Posted on 08/25/2013 10:44:07 AM PDT by moonshinner_09
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?
(Excerpt) Read more at thehealthyhomeeconomist.com ...
Contact the Governor and get a waver
UPDATE 8/25/2013: 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.Put the pitchforks down, folks. [pun intended]
Grow veggies in a window box. Sorry to say but it’s not their private property. It would be another thing if it was their own place and the USDA came and told them to plow it under.
Ridicliosity on steroids.
Or, if they want a legal document, a waiver.
Uh oh. This little girl is dangerously close to moving off of the Democrat plantation by trying to help herself. Shut it down. Shut it down now.
“Put the pitchforks down, folks.”
Our torches too?
You’re such a killjoy.
Digging up a yard that does not belong to you and is maintained by a third party presents a maintenance obstacle.
We’re witnessing national death by Bureaucrat.
By edicts of the Insane running the Asylum.
Whose land is it growing on?
What agreements were signed between landowner and tenant regarding the appearance of the property?
Without these details, the article is merely fanning a pity party.
*laugh* Too funny! Thanks for the chuckle.
Perfect example of government agency too ‘big to fail’...and a bunch of bureaucrats who don’t have the ability to think for themselves. They should have looked at this child as a doer and shaker, and use her as an example of how to rise up by taking responsibility for the first necessity...feeding yourself.
Also, since it’s not her yard, can we tell all those living in gov subsidized housing that they can’t put DirecTV and Dish dishes in the yard? All the HUD units where I live have them.
subsidized housing unit
I don’t feel sorry for this girl at all. When you are provided tax payer funding from the government then you follow the government’s rules. MUCH different situation if they were paying their own way and government was involved. Get rid of the garden or move and pay your OWN way.
That sucks. I had the noose and gasoline.
As long as the taxpayers are paying for this manless family, the taxpayers should get to make the rules. I’m getting tired of the entitlement mentality of the welfare class and the pseudo conservatives that enable them.
Here’s a revolutionary thought. Let Rosie’s daddy buy her some vegetables.
Just clicked through and saw this:
“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.”
I’m on board with that program. You sell your soul? The devil owns you.
“Take the King’s Coin, Do the King’s Bidding.”
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