witness for the defense. Callalway is a history teacher and 20 year veteran of animal and wildlfe rescue runs his own sanctuary in Middleburgh, N.Y., he has five horses and eight donkeys and is lately specializing in exotic animal rescue. He was, I have to say, right out of central casting,  tall, ruddy, white-haired,   credible and direct.

Laraway (he was not paid to testify) said he never heard of a management fee and had never charged one. He did not charge any fee for the animals that he rescued and cared for, he did accept donations.  He has never heard of the practice of charging more money for impounded horses than rescued ones, and has never done it. He said  he used a “loaded miles” fee arrangement for all of the animals he had transported. That is, transport charges are computed and begin when the animals are loaded onto a trailer, and end when the are loaded off at their destination. He said most loaded ride fees range from $2 to $5 per mile on average.

If he had transported Rockwood’s horses, the invoice would have been from $40 to $50 for all three.

I contacted each of my horse rescue friends, all three said they have never heard of a management fee in horse rescue, all three said they charged on the basis of the “loaded miles” system, although often, they said, they had to waive the charge because horse owners had no money.  “Often, these people are not evil, they are just broke,” one told me. They all said their daily boarding rates for a draft horse range from $8 to $16, and none charged more for impounded horses than conventionally rescue ones. In fact, they all said they simply accepted the horses they took into their care. They rarely, if ever, charged any fees for them unless they were boarded.

“This,” one said, “is why all horse  rescue people are broke.”

I know these good people long and well, they are all broke and live to rescue horses in trouble, it is their life, none could imagine what a management fee might be. “Caring for one horse in trouble is just like caring for another,” said Susan, who runs a rescue farm in Maine. “Managing them all is what I do.”

So there we are, another chapter unfolds in the animal wars now raging across America. This is a case that should never have happened, criminal charges that should never be brought. I felt the prosecutor somehow felt the same thing, she did her duty, but she seemed to have little heart for it. And how could she?, it is the case, as Ken Norman said, of the Bullshit Misdemeanors. I watched the faces of the farmers and friends and family of Joshua Rockwood, there was a great deal of pain in their eyes. Sitting in a courtroom watching Joshua fight for his farm and his life was the last place they wanted to be.

And unfortunately for Joshua, this nightmare is just getting underway. He is holding up, he had a gleam in his eye I had not seen before in the courtroom, this is a stand he wants to take. “I’ll tell you one thing,” a neighbor whispered to me in the courtroom, “he will never give up.”

Neither, I think, will his new army, and perhaps that is what is most significant about his case.

__

As of today, there were no further hearing dates set, the judge is awaiting motions from the lawyers on the admissibility of some of the evidence.

Joshua’s pigs are controversial. Two of them had gray matter on their ears, and the police decided it was frostbite – the temperature that week was in the -20’s all week. They charged him with having inadequate shelter for the pigs. The shelters I saw on his farm were more than adequate, his pigs all seem healthy and active. These babies are only a day or two old, Joshua knew all of the mothers by name, all of the babies are healthy and active and nursing. They all burrow into the hay with their mother to be warm.

 I think the same thing about this sad story, every time I go near it. Does the Glenville government really have nothing better to do than waste many thousands of dollars and valuable manpower and law enforcement resources and taxpayer money on this miscarriage of justice? It would be funny, except it is not. Are there no people in this community in need who  could be helped by all of this money and energy? No hungry children, no elderly couples without heating oil? No schools in need of expansion or repair? Does government really have nothing better to do than demonstrate their ignorance about farms and animals, and persecute farmers who have no magic wands that instantly turn ice to warm water?

__

It’s Spring at West Wind Acres Farm, Joshua Rockwood is caring for the babies that are sprouting all over the place – lambs, baby goats, piglets, calves. I went to see Joshua this afternoon at his farm, Maria came along to meet him and see the newborns.

I’m getting to know him, and I realized today that Joshua is a farm geek, he can spout all kinds of stats about nutrition, pasture, weight, feed and fat content. Like most farmers, his animals are not really pets, he loves them in the way that farmers love their cows – they are sustenance, livelihood, the point of the farm. The better cared for, the better the farm does.

As we left, Maria turned to me in the car and said the very same thing I said when I first met him. He is very real, very authentic, idealistic and direct. There was nothing about his farm that either of us saw or heard about to justify the effort to destroy his livelihood and his life. He knows every animal by name, and could bore the bark off an oak tree talking about nutrition, feed and genetics. Every day, I get messages from his neighbors, teachers, people who know him, who saw him grow up, they tell me he is a good man, an honest man, thanks for speaking up for him.

But you can see the baby thing is getting to him, as it does to every farmer. Farmers are among the world’s greatest animal lovers, most people don’t know that and they don’t yet know how to talk about it. But I see it in Joshua’s face all the time. He is not about abusing or neglecting the animals in his care.

Nothing about the charges against him  makes any sense. It seems a grotesque overreach by government and by the people who say they are for animal rights and who seem to have evolved a kind of Stalinist militia, going consistently over the top, ever expanding their definitions of cruelty and abuse, and their lists of targets in the intense campaign to remove animals from the everyday lives of people. It seems were are in the midst of another of those hysterias that seize the imaginations of the public from time to time.  Like Communists and Witches before them, the new animal police are finding animal abusers everywhere – on  horse carriages, pony rides, farms, circuses.

The proceedings are not about justice or fairness, they draw from Orwellian ideas about legal proceedings: if you are accused, you are guilty, if you deny your guilt, then it only proves you are guilty.

The human-animal bond, formed over centuries, is being upended.  Animals are being driven from the lives of people. Work for animals is abuse, the things people and animals have learned to do forever are now stupid tricks, animals who have long been with people are being banned and banished- and doomed to awful fates –  in the name of preserving their rights. This is the maelstrom that Joshua Rockwood, a young farmer seeking to join the local foods movement, finds himself swept up in.

On Monday morning, Joshua is back in  Glenville, N.Y. Town Court. He faces 13 counts of animal neglect and cruelty stemming from the struggles on his farm to deal with one of the harshest winters in American history. He is accused of having unheated barns.   His water sources froze, his horses were overdue for hoof trimming, his pigs did not have adequate bedding, said the animal police.

None of Joshua’s animals died or were injured, but three of his horses were seized by a local horse rescue farm that  took his horses, and is seeking thousands of dollars in costs from him, whether or not he is found guilty of the charges against him. And even if the horses are sold to someone else.

It would be wonderful if other young people were inspired by Joshua’s decision to change his life and become a farmer, passionate about raising healthy food to sell to his neighbors locally. It is precisely what the world needs and seems to want. Unfortunately, he spends much of his time these days consulting with lawyers,  fighting for his very existence.

Joshua has been told by his lawyer not to speak about the case, and he is faithful to that.  I am not looking to rehash the details of his case on my blog. But it is  shocking to walk about his farm and try to understand why these fat and healthy looking animals – and his clean barns stuffed with hay – drew this Orwellian response from the authorities.  On the same day Joshua was arrested, the sewer lines at the Glenville Town  Hall froze and the toilets backed up.

No one was arrested.

I am glad Maria came, she is shrewd and caring, and she liked Joshua as much as I do, and also found him credible and open and plain-spoken. The highest praise either of us have for anyone is to consider them authentic, and we both feel Joshua Rockwood is that. If he had done something wrong, he would be the first to shout it from the rooftops. If he is innocent, he will fight the good fight.

Water tanks froze all over the Northeast this winter, and farriers everywhere decided to postpone hoof trimming for a month or so until the weather warmed.  Our own farrier was recovering from knee surgery, we waited for  him to get well to trim our donkeys hooves. They did not mind one bit. We would have found it distasteful and disloyal to turn to someone else.

Joshua’s horses were overdue for trimming, the condition of the hooves were not close to being dangerous or painful.  Hundreds of farmers all over the country have rallied to Joshua’s defense, almost every one of them says the same thing: it could have been me.

I never thought of horse rescue as a pyramid scheme, and the horse rescue farms I know of are not that, they do great work in difficult circumstances, often for little or no money. I imagine myself in Joshua’s position on the day in February when our water tanks froze and we struggled to haul buckets of warm water out to them. For several hours, they had no potable water.

I try to imagine a convey of police cars, animal control officers, small animal vets and humane society officers pulling into my driveway, called by secret informers, serving me with warrants, seizing my donkeys and dog away and then charging me eight or ten thousand dollars in boarding and administrative fees to get them back, even if I was found innocent of all of the charges.

And even if the donkeys and dogs never came back, and were sold to someone else.

I am no judge or lawyer, but the dictionary defines conflict of interest in this way: “a situation in which a person is in a position to derive personal benefit from actions or decisions made in their official capacity.”

So the hearing on Monday becomes important, it is a significant step in this case, a hearing upon which the case against Joshua may turn, hobble along, or collapse. The hearing is about how much it will cost for Joshua to get his horses back, how the costs are determined,  and whether their seizure can be justified at all. It is the first opportunity for justice and perspective to present itself in a case marked by injustice and ignorance.

I will be there Monday morning at 10 a.m. at the Glenville, N.Y., Municipal Court. I don’t know anyone who favors, practices or condones the abuse of animals, but I think many of us sense that this is the result of  a movement that has gone too far, that has become a witch-hunt and a new kind of social inquisition. It seems to focus on the weak, the poor, the helpless, the naive or the voiceless. The greatest and wealthiest practitioners of animal cruelty – the large industrial factory animal farms (not all factory farms are equally cruel) – are not raided, their animals are not seized and re-homed, they can easily afford whatever fees and costs might be assessed against them.

I can only guess that someone thought a young and idealistic farmer would not be in much of a position to fight back against charges that seem clearly to be outrageous and unwarranted.  Perhaps they thought he would give up his horses without a struggle. If so, they guessed wrong this time. I believe it would be a serious mistake to underestimate Joshua Rockhood. He is smart, thoughtful, proud and determined. and he has many hundreds of good people – friends, family, customers, farmers – standing behind  him.

Joshua survived the winter, he got all of his animals through that awful winter, and a rational society would have offered him some help during those brutally cold days, even some recognition, not public humiliation and shame,  thousands of dollars in legal and other fees that no real farmer can afford to pay.

His case is significant now, it has echoes and meaning far beyond his West Wind Acres farm. I believe the horses will make themselves heard.

__

Joshua Rockwood has a legal defense fund on gofundme that has already raised more $55,000 dollars. He will need every penny of that and more. Thanks for helping him. Every person who loves an animal or lives and works with one has a stake in this, will be affected by its outcome. If they can do it to him, they can do it to you. Just ask any farmer.

These are the pigs that the police who raided Joshua Rockwood’s farm decided were being neglected and treated cruelly. They are one of the reasons for his arrest. The photo was  taken a couple of weeks after the police raid on his farm.

One pig has a tear in his ear, two others said there was gray matter on the tips of their ears that suggested frost-bite. The photograph was taken by me on Joshua’s farm several weeks after his arrest on 13 charges of animal cruelty and neglect.

I took these photographs to two different pig farms in my country. I e-mailed them to a third. None of the pig farmers say they saw a single thing to justify a charge of abuse or neglect. “Half of my pigs have gray matter on the tips of their ears,” one said, “animals in barns can get frostbite just as easily as pigs outside when the temperate hits the -20’s, as it did this winter. “These guys look fat and happy and healthy to me.”

One farmer also said the the hysteria over animal abuse had caused many authorities to lose all perspective. “These animals are going to slaughter,” he said, “you give them freedom of movement, shelter and good food. You make sure they don’t suffer and are killed quickly and humanely. You can’t do more than that. What do these people know about farms? You can’t call a vet every time a pig has gray matter on their ear, you would be broke in a couple of days, you’d have to triple your prices to justify that, and nobody would pay it.”

Two farmers said they would bet that the vet who came with the police was a small animal vet, nor a farm vet. They surprised me, that is true.

I am not a pig farmer, but I have seen sheep get ears like this if it gets that cold, it seems strange to me that many people demand that all animals be returned to the wild, but they arrest people when there is the slightest hint of it. These pigs had shelter – Joshua has been accused of inadequate shelter – that was hardier and more protected than any of the shelters I have seen on the local pig farms here.

I’ve lived with farm animals for more than a decade, I saw nothing about these pigs that would alarm or concern me. Neglected animals do not look like this, they are not as active or alert, they shy away from people and are slow to move or react to their environment. None of the farmers I showed these photographs to saw any signs of abuse or neglect, but I wanted to share them with you, you can make up your own mind. Joshua’s trial begins tomorrow, the 21st at 7 p.m. at the Glenville, N.Y., Town Court.