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.
Gloria Tava
wait wait doesn’t the white house promote gardening … hasn’t a garden been planted there .. isn’t that “FREE LIVING” and not subsidized … wow ..
MKC0887
Really, it’s very disingenuous and dishonest to try to make this about Obama. I realize that some people lack impulse control and maturity but do try to stay on topic, m’kay?
Eric
MK==OH GOOD GRIEF! The little girl probabally got the idea from the First Lady who is promoting good healthy eating so yes I would point fingers all the way to the top. Get off your Obama loving wagon—and stop drinking the fool-aid the man is pissing to eveyone! We all know he is a liar, a man of hope and change into a world of socialist and trying to make America the “NEW Communist Nation” It aint happening. This is not the time nor place I want to argue the Ewbama issue.
EC
This is related to Obama, there is no way around it. Thanks to him, a president can now seize anyone’s personal garden or livestock. I wonder if all the commenters who promote following the rules will let their personal food be taken away without a fight.
Saj
My Facebook post, as well as my email to Elsie:
Gawd, I swear, stuff like this makes me more and more disgusted every day by “The Government” and hoping that all governments would just be murdered off already, so that everybody else can live in the natural ways we ALL (EVERY ETHNICITY) once used to, without those greedy fucks involving themselves, with all their threats, fines, etc… Go to hell already, all you government pieces of shit. And STOP FORCING people to depend on you!
This is MY ancestor’s homeland! Drop pulling that old European control here already! If you actually think about it, you’d be so much happier and have much more peace if you left people like us (who are more self sufficient, grow our own stuff, etc…) alone. I actually curse you and anyone else involved in your type of mindframe. May karma hit you many times over.
Josie West
I wonder if gardening in pots would be an issue many landscapers and nurseries would be happy to donate the soil and pots for her to use contact me via e-mail and I will arrange it
KP
Sounds to me like the property management company is using the USDA as an excuse. The USDA has better things to do than target a kid’s garden. They are already strapped and understaffed. Unless someone really makes a stink, they are not going to come out and hunt them down for a garden. Now, building of structures, it sounds more like the property management co is using this which applies more to buildings and such than gardens (like subdividing govt funded housing to fit in more, etc) so they can get rid of the garden and not look like the bad guys.
Kevin
What you really have is a local administrator not using commonsense. But, let’s be blunt, limiting someone,who is renting an apartment, from gardening on common space–protperty that is not her’s– is hardly an attack on basic freedoms.
Aunt Jane
This is just sick!! Poor kid! Poor Americans, we are eat up with stupid!!!
watcher
The USDA is a federal bureaucracy whose number one goal is to ensure its survival by keeping people dependent upon government. Everything they do has this goal in mind. just like every gov agency. They spend their whole budget, whether its needed or not, just so they can say they are at capacity, and everyone keeps their jobs. Our government is really sick people. How many times do we have to show you that government is NOT the answer. Just ask a native american about the USDA. Thomas Jefferson said not to let govt get too big. George Washington said, Do not let the gov borrow money. We have done nothing but move towards a socialist state and away from our founding fathers. The most genius trick ever pulled, was allowing the GOP to be overtaken with lunatics. now, we are at the mercy of the socialists who disguise themselves as liberals. just because they are “progay” and “prochoice” meanwhile they take your rights away and the youth seems blind to it. most criminals are liberal voters. wake up people.
MKC0887
Sorry, but this is nonsense. And allowing the GOP to be taken over by lunatics now makes us at the mercy of socialists? What ever are you on about? Let me insert some facts for relevance. It is actually every single red, conservative state except Texas that for decades in a row now, has been subsidized and by all but 4 of the blue, liberal states. Each of the red states (except Texas, which is at break even), gets back far more each year than it contributes in taxes to the federal government. Case in point…Mississippi gets back $2.12 for every $1.00 it contributes in taxes. That is welfare. Those are subsidies. That is socialism. Blue states (all but 4 currently) pay far more each year in taxes than they get back from the federal government. Case in point…Nevada gets back a mere 65 cents for every $1.00 it pays in taxes. Connecticut gets back 62 cents for every $1.00 it pays in taxes.
It is red conservative states governed by Republicans going back decades (long before the lunatics of the right took over) that overwhelmingly and disproportionately benefit from government largesse…or socialism, as you will.
MKC0887
And it’s not about being “pro-gay” or “pro-choice”; it’s about being anti-discrimination (which, by the way, is unconstitutional).
MKC0887
And on the matter of “most criminals are liberal voters”, you need to support your assertion with some empirical evidence. That’s how that works unless you want to be dismissed as an irrelevant, inflammatory fool. Allow me to provide you with an example. Per the FBI and CDC’s yearly reports that analyze data collected nationally and calculate statistical measurements of crime in the U.S.:
The list of top 10 cities with highest rates of gun crime/violence/homicide per capita in the U.S. do not include Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco…all liberal hotbeds full of Democrats. The list does include Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Baltimore, Richmond, Jacksonville, New Orleans. Not the liberal, Democratic cities you’re searching for. In terms of states, the states with the highest rates per capita of gun crime/violence/homicide/suicide are the states with the most lax gun laws, those in the southeast and Texas and Arizona. It isn’t Illinois or California or New York or Massachusetts. These are statistics are also compiled from data collected each year and published by the John Jay School of Criminal Justice.
The nation has a problem with crime and gun-related violence. It is not a black or white thing and certainly not a left vs. right thing. But if you insist on trying to make it a partisan issue, then the empirical evidence I have submitted and which can be verified by anyone with any intellectual curiosity, shows that the problems lie primarily in conservatively governed states and cities.
Drew
Your statistics are bogus.
David
mck I want some of what your drinking, To be that far into lala land has got to be a unique experience. Chicago and WaDC are the two most lethal cities in the country, and that’s taken from the exact same source that your claiming to use, maybe you should go back and re-read the research.
Daniel
…Your link proves MKC’s point, not yours. The list in your link does NOT include Chicago OR DC (which wasn’t even mentioned until you). It DOES however contain 4 of the 7 MKC mentioned. I suggest you “re-read the research.”
MJ
I don’t care about links and city clarification. I live in New Orleans and it is the most Democrat filled city outside of my hometown, Boston. The cities mentioned might be in red states but the actual cities are very blue.
That said, I’m not sure any of this has to do with the federal government, which is the real problem. States have lost control to the Feds over almost every single topic and this is not what America was supposed to be about.
Shelby
I experienced this, in a different way. My fiance and I both lost our jobs within months of having our son. I applied for food stamps and TANF. We couldn’t get the TANF bc our son isn’t vaccinated.
Scott
Where’s the link to sign the petition?
L
I would like to gently point out that they are already on government assistance, living in a subsidized area…there is going to be even more government control. I am not so sure the tea party would be rattled over this.
LuLu
This Liber~TEA minded person is saying this is ridiculous. I wonder if you would go GENTLY into the chambers… u know which ones i mean. 6hundred and change each month and a few little bits of lettuce? seriously, you liberal lunatics are the most cruel and evil people i encounter. Assistance for the needy is the American way, but God forbid one of those being assisted tries to help themselves… you people come in and slap their hands and say, no no, you may not do for yourself. You and those like you make sure no one wanders off the plantation.
Judy Sawyer
Thats the USDA for you. Judy Sawter, Attica, NY