Golf Club Raises Stink Over Neighboring Hog Farmer

Even on a cold, windy day, a laundered handkerchief scented with starch brings only partial relief from the odor in Paul Thompson’s mucky front yard.

The stink of pig excrement, rotten food and chickens--not to mention the constant strains of country music piped in to soothe the sows and boars--has sent owners of the nearby Florida Club at Martin County squealing all the way to court.

Now the 9-inch-thick case file has come to represent what Thompson’s lawyer has dubbed a battleground between the old Florida and the new.

The 61-year-old Thompson and his wife are typical of longtime Floridians “who live out in the woods and they live there because they don’t want anyone bothering them,” Lance Richard said.

“As the urban development moves up the coast you are going to see lots of people living inland and a lot more cases like this,” he added.

In 1957, the Thompsons settled on a plot of dense brush, palmetto trees and pines near this once-sleepy coastal town 30 miles north of West Palm Beach.

Standing on the dirt driveway flanked by pigpens that leads to his house, the farmer said he raised and sold hogs over the years while picking up side jobs to make ends meet.

“If you been here all your life, unless you were born rich, you had to do things to survive,” said Thompson, clad in dusty brown work pants and shirt.

Just a few years ago, big money began trickling into the now-burgeoning city where orange and grapefruit groves are being replaced by middle-class subdivisions and upscale golf courses.

While golf course developers knew they were in sniffing distance of Thompson’s 43-year-old farm when they began their project in the mid-1990s, court records document the complaints about the smell and noise once the homes started selling.

Club owners filed a lawsuit in 1997, claiming the music harasses and annoys club members and employees, discourages sales of nearby home sites and drives golfers away.

Tom Wackeen, an attorney for the golf course, and the club’s general manager, Greg Cotton, did not return several telephone messages left at their offices.

Thompson likened the club’s claims to building a house near an airport, then suing over the noise.

“They knew I was here and they chose to build anyway,” he said. “The bottom line is, they are just a bunch of rich arrogant people who come in and take things over by suing.”

No trial date has been set, although the presiding judge said he would rather have a jury decide its outcome. Circuit Judge Ben Bryan doesn’t relish the idea of having to “sit and listen to music and decide if pigs stink.”

If the case gets to trial, witnesses could include a neighboring county’s sheriff’s deputies, hired by Martin County officials to conduct noise-level tests along the club’s 15th hole.

Their testimony could be countered by experts prepared to attest to the benefits of piping music to farm animals.

Thompson, who said he’s struggled to make ends meet for years, declined an offer by the golf course to buy his land for thousands of dollars.

“The club’s lawyers will tell you it’s all about money, but that’s not true,” Thompson’s lawyer said. “This guy’s just living on his land. He doesn’t want to move. That land --before the club--was out in the middle of the woods.”

It’s been more than a decade since Thompson attached a couple of speakers to wooden poles inside the wire pigpens and tuned the radio to 107.9, one of Stuart’s country music stations.

Originally, the farmer played the music for himself. Then he found out that the tunes could help the pigs relieve stress and, in turn, make their meat more tender. Most of the pigs he sells are barbecued for parties.

Thompson says he lives in a county--and a country--where no one has the right to take away his freedom to raise 800-pound Yorkshire pigs and play music.

“There’s your bottom line.”