County sues farmer for too many vegetables

ajc.com ^ | Monday, September 13, 2010 | By Alexis Stevens

[rawhide]

DeKalb County is suing a man for growing too many vegetables on his own land, Channel 2 Action News reported.

Steve Miller of Clarkston said he plans to fight the county and has gotten his 2-acre property rezoned so that he can have his garden. But he still faces nearly $5,000 in fines, Miller told Channel 2.

Miller has been growing a variety of vegetables for 15 years, and his neighbors support him. He sells what he grows at local markets and gives some away, he said.

"It's a way of life, like it's something in my blood,” Miller told Channel 2.

The county says Miller grows more crops on his land than allowed under zoning regulations. Code enforcement officers began ticketing him in January for the zoning violation and for allegedly having unpermitted employees on the property.

[massgopguy]

I think I know what he can do with his extra tomatoes.

[driftdiver]

he should let me help, he wouldn’t have a problem after I killed all the plants.

[pnh102]

Looks like more underworked government that should be defunded.

[ElayneJ]

For those who say the Imam has a constitutional right to build a mosque at Ground Zero - note that the government sticks its nose into every facet of our lives and regulates what it wants to. There is a constitutional right to build a mosque anywhere at all but no constitutional right to grow vegetables on one’s own land? Get serious!

[Lazamataz]

Shouldn’t the government be MUCH more intimately involved in our daily lives? I want them to install a camera in my bathroom with a scale on which I can put my feces, so that only the daily permitted quanity of scat is eliminated from my body. HEAVY FINES FOR ANYONE WHO POOS OVER THEIR DAILY LIMIT!!!!

[ClearCase_guy]

Years ago I worked with a Chinese woman who tended to laugh at inappropriate times (I’m told this is very Chinese).

At one point (for some reason) I mentioned pumpkins, which I consider a very New England type of vegetable and I said that she may not have eaten one — “Oh no!” she said, “In China we grew many pumpkins! My district in China was famous for pumpkins! My grandfather grew more pumpkins than anyone else in our village!”

Then she started giggling and added “That’s why they killed him.”

[GeronL]

Government doesn’t like independent people

[Nea Wood]

Good point.

[Never on my watch]

I remember when private property mattered.

This guano has to stop.

[dfwgator]

“Death to the Kulaks.”

[Larry Lucido]

Just grow Halal vegetables.

[Southack]

Zoning is evil, packaged as being good.

[Lurker]

Then she started giggling and added “That’s why they killed him.”

"Government is not eloquence. Government is not reason. Government is force." George Washington.

[Gasshog]

Root the dems and moonbats out of your LOCAL governments. Everyone can work to this goal we will clean up our area politics. Too many dems go unchallenged on ballots everywhere

[Never on my watch]

He sells what he grows at local markets and gives some away, he said.

It is a shame that his neighbors feel compelled to make some case for the virtues of growing more vegetables. I don't care if he burns his harvest every year (or if he throws korans on the fire). It is his property. The government can pound sand.

[bboop]

Yeh — what the heck is the government that We the People HIRE and PAY for doing controlling how many tomatoes this man grows? Is that what we hired them for? I think we need to fire many of our employees post haste.

[ClearCase_guy]

Agreed. This is yet another example of how no one can own property any more. First, you pay eternal rent to the government (property taxes) for the land that you "own", and then the government tells you what you can and cannot do on the land.

I've seen cases where someone raised livestock for years. No problem. Then, development springs up close by, new homeowners move in, and they start complaining that animals smell. Next thing you know, livestock is banned by the zoning board. It's just not right.

[randog]

The county says Miller grows more crops on his land than allowed under zoning regulations.

Well then just confiscate his land under Kelo, raze it and put up a strip mall complete with a Quiki-Mart and tanning salon with enough asphalt to accommodate 10x traffic flow, all in the name of the "public interest".

[Never on my watch]

Too many dems go unchallenged on ballots everywhere...

Ain't that the truth. I would add that too many RINOs don't get primarried (is that a word?).

[sniper63]

"for allegedly having unpermitted employees on the property."

Must have exceeded his illegal Mexican workers too.

[MinuteGal]

Outrageous!

He should be allowed to grow as many vegetables as he wants.....except zucchinis.

Leni

[dblshot]

Hear ye Hear ye Hear ye
His majesty the King, Emperor of all Dekalb, Zoner of the lands here and far prohibits the growing of vegetables in excess of one bushel per hectare without payment of proper taxes also known as royalties to His Highness' representative the Sheriff of Nottingham.

[Adder]

Then government wonders why independent people don’t like them.

We MUST make massive changes from the top down.

[doodad]

I saw that this morning. Irks me as I just had to get a permit to take down a dead pine. A dead pine.

They quietly started this last month and quickly began writing $1000 fines to anyone that did not have the permit.

[KarlInOhio]

The wsbtv.com story that this AJC story links to makes it sound even worse for the government idiots. They cited him for misusing zoned land, so he didn't grow anything this year and got the land rezoned (it didn't say from what zoning to wnat). then the county decided to prosecute him for the old violations. That's just someone in government being petty because he got the rug pulled out from under him by the zoning board.

In a nice residential neighborhood I wouldn't mind my neighbor doing a little machining work on the side, but I wouldn't want him running a multi-employee machine shop out of his garage. Similarly, I wouldn't mind someone having a big garden, but I wouldn't want him planting a wheat crop and spraying commercial farm chemicals all over it. I couldn't tell where this man fell on the "really big garden" to "full fledged farm with equipment and chemical sprays" scale.

[csmusaret]

I remember back in the fifties when the government measured our cotton crop each spring. If we were over our Government dictated cotton allotment we had to plow the excess under. And yes, they did come back to check.

[hoosierham]

We must make massive changes from the bottom up.

All politics are local.

[cripplecreek]

except zucchinis.

LOL We trade garden veggies around here. I told my neighbor that if he plants zucchinis again, I'm coming over in the middle of the night and digging them up and tossing them in the lake.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“Government doesn’t like independent people”

That pretty much covers it. Reagan correctly understood that govt will grow unchecked until it is defunded and stripped of it's power.
That is the attitude we need again in DC and everywhere else.

[dblshot]

In the late 70’s I had a quarter acre garden which I fertilized one year with the silt from a sewage plant glass house from the Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown VA. I couldn’t give away zucchinnis fast enough to keep up with the production. Not to mention cherry tomatoes which were served in the mess hall and whose seeds made it through the process unharmed.

[VRWCmember]

I think we should tax -- you know -- thingy

[AppyPappy]

Well, I feel safer now /sarcasm

[penelopesire]

Dittos! Also look at your state’s economic development authority agencies. The commie rats are hiding there too working on their marxist hellhole plans.

[cripplecreek]

We must make massive changes from the bottom up.

All politics are local.

I had a long talk with my lake association president about that the other day. I'm not particularly fond of him but he was dead on when he said that.

[blam]

"For those who say the Imam has a constitutional right to build a mosque at Ground Zero - note that the government sticks its nose into every facet of our lives and regulates what it wants to. There is a constitutional right to build a mosque anywhere at all but no constitutional right to grow vegetables on one’s own land? Get serious!"

REVOLUTION!

[fight_truth_decay]

Dekalb County: The Greenest County in America

Note logo

[freespirited]

The county says Miller grows more crops on his land than allowed under zoning regulations. Code enforcement officers began ticketing him in January for the zoning violation and for allegedly having unpermitted employees on the property.

"Unpermitted employees?" Does that mean you need a permit to make a living in this county?

And to think I thought it was bad that you need a license to be a dog in Virginia.

[bmwcyle]

Yes and Mozart makes music with too many notes. /sarcasm

[mrmeyer]

Shades of FDR & Agricultural Adjustment Act:

"Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Federal agents oversaw the ugly spectacle of perfectly good fields of cotton, wheat, and corn being plowed under. Healthy cattle, sheep, and pigs by the millions were slaughtered and buried in mass graves.

Even if the AAA had helped farmers by curtailing supplies and raising prices, it could have done so only by hurting millions of others who had to pay those prices or make do with less to eat.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/

[MrB]

Government doesn’t like independent people

---

This is the fight in a nutshell, and people need to become more aware of this.
I would substitute “ruling class” for “government”, but the point still stands.

[Drill Thrawl]

In Pennsyltucky they have areas called Agricultural Security Areas which were created for that exact reason.

[Drill Thrawl]

Yes and Mozart makes music with too many notes. /sarcasm

LOL. We use that all the time at work when managers are having problems understanding the technical details about what they have decreed shall be done.

[ASOC]

That caught my eye as well.

Is this a garden or a truck farm? - sounds like a business thus a truck farm.

But since I don’t live in GA (and doubt I ever would) I’m sure those folks can sort it all out on thier own...

[Don Corleone]

Welcome to the USSR west. Obama the czar in chief.

[Flintlock]

Pitchforks.
Torches.
Lotsa rope.
Tree limbs (lamposts will do).
Some assembly required.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Silly man. He really thought that it was “his land.” Poor deluded individual.
Not any more. There is no private property any more. Oh, I know, you still have to pay the taxes and shovel the sidewalks, but you don’t really own it. Not when the government tells you what to do on “your property.”

Plank 1 in the communist manifesto - eliminate private property.

[DuncanWaring]

What do you have against the lake?

[afraidfortherepublic]

Stop maligning zucchinis. I planted them 3 times this spring and didn’t get a single one to grow. I dug up the ground and found the seeds gone. I’m guessing that the birds took them. :( I’ll plant them deeper next year.

I couldn’t even find any at the nursery that were already started, so I put in watermelons instead.

[pallis]

Big government can’t leave people alone.