"Mike, I know, and I'm sorry, but the DA won't prosecute trespass on a dirt road unless there's a pattern of escalation. My advice: put up a gate." I put up a gate. Not a fence gate. A proper vehicle gate. steel pipe frame 16 feet wide with a commercial-grade padlock rated for outdoor use.
I welded the hinges myself in my workshop and set the posts in three feet of concrete. It wasn't decorative. It was functional. A steel barrier across my road that said what the signs apparently couldn't. You are not welcome here.
It went up on a Wednesday. By Friday evening, someone had cut the padlock with bolt cutters. I found it Saturday morning. The lock lay on the ground. The gate swung open and fresh tire tracks leading north toward Ridgewood.
The bolt cutters had left clean angled cuts through the hardened steel shackle. This wasn't a casual act. Someone had brought a tool specifically designed to defeat my lock. I bought a heavier padlock, an ABUS Granit rated for severe outdoor use with a hardened boron steel shackle that the manufacturer claimed was bolt cutter resistant. I installed it Saturday afternoon.
Monday morning, the ABUS was on the ground in two pieces. Whoever did it had upgraded from bolt cutters to an angle grinder. I could see the smooth, curved cut marks through the shackle and smell the faint metallic tang of freshly ground steel. They'd brought power tools to my farm in the middle of the night to destroy my lock and drive through my property. I installed a third lock, and this time I also installed a second trail camera aimed directly at the gate with infrared night vision.
Tuesday night at 11:47 p.m. the camera captured a navy blue Ford F-150 pulling up to the gate. A man in jeans and work boots got out, plugged an angle grinder into a portable battery pack, and cut through the shackle in 40 seconds. Then he swung the gate open, got back in the truck, and drove through. He left the gate open. 3 hours later, the first commuter came through at 4:50 a.m. I didn't recognize the man in the video, but I recognized the truck.
I'd seen it parked in Diane Prescott's driveway on three separate occasions. A few quiet inquiries with neighbors confirmed it belonged to Diane's boyfriend, Craig Mullen, a contractor from Lufkin, who did remodeling work in the area. Diane had sent her boyfriend to my property in the middle of the night with an angle grinder to destroy my lock. The same woman posted an Instagram story that morning with a cup of herbal tea and the caption, "Grateful for peaceful mornings and the little things that matter." The little things that matter apparently included felony destruction of property under cover of darkness.
But the locks weren't the worst part. Thursday morning, I drove to the south gate and found something that made my hands shake. Not from fear, from anger. Fresh tire tracks didn't go through the gate. They went around it.