The smell at the Dancing Cat Saloon was so bad on September 24, and the flies so thick that Stacy Cohen had planned on not opening the restaurant or the Catskill Distilling Company that evening. Fortunately, the wind picked up some later in the day, and that helped dispel the odor.

The restaurant and distillery are located on bucolic Route 17B in Bethel, and have quickly gained a reputation for good times and good food and drink. They never had a problem with their neighbor Peter Hofstee, a farmer, in the past. But this year, in late July, he started spreading sewage from a duck operation on his field, the border of which sits about 50 feet from an outdoor dining area of the Dancing Cat.

Concerned Cohen, who with her husband Monte Sachs, owns the two operations, contacted the NY Department of Ag and Markets. In Cohen’s view this triggered an escalation of the behavior, and Hofstee began dumping loads of eggshells and manure–and she did not know what else–next to the property line.

The resulting smell, Cohen said, has caused carloads of people to exit the place in a hurry, some saying they would never return because of the awful condition created by the rotting egg shells and manure.

Hofstee could not be reached for comment, but told another reporter that he was not doing anything differently this year than he has others years.

Cohen strongly disputed that saying that he is intentionally targeting the place, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. Officials from the Town of Bethel did try to get other farmers involved in a talk with Hofstee, but she said that did not work. Bethel officials also sent the complaint to the town attorney for an opinion about whether the town could take any action, but the opinion of the attorney was that the town was blocked from acting because of the right-to-farm section of the town code.

Ag and Markets offered some suggestions but they have no enforcement power and legally there is nothing they can do.

Further officials from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation told her they could not take any action unless the dumping was negatively impacting a body of water.

The two operations employ some 20 people, and attract tourism to the area, in a county where tourism is either the first or second most important industry. Cohen said the eggshells, manure and whatever else might be in the growing pile have “caused a lot of damage” to the two operations.