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?
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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.
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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.