Kim and Josh, a couple featured on the first season of Homestead Rescue, ended up suing the show because of how they were portrayed.
You may have tuned in during the very first season of Marty Raney’s Discovery show Homestead Rescue and thought that they had left couples like Kim and Josh Zabec, who were featured in the second episode, in a much better place to care for themselves and their animals in the harsh Virginia wilderness.
However, as it turns out, this may not have been the case at all.
Where the lawsuit started
Josh and Kim, who call their property the Revolutionary Roots Farm, quickly took to social media after they watched their episode of Homestead Rescue to dispute some of the claims that the series made about their living situation.
They also fought back against all of the backlash that they had received online.
Apparently, Josh and Kim had been under the impression that they were going to be featured on a show about successful homesteaders.
But of course, as we all know now, Homestead Rescue largely focuses on what Marty, his daughter Misty and his son Matt, can do to improve the lives of inexperienced, struggling homesteaders.
Distractify reports that the backlash and outfall that followed the premiere of this episode eventually got so bad, that the Zabecs ended up getting their lawyers involved and taking the Homestead Rescue producers to court about this misunderstanding.
And while the outcome of this lawsuit has never been made public by either party, it does seem like both the Revolutionary Roots Farm (and its owners) and the Homestead Rescue television show have been able to move on from this legal battle by now.
Kim and Josh’s Homestead Rescue timeline
The Zabecs may have been portrayed as relatively inexperienced homesteaders on the series, but this couple maintains that they had already established quite the successful little farm by the time the Homestead Rescue camera crews showed up.
And though there is no hard and fast rule about how long homesteaders need to be off-grid for them to be considered “established” or “experts,” the Zabecs had already been living on their 20-acre property for about two years prior to this episode’s premiere, as follows:
| Date | Event |
| April 2014 | The Zabecs start moving their things on to their homestead |
| May 20, 2016 | The Revolutionary Roots Mom & Pops shop officially opens |
| June 24, 2016 | The “Under Siege” episode premieres |
The pig controversy
You may remember that Josh was particularly hesitant to the ideas of fencing in their free-range pigs during the Zabecs’ episode.
This is despite the fact that Marty and Misty had spoken to a nearby farmer who had done the same with his pigs for decades.
However, Kim has now confirmed that there was also apparently more to this story than what was shown on the series.
According to a video that Kim shared to the Revolutionary Roots Farm Facebook page, they had already been moving their pigs around using electric netting before the Homestead Rescue team arrived, and they also placed several pig huts all throughout the property for the pigs to stay in when they wanted to.
It seems like the Zabecs do not blame Marty
Although the Zabecs have been pretty forthcoming about the issues that they have with the way that they were portrayed on the show, it seems like they do not blame Marty, Misty or Matt for the miscommunication about the show’s premise.
Kim even went as far as calling Marty a “fantastic guy,” and also a “very, very good guy” in the same Facebook video in which she discussed the inaccuracies of the show.
This aligns pretty closely with the opinions of Wren and Ini (another couple featured on the series in 2018), who described Marty as “very kind and caring”.
This may be all indicative of a larger problem higher up at Discovery
While Kim and Josh called out the producers of Homestead Rescue specifically in their lawsuit, the show’s alleged willingness to fudge some of the details for the camera may be an issue which started much higher up at the network.
In fact, Discovery has actually come under fire recently for their documentary, The Garden: Commune or Cult.
Julia Heim, one of the residents of the The Garden community who was featured in the documentary, took to TikTok in the last few days to provide some more clarity about the things that she felt the documentary misrepresented.
In one video from November 22, 2023, she explains that “they’re able to make sentences that weren’t said” and “conversations that didn’t happen”. In the end, Julia labeled the entire experience as simply “devastating.”
