ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
February 24, 2005
S. Shore woman: neighbors killing dream of horse farm
Virgil Wright
The snow blanketing the fields of Patricia Pina’s farm stretches
unbroken from the house and barn. Normally, several strings of
horses and dozens of sheep would be crunching through the snow
cover, but the animals are all gone from Pina’s 35-acre
Plympton spread.
According to Pina, the disappearance of her livestock is due to
a toxic mix of envy, racism, and fear. Officers from the Massachusetts
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, acting in cahoots
with town officials, took away her animals last November and shut
down her livelihood, claims Pina.
The outspoken farm-owner, who grew up in an extended Cape Verdean
family on Cape Cod, insists her only transgression is to be different
— a black woman in a white town, a horse-breeder who wants
to bring city kids to ride in the country, and, most unusual of
all, someone born with both male and female characteristics whose
very identify confuses and threatens those who see life through
a narrow prism.
“They’re choking me out,” says Pina. “Bit
by bit, they’re taking everything away so that I have no
choice but to wait for someone else to swoop in and buy me out.”
Close to six feet tall with high cheekbones and a steady, at times
unsettling, gaze, Pina cuts a commanding figure as she strides
around her property, two border collies close at her side.
She points out three trailers set up next to the barn —
accommodations, she explains, for migrant workers she wants to
hire to help run her Aces Wild Farm and Ranch and the riding academy
she envisions for local children and inner-city kids.
Pina purchased the property along Parsonage Road in rural Plympton
seven years ago. Her troubles with town officials started after
she brought in the mobile homes, claiming an agricultural exemption
allowed her to bypass local zoning ordinances prohibiting trailers
on Plympton land.
The town disagreed and refused to issue permits for her business.
Pina took the town to land court and filed federal discrimination
complaints alleging bias based on her race and sexual identity.
Things got worse for Pina when animal welfare agents seized her
30 horses and 38 sheep after the Department of Agriculture received
complaints last fall of animal abuse. She claimed her animals
had been poisoned; the state said they’d been neglected.
In the meantime, the zoning fight over the trailers has been making
its way through the land court, which heard arguments in December
and is due to issue a ruling soon.
“There is no need for hiring workers to be housed in the
trailers because there is no business to support them,”
says attorney Leonard Kasten, who represents the town of Plympton
in the dispute. “It’s unfortunate that Ms. Pina is
injecting racism and gender identity into this because it’s
a very straightforward land dispute.”
An immediate concern for Pina is a pending animal cruelty charge,
which, if held up in court, could result in the animals being
destroyed or put up for adoption - effectively ending her plans
for the farm.
“That’s really what they want,” insists Pina.
“If they take the animals away, they’ll say there’s
no reason to issue any permits.”
Peter Gollub, chief enforcement officer for the Massachusetts
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, denies any collusion
with town officials. “The MSPCA did execute a search warrant
and animals were seized. We act based on complaints without regard
to the actions or concerns of any other agency,” he comments.
Pina, 45, who was married once but now lives alone in her book-cluttered
farmhouse, says she’ll continue to fight: “I’ve
always had to prove myself. This is nothing new.”
While growing up on the Cape, Pina says she learned to shrug off
whispers and rumors about her gender, refusing to discuss the
childhood operation that sealed her identify. She battled the
same perceptions while going through the University of Massachusetts
of Boston as a tennis star, during a brief stint in law school,
and in a succession of jobs.
But it wasn’t until she moved to Southeastern Massachusetts,
close to the cranberry bogs where her parents once worked, that
she chose to directly confront the whispers with the truth - laid
out in court documents as part of the discrimination case against
the town.
“Look, they don’t expect a black woman to slip into
town, buy up property, expand a farm, and bring in city kids to
learn to ride,” she says. “And theysure don’t
expect that from someone they don’t understand. But that
doesn’t matter. This is a question of basic rights.”
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