With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren’t allowed to grow their own food unless the State “allowed” it.
In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills – gardening – the USDA’s Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green vegetables.
Rosie’s mother, Mary (names changed to protect the child’s identity), is single and severely disabled. She and her daughter live on a fixed income disability payment of $628/month. The garden vegetables growing just outside her backdoor lovingly tended by Rosie provide a fresh and healthy addition to their diet that they could not otherwise easily afford.
Rosie started the garden in May 2013, but now the property management company has ordered the garden be removed this week!
The reason?
The property management company claims that gardening goes against the rules set by the USDA’s Rural Development Agency which forbids residents to have structures of any kind within landscaped areas. It seems to me that the practice of growing vegetables by the most needy in our society would take precedence over landscaping, wouldn’t you agree?
I wonder if the USDA plans to establish “rules” about breathing air in subsidized areas too?
The Federal bureaucracy seems to think that it owns those individuals who receive any sort of government assistance and that their behavior is completely within its jurisdiction to control no matter how ridiculous or blatantly un-American the power-tripping “rules” they decide to put in place may be.
Think this is an isolated case? Â It’s not. Â I write regularly on this blog about these outrageous situations where ordinary citizens are bullied by out of control bureaucrats, the most recent being a Mother in Maine who was harassed and threatened by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for feeding her healthy, robust 3 month old son homemade goat milk formula instead of horribly unhealthy commercial formula from the store laced with rancid vegetable oils and GMOs!
What You Can Do Now to Help Rosie
It is truly unfathomable that our country has degenerated to the point where a person can no longer garden without permission from bureaucratic thugs who get paid with our hard earned tax dollars to think up these rules – Â not laws –Â rules that have never been voted on by the elected representatives of the citizens expected to abide by those rules.
If you recall, this is exactly the sort of authoritarian insanity that started the American Revolutionary War (tea party anyone?).
Tell the USDA where it can put its “rules” against gardening by those living in rural, subsidized areas.
Sample Email to USDA
You can copy/paste the email template below to send directly from your email provider. Template provided courtesy of Kitchen Gardeners International, the source of this story.
To:Â [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject:Â Allow USDA-subsidized housing residents to grow vegetable gardens
Message body:
Dear Director Meeks,
I urge you to make a loud and clear statement to all the property management companies your agency contracts that USDA-subsidized residents have the right to keep their own vegetable gardens provided that these gardens are actively maintained. Vegetable gardens grow healthy and affordable foods as well as a sense of community. Rather than preventing low-income and disabled residents from providing for themselves, we should be doing everything we can to encourage them. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely yours,
(Your name, your town, your state)
Important Updates to This Story
8/27/2013:Â FINAL UPDATEÂ and details on Rosie’s Victory Garden!
8/26/2013:  A detailed update to this story is provided here.
8/25/2013: Â Roger Doiron, Director of Kitchen Gardeners International, has provided more details on this emerging story. The USDA has claimed in email correspondence to Mr. Doiron that it has no written rules preventing Mary and Rosie from having a garden (despite the property management company’s insistence to the contrary). On the other hand, the USDA hasn’t come to Mary and Rosie’s defense either and by allowing the property management company it has a contract with to call the shots and bully Mary and Rosie it is essentially enforcing such a rule no matter what is claimed via email.
Bureaucratic rules are notoriously confusing to understand let alone interpret, but if the USDA stands behind its assertion that there are no “rules” – written OR unwritten – against gardening in subsidized housing, it should stop the property management company under the auspices of the USDA from forcing Mary and Rosie to remove their garden.
The USDA pays most of the rent for Mary and thousands of citizens like her around the United States. Â It should do the right thing and insist that property owners and managers of subsidized housing permit residents to grow their own food in well cared for gardens rather than look the other way when residents are bullied for their efforts at self sufficiency. Â After all, the stated mission of the USDA Rural Development Agency is to “improve the quality of life in rural America”. Gardening surely would be supportive of this important goal.
Source
Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI).  Rosie and Mary’s real names and exact location in South Dakota have not been revealed in order to protect the identity of a minor child.  Please contact KGI Director Roger Doiron, [email protected] if you wish to further verify the validity of this story.
“Dear Director Meeks,
I take it that you have already received some emails about this matter and I believe that you are quite tired of having to click your way through them, not having the will nor energy to read them. I don’t blame you, but I ask you to at least read what I have to say. I will be grateful.
The story of the 4-year old daughter of a disabled woman in South Dakota whose little garden soon will be destroyed has made its way to Sweden. There are many matters of urgency in this world and when reading about 4-year old Rosie, I can’t help but also think about the children who fell victims of the recent gas attack in Syria. How a society value its children, its most precious, its future, tells us where we have been and in what direction we are aiming.
Rosie may not be one of the children struggling to survive in a war zone, but she is her own experiences, her own world, and every person telling her that she has no right to be happy and healthy, no matter how big or small the action, will be part of her reality, identity and self worth.
I believe I am preaching to the choir when I say that Rosie is an invaluable proof of life and hope in a world where many children suffer. She is planting her own garden, giving life and love to the beings she care about. This is one of the most important values to give a child – that she, by being loving and caring and patient, has the power to give life to others. That she is strong and independent, an ambassador of power, and that if you believe in change, you can make it happen.
I am asking you to choose to be a part of that change. I am asking you to consider what you are telling yourself when a small child’s garden is a threat to laws and regulations. I am asking you to think about this, only for a little while, and then to do what you in your heart believe is the right thing to do. In your heart, not intellectually, since I myself know how we in our work roles so easily deprive ourselves of the right to feel. And then I am asking you to demonstrate that power in an action against the regulations prohibiting Rosie from having her garden.
I urge you to make a loud and clear statement to all the property management companies your agency contracts that USDA-subsidized residents have the right to keep their own vegetable gardens provided that these gardens are actively maintained. Vegetable gardens grow healthy and affordable foods as well as a sense of community. Rather than preventing low-income and disabled residents from providing for themselves, we should be doing everything we can to encourage them. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Thank you for reading this through.
Kindest regards,
Emilia, Malmö, Sweden”
In Sweden, you can build things on other people’s property without their permission? really?
its all part of Agenda 21,, if you dont know what Agenda 21 is, here is a start…
Most folks think this is all crazy because we have a very strong tendency to live in firm conviction to our prejudices, but after years of study I can tell you folks in no uncertain terms, that the girl in this story nor her parents (nor the vast majority of the readers here), are held to legally live under the federated United States of America created in 1776 or reorganized in 1789; but rather, an extended state ‘district’ of the United States Municipality of the District of Columbia, created in 1871. Prior to that institution, there was technically no such thing as a ‘citizen of the United States’. Only afterward, could such a ‘member of the municipality’ called ‘The United States’ be specifically designated and unwary acceptance of that citizenship implies such municipal membership … outside the original protections of our State municipal polity.
Under that exclusive Congressional jurisdiction (called ‘Property’), the provision of Art. IV, Sec. 3, cl. 2 of the Constitution allows Congress to rule without any federal or State Constitutional constraint. So, now that Congress is turning into a dictatorial, power-hungry Maw, since At Common Law, this legal status of citizenship was all orchestrated and propagated by Fraudulent pre-meditated obfuscation of Material Facts; on those grounds we can set into the Public Records, our choice to remove ourselves, lands, chattels and goods, back under our respective original, ordinary State jurisdictions, to re-assert their protections of our Natural Rights by Due Course of the Common Law.
you may be surprised that Russia is the nation with the probably largest amount of home grown food gardens.
Yes, they have learned something really important from their past.
This is what they bought 1.6 B rounds of ammo for. If we don’t obey and comply they will come after us.
Paranoid conspiracy?? Read the story above. Google ‘lemonade stand’ and look for the links to kids having their stands shut down by the police.
“if you wish to further verify the validity of this very real story”
The “very real story” part is like out of an Onion parody. And the fixed income disability part is straight out of Dickens.
This is someone drumming up likes/hits for their site(s) and cause(s). There are no verifiable facts stated in any of the above. They suggest you email the people behind this “article” to prove the veracity of this “very real story.” But why should you since it’s clearly stated it’s not only real, but very real.
The only thing that can be known is this picture–that you might imagine is little fake-named-Rosie-to-protect-the-innocent–is the FB banner picture for this page…
Which I’m sure they’d appreciate you went to and liked.
(Seriously, people, this cause is innocuous enough, but how about some critical thinking and not blindly passing along info because it fits in with your ideology? Because the same tactic is used with causes not so innocuous.)
The governments primary intention is to KEEP people on public assistance. It they allow people to climb up and out of public housing and assistance, those government workers might have to go out and get a real job.
I send my best wishes and moral support, but I do not think my “vote” would count very much, They do not seem to take notice of U.S Citizens, so a vote from Germany would probably not reach any further than the Trash can.
Good luck to the girl, and her Mother. Hope you win youre fight.
“Hello Ms. Meeks,
I read the following article with an open mind and wonder if understand correctly, the problem is that the girl unwittingly put her garden on property her mother is not renting. Is there not someone locally who could give her a few pots and a bag or two of potting soil so she could transplant her plants and put them on her front step or something simple like that? I’m sure no one really wants to see the thrift and responsibility of a youth crushed, but a little help for her and perhaps a gently delivered lesson in how to go about things that will empower her future wouldn’t go amiss. Wish I lived closer, I’d deliver the items and help her dig them up and transplant them myself. The best to both of you in sorting this out.”
Sorry, forgot to note, that’s a copy of what I sent to the individuals noted. Not really interested in the comment being published. Just wanted to share. Surely there are two sides as in every other situation I can think of. Thanks.