I’m following a story happening in Clayton, a small town in the East Bay here in California: Two sisters (one 11, one 3) have been selling the excess vegetables from their family’s prodigious produce plot in their neighborhood, but a neighbor complained and the city shut them down, leading to a fight that has turned into a request for a zoning variance.
My friend Don in Arlington, Va., alerted me to the first part of the story, but this week, the girls took their fight to Clayton’s Planning Commission, where the complaining neighbor was outed for what, it seems, is really the problem: he doesn’t like how the vegetable garden looks, either in-season when it’s being watered or out-of-season when the yard isn’t perfectly manicured.
What are your thoughts on the issue? Is a produce stand on Saturday mornings as harmless as a lemonade stand? Should the girls get their variance? Would it be any different if the parents were running the stand instead of two girls? And what about vegetable gardens-as-lawns? Would you be offended if someone grew pumpkins in their front yard next door to you and your property?
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 5:21 am
a friend, who bought 20-30 tomato plants from me each year, had to stop because of her neighborhood association, although the neighbors ate most of th tomatoes.
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Keep us Iowa folk updated! Perhaps this is a way that I could stop mowing my lawn….
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 6:39 am
I am interested in how this comes out, mostly because my darling husband wants to turn our entire backyard and part of the front into a garden. Of course, we live out in BFE – on an acre, with lots of farmland around us, although no one directly around us has a large garden.
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Wayne, were the tomato plants somewhere that visible? What do people have against tomato plants? Sheesh.
Anonymost, happy to keep tabs on this story for you. And yes — converting some lawn into food space is never a bad idea!
Ree, I don’t know…I’m in favor of more garden rather than less. Although…is your darling husband planning to do all the gardening? Or would you be required to pitch in?
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Wow this is a tough one because I’m all in favor of the girls entrepreneurial spirit and I love the garden Chase started and I can relate to the abundance of veggies but I can see why the neighbor would have a complaint. My neighbors have a yard sale business that they operate across the street and it’s unpleasant for the whole neighborhood to have all the traffic it brings. Going door to door to sell your veggies isn’t safe either. What I’d really like to see here is the city help out and get these kids and any other kids who’d like to participate in a booth at their local farmers market. A kids co-op farmers market. Everyone wins their and the neighbor gets to protect the value of his property which he is entitled to do as well. Just a thought….
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
not sure how visible, but from what she told me she opened her yard to the neighbors to come and get tomatoes. Tomatoes can’t compete with mowed grass.
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Wayne, I would agree that tomatoes can’t compete with mowed grass…but I’d say that tomatoes beat mowed grass, hands down. I mean, really…
on Sep 1st, 2008 at 8:23 am
Aww geesh. Is there really any private property ownership in america anymore? Its mine, I paid for it, pay the taxes on it and I can do what I want with it. As long as I am not drawing rats to infest the neighbors, bugger off. That said, I try to be a good neighbor and be clean and neat. But if I want tomatoes in the front yard, too bad. People are WAAAAAYYYY to obsessed with trying to control what others do. Maybe their time would be better spent building a privacy fence so they dont have to see. Or maybe the neigborhood brownshirts have forbidden that also?
on Sep 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am
Karen, I love the kids’ co-op market idea — that would be a win for everyone!
Jen, I do agree with you…there’s a time and a place to find a new hobby besides meddling…
on Sep 15th, 2008 at 6:09 am
[...] occurred to me the other day that I had not, in fact, checked back in on the story of the girls in Clayton, Calif., who were trying to get the city council to allow them to continue selling surplus veggies [...]