Lone Hickory Farm Vandalized Over Weekend

By Misty Green

Lone Hickory Farm & Nursery on Tanyard Road, in Lafayette, Tennessee was vandalized this past Saturday night, September 23, 2023.

Dean and Mary Lazarou, owners/operators of Lone Hickory Farm told the Macon County Chronicle they woke up on Sunday morning, headed back out to work at 7 a.m., and discovered it was all destroyed. “It was terrible,” Mary said, “it was the third time our place had been vandalized.”

“However we discovered who it was this time… it was children,” she sighed. 

“The other times, we didn’t have any cameras located up there… So, we wound up putting cameras up there and saw they came in the last two nights, and last night, they did about $12,000 worth of damage,” they explained.

“They sliced our tents… we have a tent set up with Halloween decorations and they destroyed everything in it, they smashed plants, and tore them all up,” Mary said.

“They just basically, flipped over all of our planters, destroyed 40 trays of plants… they took a knife and tried to cut the ropes off that held the tent up,” Dean stated. “They cut off the heads of the scarecrows and ghosts, and ghouls,” Mary said. “They didn’t steal anything, just destroyed everything,” Dean added. 

“They slashed our inflatables that we had decorated up, and broke chairs, smashing them all to pieces,” Mary recalled. “It’s a mess,” they both sighed. 

“I had $50 mums,” Dean said, “they were huge, and they smashed them all,” Dean said. “Yeah,” Mary recalled, “there were between 13 and 16 of them.”

The Lazarou’s said they have to go buy more pots now, along with many other things that they already had set up and ready to go for this fall season. “We can’t tell you their names because they are minors,” Dean said, “But the police are involved and are questioning the kids, so we will see what happens, but for now, we still have work to do,” adding, “It’s not the money, of it, it’s the stupidity of it… now we have to go buy new tents that are going to cost us like five grand, and we just decorated yesterday, and they destroyed it all,” Dean said.