Interview with Tom Roberts, Snakeroot Organic Farm

We’re sitting down today with Tom Roberts of Snakeroot Organic Farm in Pittsfield Maine to talk generally about Tom’s farming career, agriculture, and whatever comes to mind. To contact Tom, he can be found at Snakeroot Organic Farm – Gardeners to the public since 1995.

Timestamps below of our topics, as well as to help you find your way back if you can’t watch it all at once. 00:00 Intro

1:27 Back to the land

2:46 Growing crops for Johnny’s Selected Seeds

4:28 Camden Farmers Market, Brewer Farmers Market

5:48 Met Lois Labbe, moved together and beginnings of Snakeroot Organic Farm

7:31 Serious farming at 35 years old. Born in 1946. Farming past vs today

8:17 DDT, Blueberries, Wholesale to Retail

13:41 Pre- Back to the land movement farming, victory gardens, war industry transformed into a consumer goods industry.

15:01 Picking beans in the 1920’s and 30’s

15:48 The rise of consumer convenience

16:30 Importance of farming for us, vs our parents

17:34 Just what was the back to the land movement? Homesteading, rural exodus, living between Liberty and Freedom.

20:30 Fail Small

24:30 Try new things, sweet potatoes, leaf mold

28:46 Farmers markets, Brewer Farmers Market, Haymarket Square in Bangor

31:01 Solar farms and sheep

33:42 Land valuation, the dollar, commodity of land

36:46 What’s the future hold? Collapse of the American empire, China, Religion, Minorities

43:18 Mao Zedong “Hundred Flowers Campaign”. Internal vs external costs.

45:30 Egg prices, cheap goods, hidden costs, evolution, covid, wars, consciousness

51:06 GMO Corn, benefits, issues, evolution, diversity

56:24 MOFGA, selling peanuts at the Common Ground Country Fair

1:01:09 Allergies on the rise

1:03:47 Rural vs city life, tradeoffs, Rome, European Union

1:09:25 Limits to scale and growth, cancer, rethinking centralized vs decentralized systems

1:14:46 What is Real Organic Project? USDA take over of Organic.

1:19:53 The future for Snakeroot, looking at the future generation.

1:23:51 Contact Tom at Snakeroot Organic Farm – Gardeners to the public since 1995.

My three favorite take aways (paraphrased as close as possible) from this interview that really stood out to me:

1. “You characterized it as back to agriculture. What it actually was about was back to rural living….” 17:34

2. “…what’s happening in society today, the collapsing of so many institutions, I think is a direct result of having a focus on the wrong kinds of values.” 37:36

3. “You haven’t solved people’s problems, you’ve just made them behave a certain way” -In regards to Centralized Top Down Management 1:13:33