Search Results for: joshua rockwood

“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
―  Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man.  You can help a man  here. 

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Tomorrow is Joshua Rockwood day here at Bedlam Farm.

It is an important day in my life, and I believe, in the life of everyone who lives with animals, loves them, or truly cares for their rights or their own. Joshua Rockwood, a young and idealistic farmer drawn to the local foods movement in Glenville, N.Y. goes to court to face 13 counts of animal cruelty, abuse and neglect. His hearing begins at 5:30  p.m. at the Glenville, N.Y. Town Court.

His trial speaks to the lost soul of the animal rights movement, our broken covenant with farmers and animals, our disconnection from Mother Earth.

Rockwood’s farm was raided by local police and animal control officers. He is accused of having frozen water sources, of neglecting the hooves of his ponies, of failure to provide heated barns and shelter for his pigs, and of having inadequate stores of feed. Three horses and one dog were taken from him.

Everyone who knows him, who  lives on a farm, who is a farmer, who lives with domesticated animals, who understands the lives and needs of animals, also understands what his real crime is: he was a young farmer in winter, trapped in runaway social forces that threaten every farmer and animal and animal lover in the world.

Rockwood symbolizes much more than his farm and his animals. His arrest was wrong.  He brings into the focus what is truly at stake in his trial: his way of life and our way of life, those of us who believe that animals ought to remain in our world and live and work with us. Those of us who would not abandon our farmers to this thoughtless and unknowing kind of justice. The increasingly hateful ways in which we treat one another.

I am not a political person. I do not believe in the left or the right. I believe that government is necessary to protect us and our freedom, to preserve our property, to help the poor, to educate the young, to regulate the world of business, to help save the earth from our own deprivations. I abhor war in any form, I suppose many people would call me a progressive.

Thomas Paine has always been  an inspiration of mine.  I am especially touched by his passionate belief that my rights are also the rights of every man and women, my duty as a writer and a citizen is to support the right of others as well as support my own.

I also write as an author and a life-long lover animals. I have lived with them and written about them for decades –  dogs, sheep, donkeys, goats, cows, barn cats, chickens, goats. In the past year, I have been drawn to the struggle of the New York Carriage Horses to survive in the new and twisted world of animal rights, where we kill animals and drive them from the every day world in order to save them. In this twisted process, the rights of every living thing is trampled, theirs and ours.

The horses have awakened me, and then the ponies in the farmer’s markets, the elephants in the circuses, the pigs and chickens and cows on a farm, the  dogs and cats of the homeless and the poor and the elderly, the sled dogs and the border collies. I have come to see that animals are not all different and separate things, they are one thing. Them together, them with us. The sunshine soldiers of the animal world are selfish and selective in their righteousness. They mostly seem to care about what makes them feel good, not what saves the animals. Take the elephants, not the horses. Take the ponies, not the dogs. Take the animals in Hollywood movies, not my cats.

But you cannot take one withou the other, the story is the same every time. What is true of the carriage horses is true of the elephants, we don’t get to pick and choose which animal makes us feel better about our battered selves.

The  sunshine soldiers of the animal world breath the air of the elite and the smug and the self-satisfied, turning their heads from the slaughter and disappearance of animals, the true abuse and brutality of the corporate farms. And from our sacred and natural partners, from the earth. We destroy one world and habitat after another. First the natural worlds, then the few remaining ones that we have created, the last refuge of the animals.  They will share our fate.

What the people who profess to speak for the animals and the the ponies and the elephants is this: stables and zoos and circuses and farmer’s markets and  lives with humans are the new preserves, are the new natural world, are the new wild, their only remaining safe and protected homes.

There is nothing more natural in all of the earth than for animals and people to remain together. They speak to us of healing, harmony, nature and history, we stand or fall with them, not apart from them.

I have opened my heart and mind to see that this issue is larger than the carriage horses, or the elephants in the circus, or the border collie in the field. Freedom, rationality, science  and a way of life is under siege. The very idea of progressiveness has been stained by hostility and elitism and ignorance.

For all of recorded history, men and women have lived with animals – not just pets – and loved them. They have fed us, sustained us, protected us, entertained and uplifted us, worked with us, built our world with us, grounded us, touched the hearts of our children, nourished our imaginations, our art and culture. There is no part of our lives animals have not touched, no element of art or creativity that they have not inspired, no work that they have not willingly done with us and for us.

Animals are not just pets, they do not need to be seen as pets, they are something much larger, more spiritual and mystical.

All of this is in danger of being taken from us, as well as our sacred and hard-won right to be free of fear and intrusion, to live as we please, to follow our bliss and passion, not be forced by others into lives we do not seek or want, or to conform to repugnant and alien ideas about the natural world.

When you awaken, you see that one by one, everything that is good about animals and people is becoming a dark thing, a crime, a target of the new and Orwellian animal police, this new and narrow and angry way of looking at the world. We have been manipulated. Much of what we do with animals – working with them, laughing with them, is being called abuse, is turning our connection to them and with one another  poisonous and angry and hateful. Abuse is becoming the only way we can see animals, the only way we consider and understand them, even though it is the smallest and in many ways, least relevant thing about their lives and existence.

A loved and healthy carriage horse is now considered a victim of torture and cruelty by the mayor of New York. An elephant in the circus is a pathetic object to be saved by humans sitting at their computer screens thousands of miles away. Carriage drivers – many of their families have worked with horses for a thousand years – are told they must drive green taxicabs in the outer boroughs when their horses are taken away. The mayor refuses to speak with the carriage drivers or see their stables, he says their work is immoral. See, he says? No one will suffer, no one will care when the horses are replaced by more cars.

I sometimes imagine the weeping soul of Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed his beautiful Central Park so that people could see the carriage horses every day and walk among them, shaking his head in wonder at the idea that they can be replaced by big cars and no one will notice or care. I don’t know which thing is worse, that this is true, or that it isn’t. We have forgotten the animals, they are pleading with us to remember them before it is too late. Our children will never forgive us for these awful mistakes, they can never be undone.

Even the ponies who give rides to children are seen as nothing but victims.   It is an outrage for animals to feed the world, for a homeless man to have a canine companion in his tent or van, for a loving and elderly woman to have cats in her trailer, for a couple without a tall fence to adopt a dog, for the elephants to walk and kneel in the circus, as they have for thousands of years. A new generation of secret informers roams the animal world waiting to turn farmers and animal lovers into criminals, beset by a new generation of  animal police.

There is abuse in the animal world, as in our world, for sure, but it is only part of the story, and a small part. The amazing things animals and people do together are suddenly dismissed and denigrated as stupid tricks, unworthy of sensitive and intelligent  beings. So we smugly condemn them to death instead, pretending that there is a natural world for them to return to, and a safe life there. And we pat ourselves on the back and send out the informers again to seek out another animal to push out of the every day lives of humans, and from the earth.

We call this animal rights when it is just the newest form of animal genocide.

Every animal we save and keep in the world now is sacred, a victory for them, for us, for the earth.  If we don’t awaken, they will all be gone, every one. Every animal we lose is a tragedy, this is the ancient message of the horses, calling us to open our eyes and save them.

The ironic truth is that the carriage horses and elephants are – or were – among the safest and luckiest horses and elephants and animals on the planet, anyone who knows a thing about them will say the same thing. There is nowhere for them to go that is better.

And make no mistake about it, when they get rid of the horses and the elephants and the ponies and the sled dogs and the dogs and cats of the poor and elderly, they will come for your dogs and cats, for our pets, because no one who loves animals really fits into the new definition of animal welfare and animal abuse any longer. Animals lovers were never consulted about this new way of looking at animals, nor are they listened to.

The secret animal police do not know one animal from another, have no idea what they need or what their real lives are like. They do not care about the people who live with them and love them. If you own animals and work with them, you are just another subhuman, a criminal waiting to be found out, you are an unperson, you can be informed upon, raided by the police, hauled into court, bankrupted and disgraced and shamed.

Farmers and carriage drivers and pony ride operators and the people in the circuses  and the people who love animals now live in an Orwellian world.

Orwellian refers to an attitude and policy of intimidation and draconian control of issues by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of events. It describes the targeting of the “unperson,” someone  who is publicly denounced on modern media, whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, who is arrested by police with great authority, and who is thus disgraced and discredited. The dehumanizing of people, wrote Orwell, is a common practice of repressive governments.

It describes what has happened to Joshua Rockwood and what is happening to so many others.

So this is what is at stake for  Rockwood tomorrow – and for us. Rockwood is a sensitive man, an ethical farmer, an open and transparent man. He loves his family, is straight with his customers, cares for his animals.  He is not a saint, he is not perfect, he is learning things every day.  His passion is making healthy food to sell to people in his community, an alternative that is desperately needed in the world of dreadful nutrition, barbaric corporate farming and the new industrial and corporate agri-business. I would be proud to have him in my family, to call him a friend or neighbor.

Like almost ever farmer in the Northeast – like me and every farmer I know – he was unprepared for temperatures that ranged into the – 20’s night after night. Two of his pigs may or may not have gotten frostbite on the tips of their ears – I saw them two weeks ago, they are healthy and fat. So are the 100 other pigs I saw on his farm.  One of his ponies had overgrown hooves – my farrier says they were not even close to being unhealthy or dangerous.

On the same day he was raided, the sewer pipes in the Glenville Town Building (and police headquarters) froze and the sewage backed up. No one was arrested or charged with cruelty and neglect. None of Joshua’s cows, chickens, pigs, dogs or sheep suffered any serious or death as a result of the winter. He got them all through it.

If animals are to survive at all in our greedy and destructive world, it will be people like Joshua Rockwood who save them and keep them here.

Or the carriage drivers in New York. Or the pony ride operators in the farmer’s markets. Or the people whose therapy dogs make children and the sick and elderly smile and laugh – do those stupid tricks – in hospitals, schools and nursing homes. They are not different things, they are one thing. One woman’s “stupid trick” is the salvation of a sick child or an old man stuck in a dementia unit in a nursing home.

I am called to stand up for my idea of justice and for the humane treatment of people and animals. And for the right of everyone to pursue their passion and way of life. Everyone must come to their own truth. It is not the role of government to take away our freedom or property or way of life, it is the role of government to preserve all of those things. In any great undertaking, especially in our world, it is no longer enough for any man to simply depend on himself.

At Joshua’s hearing last month, nearly 300 people, many of them farmers who knew it could be them next time, showed up to support him in court. He appeared stunned and determined. He also has a calm and sense of purpose about him.  I am eager to see him tomorrow and shake  his hand and give him a hug or a pat on the back. Later this week I hope to go to his farm and see and photograph the new baby animals that have appeared there this Spring.

Whatever is my right is also the right of Joshua Rockwood. His only crime is to be a young farmer, starting out. I am certain he will prevail and return to his destiny and his way of life. Joshua’s legal defense fund has raised more than $55,000 so far. You can help him here.

Tomorrow is Joshua Rockwood day here at Bedlam Farm, and in my heart. I hope others will hold him in the light and open their hearts to the animals in world. Perhaps consider a Joshua Rockwood day for you and for your dog or cat or horse or pony or pig or goat.

The Third Way

I live about three hours from Joshua Rockwood and his farm, West Wind Acres. He is not a neighbor, or even a friend yet.

I would be happy to have him as a friend, as notorious as he suddenly is. But he will be busy for a good while defending himself from charges that he has abused his farm animals. He is determined to keep his farm, he is trying to put his disrupted life back together. It is an awful thing to be accused of abusing animals.

I spent an afternoon with him last week, talked with him, saw his farm. I am here to tell you from the heart that he is not, to me,  an abuser of animals, or any kind of criminal. In fact, he seems quite incapable of abuse or harm. His goal in life is to sell locally grown and healthy food to people, and to do it on his own farm. He was off to a good start, he has a CSA farm and his business was growing, people seem very happy with his pork, beef, lamb and chicken. That should be a happy story, the town might once have considered giving him an award.

At the moment, it is not a happy story, he got a hearing date instead. Joshua’s real crime is that he is young, inexperienced, and not wealthy enough to have installed a six-foot deep frost-free water system on a leased farm during one of the worst cold waves in American history. He never imagined it. Neither did any other farmer I know of. He tried to make do with bowls and tubs and streams. It worked, too, until the temperature got into the – 20’s, and even with all that, he got all of his animals through it.

I am not a judge or animal control officer, I am not here to try the details of his case. The truth will reveal itself. I am not part of any movement that judges people or tells them what to eat or do or think or how to vote.

Joshua is almost literally the man who could be us, any one of us who farms, lives on a farm,  lives with horses, dogs, cats, donkeys, sheep, cows, pigs or chickens. I believe he has been called, as I have been, to help take us to a new and better place, a better understanding of animals in our world, while there is still time to keep the survivors of our greed and destruction here. So far, he has raised more than $50,000 online, the money will go to pay his legal expenses and help pay the bond to get his horses back. You can see his fund here.

Joshua’s case speaks to the need for the much imagined “Third Way” of saving the animals. The First Way was to see them as dumb beasts of burden, to overwork them, underestimate them,  and take them for granted. The “Second Way” has been to see them as piteous and helpless, to know them only in terms of their occasional abuse, and to take them away and hide them from us.

The “Third Way” is my choice, Joshua Rockwood’s way, Blue-Star Equiculture’s Way. That is, a wiser understanding:  to see animals as an alien species, neither our dependents or children but as our partners in the joys and travails and work of restoring the world and our own broken and angry spirits.  We are connected to them, our lives entwined with theirs, our fate as well. That is, of course, what they do and have always done – worked with us. The donkeys, the camels, the elephants, the dogs, the cats, horses, the sheep, the oxen, the cows, the chickens. They are spiritual beings, mystical spirits. From the birth of human beings, they have always worked with us, protected us, hunted with us, fed us, watched over us and given us clothing and food and support, love also.

They do not need to be saved from us, we need them to stay with us,  to save us.

What we do to the horses and the elephants and the farm animals and the ponies and dogs and cats is a symptom of our broken contract with nature and the earth. And with them. To send them away is a betrayal. We can take them from their people and banish them from sight, we cannot hide from our responsibility for what we have done to their world.

That is  the message of the New York Carriage Horses in their fight to survive in New York City. They have, in fact, triggered a new awakening.  Our mission now is to save the animals. Joshua Rockwood is part of it, people have rushed from all over the country to support him, they know his story is important,  perhaps he is more important than he yet knows.

The Idea Of Animal Rights

The idea of animal rights – the idea that animals are entitled to valued as humans are and given their same rights – is  new in American culture, and in the world,  as powerful as it has become.

The animal rights movement came out of the liberation movements in the 1970’s,  and has much earlier roots in Christian theological concern about mercy and the welfare of animals. The term “rights” was never  used by the early Christian philosophers or conceived of by them,  and is a controversial term to many people now.

Christian writers like St. Thomas Aquinas believed that human beings needed to be merciful to animals because it made us better humans. Our treatment of animals, he argued, was a reflection of our own humanity. The great Greek philosophers – Plato and Socrates – believed in the merciful treatment of animals, but they cautioned that animals must never be considered equal or superior to human beings. What made humans special, they argued, was our conscience, the ability to tell right from wrong, and to seek to do good. In their day, the creative spark in people was worshiped, we worship animals now in many ways.

Since no animal has a conscience, Plato said, they could not be considered as being equal to humans. Aristotle agreed, he thought it was demeaning to compare human beings to animals, then considered stupid beasts of burden. The ancient rabbis said it was the duty of Jews to treat their animals decently, and it was forbidden for animals to work on the Sabbath.

The idea that animal life had the same, or even greater value than human life was advanced not by farmers or animal lovers but by academics like Tom Regan and Peter Singer in the late 1970’s. It was a time when most Americans were leaving family farms, leaving rural life, leaving animals and becoming disconnected from them except as a political or ideological idea.

To understand the tension surrounding the animal rights movement and people who live and work with animals, it is critical to understand that the literature and ideology of the movement  very clearly states that there is no substantial difference between the rights of human beings and the rights of animals.

They are to be considered one and the same, equal in every respect. Before the animal rights movement, organizations like the U.S. Humane Society (H.S.U.S.) and S.P.C.A. saw themselves as promoting animal welfare. The Central Park carriage horses drink every day from a fountain donated to the horses in Central Park by the S.P.C.A.  They were worried about their thirst. That organization and H.S.U.S. Is now closely linked to PETA and is now supporting the effort to ban the same horses. They consider their work to be a form of abuse.

Animal welfare is very different from human rights, it promotes the idea that animals should be well cared for and humanely treated but does not argue that they should have the rights of human beings, or that they are equivalent to human beings.

Animal welfare lobbyists organized to prevent abuse as defined by the law, then and now: the extreme neglect or mistreatment of domestic animals leading to severe suffering, grievous injury, or death. Animal rights activists have expanded the idea of abuse to essentially be an opinion held by anyone. Every day now, the work being done by animals for thousands of years is now considered to be a form of torture and enslavement.

The movement is honest about its core beliefs, even though many people who contribute money to the movement do not understand its ultimate goals, which are not always made clear: Animals should not work for or with people, they should never be eaten by them or entertained by them or exploited by them in any way. They should not be the pets of human beings.  If they must be pets, they must be treated in heavily codified ways. They should never be bred by human beings, or used to uplift or amuse people.  They must never work with people. Not on sleds, looking for bombs, searching and rescuing, herding sheep, doing therapy work, guiding the blind.

Animals belong in nature, and in the wild, according to this movement. Even the chickens should be set free. I do not care to think of chickens in the wild.

Free The Dogs

This ideology offers by far the most radical change in the human view of animals in human history.

Since it directly conflicts with much of the interaction between people and animals, it confronts the very foundation and tradition of the human animal bond. It goes against almost every grain and feeling and experience humans and farmers and animal entrepeneurs have had for animals for thousands of years. It utterly rejects the powerful tradition of animals doing work with people. It also turns countless people who live and work with animals – farmers, circuses, carriage horse operators, researchers, animal lovers, dog breedes, owners, trialers and hunters, sportsmen and women – into an enemy of the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals.

Thus, people are oppressors, abusers, even criminals. It has also, through intense political contributions and lobbying campaigns, drawn government into the middle of a relationship that has always been private, even sacred – the relationship of humans to their animals, from carriage drivers to falconer to farmers to pet owners and circuses. Local governments have buckled to lobbyists to pass countless new laws restricting the movement of animals and dictating their care. Police have  been drawn into the middle of yet another social conflict that is beyond their training or experience.

The many people I have met who work with animals love their work far more than any person I have ever met in a low-paying, always vulnerable job in a modern corporation where so many Americans now work. Instead of celebrating this kind of opportunity, or even expanding it,  we destroy it over and over again, the tragedy of vanishing animals is compounded by the tragedy of broken human dreams.  And we have lost sight of the idea that it is an awful thing when people lose their life’s work, their freedom and security and the gift of a life working animals.

A cherished way of life is being destroyed. For it is not cruel for people to love horses or ponies or elephants or live and work with them, if they are well cared for. It is a beautiful thing. We have forgotten that in our righteous zeal.

Suddenly,  traditional ways of caring for and being with animals became evil, unacceptable, even illegal.  Joshua Rockwood was cited for having an unheated barn, and the police did not know that farm barns are never heated and even pigs in shelters and barns can get frostbitten ears in temperatures so cold. If they can come for him, they can come for you.

People who had lived and worked with animals for years in a particular way or in service of a long tradition – the Irish carriage trade – suddenly became Orwellian targets, sub-humans, “unpersons,” people not to be spoken to or negotiated with. Animal rights organizations were among the first (and best) fund-raisers on the Internet. Images of suffering animals are one of the most powerful fund-raising tools imaginable, and they are all over the Web. There are countless images of abuse online every day, accompanied with desperate pleas for money.

Many of these stories of abuse turn out to be exaggerated, distorted or completely unfounded. Photos of horses who died of heart attacks in Arizona  and are pictured lying on the ground dead or injured are used on websites in New York City every day to raise millions of dollars used  to ban carriage horses, who are portrayed as living in horrific circumstances, “cells” too small to lie down in, illnesses untreated, overworked, beaten, fed rotten and rodent infested food. There is no evidence that any of those accusations are true.

A generation ago, it would have been unthinkable – and illegal – for the police to raid Joshua Rockwood’s farm and arrest him because his stream froze and he didn’t get to the farm in time to chop a hole in the ice, and his horse’s hooves were too long. It happens all the time, that’s why nearly 300 farmers turned out to support Rockwood at his first hearing. And every one of them said the same thing: it could have been me.

The animal rights movement does not support or fight for ways to keep animals among people because it does not believe they should be with people.   Since it opposes work and amusement and the slaughter of animals for food, and believes animals ought to live in nature, it follows that the animals must be separated from humans. But there is a dreadful Catch-22 to that argument in 2015.

Since the animal rights movement was launched more than a generation ago,  the habitats of most domesticated animals have disappeared. The World Wildllfe Federation estimates that half of the  animals on the earth have vanished since 1970.  Climate change and global development , poaching and greed have destroyed the wild.The discussion of the future of animals takes on a new, mostly unconsidered cast, but the ideology has not changed.  The horses will be doomed if they are banned, the elephants and the ponies as well.

Work Is Their Salvation

Innocent people, with well-cared for animals, invaded by government and the police, harassed and intimidated, and forced to fight for their lives, freedom, animals,  and way of life. This is the tragedy of the Second Way.

Domesticated animals like horses and elephants are not wild animals. They attach powerfully to people, they love and need work and purpose, and people attach powerfully to them, just like humans with dogs and cats.  People and animals both suffer great trauma when they are separated, you can see it in Joshua Rockwood’s face. Only the animals will suffer more. They will soon be gone from the protection of their work and people, there is nowhere for them to go.

Work is their connection to us, and now, their salvation. Without it they have none, they are hidden away and driven from the earth. Today I heard of the story Kari Johnson, who runs a company with her husband called HaveTrunkWillTravel that raises and keeps (and seems to love) elephants and rents them out for various reasons.  For years, they have loved their work and their elephants. Until such work became animal abuse.

The group has been under continuous attack from animal rights groups who claim the elephants there have been abused in their training and care. The courts have found otherwise, as they have with Ringling Bros., but the company has been nearly overwhelmed dealing with accusations, assaults, videos and lawsuits. They have won all of their legal conflicts, but suffered greatly in the process.

I don’t know the Johnsons and have not seen their elephants. But their story is becoming disturbingly familiar to me, it reminds me of the long assault on Ringling Bros. Even though a court ruled that animal rights groups had paid witnesses to lie about the elephants and fined them more than $21 million dollars, the elephants are leaving the circus in three years. Ringling Bros. just got tired of the fighting, they never lost in court or were ever convicted of abuse, and never admitted it, but have been accused of it repeatedly. In the same vein, “Have Trunks, Will Travel” has not been convicted of any wrongdoing, yet they are under ferocious and continuous assault.

It does not seem to me that people who work with animals do so in order to mistreat and abuse them. That, I think, would be the exception, not the rule. And there are many employees and interns at “Have Trunk, Will Travel” who can testify to the conditions there.

“Until the past few years we mostly won the battles,” wrote Kari. “We are a hindrance and a threat to the extremist agenda…Repeated false accusations of abuse have taken a toll on our business. The threats and harassment by mail, phone, e-mail and in person at our events have taken a toll on our health and well-being as well as that of our employees and our family.”  I have investigated the claims of PETA against the New York Carriage Horses and found them to be false, time and again. I am wary of abuse stories on the Internet, everything one sees there is not necessarily the truth.

When Kari talks about her health, I think of the people in the carriage trade, the depression, drinking, anxiety, the heart attacks and corrosive rage. I don’t know her, but I know what she means. It is wrong to threaten and harass and intimidate people, especially in the name of animals. I hear those words  -“intimidation, harassment,” again and again, from farmers, pet owners, businesses who work with animals, the New York carriage drivers.

A Better Understanding Than This

We need a better understanding of animals than all this,  and a more thoughtful and humane idea about how to keep animals in the world. We need to find ways to transcend this ugly war over the animals and new Inquisition over abuse, and begin talking to one another, to the people who live with and love animals, and the people concerned about their welfare. There are no winners in this movement. The animals are disappearing, so are the people who care for them. I can’t help but wonder where they will come when the horses and the elephants and the ponies and the family farmers are all gone.

The First Way of looking at animals in the world was to see them as dumb brutes, unworthy of mercy or special care. The Second Way was to see them as abused and piteous beings who ought not to be in contact with abusive humans

There is a Third Way. First, it would set different goals. The first would be to keep animals with people. To find work for them.  To stop driving animals away from people, pitting the welfare of animals against the very people who own them and live and work with them. It is not possible to advance the rights of animals at the expense of people. We are not more important than they are, they are not more important than we are. We are partners, our lives are inter-connected, and we will share the fate of the earth with them.

If animals ought not be on the earth for the amusement of people, they surely ought not be on the earth to make people feel good about themselves and to be exploited once more, this time to harm and hate human beings. History is a pendulum, it swings back and forth. It is time to find a new way  to reach common ground, to treat them and the people who wish to be with them with love and respect and compassion. The Native-Americans say we are at a crossroads, we will either find a way to harmony or a path to ruin. They say this is the message of the horses.

People like Joshua Rockwood are exploring this Third Way, sometimes unconsciously. Joshua wants to feed healthy food to people, he honors them in this way, he says. Most of his animals will go to slaughter. Others – his sheep dogs, his horses – get to live with him, will be seen by people, will feed people, for much of human history an honorable fate and work.

He is part of  desperately-needed local food movement, a new system drawing young people to farming for the first time in generations, and offering new and healthy food sources to an agricultural system dominated by giant conglomerates who treat animals brutally and make unhealthy foods transported over great distances at high cost. They work in league with politicians and regulators. Joshua Rockwood is not a criminal.

In the Third Way,  government and the police and the community would support people like Joshua Rockwood, not arrest them, talk to farmers, not harass them, seize their animals and threaten their livelihood. Perhaps Joshua needed advice, perhaps he needed help in chopping a hole in the ice or hauling a heated tank to his barn. He can’t do those things in jail, and if his farm is destroyed, 100 animals will be homeless.

It seems to me that if people’s animals are not in extreme suffering, grievously injured or dead – abused as defined by law, not Facebook  and Twitter –  that is the boundary, the line that should not be crossed. It is no one’s business what else happens between them.

Separating people from animals is not a side-affect of the animal right movement, it is the point. Nothing about the movement makes sense without understanding that.  That is the root of this fundamental and deepening conflict. Many millions of people want animals to remain with them, and wish to be free to live with them freely and in privacy as long as they treat them well. We need to make it easier for people to have animals, not more difficult, expensive and frightening.

To understand the Third Way, consider learning about and supporting the Blue-Star Equiculture Farm in Palmer, Mass, a horse rescue and organic farming center that works to find healthy work for working animals like horses,  rescues animals in distress and works for their humane care and treatment. I believe they are the future, the best hope and model for keeping animals in the world and respecting the rights of people. Blue-Star also understands that people and animals belong together, and works to find ways of keeping them together. They practice compassion, not intimidation, for people and for animals.

Animals, like people, can not live in a vacuum. Joshua Rockwood’s animals will do only as well as he does, will be treated only as well as he is treated, will have only some of the rights that he is given.  Animals are not like people, they are very different. If we lose sight of this truth, they will suffer and we will lose them.

Animals cannot survive in our world only on rescue farms or in the mythical wild. So we fight for them, one animal at a time, one carriage horse, one elephant, one farmer, one human victim after another. We are bound together with them in our lives on the earth. If we cannot live in harmony with one another, and treat each other with understanding and empathy, then we cannot live in harmony with them, or with the Mother we all share, the earth.

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You can contribute to Joshua’s gofundme campaign here.

Let’s start our abuse primer  this way: The greatest abuse in the history of animals – corporate farming, the wanton destruction of habitats by blind governments and greedy developers – is not illegal. Even though millions of animals are tortured cruelly or perish as the result of corporate farming and development, no one is ever arrested for either, there are no raids, no animals are trucked out and re-homed on rescue farms.  Many more animals die awful deaths in corporate farms or die from development than could ever be harmed by a young farmer named Joshua Rockwood.

At the end of the very bitter winter of 2015,  Rockwood, a new farmer  in Glenville, N.Y., committed to the local food movement – he sells pasture-fed beef, pork, chicken and lamb – was reported to authorities by a secret informer. He was visited several times by the police, an animal control officer, and a worker for the Humane Society. Three of his horses and one dog were taken from him, and he was charged with 13 counts of animal abuse, cruelty and neglect. He was accused of having frozen water tanks, inadequate shelter for his pigs, overgrown hooves for his pony, and of keeping animals in an unheated barn.

On February 27, one of the same days he was raided by the police and charged with having frozen water tanks, the sewer pipes in the Glenville Municipal Building froze, and the toilets backed up and were unusable. No one was arrested

Rockwood’s arrest raises serious questions about the persecution of farmers. It also raises issues relating to freedom and  privacy, the right of the state to invade private property and seize it without hearing or trial, and the growing role of secret informers searching everywhere for animal abuse. Government, formed to protect freedom and property, does neither when people like Joshua Greenwood are denounced for animal abuse.

The persecution of Joshua Rockwood is Orwellian.

Orwellian is an adjective that describes a situation or idea that the writer George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm,) identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It refers to an attitude and policy of intimidation and draconian control of issues by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of events. It describes the targeting of the “unperson,” someone  who is publicly denounced on modern media, whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, who is arrested by police with great authority, and who is thus disgraced and discredited. The dehumanizing of people, wrote Orwell, is a common practice of repressive governments.

The action against Joshua Rockwell was Orwellian, it fits every definition of the idea.

In our culture, people accused of animal abuse are shunned and disgraced, removed from the community of moral people, denied the right to acquire and own animals, listed on registries posted in public. Police invade their homes, seize their property, they are denounced publicly before trial or hearing, they become a non-person.

This is the fate Joshua Rockwood is quite determined to avoid. He insists on his identity, he defends his identity as an ethical human being.

The real problem here – and in many other cases around the country – is that Joshua Rockwood is almost certainly not guilty of animal abuse as it is known and has always been defined. The charges against him could have – and can be – lodged against almost any real farmer in the country in the middle of winter, and against almost anyone who owns a dog or a cat.

They could be lodged against you:

If your water pipes froze while you were at work, and you were running low on dog food, or built your own doghouse out of plywood and tar paper, a hostile neighbor, a disgruntled co-worker, an anonymous person on Facebook who saw a photograph you posted, or any other  informer,  peeked through your window, or drove by your home  and called the police. The police could enter your home on an open warrant, charge you with failure to provide water, shelter, adequate food or heat.  They might find that you failed to keep your dog’s claws properly trimmed. They could take your dog away. At any time.  You would see yourself shamed on the evening news, a photograph of your wet and miserable looking dog seen by your friends and neighbors.

And all this before you have any chance to defend  yourself.

Your dog could be euthanized without your permission, and if he or she were kept alive, it would cost you thousands of dollars to get it back, assuming that became possible.

Rockwood’s animals are right there for everyone, including the police,  to see –  healthy, hydrated.  Two different veterinarians said they were healthy and properly cared for. They survived an awful winter safe and intact. They were not beaten or whipped, seriously ill or injured, or abused to the point of grievous injury or death. At worst, Rockwell was guilty of being inexperienced, and unprepared for one of the worst winters in American history.  It is not easy to have animals on a farm, especially in a brutal winter.

He could have been charged with being overwhelmed, but that is not yet a crime. Or maybe it is. And he could have been helped instead of arrested. Is it abuse to use home made shelters for pigs? Is it abuse when a water tank freezes in – 27 degree or higher temperatures? Is it abuse when you are a month or two behind having the hooves of your horses trimmed? They used to call it farming. And  how many municipalities, I wonder, send the police into private homes when there is no heating oil and take the people inside to warmer homes.

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So I’ve written a short Q &A primer on abuse, I hope it is helpful. I have been working on it for a long time.

1. What abuse is: Animal abuse is defined almost everywhere, according to the American Legal Dictionary, as this: The extreme neglect of domestic animals to the point of great suffering, grievous injury, or death. There are plenty of laws on the books of every state and municipality in America regarding animal abuse. It is illegal. In recent years, animal rights organizations have lobbied to re-define abuse  – working with animals, being entertained by them, keeping them in low-fenced areas,  using them for research,  even their experiencing  inevitable accidents, sickness,  and death.

2. What abuse is not: The opinion of someone sitting at a computer screen in some distant city, diagnosing an animal from a photograph or image. The opinion of someone driving by a farm and seeing a cow sitting in the snow, or a photo online. The opinion of someone driving by a private home and seeing a dog sitting in the rain. A horse lowering his head and raising a rear leg (this is an equine sign of relalxation. The use of a tool – a bullhook, a crop, a stick – to control a large animal or steer them in a direction. There is no state in the country that has found the work of working animals to be inherently abusive. The use of dogs to herd sheep or work with the blind is not abuse, nor is the use of animals to entertain  and uplift people, as in therapy work.

3. Killer whales. Is it appropriate for killer whales to be confined in aquariums and water parks for the amusement of tourists?   There is no law prohibiting killer whales in theme parks, but I am clear in my mind. It is wrong, it is not technically abuse, but it ought to be illegal. Killer whales are not domesticated animals, they have not ever worked safely or easily with humans, unlike draft horses or Asian elephants. They have never lived in confined areas close to people and structures. To me, the use of killer whales in confined pools and spaces is not acceptable to me, it is clearly wrong.

Animals fall into three categories – pets, domesticated animals, wildlife. Legal definitions of abuse are different for all of them, and all animals are not pets. Nor are they children with fur.

4. Why isn’t it cruel for all Asian elephants to be in any circuses? Because there is little or no evidence of systematic abuse of elephants by Ringling Bros.  Why not improve the lives of elephants rather than ban them, and doom them? A half- dozen courts have ruled the Ringling Bros. elephants have been well cared for.  Animal rights groups – the U.S. Humane Society, and A.S.P.C.A. were fined more than $21 million by a judge for paying witnesses to claim the elephants were abused. There is considerable evidence that their elephant trainers love them, train them gently.  Asian elephants have worked with people for thousands of years, there is nowhere else for them to go, there is no wild for them to return to.

5. I hope I am not the first one to tell you that everything you see on the Internet is not true, every image of a suffering animal is neither accurate nor genuine or tells the whole story of any species.  Be careful where your money goes.  (If you want to save money and see it go directly to animals, find organizations like Blue-Star Equiculture, which uses donations to save animals and encourage people to keep them and care for them. I support organizations that work to keep animals among us, not to take them away.)

So there is a sense of unreality and very selective morality about real abuse. Abused animals bleed, starve, die. Corporate farmers who house their animals in unimaginably horrific conditions – who abuse them in every moral and social sense of the term – go unpunished, while farmers, carriage drivers, pony ride operators, circus owners and sled dog mushers are considered criminals and are harassed and persecuted. Abuse has ironically become a blinding obstacle, a distraction that keeps us from figuring out how to keep animals among us. We ban them from their lives and work, and look away as they fade from the earth and are never seen again.

Stopping abuse is not the same thing as saving animals and keeping them in our world.

For all of human history, the relationship between people and animals have been private, sacred, individual and personal, as long as the animals are treated decently. They are not owed perfect lives, and cannot be spared the travails of life. The very people who insist that animals need to be released to the wild persecute farmers because their animals are sometimes in the wild.

Animals in barns in bitter weather can get frostbite just as quickly as animals outside without shelter And most of the real farmers in the Northeast could have been charged with abuse at almost any point in February. Everyone’s water tanks froze. That’s why they are flocking to support Joshua Rockwell. They  believe they have the right to live their own lives in peace, as long as they break no laws.

There is an epidemic of abuse emanating from the animal world, but more and more, it appears that it occurs to the most vulnerable humans – farmers and the people who live and work with animals and most often love them, rather than to the animals themselves.

Joshua Rockwood is not an unperson, a grainy photograph on the evening news. He is a human being, fighting for his existence because the people in charge of the welfare of animals no longer have any idea what animals or farms are like. Nobody is lobbying to pass any laws protecting Joshua Rockwood and his rights, or helping him to get through the worst cold wave in decades.

Here is the secret at the heart of Joshua Rockwood’s increasingly infamous arrest for animal abuse.  It took perhaps three minutes to discover it.

One bitterly cold winter day – it reached temperatures of minus -27 degrees in parts of upstate New York that day – Joshua took his son to see his grandmother. He spends Wednesdays doing things with his two children. He may or may not have been late chopping a hole in his frozen stream for the cows to drink and replacing the frozen water bowls for the dogs.

When he returned, the police were waiting at his home. They wanted to go see his farm. One of the secret informers of the animal rights movement had reported him to the animal police. Wishing to be co-operative, and not for one second imagining himself as an abuser of animals, he said yes.

Had Joshua demanded that the police go and get a warrant, like lawyers tell people to do, he could easily have provided fresh water, as he had been doing all during that cold winter, and he would not be facing the destruction of his livelihood, reputation and farm. And I would not know him or be writing this. (You can follow his very transparent blog here.)

If he had replaced the water bowls earlier, as he normally did during that awful winter,  he wouldn’t be spending his Spring in court and in meetings with lawyers. And his horses and dog would not have been stolen from him. The fact that all of his animals were healthy, and that two veterinarians certified they were healthy, did not matter at all. The water was frozen, so was any sense of justice or empathy or rationality in the justice system.

It is definitely worth mentioning that on February 27, the sewer pipes leading to the Glenville Municipal Center froze, and the toilets back up. There were no arrests.

There were some other issues, for sure, but this is the only one that is not what my farrier Ken Norman called a “Bullshit Misdemeanor.” Joshua Rockwood’s other big secret: his farm, is, well, a farm.

It is a typical mess in many ways, as real farms are. Rockwood’s animals are fat, alert, healthy looking and active. There is no sign of abuse, starvation, or dehydration. One after another, every farmer I know has been telling me, messaging me, e-mailing me the same comment: it could have been me.  And judging from my e-mail, it  often is. A farmer up the road from me is afraid to let his cows out in the snow, somebody usually calls the police. Every farmer dreads his water freezing. Now, on top of figuring out how to get water to the animals, they are vulnerable to arrest and prosecution.

This winter, it could have been me, too, and almost every other real farmer in the world who is not rich or superhuman.  Water pipes burst and froze everywhere. The secret of this story is this: most Americans live on the coasts and they and their politicians have rarely, if ever, seen a farm. They only know as animals as pets.

They have lost any sense of perspective or reality about what a real farm is like, and can no longer understand the difference between a furbaby and a cow or pig. They have no remote understanding of what it means to have water systems freeze in unprecedented and record-breaking cold on a farm when enormous animals are often far away. Nor is there any coherent understanding of what “shelter” means, or what kinds of shelters animals need and want, or what kind of “feed” is necessary to keep them healthy.

The confrontation in Glenville may well turn out to be historic. The arrest of Joshua Rockwood has awakened the agricultural community,  aroused farmers and animal lovers all over the country. Like the struggle over the New York Carriage Horses, it has brought considerable attention to the disconnection between people and food, people and agriculture, people and animals, people and the environment.

It has highlighted again the great confusion about animal rights and animal welfare, and what appears to be the trampling of human rights in the name of loving animals.

What becomes clearer by the day is that people who speak for the rights of animals and the people charged with enforcing the new rights of animals know as little about them as they do about farmers. We are strangers to the very animals that sustain us, and to the people who have always fed us. And we appear to be gripped by a cultural civil war – a great misunderstanding – between people who have pets and people who raise animals. Small wonder the earth itself is bleeding.

Joshua Rockwood ought to be an inspiration and a role model for all of the younger people in the world who wish to create a better and healthier place, and for those of us who wish they would.  What, really, do we want our children to be doing, if not what he is doing? He does not belong in jail, he belongs on a farm with good fences and a frost-free water pump. And a society that helps people care for animals and not only prosecutes them.

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It is always a good thing to see things for myself.  Nothing I had heard, read, or seen about this story seemed right to me. Wednesday, I went to Glenville, N.Y. to meet with Joshua Rockwood and see West Wind Acres. It is on the western edge of his town, a community split by farming and development. There is a big barn, and 90 acres of pasture and a sea of busy foraging pigs. On one side of the farm is a big hill, almost out of sight, where the cows live.

I reminded Joshua that I am not a farmer or reporter, but a writer with a farm, and a photographer who takes photos of farms.  I have lived on a farm for more than a decade, and love it, but I have always wanted to be a writer, and cannot imagine being a farmer.

Joshua said I was welcome to go anywhere, see anything, take photos of anything I wanted. We spent nearly four hours trekking around his leased 90 acre farm, walking through the pig pasture, through the barn, up to the cows on the hill, down the boundary road, past the streams and springs.

My community – near Cambridge, N.Y. – is a heavily agricultural community, I am friends with many farmers and have been taking and selling and showing pictures of them for years. My specialty is struggling dairy farms. I just wrote a play about dairy farmers that was debuted at the Hubbard Hall Arts Center in January, “The Last Day At Mapleview Farm.”

I see a lot of farms as well as live on one, I have been to many of the farms in the area. I love to walk through big old barns and take photos of them.

When I first moved to upstate New York, my vision of farms was shaped by all of those Vermont calendars and paintings I had seen. Bright red barns, neat wooden fences, sparkling white farmhouses, shade trees and bushes. When I started taking photos of real farms in upstate New York, the reality of farming stunned me. Scraggly fences, rusting tractors, rusting silos, mud, ice, manure, collapsing barns, piles of junk, old hay, new hay, pipes and wires and gates, worn pasture, tubs filled with muddy water (dirt on the animals) rooms filled with bottles, tubes, tools.

No real farmer ever buys anything new, or throws out anything at all. Most real farms look as if they had just been strafed by the Air Force.

Joshua has a real farm. Like most farmers, he does not have the money for the best fences, and he uses streams and running water for grazing animals like cows. There are very few feasible ways to get water lines a half-mile through the pastures and woods, especially on top of a hill. And if you have streams, you don’t need to. Unless the streams freeze over, which moving water almost never does. Except when it is one of the coldest winter spells in the recorded history of weather. Then, you have to chop a hole in the ice, or let the animals eat snow for a few hours, even a day.

New York State law requires that animals get fresh water twice a day, it doesn’t say when or how.

But the water was frozen when the police came.

Joshua, a 36-year-old former construction worker, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of animal neglect and abuse. He was cited for failure to provide adequate water, feed and shelter. Three of his horses were seized and brought to an animal rescue farm. One dog was taken also.  In addition to his legal fees, he will have to pay thousands of dollars to the rescue farm to get his horses back. The police said they might come back for his pigs, they have an open-ended warrant, they can return any time.

Although none of his animals were seriously ill or injured, prosecutors sought bail and considered him a flight risk. They were not deterred by the fact that he has two children, a wife and more than 100 animals on his farm. The bail request was denied, he was allowed to go home. At a preliminary hearing for Joshua held this week in Glenville Town Court, nearly 300 people, mostly farmers from the area and much of the Northeast, showed up to support him. In seven days, Joshua has raised more than $49,000 through a gofundme project for legal fees and bond money to pay for getting his horses back.

Joshua has appointed an independent administrator to make certain the money is disbursed properly and for the reasons he stated.

In a number of years of writing about farms and farmers, I have never seen farmers as disturbed and aroused as they are about Joshua’s arrest and charges. I believe it is a significant turning point in the deepening and disturbing conflict between the animal rights movement and farmers and people who love and live with animals. At the heart of Joshua’s legal issues is this question of frozen water. The charge of failing to provide water, which he obviously had done all winter, is curious. If he had not been providing water every day, the the animals would all be dead or dehydrated. Two veterinarians said they were not dehydrated or unhealthy. On a number of days this winter, the streams and water bowls on Joshua’s farm froze in the bitter cold wave that hit the Northeast in February,  when temperatures were below zero for weeks.

In many parts of the Northeast, the frost line deepened to five feet, two or three feet lower than normal, bursting even municipal water delivery systems.

You will not find very few farmers with a different story than Joshua’s. They had a hard time.

The photo above is the frozen stream that was one of the factors leading to Rockwood’s arrest. Many farms use running streams as a water source for livestock, it is cheaper and handier than water lines and quite healthy for animals. Moving streams almost never freeze, especially those running down mountains and hills. When they do, animals like cows and horses use their hooves and paws to break holes in the ice, which doesn’t have time to get thick. The farmer can do it too.

When the temperature drops well below zero, as it did in Grenville this winter, and stays there, even moving streams freeze and the ice gets thicker. Then, the farmer has to chop a hole in the ice, as farmers do and as Joshua Rockwood did. A water line would have frozen, and it was far too great a distance in install one. On the day he was arrested, this stream had iced over. On my farm, unheated water bowls froze in minutes.

One day, when he has his own farm,  Joshua may have a well dug, and he can move the cows to a lower pasture.

I wondered why no one offered to help.

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Ken Norman has a farm in Vermont. He is a farrier and a long-time rescuer of abused horses, he sent Joshua this message. It was typical of the hundreds, if not thousands, of messages Rockwood has been receiving: “I support you ! This could be anyone of us.  I think and stated to Jon that they are ” Bullshit Misdemeanors ” I know many farmers who were pitted against Mother Nature and lost the fight keeping open fresh water to their stock! No farmer wants any of his animals to suffer any kind of harm , especially someone who is investing money into those animals to be good producing food animals.  That would be throwing money away.  I kept two water lines flowing from my barn to fields where several horses, ponies and donkeys lived out with run-in sheds. It was a crazy winter. Keep going strong!”

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I came to West Wind Acres to see what the farm looked like, and to see his shelter, water system and to look at his animals.

Joshua has a CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – farm. This is the growing choice of a new generation of young farmers who are creating a new economic model for farming, one in which the local community shares in the profit and produce and risks of the farm.

CSA members or subscribers pay the farmer at the beginning of the growing season for a share of the anticipated harvest. When the harvesting begins, customers receive shares of the produce – in Joshua’s case, pasture fed pork, beef, and chicken. CSA services vary from farm to farm, some offer honey, eggs,  and dairy products in lieu of or along with meat. The CSA model offers young and new farmers a way to enter the market and connect their food and meat to the community, something many farmers have long struggled to do in the era of corporate farming and the supermarket industry’s control of regulation and distribution.

CSA farmers also tend to be environmentally-conscious, joining the movement to support local businesses that consider the environment in their work. Like Joshua, they  feed their animals on grass-fed pasture, not on processed or chemically altered foods. You can see his food program here. I asked Joshua what his ambition was as a farmer. He said it was to sell healthy food to people.

I saw what I needed to see at West Wind Acres. I was glad I went. Understanding a story like this is just like peeling an onion, you keep going until you get to the heart of it. West Wind Acres  is more or less what every farm I have ever seen or photographed or visited looks like, it is not a pretty or neat place. It does not look like a Vermont farm. There is snow, mud, plans, ice, manure, bare ground everywhere, makeshift shelters, cheap fences. It is not a grim farm, it is not a farm in crisis. It is a farm. The farmers are correct when they say it could have been anyone of them.

Farming is an essential business, but it is not a pretty or simple business. If Joshua’s business takes off, he can do what young farmers end up doing, he can fix the farm up bit by bit, or go buy his own farm and build the infra-structure any farmer wants but few can readily afford. That is the reality of it. Maybe our society will awaken one day to the idea that we can help people like Joshua do this, that is, if he has any of his left-over gofundme money from legal fees and buying back his own animals at a cost of many thousands of dollars.

Joshua’s farm does not, as he readily admits, have a strong infra-structure – tall fences, modern and frost-free water systems, storage space for hay, modern, custom-built shelters. That is not a crime. Arrests like this seek to criminalize the real lives of real farmers. Joshua  does not yet have a lot of experience putting a farm together. He has earned a lot of respect, admiration and affection from people in his community, and from his customers. Like many farms, and especially  many new farms, he has a hodge-podge system of huts, lean-tos and trailers.

I have never seen a working farm that was not also a junkyard.

It works, there is nothing particularly unusual or alarming or dangerous about it. Every animal I saw (there was a sick cow being treated) looked fat and happy. Two of the pigs had gray spots on their ears, sometimes a sign of frostbite (this is one of the charges against him), which can occur anywhere on a farm in sub-zero weather. Animals go outside to eat, drink and eliminate, they can also get frostbitten ears sleeping in a barn if it’s cold enough.

Ken Norman, who knows much about farms, is correct when he says no farmer wants to see his animals suffer, especially one whose livelihood depends on their being healthy and well cared for. The world seems inverted to me when concern for animals leads to the loss of basic human rights for farmers and for many animal lovers.

Farmers are poor lobbyists and advocates for themselves. They spend little time on Facebook, do not have the publicists,  marketers, volunteers and fund-raisers of the animal rights movement. But social media seems to have finally given them a way to communicate with one another and to help other farmers. I believe that will change the dynamic of the Rockwood case, as it is changing the narrative in the New York Carriage Horse controversy.

As I watched hundreds of farmers pile into the Glenville Town Court on behalf of Joshua Rockwood, I thought this is an amazing thing to see. They have had enough.

Tomorrow, Part Two: The shelters  on West Wind Acres. You can support Joshua Rockwood’s gofundme project here. He is only $700 away from his goal.

I went to Glenville, N.Y., today to West Wind Acres Farm  to meet Joshua Rockwood, suddenly one of America’s best known,  most beloved, and most controversial farmers. It is not easy being Joshua Rockwood today, but it sure is exciting. He is awaiting trial on 13 counts of animal neglect, all misdemeanors but it sometimes seems he is on trial for murder. All day long, wherever he goes, friends, neighbors, farmers, strangers, people who buy his lamb, pork, beef and chicken come up to him and commiserate and wish him well, offer him support, shake their heads at the strange nature of the world.

He has, for many, become a symbol. Of the hard and little-understood life of the real farm, of the unseen and little understood struggles of the real farmer,  and of the very ugly cross currents that run through the animal world.

For all of his connections to his community, the prosecutors tried to force him to post a high bail bond last week at his first hearing, they seemed to want  him in jail. I think this was perhaps the hardest thing for me to believe. They said he was a flight risk just like other dangerous criminals. His attorney was incredulous, Joshua has a wife, two kids, and a 90-acre farm with more than 100 animals on it.

None of them died or were grievously injured by him – that is the definition of abuse. Where would he run? Why would he run?

The judge denied the bail request. Joshua was, I think, holding his breath.

Joshua told me before I came that he was not permitted to give any statements for public consumption to me or anybody else, and I told him I was not interested in statements for public consumption, I am not a TV or newspaper reporter, I am an author, I have only my own rules. Mostly I wanted to get a feel for him and a look at  his farm, the details of which are being intensely debated and described and portrayed all over social media and on television.

We made a deal and promised to trust one another. I said I would do nothing to betray his trust. He said he was happy to have me.

None of the arguments online did it for me, I need to see things for myself. I don’t like writing about someone I have never met, seen and heard. I needed to get a feel for his place, his farm. Just as so many people wish to get  feel for mine.

I was prepared to like him, I was prepared not to like him. I do not like lots of people at first blush, or even second.

I agreed to keep everything that was said off-the-record, and we did not discuss the details of the hearings. Not really my concern, it is in other hands. There are lots of people who  live to argue and judge people and play God and judge and jury on Facebook, I am not one of them. Joshua and I were instantly at ease with one another, there was no discomfort, hesitation or awkwardness. Nobody pulled any punches, the way men do when they meet one another. I asked him a million questions about his life, he answered every one of them, looking me in the eye, never flinching.

I thought there was some anger in him, some gentleness, a quick mind that was always going.

Joshua is soft-spoken and well spoken. There is, as I was told, a quietness about him. A sharp intelligence. And some vulnerability in those sometimes sad eyes, for sure. He is quite steady, but there is much pain and hurt in him as well. Not easy to be accused of awful things in front of your family, to have animals you love hauled away by the police to places you don’t want to see them go. But I felt he is a very strong man, he will not go to pieces or bend too much.

Joshua and I walked over every inch of his farm, much of it still covered in the ice and snow and mud and frozen manure of our brutal winter. He and his animals all got through the winter, but Spring, the farmer’s season was laying in wait for  him. The secret informer struck and the police arrived right after the solstice.  We walked among pigs, cows, I saw his beautiful Maremma sheep guard dogs, his sheep, his chickens. We hopped over fences, shelters, lean to’s, huts, we walked through mud, climbed hills, talked easily with one another for nearly four hours.

Time went by quickly, I was surprised when it was time to go. There was no small talk, just talk.

I should say I did feel close to Joshua, I liked him a lot. I think he is incapable of guile, a trait that has perhaps cost him dearly. He wrote last week on his blog that when the police came for him, he let them in without a warrant, he never hesitated. He admitted to being sometimes overwhelmed, he had many things to learn.

When I left, I remember thinking I would have been happy to have had a son like Joshua, that is one way I assess people. Would I be happy to have them as a kid? In this case, I would. Joshua has suffered some brutal tragedies, brushed up against a frightening illness, suffered a lot of doubt. And rebounded, again and again. He means to do good in the world.

He is idealistic, hard-working, almost shockingly open, a rare thing in our fragmented world.  There is nothing guarded about him, no sense of secrets, no wariness. His blog is an open book, an honest memoir.

Joshua’s dream is to produce good and healthy food for people. I watched and listened all day as one person after another drove onto his farm to wish him well, wish him luck, offer help, thank him for this and that, order some food, claim their faith in him. He is very much loved and admired. One young woman came to his hearing to tell him – and me – that she owed her life to him, he helped her when she needed help badly.

That is also a pretty rare thing, all those people going to all that trouble,  especially for someone accused of wanton disregard for  living things.

I wondered how many people would show up for me in that way if I were in trouble, not that many, I think.  I walked up some steep hills with Joshua, I fell and tripped more than once, he caught me and steadied me. The pigs live on a huge field, it was covered in ice, the cows are at the top of the hill, a lot of snow to stomp through, a lot of ice to fall on, and I did. Good thing I have been working out daily at the gym. I did make it. As always, I saved my camera.

But I am tired and I want to think a bit about my visit to West Wind Acres. And my eyes are tired, too from the wind and my knees sore from all that hiking. I did have my shoes nibbled on by pigs, and that is new. I’ll write him some more.

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He is seeking help for legal fees and for the thousands of dollars he may have to give to a local rescue farm that took three of his horses after the police raid on  his farm. It’s called a bond. You can see his gofundme project here. You can read about his farm in his own words here. I believe in words, they tell their own truth.