Just as more and more people are beginning to understand the importance of buying fresh produce from local growers they can trust, Mayor Greg Manning of Carlton, California, reminds us that government is too often part of the problem and not the solution. Instead of buying a tomato or two from 11-year-old Katie or 3-year-old Sabrina Lewis, Manning ordered the shutdown of the card-table farmstand that the sisters operated on Saturday mornings to sell excess produce from the family’s garden.

When reporter Terry McSweeney of the San Francisco ABC affiliate KGO confronted the mayor, instead of being repentant, Mayor Manning insisted that he was merely protecting the public safety and enforcing zoning laws:

They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have? Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next?”

What next - are the girls going to “make” some zucchini in the basement with a chemistry set? The little budding terrorists.

The mayor also noted that lemonade stands are against the law. He almost sounded wistful when adding that illegal lemonade stands typically don’t stay up enough for him to dispatch the long arm of the law to shut them down.

In addition to playing Grinch and deflating the dreams of two little girls, bureaucrats like Mayor Manning are why you typically cannot enjoy a slice of a ripe apple or peach at a farmers’ market unless it has been cut in a government-approved kitchen.

There is something so so wrong about a system that fails to protect us from DDT-laden grapes from Chile or e coli in spinach from California, while refusing to allow us to taste a new tomato variety at a kid’s farmstand.

Decades ago, my job with Michigan Farmer included covering the monthly Ag Commission meetings. A government drone with much in common with Mayor Manning once slid through a regulation requiring that all foodstuffs baked, cooked or canned for judging at county fairs would henceforth have to be produced in a certified kitchen. The thought that Aunt Tillie’s apple pie could no longer be cooked at home caused quite a stir when the next issue of our magazine came out.

At least in that era, once my story appeared, the regulation quickly disappeared. Let’s hope the same happens to Mayor Manning at the next election.