ORANGE — Up a long dirt road, sows lie in the travel lane and nurse their piglets while dozens of boars run in the trenches.
Pigs have been loose at Sugar Mountain Farm on Riddle Pond Road since Aug. 9 and town officials aren’t sure what to do.
“They’re creating a public hazard because you can’t walk down the road without encountering sows and piglets,” said Selectboard Chair Eric Holmgren.
Holmgren said he drives by the farm every day and counts each pig that’s in the town’s right of way. He’s counted between five and 25 loose pigs every day since Aug. 16. Some have tried to chase his truck.
“Right now it looks like they’ve gone a half mile in either direction (from the farm),” Holmgren said.
The town started imposing fines of up $500 for each pig that’s loose every day under the town’s nuisance animal ordinance. As of Monday, the fines totaled $68,455, said Town Clerk Angela Eastman, but the pigs remained unfettered.
Eastman said she’s called the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets daily about the pigs since Aug. 19. She’s also called the state police and the game warden.
“I’ve called everybody that I could imagine,” Eastman said. “It’s really out of our control. We don’t have the means or the resources to take care of this problem.”
State veterinarian Kristin Haas contacted farm owner Walter Jeffries on Monday and urged him to take “immediate” action in an email.
“The current circumstance represents a significant public health and safety and environmental concern,” Haas wrote in an email to Jeffries.
Agency of Agriculture Communications Director Scott Waterman said Haas is assessing the situation to see what actions the agency could take.
“The concern with any pig out in the environment is they become feral and that is a real problem,” Waterman said.
Jeffries has several hundred pigs on his property, which he’s owned since 1989. He sends four to 10 pigs to slaughter every week and sells pork, bacon and sausage.
This isn’t the first time his pigs have been loose.
Jeffries’ pigs were out for about two months last October and wandered two miles away from the farm.
Holmgren said pigs damaged roads and culverts in addition to several properties last year.
Brian O’Meara, a neighbor, said pigs damaged his lawn and gardens.
“We were having 8-10 pigs a day here,” said O’Meara. “It’s just a matter of time before they’re down here again.”
Despite the damages, Holmgren said the town never imposed fines last year.
“We gave him the chance to get his pigs back in, and he did,” Holmgren said.
Holmgren said he met with Jeffries this year on Aug. 16 and told him the town would enforce its ordinance this time.
“We honestly don’t expect to be paid back for the fines,” Holmgren said. “It’s to get his attention, to say, ‘listen, we’re taking this seriously.’”
Pigs freely walk about Jeffries’ property. Some sleep outside his front door, others sleep underneath his car.
Jeffries said in an interview Saturday that fixing the fence was his “top priority.”
Jeffries sent a lengthy email to the Agency of Agriculture on Monday after he was contacted by Haas and claimed that fixing his fencing could put him out of business.
“This is costing me thousands of dollars,” he said in the email.
Jeffries said that the pigs got loose after his fences were “sabotaged” by people he thinks have been trying to rob him. Jeffries explained he has security camera footage showing a group of people stealing tools and possibly meat from him last Friday afternoon. He believes the same group could have damaged the fence.
Jeffries also said the confrontation with Holmgren on Aug. 16 “hurt” and “caused people to quit who would have helped get the fencing back up.”
After the confrontation, Jeffries said he instructed his two remaining employees to fix the fences while he was gone on a business trip Aug. 20-23, but when he got home, he saw the “disaster.”
“My employees, who were supposed to be taking care of the problem while I was away, were falsifying their time sheets,” Jeffries said in an interview on Saturday.
Jeffries said his employees quit after they were confronted about their time sheets and he’s since been left alone to fix the fences and gather the pigs.
“I’m the victim here,” he said. “The town’s harassing me. The government needs to be protecting farmers like me, not harassing me. I’ve been trying to do the right thing for so long, it’s frustrating.”
Until the pigs are back in, town officials remain concerned that loose pigs will continue to cause damage to the road and more pigs will escape.
“We don’t have the resources to deal with several hundred pigs on the loose,” Holmgren said.
