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.
Actually, things are currently far better in Russia than here when it comes to growing whatever food you want on your own freaking land.
Here’s the deal.
You live in Public Housing? Guess what? You do what THEY say. THEY are the government. You live in public housing you live by the rules. This is what you get for taking hand outs (whether you need them or not is beside the point).
It’s called the NANNY STATE for a reason.
Now, if YOU own the place you live, and someone comes and says, “You can’t grow your own food.” Take issue in the strongest way possible.
CREATIVE SOLUTION:
Grow the veggies in pots, or cans, and bring them in at night. It’s not a structure, and it’s NOT permanent. HUH?
I am glad I live in Canada and not he U.S. where there seem to be so many heartless people, suspecting the worst from fellow citizens. Obviously, the initiative to grow vegetables by people in public housing should be encouraged rather than discouraged. And as already pointed out, one should not jump to conclusions about things one knows very little about.
in australia, our government encourages people to grow vegetable gardens in their city homes. the problem with the USA is that you need to get corporations OUT of the government. i.e Monsanto. Your government is a ‘corporatocracy’. All the laws are being made to look after the corporations, not the people. Sadly, you people are to blame for this because you haven’t done anything about it… you buy their products and let them determine your lifestyles. Who on earth would want to live in the USA today? Despotism is thriving!! http://www.veryediblegardens.com/
The ranting in your article, and in the follow-up, seem very misplaced.
It’s the property manager who appears to be at fault, not the Department of Agriculture. So why not have people write to the property manager to register their opinions, suggestions, scorn, and outrage.
My hunch: it’s a lot more fun, and gets a lot more eyeballs, to bellyache about government bureaucrats instead of the private-sector bureaucrat who’s either ignorant of rules or (more likely) making them up on the fly and then blaming… the government.
The property management company is under contract by the USDA and is hence an extension of the USDA. This company states that there is a rule prohibiting the garden. The USDA denies it via email. But, having had much experience with bureaucrats in the past, they say whatever they want to get people off their back. My most recent experience is with bureaucrats who have arbitrarily forced a dairy farmer here in FL to put synthetic vitamin A in their milk even though there is NO RULE on this for small dairy farms. This is the tyranny of a large bureaucracy – they do and say whatever suits them! They have no one to answer to and there is no checks and balances on their behavior except via an expensive and lengthy court battle. The USDA is in essence by doing nothing, enforcing and supporting the property management’s enforcement of the rule whether written or unwritten.
Is anyone else concerned about the welfare of a 4 year old living with a SEVERELY disabled mother? Does she go out to this garden to take care of it by herself? I see nothing wrong with the garden, but I worry about who is taking care of this child.
I left out single mother. If she is a single mother, then is there no other caregiver who is not disabled? I guess this depends on how one defines severely disabled.
Where is Michelle Obama? She advoates the healthy eating, lots of vegetables, growing one’s own vegetables. why doesn’t she speak out in this little girl’s behalf.
There is no excuses. This is just wrong on all levels.
These people don’t own or rent this land. It is not theirs to grow on and they could potentially get poisoned if they don’t wash their harvest correctly. It’s public housing in a rural area with grounds keepers who spray chemicals. It’s not wrong at all. If they want a space in the public housing complex to grow veggies they can work toward that and I bet they would get it. Reasons and excuses are very very different.
Most condo associations also ban people from growing food in the areas around the house. Container gardens are usually an exception. The landscaping grounds keepers use pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers that are toxic. They usually post flags when they do it to warn people about it. This story is about PUBLIC HOUSING. I bet they aren’t allowed to keep pets either. I think your take on this situation is more than a little off base.
The fact that the USDA provides publicly funded housing in rural areas is amazing. I think it’s totally within it’s purview to keep people from potentially getting poisoned by landscaping compounds…and don’t go on a tirade about how they shouldn’t use them (it would be better if they didn’t but I don’t think you will get funding for expensive organic grounds maintainence from the Federal Goverment.) I’m sure if they wanted to grow something in a window box or in pots on their steps they might be able to.
Thank you for the sanity. ♥