CORRUPTION! Abusive Land Grab of Family Farm!

after we had invested so much love and passion and had put my heart into this land and to creating what you see I realized that there was this deliberate attempt to take away our property rights and I I became scared not just for myself and saving my farm but for the impact this would have on on all Virginians and really all Americans I mean if this could happen to me it could happen to any farmer and it could happen to anybody in 2006 Martha Panetta bought a tattered 200 year old farm in Paris Virginia on 64 beautiful acres an hour west of Washington DC Liberty farm should be the realization of Martha's childhood dream to become a working farmer in Virginia and bring homegrown organic produce to her community but corruption and abuse of power in Bakke County threatened to put Martha out of business my name is Martha Panetta and I grew up in Mount Vernon Virginia and my mom always said that we grew up on what was a part of George Washington's pig farm from an early age I had told my parents you know I really wanted to be in farming and I would think my parents may have been secretly hoping that I would have abandoned that dream but I never did from the very beginning we ran into almost immediate problems through the county and through an environmental group that made it almost impossible to really be successful the property had been a neglected part of a massive 1,250 acre estate known as Avoca farms which was owned by Phil Thomas a fifth-generation landowner and real estate developer in Fauquier County in 2000 mr. Thomas sold most of that estate including Liberty farm to a private land trust called the Piedmont Environmental Council when Martha purchased the farm in 2006 the P EC attached a contract called conservation easement to the deed permanently preventing urban development on the land through a CO management arrangement with a state agency called the Virginia outdoors foundation we've mostly done our work through conservation easements which is working with private landowners to help put development restrictions on the land if you think of property rights as a bundle of sticks what an easement does is it takes certain sticks and it extinguishes that stick so when you sell the property you transfer it to another landowner they now inherit a smaller bundle of sticks and it's a legally binding document Martha's easement was written to prevent urban development and does limit some of what she's allowed to do with her property but the terms were designed to preserve the agricultural historical and environmental value of the land and that's exactly what Martha wanted to do with the farm when I saw this farm I wanted to save it I wanted to save this barn it was in tremendous disrepair it had to be lifted up on hydraulic lifts the silo didn't have a cap there were trees growing and vines that had just taken over the barn we couldn't even have animals here until we had properly put in new fencing and secured the farm after two years of hard work with the help of Martha's friends and family the historic Liberty farm was finally operational again Martha planted vegetables and raised livestock she even opened a small rescue operation to help save sick and injured animals in the area soon she had local customers coming to her farm every day and for a fleeting moment Martha believed that she had turned her childhood dream into reality once she put his signs up and tried to draw people in to purchase things is where the roads diverged she began to have the local government come down and slap and slap and beat down for no real reason even though it's a barn and we're allowed to repair the barn we had completed all the proper paperwork the county would just send people randomly to the barn to see what we were doing we had actually put up handmade signs on the farm and in fact one of the elected officials referred to them as a kid two gypsy signs because they were handmade and the county said that we needed to replace them and we ended up having to spend a lot of money to put professionally made signs on our farm to advertise we discovered that our neighbor had sent a picture of an abused horse and had sent it to Animal Control the Sheriff's Department and anybody that would hear her alleging that this horse was my horse on my property you know Animal Control did come to the farm there was no issue the Piedmont Environmental Council also began accusing Martha of violating the terms of her easement and their inspections grew increasingly antagonistic but strangely the Virginia outdoors Foundation which co-manages Martha's easement has never had a problem with her well we can only speak to the portion of these meant that we co hold and that we're responsible for stewarding but yeah we've we've had no issues with her if there have been issues we've resolved them Martha is in complete compliance with her conservation easement so it is not the conservation easement in and of itself that is the problem it is the faeces enforcement of that conservation easement and they're twisting of that conservation easement to harass Martha which the P EC has done ever since if you are in compliance with your conservation easement and are still being bullied that is an abuse of power and this is exactly what the P EC has done you're not supposed to be looking for changes it's very specific do you understand why you're here it's not to look for changes that's not exactly correct what is it exactly we are looking for evidence of whether or not this is being used as a residence that would that's what's in the easement and you need to look in class as much for the refrigerator to I'm really not it but I don't wanna get into an art I'm asking if I can look in the closet as a yes or no question it sounded like to me that Martha was being railroaded by something we didn't know exactly what at the time the source of Martha's harassment remained a mystery until early 2009 when her bank sent her a letter documenting a series of bizarre enquiries about her mortgage one of our board of supervisors colluded with another party to have my mortgage either called in or purchased we didn't realize that there was a coordinated calculated attempt to get us off of our farm we really didn't understand why we were being attacked from all these different government agencies and what was going on behind it as Martha looked into the bank's documentation public records and emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request she started seeing a pattern of cooperation between Fokker County Supervisor Peter Schwartz the former owners Phil and Patricia Thomas and the Piedmont Environmental Council their goal rein in this dreadful woman Martha is the most loving and innocent and honest working person one of the most that I've ever met the Virginia legislature gave counties broad discretion in land use laws and it started out as a good thing as you want local control over local issues but you have people in county government who have all this power and no checks on their power poor Segen abusers ultimately this is about power who has it and who does not originally and this is simply conjecture on my part they thought simply by bullying her a little bit they could get her to knuckle under and get that property which she had restored into someone else's hands Martha would simply would have been regulated out of existence and had no alternative in the end but to sell the property that she dearly loved and that she wanted to keep since the P EC and Fauquier County refused to be interviewed we can only speculate on their motives but they have developed a reputation for opposing any kind of development in the area it started in 1993 when they prevented Disney from building a theme park but since then the county has gone after every type of commercial development from farm stores to local ends restaurants and wineries we are in Fauquier County and it's a terrible County to do business we're trying to get a special event permit here just so we can do up to 30 people in ridiculous suits and it makes it difficult to run a successful business in this county and that's what my owners and other people in the county are trying to change after the failed attack on her mortgage Martha began to experience increasingly frequent and more intense instances of harassment by the county government in collusion with the P EC and the Thomas family in April of 2012 Martha was issued a citation from the county alleging three different zoning violations we were found in violation of zoning which carries criminal ramifications and up to $15,000 a day in in violation fees for selling what we produce in in this farm that we own if that wasn't bad enough they were also citing her for events and the events they were talking about was a a birthday party for a ten year old girls why would we need to have a site planned special exception permit administrative permit for a private gathering on private property that's written nowhere in the in the ordinances there's written nowhere in the county guidelines yet the county viewed it as an event and thereby we would need all of these additional permits and full-blown hearing site plans that would cost thousands and thousands of dollars Martha had enough and for the first time she pushed back her friends and neighbors organized a pitchfork protest to rally in support of her Zoning Board of Appeals hearing I'm Robyn Verity mom of Gwennie Verity and Gwennie is the one that had the birthday party at Martha's we just sat in and listened to this court hearing and when they came to a solution they have held their original decision that what Martha did was illegal I'm shocked I'm absolutely shocked it's becoming very difficult for small to mid-size farmers to compete and to survive and thrive in this current environment there's another hundred and fifty four farms that do exactly what Martha does they sell produce off their farms to the individual but the only person that's been cited for this is Martha I was totally ignorant that there was anything we were doing wrong and I guess I wasn't ignorant because I don't believe we were doing anything Martha is exercising the freedom that we're all given to do what we want on a property she did it peacefully she did it properly and the government has come here today in disgrace we're gonna force the law on for Connie and today is just the beginning Martha lost her appeal and the fines forced her to temporarily shutter her farm during the peak of the 2012 harvest you know we purchased our farm in 2006 spent years building the infrastructure and then when they came after me every day of my life has been in fear of what they're gonna do to me next I've been farming in fear and there were definitely times where you know I thought there was no way I could continue doing this it was it was sleepless nights it was you know devastating it was dealing with constant criticism every day was a struggle and there were times when I would really question my ability to continue on on this journey and then I would pray about it I would talk to my family and you know my mother was always there saying you can't give up you know keep fighting because it's not just for you make things better for other people so that you know the economic viability on the family form isn't lost forever soon after the Zoning Board of Appeals hearing Martha's story started to gain traction with the national press the attention brought in more supporters as new friends in the area and around the country shared their stories Martha realized that her experiences weren't unique too often the government will step in and crack down on the rights of farmers whether they're big or small at the expense of our food production I mean this is these are the people who make our food who grow our food who provide us with food Martha Meadows case is really an example what's going on all across the country and most of the issues we're seeing today involve the key Amendment our bill righteous the fourth amendment which says we're to be secure and that's the key word in our houses person's papers and effects in our culture now we have completely lost the ethic of property we don't we don't have it anymore it is now perfectly appropriate for me to tell you what you can and cannot do with your own property the basest unit of industry that America was founded on was farming and now all of these rural localities are wanting to do away with farming are to regulate farming we've had cases where somebody has they say no chicken in their backyard to just get eggs or let your kids play with a pet chicken it's still legal a lot of places to have that Newton Massachusetts there was a guy who was growing tomatoes in his front yard and the government ripped them out I think the same thing has happened in places like Michigan in Florida and Tennessee I can't think of anything more ridiculous than telling people they can't grow their own food the American Dream on small family farms for the family farmer has become almost impossible to achieve there are federal regulations state regulations County regulations that are endless miles and miles and miles of red tape and completely unrealistic in a rural agricultural community and what's happening is that you know younger people that want to get into agriculture they want a homestead they want a farmstead they want to bring back so much of our beautiful heritage our rural agricultural heritage they're finding that that they're stopped before they can even get started now this this story is a extension of my farm I have Mount Airy farm if the government wins against Martha that means I can't sell and this county has a lot of little farms that people go to do the same thing they go go to the farm and they buy their raw milk and they bother it well they don't buy the raw milk they go and pay the fellows for their cow yeah you better don't put that on there yeah they bother they pay their share in their account pick up their raw milk for their pets there you go the officials are saying that Martha can't do that then so why is anybody else any different as the industrial sector became neighbor unfriendly then people look to the government for relief for remediation of things they didn't like to see didn't like to hear didn't like to smell and so zoning grew out of a a mindset of ordering the unsightly stuff over here and as soon as we order the unsightly stuff over here then of course you know that pendulum never sits in the middle then we began trying to order everything to the point where now you know the the 1,500 square foot residential houses can be here but we don't want them to intermingle with the 1200 square foot houses and what you have then is increasingly segregated schismatic tension in the culture as opposed to to integration people come out because they want the fresh air and the sunshine and the wide-open spaces but they don't want what goes with it and they don't understand they think food comes from the grocery store politics is all a matter of numbers those supervisors in representing their constituency they've got a lot more folks screaming about the farms against them than the farm saying hey you're gonna want us out of business as long as you're not inviting other people to come it's fine but once you start inviting people to come to your farm then you have a quote event and that's really where the rub is they don't want people coming you know it would be different if this were an inner-city area with townhouses or homes close together but we're literally surrounded by thousands of acres of farmland here and it speaks to a larger issue and that is of you know we wonder why we're losing our small family farmers and if it's not from over-regulation it's from you know communities being forced and pushed out because of these kinds of situations and it's really heartbreaking because you know this is really the fiber of our nation it was built on small family farmers after shuttering Liberty farm Martha knew that the only way to save her dream was to take her case to Virginia's General Assembly and advocate for a bill that would protect the rights of farmers across the state last year there was a bill that came before the assembly delegate Ligon filter carried it and it quickly became called the Boneta bill I've talked to several legislators they have never received so many phone calls about one bill than the Boneta bill it across political lines too we had Democrats and Republicans calling in it made no difference I believe that this is a nonpartisan issue I think that property rights and the ability to make ends meet and the ability to be entrepreneurial and to work hard it's really at the at the cornerstone of being an American House bill 1430 otherwise known as the Boneta bill was an amendment to Virginia's right to farm act which clarified that the law included the right to commerce on private property if passed it would mean that local governments no longer had the power to prevent farmers like Martha from selling their products or from inviting customers to visit their farms without a special permit the Boneta bill faced immediate backlash in the legislature and the personal attacks against Martha escalated it began to get pushback before it went had even been filed as legislation it was just drafted I saw that the bill that she had originally it was going to give so much power to the farm quote unquote over local government that I saw the local government's reaction to be will just go away with farm zoning and the process will do away with land use taxation you know and if you push anything too far there's usually a pushback from the opposing side we found out that one of my elected officials Peter Schwartz had openly disclosed the private content of my IRS my aleene's that I was the subject of an IRS audit to the community and I was shocked because I hadn't received an IRS audit and at first my reaction was how odd that was and I thought wow they will really say anything lo and behold we received an IRS audit shortly after it had already been disclosed to the public from one of my elected officials regardless of it was irrelevant to the zoning issues he was using the IRS audit in the context of trying to persuade me that Martha is a bad person it was like I said shocking to me and Peter's a lawyer first of all how is it even possible that an elected official is privy to the tax returns that I file and then to disclose it publicly to others is shocking and terrifying it's something that I struggle with every day the IRS audit itself has been like nothing I've ever experienced before what's very unusual is that in my audit questions that are that were asked were nowhere reflected in my IRS documents they were directly pertaining to the complaints in the county while Martha dealt with the audit Fauquier County sent a paid lobbyist Eldon James to fight against the Boneta bill at the Statehouse the county's efforts worked the Boneta bill failed in 2013 they came up with a legislative trick you could pass the bill with the reenactment clause which meant it would take a year for it to be worked on and come back again and so all the people in the house got to say that they passed the bill then it got to the Senate and in the Senate committee hearing only four people voted for the bill so it died there you know this reaction was so visceral for people that were farmers as well as consumers all of that energy and then to have the bill defeated was was devastating it was that glimmer of hope that we all held on to and thought you know perhaps if this bill passes we won't farm in fear anymore and we will be free to prosper and be productive and the community would have access to more locally produced goods it was a disappointing setback for Martha and her supporters but there was still a chance to change the law Martha's activism brought her an invitation to join the Virginia Department of Agriculture's on-farm activities working group this Boneta was one of the stakeholders on the group folks from other independent farm organizations Farm Bureau was their local governments had a seat at the table and as a result of that workgroup that were bills introduced this year that's when I met Martha and that's when I offered to privately meet with the Farm Bureau who had crafted a bill and pretty soon within about four to six weeks we had a bill that everybody could agree with and dad just about guaranteed passage this time delegates like Bobby Iraq who had rejected the first draft supported the new Boneta bill and when the legislature voted on it again in March 2014 it passed it was one of the greatest days of my life for myself and my family but also for the community that had spent two years taking time away from their families and their homes and their jobs the people that made this possible I don't know that how I could ever thank them I think I could probably try every day and it wouldn't it wouldn't be possible to thank everybody that made it possible to UM to move the ball forward just a little bit my immediate reaction was just complete thankfulness very sincere heartfelt linkable dhis it was a victory for you know the the small family farmer and that hadn't really happened before hopefully it's the beginning of really untold opportunities across the state for producers that have either been engaging in these practices anyway or we're told they couldn't do them you know my doors are open and people are coming with their families to have a little plot of land and to take in rescued animals and grow organic vegetables and do what you want to do on your property not to bother anybody but to be left alone to provide a little bit of enjoyment for the community I mean that's what America is all about and we've got people that want to not only stifle want to punish Martha for pursuing this little dream of hers I think justice is should be blind in this country it's either good policy or it's politics and I think it's good policy to open up the farms and create more opportunity for people in the rural areas where employment is so low and it's something that we want to promote it's good I think it's very important that we allow small farmers to flourish rather than be under the heel of local government that doesn't let them to do what they want to do my family didn't realize we had no idea what was going on behind closed doors we did not know that there was this force with the intention of forcing us off the farm we had no idea we thrive by lifting others up not by pushing them down you know I know what it's like to be shut down so I think that those fears will always be there because I've experienced them but but at the same time I know that we can't make a difference no matter how many times the government tries to shut you down to just have the faith and the courage and the hope to keep going and if enough people do that then you know we won't have to worry about losing our businesses or won't have to worry about losing everything we've you know hope for and we'll be able to make sure that the American Dream is alive and well it's as simple as that I would stand on my own two feet to feed now will called itself come a little bit closer this yeah

Channel: Property Rights & Farming Alliance

Views: 113,539

Rating: 4.8805213 out of 5

Keywords: Joel Salatin (Author), Justin Bieber (Celebrity), Agriculture (Industry), Corruption (Quotation Subject), Conservation Movement (Organization Sector), Martha Boneta, Barack Obama (US President), Donald Trump, Family Farm, Land Grabbing, Property Rights

Id: 87XQZ6sTXGw

Length: 28min 18sec (1698 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2015