Victory Veggie Garden gets "Squashed"

After 17 years of living with a beautiful wooded lot across the street, last year I arrived home from a trip to North Carolina to see of the trees cut down.  Uh-oh, I thought, the roumors must be true; ANOTHER person has bought the land across the street. This would be oh the fouth or fith person to do so, but no one raped the land before. The lot looked TERRIBLE, not to mention the loss of trees lowered the property values of the houses facing it by about $20,000.00. This lot had been unbuildable in every shape or form and has passed on from one sucker to another that has a dream of building a house there for a quick sale. As a result the entire street has used the edge of the property along the street for additional parking (this is a lake community so driveways are small or there are none at all), to walk our dogs, drop our organic waste etc.

Unfortuantely, others saw this as an opportunity not to pay for their garbage removal and began dumping on the property. Bags & Bags of it. I spent many an afternoon collecting garbage, and getting rid of it at my cost, and still pick up the occasional stray bottle or fast food wrappers. (why do people litter? I dont get it)

As I was getting ready to my house on the market at the time, my husband I put a compost bin up made of haybales for the street to put the organic waste in, later to become beautiful gardener's gold. (Mulch or soil for those who do not know what gardeners gold is). A month or so later, I see a buisness card on my door regarding the haybales. Ok I figure....here goes. I had heard from the woman in our lake association office that the owner was frankly, a jerk. Typical mid-New Jersey mentality type, talked over her, and was easily angered. Definitely a person I do not want to call as I have quite a bit of an Irish temper myself. My husband thought of the idea of putting a vegetable garden on the property as it now got full sun all day since the trees were destroyed, and I ran with it. I email, and mailed 2 letters requesting permission to put a garden on the property to the owner. In addition to strew some wild flower seeds and sunflower seeds to improve the look of the lot. No response. As common law states, 'Silence is Acceptance'.

I went ahead and tilled 900 square feet of land (30x30), added manure, grass clipping, decomposing leaves and worm castings. Let nature do it's trick and improve the soil while we waited for winter to pass. I don't know about the rest of you, but it really makes me mad to pay $5.00 for two red peppers at the grocery store, and as I am sure many people agree, groceries can be outrageous to feed a family of four. This garden would save us hundreds and allow me to put the saving against the debt that I am killing myself to pay down. But in the back of my head I knew, and often said: "Watch, this guy is going to show up in July when the garden is full blown and demand we rip it down or want rent'.

Spring came and I planted corn, pumpkins, 3 kinds of squash, lettuce, radish, tomatos, potatos, peppers, cukes, canteloupe, herbs, peas and beans. A lot of hard work went into this putting up temporary fencing, rain barrels, etc. But the best part was that all the plants were totally organic. No pesticides, fertilizer etc. Only beer was used to lure the slugs away from the lettuce, and that in a small dish. The produce was delicious and I was already seeing the savings.

But I was right; July 19th while I was not home, a man came to the door informing my daughters, 18,17, and 15, that he was the owner of the property. He was very aggressive toward them and went from saying such things as "who puts a garden on someone elses property?"  (Well, Sir, in the country, WE do) to "What if someone gets hurt?" To which my 17 year old daughter replied; "In a garden?"  lol... to "Okay thats fine if she wants a garden, she can pay me rent".  oh-kay?

I wrote a letter to him instead of a verbal issue. He wrote back and was very threatening and nasty. I finally called him to find out his price for renting 900 square feet of DIRT. At the mention of square footage, he started to splutter and seemed very flustered, either that I knew what square footage was or that he didn't know how to calculate it. Phone messages went back and forth I finally spoke with him today. He wanted $400.00 per month, with a $800.00 security deposit payable by the end of the week.   Excuse me, what?

Here in Northern NJ, farm country, on the border of New York State, these prices do not exist.  You can rent a 1 car 30x30 garage (the same size as my vegetable plot) for $100.00 a month. This is DIRT, $50.00 per month would have been about right. And being that all the owners permits were pulled and he cannot build until he corrects the flooding problem he caused by removing all the trees, his land is sitting and doing NOTHING. Rent for June, July, August, September and part of October would have been $250.00 he did not have before. But $400.00 per month is sinply greed and "down below" mentality and pricing. Most people would simply have been happy with free, fresh, organic vagetables; which I did offer from the start and with my counter offer of $50.00 per month.

So today when I get home from work I will start digging up all plants with the exception of the squash and pumpkins, pot them, and put them on my deck. (That will look great while the house is for sale). The people at the local nursey were very sympathetic to my case and gave lots of pots free and at a very cheap price.  I am saddened at the greed of today's people, worried my plants are going to die, and frustrated that all this guy did was yell when I spoke to him on the phone. When the garbage returns to his property thanks to the 'dumpers' I will be sure to take some pictures and forward them along to Mr. Greedy. That and the pictures of the rats that the garbage will draw. Have fun never building your house Sir!