Posted on 08/02/2008 3:28:39 PM PDT by Graybeard58
KENT -- Jon Hoose's first crop of sweet corn he'd ever grown started to come in this summer about as well as the 17-year-old could have hoped.
He'd gotten his own rumbling John Deere tractor as a high school graduation gift. His dad, a former dairy farmer, helped him secure about 20 acres of leased land, and loaned him the cash to plant corn and pumpkins.
In early July, he stacked harvested corn on a picnic table at the end of his driveway on Davis Road, scrawled two cardboard signs advertising sweet corn and put them out on Route 341. He stationed his 13-year-old brother, Tom, to man the operation. When Tom wasn't there, they left a jar for customers to pay their $6 a dozen.
It was an operation they assumed was as harmless as a lemonade stand, but only about 10 days and $300 later, they received a letter from the town. They were running an unauthorized business, the letter said, and the signs on the road were prohibited by town ordinance. They had to stop selling corn by July 23.
"What are we going to do with it? We've got all this corn now," said Horse, who spent his four years at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in the National FFA Organization. Their plan was to sell about 25 percent of it from the picnic table. The rest they already made an arrangement to sell wholesale. Horse is saving his profits, partly to go to college.
On top of that, Hoose and his father, Tim Hoose, had purposely planned for their corn to come in later than most corn crops. They hoped to be the only game in town later this summer and early this fall, when most farmers may have run out. Over the next two months, most of their corn will reach it's peak.
"We'll sell wholesale what we can, and maybe give some away," Hoose said. "We can't let it go bad."
To operate a roadside stand, Kent residents must apply for a permit from the Planning and Zoning Commission. There has to be a free-standing structure to house the stand, adequate parking, and approval of the plan during a hearing. The process can take as little as a week, or as many as three months, said Jennifer Lemansky, land use administrator.
By that time, corn season could be over for this year.
The Connecticut Farm Bureau routinely hears questions from farmers who are told by their towns they're violating rules and ordinances, said Joan Nichols, government relations specialist with the bureau. "Unfortunately because we're a home-rule state, sometimes common sense doesn't always come into play," she said.
She said most towns have ordinances about agriculture but rules vary wildly from towns that are accommodating to farmers and others that are "not so agriculturally friendly."
"I didn't think it was a big deal to sell corn at the end of your driveway. Farmers don't have time to screw around with small-town, stupid politics," Tim Hoose said. "He's doing something practical with his life ... and he's doing something important."
As he drove his pickup truck past the pumpkins growing steadily next to the corn on Friday evening, Jon Hoose, for one, was hoping something gets straightened out before his next harvest is ready just as they planned it, in time for Halloween.
re: He could just post signs up around town like everyone else does that say:
“Garage Sale)))<>
LOL—wonder what the “law and order” types will do with that?
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We have the same problem here.
When I came to this valley in 1977, we had a valley 18 miles wide and 200 miles long, all desert.
Our Supervisor for one Board meeting said “those people in the valley, just want to live alone and raise a hog.
Today, the liberals from California would have a conniption fit if a hog drove through the valley.
They came here and pushed to make our zoning laws match the very towns they left and now they do.
I want back the freedom I knew in my youth...............
I do not see why they import diseased food and toys from any place in the world, but we can’t take a chance on eating from a farmers fields.
The northeast. Local politicians try that in our neck of the woods, and they'll wish they hadn't. We still have some rights to our land ownership.
Kent is a beautiful town. The Litchfield Hills are nice, and one time I met Susan St John in a Wal-Mart with her family.
I wonder is a DRIVING pig would come BEFORE a FLYING PIG or After??
It is very beautiful!!
That is what he's doing wrong!!! He is not applying for subsidies!! :-)
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