A pile of chicken manure was dumped near a wedding site in Exeter for the second time in a week. (WJAR) 
 
 A man was ordered Friday to move a pile of manure placed near the property line of a neighbor, who has been hosting weddings in Exeter. 
 
 Gerald Zarrella hosts weddings on his property and said his neighbors, James and Diane Lynch, are retaliating against him because of it. 
 
 A large pile of chicken manure appeared last week on the Lynch property, just feet from Zarrella's land. The smell all but ruined a wedding that weekend. A second, smaller pile of manure was dumped there on Thursday. 
 
 Outside of Washington County Superior Court in Wakefield Friday, NBC 10 News approached James Lynch and asked him why he didn't move the manure. He repeatedly replied that he was being harassed when confronted with questions. 
 
 Afterward, Zarrella said, "Can you imagine somebody who harassed somebody would have the guts to say, 'Leave me alone, you're harassing me.' He harassed me, he harassed the people at the wedding." 
 
 James Lynch was ordered to move both piles of chicken waste to the far side of his property and cover it with top soil by Wednesday, days before Sarah Hill Richmond and Matthew Scoggins get married on the 32-acre property next Saturday. 
 
 "We were worried that our guests wouldn't be able to enjoy the event," Scoggins said. 
 
 Sadly, the overwhelming smell of manure was the talk among wedding guests the day Julie Charren and her husband, Kyle, got married there last week. 
 
 "I think he owns 100 acres," Richmond said. Why he chose to drop it within like 10 yards of where a wedding was going to be?" 
 
 Richmond and Scoggins told NBC 10 if the manure isn't moved before their wedding day, they'll get married on a relative's property. But they are hoping it doesn't come to that. 
 
 "Seems like an untrustworthy guy and I hope he follows through, but he's a shady character," Scoggins said of James Lynch. 
 
 Zarrella said, "If he doesn't then he would be in violation of a court order and then he would have to deal with the consequences of what it means to violate a court order." 
 
 NBC 10 tried multiple times to speak with James Lynch prior to confronting him outside of the courthouse on Friday, but he never responded. 
 
 Zarrella told NBC 10 that the manure was in the process of being moved on Friday afternoon. ||||| So massive was the pile of manure lining the edge of David and Joan Gallant’s property in rural New Brunswick, it could be seen using satellite imagery. 
 
 And the stench? Unbearable, they said. Especially after it rained or when the wind blew from the east. 
 
 But despite the Gallants’ repeated complaints to neighbours Lee and Shirley Murray, the pile of poop just sat there for almost a year, part of an ugly — and escalating — dispute. 
 
 The Murrays had without question set out to make the Gallants’ lives “miserable,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice George Rideout said in a recent decision. “The manure was piled high and a photo taken by Google (Earth) from a satellite shows it.” 
 
 And the Murrays’ offensive actions didn’t stop there, the judge said. The Murrays used a snowblower to send snow and rocks onto the Gallants’ property and likely were behind the escape of numerous cows onto their property, causing extensive hoof damage to the lawn. 
 
 “I have little doubt these activities were initiated by the Murrays and designed to inflict fear, nuisance and harassment against the Gallants,” the judge said. 
 
 The manure was fresh, unseasoned, wet, raw manure. The smell was disgusting. 
 
 Reached by phone, Lee Murray said Friday he and his wife planned to appeal, insisting that they were the ones who had been harassed and that their one-time friends had “made a big fuss over nothing” and were just looking for money. 
 
 “There’s more to this,” he said. “This thing isn’t over yet.” 
 
 The Gallants purchased their property from the Murrays in Indian Mountain, just outside Moncton, in 2001. The Murray property borders the Gallant property on three sides. 
 
 It is not clear from the court records when or what caused the relationship between the two couples to sour. But in court affidavits, the Gallants say things got really bad when, over the course of several days in November 2013, the Murrays deposited hundreds of loads of cow manure along a strip of land next to their property. 
 
 On one occasion, the Gallants said they were awoken at 4 a.m. by the sound of a loader dumping manure. “I called Lee Murray on his cellphone to complain, but he hung up on me,” David Gallant, who is retired, said in his affidavit. 
 
 “The manure was fresh, unseasoned, wet, raw manure. The smell was disgusting,” he said. 
 
 It was just the beginning of a long string of complaints documented by the Gallants. In March 2014, they alleged, the Murrays used their snowblower to blow snow and rocks onto their property. 
 
 In May 2014, they alleged that about 50 cattle from the Murray property escaped through a gate, causing extensive damage to their lawn from “hoofprint holes” and damage to three trees. 
 
 “I saw cow dung all over our property,” David Gallant said in his affidavit. 
 
 In September 2014, they say that Lee Murray put a large bale of hay near their back fence, “with the presumably intentional effect that it drew his cattle to eat, urinate and defecate as close to our house as possible.” 
 
 It was around this time that the Gallants filed a complaint with the New Brunswick Farm Practices Review Board regarding the pile of manure. 
 
 The following month, the Murrays finally removed the manure pile, but in the process of doing so, the Gallants alleged, they started a brush fire that caused smoke to enter their garage. 
 
 In December 2014, the Farm Practices Review Board held a hearing and concluded that the cattle escape and placement of manure near the Gallants’ property constituted “unacceptable farming practices” and recommended a number of changes. 
 
 The very next day the Gallants said they found a long scratch along the side of their car. 
 
 “It is very unusual to observe this kind of vandalism where we live, on a rural road where the properties are very large and far apart from each other,” David Gallant said. 
 
 In early 2015, the Gallants sued the Murrays in an effort to stop what they said was an “increasing pattern of aggression.” 
 
 The judge opens his Jan. 19 decision with this observation: “When neighbours fight, nothing good results. The case now before the court proves this adage.” 
 
 Rideout said he had “no hesitation” in finding that the Murrays’ conduct had been “wilful and reprehensible” and awarded the Gallants $15,000 in damages. (The judge noted that the Murrays’ insurance company had previously covered damage related to the cattle escape.) 
 
 He also issued an injunction forbidding the Murrays from entering the Gallants’ property; spreading manure within 300 metres of their property; blowing snow, rocks or manure onto their property; and communicating with the Gallants, except in writing. 
 
 The Gallants could not be reached Friday. 
 
 Murray, who reportedly pleaded guilty last year in a separate case to failing to obtain the proper permits to have more than 19 head of cattle, insisted the manure he had dumped next to the Gallants’ property was old and did not give off an odour. And the debris that was blown onto their property was merely “small shovelfuls.” 
 
 Murray insisted he gets along with all of his other neighbours and that over the Christmas holidays, he helped spread gravel on their driveways. 
 
 If neighbours get into a disagreement, they should resolve things by talking, Murray said. Never, he said, was he looking to aggravate the Gallants. 
 
 “I’m not that type of guy.” 
 
 • Email: dquan@postmedia.com | Twitter: dougquan
– Good fences make good neighbors, so long as that fence isn't made of manure, apparently. A Canadian couple has been awarded $15,000 in damages, to be paid by neighbors who have also been banned by the judge's Jan. 19 decision from spreading manure within about 1,000 feet of David and Joan Gallant's property. The Calgary Herald reports the Gallants bought their place in rural New Brunswick in 2001; between then and November 2013, things went south with their Indian Mountain neighbors, Lee and Shirley Murray. The Gallants alleged that in that month, load upon load of "fresh, unseasoned, wet, raw manure" was dumped by the Murrays onto land adjacent to their own property. To get a sense of scale, there was enough of it that it was visible via a Google Earth photo. The Gallants say nearly an entire year passed before they complained to the New Brunswick Farm Practices Review Board; a short time later, the manure pile was removed. But when the board in December 2014 determined the manure positioning was an "unacceptable farming practice," the Gallants alleged the Murrays retaliated in the form of a long scratch on their car. Early the next year, the Gallants sued, outlining a litany of other alleged transgressions, including rocks forced onto their land via a snowblower. The Murrays say they will appeal. America isn't free from its own manure-related debacles. WJAR reported in September on a tussle between Rhode Island neighbors. Gerald Zarrella had been hosting weddings on his Exeter property, and claimed his neighbors dumped chicken manure near it in retaliation; the neighbors were ordered to move the manure. (Horse manure is at the heart of a legal dispute over religious freedom.)