My very strange pears

General Fruit Growing
#161

Yes, I know you are in an awkward position with him being your boss and the mayor to boot.

That said when you say “I am almost certain they will end up being very deformed if they live at all. And I am not claiming a penny on those, because I know that will end up with them saying “they will be fine” and me saying “they are ruined forever” .” I thought that 2, 4d exposure is known to be pretty bad for growing trees. That is a fact, not a difference in opinion. I mean on the warning sheet it says damage will result:

Unless you are tight up for cash I would say that you want to wait until May/June of next year to see what trees actually leaf out. If you have another 10, 20, 30 dead trees it would be easier to just add them to the initial bill as opposed to try and negotiate a 2nd time.

Also the point about $12/hr is what he pays his farm workers so that is what he would pay you is BS. If he can get cheap labor to paint his barn that bears no relation to the fact that you need to hire a painter and pay market rates to repaint your building that he damaged (as an example). And he can’t force you to accept his workers to do the paint job, you can hire who you want. And that aside, it does not matter what HE pays HIS workers, the question is what does he pay himself per hour? What is YOUR time worth? Damn sure more than $12/hr. He knows farming but her probably does not know orchards. That is why I am suggesting talking to an orchard company and get a quote - then you have a solid baseline cost and can go from there. If market rate is $20/tree that is what should be in your invoice. Someone damages my property and causes 40 hrs of labor to me I will be sure to be charging more than $12/hr.

I know you are hung up on your potential fruit loss, I’m just saying you have fruit guys here who are sympathetic to you but are still saying they don’t think you should claim it. You don’t have a history of yields. You can’t say what your yields would have been this year nor next. You can’t prove what market cost of the fruit would have been. The number is just too wishy-washy. I would say you are better off rolling that $ value you want to get into your replacement costs as we are all already telling you that your asking rate is way to low there so you have room to go up.

Just like I don’t think you would be able to claim for mental anguish and suffering. It just does not fit in this setting. If you were a commercial orchard with a proven history of sales, yes. Home owner, I’m not so sure.

Anyways, it is a super interesting story. Moral for future people is call the EPA/State prior to notifying offending party. Hope you get a happy resolution and have many years of future growth ahead.

#162

But to finish it comes down to what you are comfortable asking for balanced with what $ value you feel will adequately compensate you.

I imagine this is difficult because first he tried to minimize, then tried to avoid blame by suggesting it might be others, then cooked his books, then trying to minimize your losses. Honestly you are probably looking for an honest statement of recognition of your loss, an accepting of responsibility, a true apology, a promise to do better and finally a fair offer of compensation.

Based on the way he runs his business and my general experience with politicians, I would not hold my breath. Try and just get a dollar amount that allows you to put this behind you and move forward with as little bitterness as possible.

Good luck.

#163

Have you had soil samples taken to be sure the residue has dissipated? If not, then make sure any estimate includes such testing and makes allowances for parts of your property that will no longer support the kinds of plant growth you wish to have.

This was the only point I did not see touched upon
Scott

#164

For those of you who have followed the drama of my neighbor (and coincidentally my BOSS at my real job) accidently killing many of my trees and fruit-bearing plants, I wanted to let you know it is all over. And before I tell you how it ended, I want to remind you that I took it on the chin so badly and handled the whole thing so delicately (and differently than I otherwise would have) because of the social, political, and media attentention that would have resulted if a huge fight and/or lawsuit erupted between 2 city officials. You aren’t going to like how it ended any more than I do, but this situation really was different than a typical negligent spray case because of these other considerations.
Anyway, a bit of an update first. I took almost all the suggestions made by folks on this thread and revised my “claim” figures and spreadsheet. Some things added costs, others lowered them. In the end, the spreadsheet showed the death of 14 trees and 19 berry plants, with a total cost (including everything I left in the estimate) of about $1,800. Yes, that was way too low but I wanted it to be extremely defendable and air tight where it would be impossible for anyone to say I was overcharging or being unreasonable. I was going to give the spreadsheet to the Mayor after the holidays. However, before I could, his brother called and said he wanted to talk to me about everything. TO be clear, the Mayor and his 2 brothers are all equal partners in the commercial farming company that, among many other locations, farms the land adjacent to mine. It was one of their employees (and nephews) who did the actual spraying. Anyway, I stopped by the brothers farm office and within about 60 seconds I could tell it was going to go very, very poorly. Almost immediately he started telling me that he had sprayed around apple trees all his life and never had 2, 4-D do anything except curl the leaves. There was no way in the world, he said, that they killed any of my trees and plants. Within another 2-3 minutes he basically accussed me of lying….saying things like “Well when I cut hay a few months later I only saw 2 or 3 dead trees and you say it was 14”. I immediately said “we need to go over to the property and talk about this” so he followed me to my place. Fortunately I had never even pulled up about 9 of the dead trees, and the ones I had already pulled up I had kept- tree, rootball, everything. I walked him around and showed him 8-9 dead trees and told him the others were in my barn for his inspection. SO he walks around and breaks the branches on the ones I said were dead and on ONE of them there was still just a tiny, tiny hint of pale green on ONE limb. He starts saying “this one isn’t even dead…look there”. I immediately sliced a huge piece of bark off the trunk and it was nothing but brown…but he wouldn’t give in. SO he calls the Mayor and says “will you come over here and tell him this tree isn’t dead”. Then he goes back to looking. Soon enough hejust says “well, trees die. It happens to everyone. Doesn’t mean its our fault”. I said “well, you were sent a report from the TN dept of Agriculture showing that they pulled leaves off every single one of my dead trees and tested them and all of them had leathel concentrations of 2, 4-D. They also tested all the farms in a ½ mile of here and interviewed all farmers and the one who used 2-4d by that point in the spring was you and only your land and my orchard had it and I don’t use it either. “ His response to that tells all you need to know about this guy…….I swear to you, his response to the testing and investigation done by the state was to say “well, they are just a bunch of scientists and state employees, you can’t trust anything they say”!!! So that tells you the absurdity I was dealing with. I then conceded that trees do die occassionaly, but I asked if he thought it was a coincidence that I had 14 trees and 20 plants and lots of wild vegetation all die in the same week, and all 1 week after they sprayed. He said “well, it might have been, or some disease or something”. Even he isn’t that stupid….he was just trying to lie his way out of it. Anyway, it went on like this for 15 minutes or so and even he was starting to see that there was just no way on earth any ½ rational person could possibly try to deny responsibility. SO he just said “well, just tell me what to write a check for so I can be done with all this”. I said “well, I have an exact calculation in the house for you”. He says “no, I don’t want to see no more paperwork, just give me a number. Here is where you guys are going to be furious with me. Because we had not talked 1 bit about the dead plants (brambles, blueberries, etc) and, more importantly, because they had long since rotted away and there was nothing I could show him to prove they were dead (well, I had photos) I decided to just charge for the trees and related costs and told him if he’d give me $1,200 we would call it even. Right about then the mayor drove up. The brother said “go look at that tree and see if you think its dead”. Mayor walked over, scraped the trunk, and said “its dead as hell”. While I loved it, that seemed to agrivate the brother even more so he wrote the check and handed it over. At that point I said to the Mayor “well, your brother is pretty upset about this and seems to think all the state tests and reports and me are wrong and all these trees and plants just happened to die at the same time by coincidence. I’m sorry he feels that way and I didn’t mean to cause so much turmoil, I just wanted help replacing the things we all know you guys killed”. The Mayor said “hey, I don’t like it either but its obvious it was our fault and the right thing to do is pay you for it”. At this point the jackass brother changed his tune considerably and almost apologized and said “next year we will hire a professional company to spray this field now that we know how sensitive those trees are”.
That’s more detail than any of you wanted, but I thought I’d give you the whole sordid soap opra ending. Obviously I came out badly in the hole and didn’t break even by any measure. But I’m glad its over and I did get enough money to replace my trees (and plants to, honestly, since I will really be replacing the trees with bare roots and not 3 year olds. $1,200 is more than I thought I’d get. Just glad its over.

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#165

Glad you got something Kevin. Honestly, I didn’t expect that to happen without a court order. So you got a little compensation and avoided the hassle and awkwardness of it all. Maybe the brother was behind the Mayor’s initial reluctance to do the right thing all along…who knows.
Best of all, the price for their stupidity and carelessness is now well known to them. $1200 is still a pretty penny, and they felt it a bit when they got pinched…just like you did. Fair is fair.

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#166

I haven’t commented on this but have followed it. Lousy situation all around, so sorry you had to suffer through it. I know I’d be heartbroken losing my trees and bushes.

I’m glad they at least accepted they screwed up, nothing is more frustrating than that! If nothing else, now you can plant new varieties that may be better than what you had before.

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#167

Glad you recovered some of your cost. His motivation to settle might have been to keep it from going public. Bill

#168

I’m glad you resolved this Kevin. Now everyone can just move on. I don’t think the final compensation was enough but keeping it out of the courts is a good thing. Like Appleseed, I feel like that punk brother could have very well been in the Mayor’s ear the whole time and could have been largely responsible for the initial reaction from the mayor.

#169

IF I haven’t already said so, let me do it now. I sincerely…SINCERELY… appreciate all the people who have followed this ordeal so closely and have offered advice, ideas, factual information, and most of all SUPPORT. I cannot express to you how much it has helped me to have you folks to share this frustration with! Of course I have friends and family I can vent to, but only serious fruit tree people REALLY get it. Everyone else I know (and I’m serious about this) thinks I can just go to Lowes and Walmart and buy new trees for $25, stick them in the ground, and in a year or two I’ll be right back on track. Only you folks understand the real love we have for our trees. The way we know when and where we bought them, how we saved their life or improved their health during an attack by some kind of enemy (bugs, diseases, deer, etc). Only you all know what its like to prune a tree from the time it is a “baby” and take pride in how our pruning created a well shaped tree with good fruiting wood. Only you all know the pride that comes from having a tree grow larger or better than an average tree would have- thanks to the pampering you’ve given it. Only you know about the nights spent searching the internet and scouring endless forums just to decide on the right tree for you and your environment and orchard.I could go on, but even here…you know what I mean. You know how precious our trees become to us and how devestated you would be to loose 14 of your favorites. (And 14 is very conservative…I had several more that grew in deformed, twisted ways that will affect them and maybe ruin them for life. And who knows how many more will die this winter after being weakened so much by the spray. Anyway, point is that you understand the true scope of my damage and you all have been incredibly supportive and helpful and I will be forever grateful. Its also no secret that I tend to write long posts and replies, so you all deserve a commendation just for reading and following all this!

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#170

I think you handled this as well as any one could and I for one am impressed. Even though the compensation will never cover all you lost I think you did win in many other important ways. You stood up to them and did it at the same time dealing with the delicate situation it put you in !

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#171

Yeah, you’re worse than I am on that. :wink: But tweeting leaves much to be desired when it comes to filling in a saga.

It sounds like you won more than you lost as far as the settlement goes. It’s seemed to me all along that the most important aspects to this for you were that the mayor accept and shoulder the responsibility, realize to the extent that they never again mishandle those sprays that misuse has repercussions to others and themselves, and very importantly to your future working relationship, that he in particular not be angry or vindictive that you pursued the matter.

The only area where it appears to me in your description that you lost out was in the amount of the settlement. The way you described the afternoon, it sounds like that rests solely on your own shoulders because your interaction with the brother left you feeling intimidated and insecure. I’d bet that if you had quoted $2,000 with confidence they would have written the check just as quickly and would have had the same reaction. Either way, I think it’s likely that the mayor is privately feeling lucky to have gotten by with amount.

The important thing is that you did win on the things that were most dear to you.

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#172

Wow, I was just icing an inflamed tendon near my knee and had to kill some time so found this long thread for the first time. I can’t believe I totally missed this drama as it unfolded here. I’ve iced my inflammation about twice as long as the orthopedist suggested and still barely skimmed the details here.

I can’t imagine adding anything very useful at this point, but I will say I’ve seen a certain amount of herbicide damage in my time and even supposedly safe weed killers for lawns have caused significant damage even when applied according to instructions, apparently. A couple years ago a new formulation of weed and feed became widely used by commercial lawn companies around here before it was found to be excessively volatile after the fact of its approval and wide use. It did extensive damage to some pear trees I was managing at the time. I believe the formulation has been banned since.

One thing this all reveals is that as much as we may grouse about excessive Gov regulation, without it we are at the mercy of people who are often not very concerned about the damage caused to innocent bystanders hurt by their practices. This was a case where the gov appears to have been exceptionally competent, which is something not always reliable in any human endeavor, whether in the private or public sector.

The solution is not to mindlessly slash regulation, but to try to make it more effective and efficient. The people being regulated better not be the one’s making the rules although their input is also essential.

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#173

Yea, or just be good neighbors, I would feel terrible if I killed someone’s trees or fish or live stock just because I was handling chemicals carelessly.

#174

I again appreciate all the comments and can even accept the good-natured, well deserved ribbing about my extensive posts! ha. But yes, in spite of the fact that I’d much have preferred this never happen and I’m not really getting back all my true costs, I do feel like I came out ok. And I Alan is right too. I’m a conservative and generally in favor of smaller government (I say that as a bureaucrat myself and see that irony) and generally oppose government intervention, regulation, etc. But it is absolutely true that without the state’s intervention in my case, I would have either had to pay for all the investigation, test results, etc (which would have cost more than my loss probably) or I’d have never gotten anything and would have been called a liar with no way to prove my side. So it is true…there are places where government regulations and government agencies are necessary and even helpful. All through this case, the TN Dept of Ag has earned my respect and gratitude.
I also thing @MuddyMess_8a is 100% right. I’m not proud of it, in fact I’m downright embarrassed by it and somewhat mad at myself, but my spare of the moment decision to only ask for payment on the trees (and tree-related costs) was the result of me being intimidated by the dominant, jack-ass brother. Not in a physical sense, as though he might physically attack me- but just by his dominant, demanding, doubtful, forceful attitude. He could tell that I very much wanted to avoid conflict and he used that against me. I knew the moment I brought up all the dead brambles and blueberries that he would demand to see those too, and I knew they had long since rotted away (its been 9 months), so at that moment I decided to just avoid that argument and focus on the trees (which were more expensive). In reality I had photos of the berry plants and lab tests done on them so I could have proved them too but like Muddy said, I was basically intimidated out of it. Not my proudest moment. What’s funny is I deal with difficult and demanding people- including high paid lawyers- on my job all the time and truly do never get backed down like that. Not sure why it worked in this case!
Oh well, I got enough money to buy and plant all the trees and plants I lossed (if I get bare-roots instead of the 3 and 4-year olds I used in cost figuring) so I’m ok with the settlement. Most of all, I’m glad its over and hope no one else ever has to deal with something like this…though they probably will.

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#175

I’ve not commented before but I’ve followed this saga from the beginning. Congratulations on your win. I think the biggest win is you can now feel confident that there won’t be a repeat of this situation. That peace of mind is invaluable.

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#176

Thanks for commenting. I am 95% sure this won’t happen again, but if it does, I would hate it for another reason: The last thing they said to me at the settlement meeting was “ok, well, we’re going to get a private company to spray that field next year, so if you end up with dead trees again next year we’ll know it wasn’t our fault”. So just imagine it…the company actually does make a mistake as well and I do have more dead trees…I’ll NEVER convince them its not something I’m doing or some other factor. They’d feel so vindicated and get to say “we told you it wasn’t our fault last year”. Nevermind that I could get more testing done to prove it again…they won’t be swayed by scientific facts! ha So I hope more than ever it doesn’t happen again! The scary thing is I have trees 10 foot of the property they spray, and the wind almost always blows from their land toward mine, so it is very possible it could happen again. Oh well, hope not.

#177

Does it matter who sprays the wrong product or the wrong day. Certainly don’t change their fault for 2015. Hang in there bro, don’t ever let bullies like that intimidate you, you were right!

#178

Minor update: The person who owned the land and who leased it to the Mayor and his farming “company” just passed away last week. Her heirs have already made it clear that they don’t like the Mayor and his brothers so almost certainly they won’t get the opportunity to farm or spray the land beside me this spring. That being said, I’m not sure that is such a good thing. If nothing else, the Mayor’s family would almost certainly have exercised great care this spring-not out of concern for me but because they don’t want to go through all this (including state fines) again next year. In fact, they told me they were going to hire an outside company to spray that field. So strange as it may seem, I almost would rather have had the people who killed my trees be in charge this year because they know better than anyone what the consequences of careless spraying would be. If a new farmer/farm company gets it, they likely won’t know all the history or the likelihood of overspray and so on. I’m going to try and let the heirs know and ask them to warn the new leasers, if there are some, but they live out of town. I have had some signs made already that I am going to put up. They are polite and just say “please be careful with spray” and I’m going to put them up all along the property line. The big problem, if I haven’t made it clear, is that my orchard starts about 10 feet from the property line, there is no fence or natural barrier of any kind, and the prevailing wind almost always blows from them to me. Its also very open and flat land around here (forget what you think you know about TN- this area is the exception and looks much more like Kansas than TN) so the wind blows almost all the time to some degree. As a result, the odds are against me! But darn it- none of that should matter. I should be able to grow what I want to on my land and not have to give up just because of what my neighbor wants to grow and spray. Whatever it takes, they should have to keep their chemicals on their land! I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

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#179

there is nothing wrong with you talking to the new lessee and explain the situation and the history.

A casual “throw away” comment that you have placed monitors on your property and that the state Ag Dep’t has its eye on the place should insure that they act responsibly. :wink:

Worth a try

Mike

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#180

Could you buy a buffer strip?