The couple who managed Harpswell’s last sizable farm have moved themselves and their livestock off the property and lost their latest appeal to Maine’s highest court.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected the appeal of Joseph and Laura Grady, who ran Two Coves Farm for more than 16 years but were ousted because, according to an arbitrator, they failed to pay roughly $124,000 in rent and grow crops as they had once agreed.
The Aug. 19 ruling capped a protracted legal fight that had the Gradys claiming they were being forced out of their home and stripped of their livelihood in spite of their good faith efforts and in contravention of Maine’s protections for home renters.
Opposing them was Helen Norton, who — with her late husband — bought the 100-acre tract in hopes of preserving a vestige of Harpswell Neck’s agrarian history. Norton’s lawyers alleged that the Gradys had taken advantage of an ailing 94-year-old woman and were “squatting” on the land while dragging out the process with a series of “11th hour arguments.”
The Supreme Judicial Court ruling rejected the latest of those appeals. It affirmed a longer order dated July 28 in which the court upheld the arbitrator’s decision and spurned the couple’s contention that the arbitrator had exceeded his authority in treating the lease as a strictly commercial contract rather than one that also provided the Gradys with a place to live and raise their children.
Norton said she was pleased by the ruling and is working to make repairs to the property that will allow her to “find a good, responsible farmer and his family and make it a viable working farm” as soon as next spring.
Of the legal fight, she said, “It has cost me a lot of money, it has cost me a lot of time and effort, and it has made us quite unhappy.”
The Gradys declined to participate in an interview for this article. Joe Grady requested questions in writing, then declined to answer them. However, court filings from their legal team lay out their position in detail. In a brief statement emailed to the Anchor, they said they are disappointed but determined.
“The last two years of defending ourselves from the claims made against us have been exhausting; losing our home where we planned to spend the rest of our lives, as well as the business we built from scratch, was devastating and is still fresh for us,” they said in the statement.
Partners in protection
The legal battle brought a bitter closing chapter to what began as a pastoral partnership.
Two decades ago, in 2006, Norton and her late husband, Walter, bought a 100-acre saltwater farm near their home on Harpswell Neck. The entity they formed, Neils Point LLC, in 2008 granted an agriculture conservation easement to the Maine Farmland Trust, with the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust overseeing the easement.
The purpose of the arrangement was to protect the farm “from encroaching suburban sprawl so that it will always be available for its traditional use as a productive cropland, open fields and forest,” according to the arbitrator’s findings.
In 2009, a young farming couple — the Gradys — signed on as stewards of the property, an agreement renewed in 2017 for an additional 25 years. In exchange for the right to live and farm there, the couple agreed to keep the farm in productive operation and to pay rent equal to 10% of their “annual net proceeds” — their farming revenue minus legitimate operating expenses.
For many years, all seemed to be going smoothly at Two Coves Farm. Drivers passing the property on Harpswell Neck Road saw signs advertising a farm stand along a tree-lined lane that sold, among other things, eggs, lamb, tomatoes, cucumbers, yarn and sheepskins.
A ‘stark injustice’ or an end to a ‘free ride’?
But trouble arrived last year, when relations between Norton and the Gradys took a sharp downward turn. In July 2025, an arbitrator presided over a hearing to examine Norton’s allegations that the couple had failed to live up to their end of the deal.
After examining evidence and hearing from both sides, arbitrator and Portland lawyer Timothy J. Bryant concluded that the Gradys had not made rent payments on time and “failed to pay any rent whatsoever for the years of 2023 and 2024.” In a decision dated Oct. 24, 2025, the arbitrator concluded that the Gradys had understated their revenues and “knowingly inflated their operational expenses by treating household and personal expenses as business expenses.”
The arbitrator also agreed with Norton that the Gradys had failed to “use the farm to actively plant and grow productive crops,” as required by the 2017 lease.
He ordered the Gradys to pay Norton’s Neils Point LLC $124,175 and to vacate the farm no later than Dec. 31, 2025.
The Gradys did not move out, instead filing a Dec. 30 appeal asking a Maine Superior Court justice to vacate the decision and allow them to continue working and living at Two Coves. Because the farm was also their home, they argued that state law prohibited them from being evicted without the formal court process guaranteed to residential tenants.
Norton’s legal team countered by saying that the arbitrator’s ruling was sound, and that the Gradys had voluntarily agreed to arbitration as the method for resolving disputes. In a Feb. 4 ruling, Superior Court Justice Darcie N. McElwee sided with Norton and agreed that the Gradys must vacate.
In late February, the Gradys took their appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court.
“This case presents a stark injustice,” wrote the Gradys’ lawyers, Regan A. Sweeney and J. Spencer Hoffman. “A wealthy landowner has utilized commercial arbitration to dispossess a tenant farming family from the property they have called home and worked for over sixteen years.”
The lawyers stated that the Gradys had been served a “writ of possession” on Feb. 25, giving them 48 hours to vacate. “The Gradys were afforded no meaningful opportunity to seek appellate relief before the coercive machinery of eviction was set in motion,” they wrote.
The court’s ruling would affect not just the Gradys, their lawyers wrote, but also other farmers.
“Farmers are the backbone of Maine’s communities. They feed their neighbors, steward the land, and embody the independence and self-reliance that define this State’s character,” they said. “Yet the (ruling) treats farmers as something less than every other resident of Maine. The Gradys are people who work the land they live on. They are not commercial tenants operating a warehouse or retail establishment. … Their home is their farm, and their farm is their home. The two are inseparable.”
Norton’s lawyers countered with strong words of their own in a Feb. 27 pleading. Noting that the Gradys had already relocated their livestock and “never grew any crops in the first place,” they said the couple faced no real hardship.
“For the last decade, the (Gradys) have had possession of the farm under false pretenses. For the last two months, they have trespassed on the property unlawfully,” said attorneys Thimi R. Mina and Alfred C. Frawley IV. “Meanwhile, Mrs. Norton is 94 years old and recently suffered a significant injury. Put simply, time is of the essence, and the balance of the equities lies in favor of ending the (Gradys’) decade-long free ride while Mrs. Norton still has the opportunity to put the property to productive use.”
The legal point and counterpoint continued through the spring and summer. Following the adverse July 28 Supreme Judicial Court ruling, the Gradys again appealed and — in August — lost again.
The court rejected the Gradys’ argument that they were entitled to the same channels of legal appeal available to a tenant facing eviction from a rental home. Instead, the Gradys had to abide by the arbitrator’s decision after earlier agreeing on that course of conflict resolution.
As their legal battle wound down, both the Gradys and Norton expressed gratitude for the support they had received from neighbors.
“I am very happy for the support that I’ve received from the community,” said Norton, who, along with her husband, has invested in conserving a large amount of open land in Harpswell and neighboring communities.
“To all those in Harpswell who have supported us and Two Coves Farm, we want to pass on our thanks and let you all know that we are doing well and have transitioned to a new home,” the Grady family said in their statement emailed to the Anchor.
“We do not know what the future holds at the moment,” they added, “but we will certainly be finding our way back to farming in the months and years ahead.”