A farmer who refused to sell his land on the outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin to apartment building developers continues to harvest crops using combines and tractors under the surprised gazes of his new neighbors.
Imagine living in an urban apartment and looking out the window to see a huge combine plowing through a field of wheat or maize? That’s the view that residents on Jantarowa street, in the Polish city of Lublin, are treated to every summer or fall. Apparently, while most land owners in the area sold their farmland to residential building developers, one farmer refused to budge, so the apartment building were built around his property, where he continues to farm every year.
Photo: Michał Mysłowski
You would imagine that people living next to this urban agricultural field would complain about it, but in fact,, the opposite is true. Most of those interviewed by local news outlets said that they welcome the unusual view and hope that the farmer holds out for as long as possible.
“Some people would give anything for such views,” one person commented. My daughter’s view consists only of concrete and supermarkets.”
Photo: Michał Mysłowski
“As a resident, I can say that it does not bother us at all, on the contrary,” a woman named Katarzyna said. “Better such a view outside the window than being surrounded by concrete buildings.”
Polish newspaper Dziennik Wschodni caught up with the urban farmer last summer, after a video shot by a local went viral on social media, and learned that he gets along just fine with his neighbors. They wave to him fromthe windows, he waves back, they sometimes take photos or film him with their phones, which doesn’t bother him, and no one has ever called the police or had anything bad to say to him.
As new residential complexes encroach on farmland on the outskirts of Lublin, such situations were bound to occur, so everyone is just taking things as they are and making the best of it.
This unusual story reminded us of Takao Shito, the Japanese farmer surrounded by an airport after his family refused to sell their land to the government.
