Rally your community, state your case and keep on growing your own food!

A little background:

In 2017, we received notice from our Home Owner's Association (HOA) that our front yard vegetable garden was not allowed according to the architectural review committee (ARC). In the words of the manager of the HOA:

"The board isn’t saying you can’t have a garden, they are just saying you can’t have it in your front yard."

Below was my "Letter of Appeal" to keep our garden in the front.  I am hopeful they will no longer ban it because several moms in neighborhood supported me in presenting this case at a recent board meeting. 

Their response was encouraging and we haven't received any further citation since then!

2020 Update:

Since writing this, we have been cited again for growing "vines" which the HOA thought were ivy on our front yard flanking both sides of doorsteps.  These were actually grape vines that provided us with several pounds of native Concord grapes.  We are planning to pull them out, plant the in our school's gardens and place beautiful edible trees there instead.   

Dear Members of the governing board of the Fox Creek Homeowner's Association,

My name is Nicole Schauder. My husband David and I and our children have lived in Trumpet Circle for over 10 years. Around 5 years ago, we started gardening in order to grow our own food.

This gardening project, while at first recreational, quickly grew into a serious endeavor for us. We were desperately trying to search for alternative sources of organically grown, nutrient-dense produce.  

We thought, there must be something wrong with the commercial food that we were buying.  Especially, the food that was not organic.  

Perhaps if we grew our own fruits and veggies,  it might heal our children from their allergies.

When our first child was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with "failure to thrive." This was due to the fact that she was allergic to wheat, legumes, tree nuts, beef, chicken, eggs, milk and other dairy products.

Our second child, similarly, suffered from allergies that included fish and nuts. One evening when he was 3, we fed him tilapia for dinner.  Shortly after eating the fish he turned blue and could not breathe.  We gave him Benadryl (we had no Epi-Pen for him then) and called the paramedics.

The only foods they could safely eat with the exception of legumes and nuts were vegetables and fruits.

5 years ago, we had fewer organic food choices in the market than we have today.  As we began researching our food, we discovered that commercially-grown food even if it is organic travels long-distances to get to the stores and loses valuable nutrition in the process.  

A study by Rickman, Barret & Bruhn, comparing the degradation over time of the amount of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in vegetables shows the following results:

When these fruits and vegetables finally hit the shelves of our grocery stores, organic options are more expensive than their non-organic counterparts.

The more we studied about intensive, organic vegetable gardening, the more we tried to apply our knowledge to our backyard garden. But since our property faces the south, we discovered that planting in our front yard (Year 3) greatly increased our fruit and vegetable yields.  

The results were much more effective than planting in our backyard. Plants need sunlight to grow more vigorously.

This is the reason why we started to plant edibles in our front yard.

Eventually, we became certified in permaculture designers.  

Permaculture is a sustainable design system based on ethics that gives a holistic approach to organic gardening. Basically, it helps you consider your garden, not merely in isolation, but as part of many circular ecosystems: home, family, local wildlife and pests, community and the larger society. And it works with nature, not against it.

So when we design with permaculture in mind, we design our gardens and homes taking into consideration not only our own personal goals for health, wellness, aesthetics, and recreation, but that of a larger whole of our community and for the long-term ecological benefit of mankind and the planet.

Our family business is Permaculture Gardens (www.growmyownfood.com), an education website that is passionate about helping suburban families grow their own food!

As already mentioned, we experienced health benefits by being able to grow and eat our own food. In the summer, more than 25% of our food consumption comes from our garden.

Since we started eating organic and from our garden, our two eldest children have outgrown all their previous allergies except for most nuts. This is a tremendous burden that has been lifted off our shoulders. When we first found out that they were allergic, we had to ban certain foods from our home, learn how to cook allergy-free and discover where to source our foods. Now, the only thing they have to watch out for is nuts.

Our bottom four children were born with no allergy conditions. This was an amazing relief for us!

Since we started growing our own food, our own digestive disorders have been healed. My husband used to be more prone to "food poisoning" and now that is a very rare occurrence for any of us.

Even though we are considered a very large family of 8, we do not get sick as often as we used to 5 years ago!

Our food tastes better. We've only discovered how fresh figs taste vastly different from store-bought ones.

The same is true of tomatoes. No two tomatoes in our garden seem to taste alike.

It is the beginning of December as I write but we are still harvesting Jerusalem artichokes from our garden. Jerusalem artichokes are legitimate, juicy, delicious vegetables that help your body fight diabetes. When our neighbor Sandy tasted them she said:

"I am racking my brain to figure out what it tastes like and there's nothing I know that I can compare it with. I cannot figure it out. And yet, it's good!"

The same is true of fruit grown in neighboring gardens.  Our neighbor, Aklima, who lives two-doors to our right just gave me a Bangladeshi pumpkin to eat and to save seeds from. What a sweet and delicous pumpkin that was, quite unlike anything I've had from a grocery store.  

Speaking of friendships, we've started many conversations and forged many friendships because of our front yard.

We have helped build other gardens on Trumpet Circle and in the community. We have given away tomatoes, herbs, squashes, and pumpkins to our neighbors left and right to us.

I give zucchini bread or sweet potato muffins to Mr. Denny Rucker on my right and hordes of tomatoes, squash, fig, cherry, pawpaw fruit (the largest native American fruit) to my neighbors on my right Ms. Sedia Asgarian and Aklima, the Bangladeshi grandmother featured above.

Aklima speaks no English, we only speak through the language of farming.