Farmer removed my fence row w/o permission

To say that I’m upset is an understatement.
I rent some land to a farmer , last year was his first for this ground . I signed a 1 year lease so the lease is up this spring .
When we discussed rent payment etc… last spring I specifically told him I do not want any fence rows removed or trees trimmed around the woods . He’s known for taking his backhoe and just ripping limbs off anything . Looks terrible when he’s done .
Sometime in January he took the backhoe and destroyed about 350 feet of a nice fence row . Lots of oaks and hickory are gone .
I have spoken to his wife , he was unavailable,
and she called him and said he forgot . Ugh !
Trying to decide how to handle this situation.
There is still huge piles of brush in the field that he is planning on burning .
Any suggestions?

 

Take pictures so when you go to court you have a visual story about what happened. Document when you've talked with the guy and what about. Basically make a timeline of all events between you and him.

Doesn't sound like the kinda guy that'll compensate you on his own.

 

Yuck.

 

Non-renewal on that lease.

lesson learned…

mitigate costs and just tell him to leave.

 

That would be the nicest thing to do.

 

I’d even talk to the local concrete company and have barricades installed on the field entrances

 

I pretty much am in agreement with what everyone else has said. I think you'll end up spending more time than it's worth trying to get compensated for something that, to me anyway, appears to be very subjective.

Any chance you can salvage anything from the brush piles for firewood?

 

Sometimes you gotta hold people's feet to the fire for them to learn anything. My guess is people have just been letting this guy do what he wants and look the other way all the time. But i may be speaking from my experiences.

Them type of people are the ones that make you get any agreement in writing. A man's word doesn't mean much now a days because of people like him.

Edit: the "I forgot" response is what pees me off. Says alot about his character.

 

I agree on this. That guy probably knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to get rid of something that made his access to land easier. More than likely figured, what’s he gonna do, and went ahead and did it. Accountability is dying. Hold him responsible. Is it too much to ask to respect your conditions/wishes? He walks away w/o consequences he’ll just continue doing what he knows he can get away with. It sucks to have to do all the legal BS but how often or much will you allow someone to step on you before you say enough. There was a verbal agreement to NOT remove fence rows or trim trees. That was obviously ignored.

 

I completely agree. I just got rid of tenants that have been nothing but a pain in my azz. I worked with them when I could to keep me from having to go through a longer, more expensive, and more time consuming process.

Another tenant, total lying POS that I could hijack this thread with but I'll try not to, left me this mess when he moved out of another house. He gets 30 days to remove any left behind items from the property. I saved him the time and loaded everything (yes, bike, tool box, and all) into my buddy's dump truck and dumped it that night in the driveway of his new place. Never heard back from him again. I'm petty AF. Do what you feel is right, and legal (I'm certainly no authority on this part), and move on.

 

I'll bet it took all you had to not turn towards the dump.

 

Not with the a bike. There was nothing he could say, he got all of his property back.

I don't really know how to use "the county dump" here. We have "collection" areas where you take your trash, used oil, etc. But the dump itself doesn't really take anything it seems like. Maybe it's just me. But the only times I've ever been to the dump I've been turned away. I believe I had a hot water heater loaded along with bundles of fence. They wouldn't take those. Another I believe were a bunch of refrigerators and stuff I pulled out from our farm the previous owner (who I've known for years) used a spot for his personal landfill. It's a joke going there so I just take everything to a local unsupervised dumpster I've found for now on. They've made it incredibly difficult to do the right thing.

The story with the guy I mentioned was he knew I was needing in to remodel the house. That doesn't even include the night stands and junk he left inside. He's one of these guys that "he's going to get on it 'soon' " and "I'm working on it". They ruined the house by being slobs. Hauling that crap to the dump would have got me either turned away, in legal problems because of the bike, or doing him a favor. I did him a "favor" technically. It's not my fault my interpretation of doing a favor is different from others...

This is the stuff the dump here wouldn't take. You cruise through it and see ALL kinds of crap like this...but I can't dump it... I can't remember what I ended up doing with it, but it was some place other than the dump. The dump is a huge joke here. When I yanked that refrigerator out with the tractor and a chain it was door side down. The stupid thing got caught, flipped around and the door swung open and you would NOT believe all of the empty glass pickle jars that came out. I'm like "f'ing George"...

 

I was just joking mainly. If i was in your shoes it would've been hard to not turn toward the dump but like you i would've dumped it in his yard.

People have no respect for other people's time or effort anymore. They've been coddled to the point of just waiting for someone to do it for them. Good on you for not doing it all proper and such like I'm sure that tenant expected.

 

Yep. This is best handled through the legal system, unfortunately

 

I forgot to add this part...I knew I would get carried away on this.

Those pictures aren't "the day after" they left. That's almost a week later. He left all of that stuff on, I believe, a Monday and I went back that weekend and loaded it with my friend. No sign of him the entire time coming for anything, and you can see the weather was nice.

What I forgot to mention is he had all of these plastic barrels in the back corner of the yard. It was some kind of half azz chicken coop, which he never asked me about. There was no room in the dump bed and it was in the back of the property and not in my way. Well I come back later in the week to start on the house in the evenings. It's all gone. I find out later from the neighbor he came back with a rollback (he tows in his spare time) and got all of his chicken coop junk and the trampoline.

 

Per the fence issue. If it would have contained livestock, get in touch with a fence builder and get a written quote to replace lost fence. Also, if he just ripped it out with the backhoe, check the rest of the fence line, he could have broken or pulled H braces out of the ground so then would estimate cost of complete line of fence. Let the fence guy rebuild it so this guy gets to see it when he drives by and knows he paid for that!

 

Don’t renew, make him replant and repair making it as back to what it naturally was as possible, no burning make him haul ALL of the brush out. Bring the legal system into play at his expense(if possible in your jurisdiction), not being worth the hassle is why he keeps getting away with destroying other peoples property. It will be a pain in your backside, but it will be more so for him and will save future problems if you ever lease again(not to him) the word will be out about what you will and will not allow to happen on your land.

Easy for keyboard responses, hopefully it turns out as well as possible for your end.



Owl

 

Thanks everyone for the advice . I just don’t get why he can’t respect my property .
As far as firewood goes , the logs are gone . He runs 2 OWB so I’m sure it’s over by those somewhere .
Access wasn’t an issue to remove the fence row .
His sole purpose was to get to as much dirt as possible . I will be nice at first when I see him and see how he replies to my request for compensation. Frankly , I have no idea what would be fair ?

 

Fair? He destroyed your property. If you’ve got pictures of it prior, have it appraised.

civil damages should be 1.5X as far as I’m concerned. It’s criminal destruction of property. He showed intent and malice going directly against your agreement.

now you need to ask if it’s worth the stress to recoup your loss.

go talk with your local Soil and Water district and it’s likely they’ll have replacement trees for you they’d give or sell to you at a significantly reduced price. Since they have the opportunity to replace that tree line now with more native species, they will likely jump at the opportunity.

 

Was this written in your lease agreement with him? If it was only verbal you will have a hard time in court.