This Farmer Found a Brilliant and Legal Way to Evict a Horde of Squatters
When a few trespassers drift onto private land, it’s a nuisance. When hundreds of caravans roll in and stay put, it’s something closer to a takeover. That’s what farmers in eastern France faced this summer as fields reserved for crops and livestock were swallowed by a sprawling encampment.
Court orders weren’t arriving quickly, and police offered little help. Each day that passed meant lost work and mounting frustration, yet the farmers knew pushing back could cross legal lines. The question hanging over them was simple: how do you reclaim your ground without breaking the law yourself?
Police Absent, Farmers Take Over
Nearly 400 caravans rolled into Hautes-Vosges and set up camp on farmland usually used for grazing. Local officials said the group was connected to a recurring evangelical gathering. Mayor Pascal Claude admitted the town had little power to remove them, noting the same community returned each year despite repeated requests to leave. One farmer said he was even threatened after asking the group to move on.
With harvest approaching, patience ran out. Farmers brought in six tractors fitted with slurry tanks and sprayed manure across the occupied fields. The thick wall of waste served as both a barrier and a message: if official channels couldn’t protect their land, they would.
The Standoff Goes Viral
Clips of the standoff spread quickly online. Videos showed caravans surrounded by drifting clouds of slurry, with residents trying to block the tractors or banging on their cabs. The machines kept circling, and the spray kept coming.
Spreading manure on farmland is routine, which gave the act a technical cover of legality. This time, though, the timing was deliberate. Instead of fertilizing empty ground, the farmers laid waste around caravans that refused to leave.
Echoes of Other Slurry Showdowns
This was not the first time manure had been used as a weapon in land disputes. Just a year earlier, a British farmer named Jack Bellamy blasted slurry at a trespasser who had pitched a tent in his field in Tavistock, Devon. Bellamy coated the camper’s tent and bike in a spray of waste, remarking that there were legal campsites nearby, but the intruder simply “didn’t want to pay.”
Even celebrities have not been spared. In 2016, Emma Thompson staged a protest on farmland in Lancashire against fracking plans. The farmer, furious that his land was being occupied without consent, drove a muck spreader around the group and showered them with slurry mid–“bake off” stunt.
Protesters dodged the spray while the farmer carried on with his point. These cases underline a trend that when landowners feel ignored by authorities, they sometimes reach for manure as their first line of defense.