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.
I have been going through the same thing with my community garden. Ours is near the property where we rent, and have nothing to do with the complex other than the fact that it is the people who live here who are helping. EVERYONE who has helped with the garden has gotten eviction notices, including me. We fix vandalism daily, and we all assume the management is behind. The best thing you can do is to keep going! Hopefully you can get a lawyer pro-Bono to see if there is some way you can turn the tide against them, possibly for harassment?
This is wrong to deny someone less fortunate the right to have a small garden. All the comments about the little girl and whether her mother had her out of wedlock or was married is just a distraction. Children have no control over how they are conceived by a married couple or not. The fact that this little girl wants to help her disabled mother and work in this garden touches me. I worked in gardens picking vegetables when I was a small boy and helped shell peas and beans and earned a lot of self esteem from this. My family lived in the housing projects when I was 9 & 10 years old and the people couldn’t have a garden, but they could put containers on their small front or back steps and have a tomato plant or squash plant and some flowers and it meant a lot to them. No matter where you live, you should be able to have a small garden or some container plants as long as it’s kept up and not hazardous or unsightly. The way to lift people out of poverty is to teach them to work and be self sufficient. Encourage people to work and learn instead of discouraging and disparaging them is the best answer. I know that little girl has a lot of positive self esteem from doing her part to help her mother that she loves like all children love their parents. The government seems to want to take our dignity from all of us and especially the most vulnerable and defenseless. This child and her mother need our prayers and the mean spirited property manager needs them, too. This is just an abuse of power and nothing else. How a person gets on disability is not important. What’s important is they shouldn’t be punished for something that can’t be changed.
What is needed are designated areas approved for gardening in each managed lot. Landscaping is controlled by dangerous chemicals and that would have harmed the plants. I don’t see why she can have a petition drawn for her to have a designated area for just the tenants to be able to garden. I have seen some landlords building boxes for their families here in WV. Hope that helps. I know some places like Lowe’s or even Home Depot that would help out with her mother being disabled will donate lumber to make something nice for her to garden in. Look into it. Blessings Eva
I don’t believe that this is government’s task, to house people. That said, it does. No rules about gardens, then the property management company can be sued for enforcement of something that does not exist.
But, tell me why in a state that is largely farmlands, someone in the list of acquaintances, or even a stranger, cannot pick up this task, perhaps give a ride to the people involved, and permit them to garden on “their” land, perhaps even teach them.
This was the kinds of things that used to occur before government took over the tasks of everyhitng. Now people do not pay attention to what’s around them where they could help. Government cannot be responsible for more than what it is made for, the protection of people’s rights. The article mentions mom’s disability, but not what it is. My own experience with disability is that very often people can do something in the way of becoming viable members of communities of they live within. I don’t know whether that is the case here or not. But with a “totally” disabled mom, there should be someone around to “look after”. My heart goes out to this little girl, though. But I think this could be something that the community, the people (exclusive of government) can pick up on.
The headline is misleading. It wasn’t the USDA that said this. It was the management company for the apartments. This is about local control and some creepy power seeking freak getting out of control. Residents of the complex and neighbors need to organize and get this pseudo “authority” to back off! P.S. I doubt it was the garden that prompted the issue, more likely the pallet was viewed as a “structure”. None the less the remedy should not be getting rid of the garden. Some accommodation is certainly in order.
this is crzy. let the girl have her little, and i mean little garden, for Christ’s sake meaning literal, she is just trying to help her mother out since the government dont want to, and then thye want to tke this away from her and her mom, get real people and wake up before it is too late. GOD sees all!!!
I don’t think the problem is with the government in this particular case. I think the property management company us just using the USDA as an excuse to save itself what it considers to be some headaches by not allowing the garden. I think it’s entirely the doing of the property management company.
and here’s a different way of doing things from the uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2397899/Community-transforms-Victorian-passageway-Middlesbrough-homes-oasis-greenery.html
community gardens, allotments, growing plants for food, communal gardens etc not only help people to eat healthier, they also help create and foster community, help reduce crime etc…etc
i suggest that the mother and the little girl get the other people in the apartment building to also grow stuff together, make a vertical garden up the walls, create hanging baskets and put them on any balconies, window sills, hang them from the window brackets etc…
transform the whole area.. and then see what ‘they’ say
Really seems that they should mandate every available space be used to garden instead of bare patches, and grass that needlessly uses vital resources (water, fertilizer, coil) that could be put to better use providing sustenance..but no let’s have these patches of GRASS that serve little real purpose other than looks..and people who COULD very well grow a few vegetables sit in their apartments doing nothing for the ecology..much better..because the GRASS looks better than crops??
hi sarah, you are not providing us computer morons an easy way to forward this, also i dont know how to use facebook,why not an “email this” button? thanks, jeff