Page Farm & Home Museum Luncheon Lecture Takes Up Raising Tomatoes
Contact: Patty Henner, 581-4401, George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum is offering home gardeners a chance on Nov. 8 to learn all they ever wanted to know about growing tomatoes. “Tomato City” co-owner Tom Roberts of Snakeroot Organic Farm in Pittsfield is the scheduled guest speaker at the museum’s continuing brown bag lunch series.
Roberts and his partner Lois Labbe have maintained Tomato City, the rubric under which they market an extensive variety of heirloom tomatoes and seeds at Snakeroot Organic Farm, for 14 years. They produce 20 varieties — hybrids and open pollinated, cherries, standards and paste, reds, pinks and yellows. About half of the varieties are heirlooms and half modern hybrids.
Roberts will share the triumphs and tribulations of running and marketing an organic farm, with a particular focus on heirloom varieties of tomatoes.
The discussion begins at noon, is open to the public and is free.
Roberts joined Peacemeal Farm in Dixmont in 1981 with almost no farm experience. But with a willingness to learn, he helped start many central Maine food co-ops in the 1970’s, helped start a statewide produce delivery business and has marketed his own produce at farmers’ markets continuously since 1983. He is a member of the Orono Farmers’ Market.
Call 581-4100 for further information about the lecture and discussion on Nov. 8 or about the Page Farm and Home Museum on the Orono campus.