Carol French and husband Claude tend 70 heifers and calves on 160 acres near the New York line. What did they know about negotiating mineral rights?

So, when a natural gas company's landman in 2006 dangled a $13,800 signing bonus to drill on the Frenches' farm, they bit. "Our biggest concern was if you tear down our fence, we want you to rebuild it," Carol, 48, recalled of negotiating a five-year lease.

The Frenches thought they knew something about gas drilling. But they were picturing the unobtrusive well drilled in the 1980s in nearby Spencer, N.Y., that exploited a gas pocket in the Trenton-Black River formation.

What the Frenches didn't know was their lease exposed them to a completely different kind of drilling.

The landman didn't tell them that if his company chose to drill on their land, it would dig a mile deep into the Marcellus Shale, Carol said. He didn't tell them about water-intensive hydraulic fracturing, chemical-laced flowback and the need for a 4-acre well pad occupied by truck trailers, tanks, mixers, compressors, piping.

Bleak outlook

The Frenches five years ago had never heard of fracking and played into the landman's hands.

But that was then. Now Carol is one of the industry's most knowledgeable foes. She said she is angry about being misled and is appalled at the rapid industrialization of cropland. She has devoted the last two years to learning how to fight back.

Carol and neighbor Carolyn Knapp, who's equally committed to battling the industry, drove me past a dozen drill sites and pointed to where fracking and spills, they believe, have poisoned a well here, contaminated a pond there.

Back at her farmhouse that 200 years ago served as a post office, Carol described the gas boom as a threat to everything she loves about rural Bradford County, the only home she's known.

It's fostered distrust among neighbors, she said. Those who have cashed in are resented by those who have reaped only traffic, crime and environmental degradation.

Carol's biggest fear is her way of life might be doomed because the appetite for wells is insatiable. Within a mile of her home are seven drilling pads, she said. How long until one's next door?

So far, her farm has been unaffected because the company opted to drill elsewhere. With their five-year lease due to expire Aug. 29, Carol feels she's dodged a bullet. But only for now.

Deep roots

Carol said she and her neighbors have a pact to stick together if the landman returns someday. But any new lease will look nothing like what they signed in 2006. Carol has compiled 26 pages of restrictions the driller must honor. She also wants a signing bonus big enough to move away — her Plan B — if living in the gas belt becomes insufferable.

"This is like a chess game to me," Carol said. "Maybe I can outfox them."

But Carol also knows Plan B is not genuine because she could never break home ties.

"That road you came down (to my house), it's always been like a friend," Carol said. "It's my path home. And home for me is my friends, my neighbors and my family.

"We all thought we could pick up home and move it somewhere else," she said. "But I can't take everybody that I graduated with. I can't take my friends, my neighbors, my family. We're fooling ourselves if we're saying we're going to take Plan B and move on. In reality, there's no place like home."

Carol isn't waiting and hoping for a big payoff. What she really wants is to wake up some morning and find that the last five years were only a bad dream.

jhawkes@lnpnews.com