Just when I thought I’ve seen it all I find this news alert.  Did you ever imagine that growing your own food and selling the extra at a local farmer’s market could land you in court?  I certainly didn’t.

This case is a prime example of how tyranny has become common place in the USA.  Before the law of the land only needed to be involved in clear cases of the violation of rights of someone else now it is all about violating our rights to grow our own food, make our own food choice, consume the food we prefer and support the farmers that grow that food.  We’ve seen the war against raw milk but now it’s being brought against hobby vegetable gardeners.

In case you find this hard to believe, and I don’t blame you, you can watch the local news segment on this hobby farmer’s plight on WSBTV Georgia’s website.

I’m still not sure what this man’s actual crime was though I can see they are using the excuse that he violated zoning laws however that doesn’t make sense as they continue to pursue the case against him even after he got his land rezoned.  This smacks of harassment to me.  And I have to wonder how much they will spend on court fees, and the time for the prosecutors to pursue this $5000 in fines.  Probably enough to make it not worth it but of course they will anyway.  Common sense rarely comes into play where governments are concerned.

Then there is the rather disturbing method they used to determine he was growing too many vegetables.  No one is sure how the information was obtained without a search warrant or someone actually coming to the premises to determine his “violation.  This has led many people to believe they are using satellite or aerial surveillance?  Not hard to believe as we know they constantly fly over the countryside supposedly looking for illegal drug production.   Is anything sacred anymore?  Privacy fences and screening trees and bushes do little to protect against snooping eyes from the skies.  When will enough be enough and Americans stand up and demand their rights especially to privacy and the freedom to life and liberty.  And what is a better example of freedom than growing one’s own food?  It’s hard for me to think of anything more vital and crucial really.

And the sad truth is that I doubt anyone really cares that he was growing vegetables but instead the local governments that are struggling to meet their budget needs in this horrendous economy, getting no help from the onerous Federal Government which is taking a bigger chunk out of our souls every day, has decided to become proactive in finding new fines to collect.  That should really upset you, when the government decides instead to look for law breakers, and make new  ones by invasive means, rather than just punish crimes committed in open air.  It rather smacks of Orwell’s 1984 to me where everyone is under constant surveillance and scrutiny the very minutia of our lives recorded to find possible thought crimes to prosecute us.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984