Farmer removed my fence row w/o permission

What a POS. People have no respect for other people's property. So, it is best to use the legal system (being a pain in the behind) to make him (hopefully)understand and respect your property.

 

So unfortunately true. Although a magistrate judge might get him to admit that he knew the rules. The fact that he said “he forgot” shows proof that he did in fact know your requirements. Wishing you luck with this and sorry that you’re having to deal with it!

 

If he removed the wood he needs to compensate at the market value, which around here is triple stumpage. Which ever is higher, the processed firewood price or the market timber value(by your determination not his) and also any changes the county/state may deem important and recordable.

If there’s any chance for a protected species in that destroyed fence row, now is the time to bring that up too. Those hairy legged dry land racing turtles can be an ally in situations like this.



Owl

 

If he is a local farmer than leases additional land for his operation. let your and his neighbors know what happened so maybe no one in the area will lease any land to him.

 

I agree with so many of these comments, aggravates me to no end when people have no respect for my property and it's worse when I'm made out to be the jerk for holding them accountable.
If a few of us had a company or were management for one we'd probably be broke out of work, noone would want to work for or with us!

Make him pay wishlist! Good luck!

 

Lease agreement specially says “ common farming practices “. I wouldn’t think that includes removing a 40 foot wide fence row.

 

I would think it would be totally different if he trimmed the edges of the fields back a little aggressively. Removal of a row of trees between two fields is nuts!

 

Moparguy I had a similar experience renting to a “construction worker “. That means he works three months a year and lies a lot. Had a garage on the property where I kept my Challenger. Told him he could keep some small work related items in it if he liked.

he becomes MIA, and the three car garage is full of junky tools and other crap. Enough to fill a roll-off trash bin. I scavenged any decent craftsman type tools and boxes. Took them to the tree farm.

new guy moves into the mobile home and said the deadbeat stopped by and was upset when all his stuff was gone. Was arrested for domestic violence not long afterwards.

decided to get out of rental business out of concern I would murder a person one day. A coworker said his best renters were prostitutes in the inner city. Always on time and always cash. .

 

Oh yeah he'd definitely be paying. Probably going to be hard to value it since it's gone, but in VA I think you can charge 3 times the trees value. Not sure how you'd value them with them being fenceline trees (they're not usually straight/sawlogs around here), so maybe there would be more value charged as firewood. I'd try to end the lease immediately, and make him pay for the wood and fence.

 

What a mess! You sure have our pity.

I hope you have everything spelled out in your lease; It seems "we spoke and had an agreement" doesn't hold up in court......

What isn't quite clear is why this guy leased the land in the first place. To get dirt and firewood? Common farming purposes? Whats that mean? Hopefully you were well compensated for the year's lease to lessen the sting of looking at your land now that it's over.

Hope you have before/after pics of the property if you're going the courtroom route.

Couldn't you tell what was going on when it began or while it was going on? Maybe it would have been worth the early eviction fees.

 

I think the court would easily side with you. Even if the lease didn't explicitly say he couldn't rip the fence out and cut down trees, that doesn't mean he can. And verbal agreements are agreements.
But I am just a knucklehead on the internet that deals in common sense....good luck.

 

It certainly is disappointing to say the least Dennis . Written agreement is for tillable acres , I would think that doesn’t mean he can destroy property to make more !

Syrup season is just crazy anymore with the weather . Last year Feb 10 I tapped and this year I had 1800 taps in on Feb 3rd . You know that way early for us in mid Mich . I’m around 400 gallons made but it sure doesn’t look good this week . I know a large producer in the UP who made syrup in January. That’s just unheard of .

 

Please keep us informed of what actions you take. It would be nice to know if this gets resolved in your favor.

 

Someone asked if I had before pics . Here is the fence row on google earth . It’s all gone .

 

Looks like you have the start to your story/dream you once had. Should be easy to show how he destroyed that dream.

 

There's a start. I'm sure you've saved that image before Google Earth updates.

 

If it does turn litigious it might be worth it to have someone with a drone take an after picture for you from a similar vantage point.

 

Boy that's got me a little whizzed off just looking at the pic/reading about it!