Farm freedom heroine
Martha Boneta dreamed of having a farm in Virginia’s lush countryside. Green busybodies turned her dream into a nightmare. She fought back and won. WATCH NOW
Martha Boneta dreamed of having a farm in Virginia’s lush countryside. Green busybodies turned her dream into a nightmare. She fought back and won. WATCH NOW
Martha Boneta: "It is my hope and prayer that no American citizen ever has to suffer the way we have on our family farm.”
Martha Boneta’s lawsuit against the Piedmont Environmental Council, filed in May, argues that the organization’s linking of Jackson to her property was not just a mistake but a deliberate act of fraud.
Saying their multi-year, well-documented harassment of a local farmer does not mean they “should have to be dragged through protracted, expensive litigation to battle a neighbor,” a powerful Virginia husband-and-wife real estate team has put forward a novel argument in their defense: We should not be held liable for the pain and financial loss we inflicted on our neighbor; she should suck it up because our acts were a mere “irritation and distraction.”
"Farming in Fear" pieces together Martha's story from interviews and documentation, tracking the nearly 10-year ordeal she's gone through just to earn a living in spite of corrupt local ordinances, abusive management of her conservation easement, and personal attacks through the introduction of an amendment to Virginia's Right to Farm Act called the 'Boneta Bill', designed to protect small farmers so that what happened to Martha never happens again.
Martha wins! In a stinging repudiation of the conduct of a Virginia environmental group once viewed as politically invincible, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) March 10 signed into law bipartisan legislation that -- for the first time -- provides rural landowners the means with which to defend themselves against bullying by land trusts.
Did the PEC fabricate claims that Stonewall Jackson slept in an oak grove on Liberty Farm?