The Final Straw
Waking up at the crack of dawn to tend to his farm, he’d never seen anything like this before. What someone had left there for him to clean up this time made him absolutely livid.
Furious, he surveyed the giant black mountain that had been left right in his tractor's path. That day, something snapped inside him. The wheels turned as he began to scheme. And what the unassuming rancher decided to do about his predicament became the battle cry for farmers everywhere.
Stuart Baldwin
Stuart Baldwin had been toiling on the family farm for as long as he could remember.
Stuart had come from a long line of farmers. His father had taught him everything he knew. But he learned early on that the life on a farm that everyone had glamorized is very far from the truth. Raising his own livestock and crops to survive, he learned the hard way that some people were willing to destroy all he'd built.
Becoming A Target
On top of everything else, Stuart had also recently become a target for so-called ‘fly-tippers’.
Basically, jerks would come in the middle of the night to dump all of their unwanted rubbish on his land. They didn't care if they dumped it in the middle of his road or straight onto his wheat field. So, what could be done about it?
An Extra Burden
The fact that Stuart is legally accountable for cleaning up all the mess even though he didn’t create it was a bitter pill for him to swallow.
All Stuart had wanted was to provide food for the entire town to eat and make a living to support his family - he definitely didn't need this extra burden thrust upon him. He already knew that farming was an unappreciated job, but he never expected it to be this thankless.
A Huge Heap
One day, Stuart woke up early, as usual, to tend his land. But while he was working, he came across a new sight - squarely dumped on top of one of his most productive fields.
How had someone gotten so close that they were able to dump this without him knowing about it? This was at least the 25th time that it had happened, but this new load wasn’t just a pile of trash… it was something much, much worse.
Heaps Of Tires
Stuart came to a dead stop and couldn't believe what he was seeing. This time, it wasn’t just any old junk dumped there. Lying right on his field was a black mountain made from heaps and heaps of tires!
Sweat began to drip from his forehead and his hands tied themselves into angry fists. How dare they? He furiously dismounted his tractor and began searching for clues. But then, he remembered something.
Some Insurance
Well, Stuart had had enough. Never mind the damage, it was also costing him an arm and a leg to remove the rubbish that he was legally responsible for. He just couldn't stand for this nonsense any longer.
In fact, the last time someone had decided to dump on his land he had devised a cunning plan to ensure that it would never happen again. The best part? The latest fly-tipper had no idea what was coming.
Smile!
Stuart had had enough foresight to install hidden CCTV cameras all over his fields the last time he found a load of trash strewn across his land.
The footage would reveal the culprit, once and for all. Then, it would be time for a level of justice so poetic that Stuart couldn’t help but cackle. But, first things first. It was time for phase one.
Name And Shame
Stuart’s daughter, Megan, posted the video of the man on a public Facebook group for everyone to see. Everyone in a 100-mile radius witnessed the man shamelessly dumping over 400 tires onto Stuart’s property.
Megan took a clear screenshot of the audacious man’s face and pleaded with the group members to come forward with a name and address. Revenge glistened in Stuart’s eyes when they got a lead.
Promises
Now, Stuart wasn’t an unreasonable man. He assumed that the fly-tipper would be forced to collect the tires he’d dumped after being publicly humiliated. He’d have to save face.
The man, whose name was Matt, was indeed horrified to see his face plastered all over Facebook and promised to rectify the situation. Only, that wasn’t what happened.
The Benefit Of The Doubt
Stuart waited for the man to remove the 400-plus tires he’d dumped. He gave Matt every chance to redeem himself. But on day three, he still hadn’t shown up.
Stuart knew he had no intention of making things right. What he’d gotten instead was a slap in the face. Well, that meant that it was time for Stuart to put phase two of his diabolical revenge plan into action.
The Community On His Side
The truck pulled into Stuart’s farm, and men started to stream onto the field. They too were aghast that someone had the nerve to leave their trash on someone’s private farmland. They immediately got to work loading it all onto the dump truck.
When they heard Stuart’s plan, they applauded him. Everyone wanted to see the fly-tipper get his comeuppance. They were going to give him a taste of his own medicine.
The Fly-Tipper's House
The man who had so callously dumped the heap of tires on Stuart's land was identified by neighbors as Matthew Worrall Parkyn.
He lived in a semi-detached house with a small front yard in a nice neighborhood. But after Stuart served his revenge, MailOnline tried to interview him and a woman answered the door, saying she was his ex and he no longer lived there.
Revenge Is Served
The truck backed up with a beep-beep and tipped the heap of tires right into the rude man’s front yard.
Onlookers gathered and couldn’t help but gawk at such a sight, but Stuart smiled when he thought of Matt’s reaction when he saw what surprise he had left for him: 420 tires in total, spilling over his fence and blocking his front door.
A Hero
Stuart’s friend uploaded the video of his revenge onto Facebook and Youtube, and it quickly gained traction around the world. Local news stations picked up the story, and the original video has garnered over a million views.
Most commenters praised Stuart for teaching the fly-tipper a lesson in common decency. Many people hailed Stuart as a local hero. And it's not just Stuart taking a stand.
Farmers Taking A Stand
"My dad has a farm," a Reddit user wrote in response to the story.
"For some reason, people regularly throw bags of trash into our fields. Being dumb, these people often have mail with their addresses on it in the trash. My dad likes to collect the trash and dump it back on their doorsteps."
No Harm Done
"We wish no harm to him or any property hence why we placed them in his garden without causing any damage, we just want to prove a point that you can't just go around fly-tipping wherever you want as it isn’t fair," Stuart's daughter explained on Facebook.
"You get people like this – they're vermin. People in the community have called me a legend and a hero. Hopefully, people will think twice now about dumping on our land," Stuart told DailyMail. How did others respond?
No Logic
“The response we have had since doing it? Fly-tipping is horrendous – why should the farmer put up for it? We work the land and scumbags go and tip rubbish on it,” Stuart explained in an interview.
“I wouldn’t mind, but you can take your rubbish to the tip for free. I can’t see the logic in it, it’s downright ignorant, to be honest.” Fortunately, everything worked out for Stuart. But, for Martin Montague, his encounters with fly-tippers were downright terrifying...
The War On Fly-Tipping
Sometimes the best way to deal with fly-tippers is a stake-out.
“I do, on occasion, wonder how I get into these situations,” sighs Martin Montague, a farmer who is trying to do anything in his power to protect the land he owns. His recent experiences include being chased by dogs after a fly-tipping gang caught him filming them.
Martin Montague
Martin, a 47-year-old businessman from Winchester, is the creator of an anti-fly-tipping app called ClearWaste. The app enables users to get waste-removal quotes in real-time from legitimate operators and also report fly-tipping.
But what makes his job dangerous is the fact that organized crime may be behind the surge of fly-tipping. Criminals are posing as legitimate waste-disposal businesses, only to dump the rubbish they collect on private land or public roads.
Stake-Out
Martin was fed up with finding heaps of trash on his land. He resorted to lying in a field in the dead of night to film the fly-tippers through night-vision goggles.
Using social media, Montague had tracked down the gang of fly-tippers and had pressed them to return and pick up their trash. Then, things went awry.
Dangerous Gangs
Martin just could not resist videoing the gang in the act. Unfortunately, the gang spotted the red light on his goggles.
A chase ensued, and Martin found himself being chased through farmland at night. “I’m not going to lie,” he says. “I thought I was going to die.” But that was not Martin's first run-in with the fly-tipping criminal underworld.
Fly-Tipper Vigilante
Martin received a tip-off the previous August that fly-tippers had been targeting a trampoline park in north London. He reported the crime, but “the operators said they’d contacted the police, but no one was interested,” he explained.
That's when Martin decided to go vigilante. “I thought, I’ll get them. Night vision, bush.”
Busted
Martin staked out the trampoline park with his night-vision goggles, but the fly-tippers saw him and chased him across London in a van with no license plates or lights on.
Although Martin has good intentions, perhaps he needs to improve his subterfuge. DailyMail asked him why he is doing all of this.
People Are At Their Wits' End
“I don’t earn a penny from the app,” Martin said. “It’s my quest to try to put something back. My wife and I can’t have kids, so this is my legacy. People are at their wit’s end with fly-tipping.”
And Covid-19 only turbocharged the problem. Fly-tipping increased by 300% at the start of lockdown. “It was a perfect storm of people being furloughed, finally getting around to doing DIY jobs they’d been putting off and then finding that recycling centers were closed,” says Richard McIlwain of Keep Britain Tidy.