The following is the oral history of the March 2011 Living Treasure Les Snyder. The oral history was recorded and transcribed by Nancy Theiss. The Living Treasure Program is a joint program of the Oldham Era and the Oldham County History Center.


I was born in Owensboro, Oct. 26, 1943 during the Second World War. My father was in Germany or North Africa at the time and didn’t see me until I was 24 months old. My mother was living with my grandparents in Owensboro. They had moved there from MacClean County, southeast of Owensboro, where the all family was born and had farms. My granddad had a farm near Livermore and he had coal mines on the farm. They dug short shafts in the hills and they pulled the coal out of the shafts with ponies because the shafts were not big enough for horses. Then they delivered the coal with mules. My grandfather was a farmer and a mule skinner. When the State or County needed to build a road, they would hire my grandfather and his mules. In the summer they mowed the right of ways and the Cemeteries. My dad and his 2 sisters road ponies and a horse to school every day in Livermore, KY. The last time I drove my dad to visit his sister, he told me "I spent the hottest summer of my life on this road and explained that he had driven a team of mules slip scraping that roadbed all summer.

My grandfather lost his farm as a result of delivering coal to freezing families that had no money to pay him. This was during the time of the Great Depression. After losing his farm he became a carpenter and lived in a rented house in Owensboro. This is the time my father left for the War.

When Dad came back from WWII he went to work for a lumber company for Bob Robertson and then Robertson opened a lumber company in Cloverport and Dad moved us there where he managed the store. We lived right on the river on an old historic house. We lived in half of the house and the other half, Mrs. Frank Colville lived in. My family became very close to her and my sister and I became to call her "Aunt Ray". She told us that the house had been headquarters for the Union Army during the Civil War, as the house was on the Ohio River.

The life then was you went to church two times a week. There were farms on each side of the town. There were train tracks close to our house. We had hoboes back then that hopped rides on the train. The hobo’s always had a bandanna tied on a stick with all their things in it. So Barack Gibson, a friend of mine, we decided we would run away from home and live life like a hobo. We were standing on the banks along the river, in front of the house, and we made our own hobo sticks. But we didn’t get very far, I think we got hungry! We put our sticks down and went home!

Every weekend I visited my grandparents in Owensboro. In those days the river would flood and we would be going to Owensboro and of course, the road back then were not very good. We would drive through all those river bottoms and the roads would be flooded. They stuck tobacco sticks up on each side of the road so you knew where it was but it scared me to death when we drove through those old roads. I was fearful that the car was going to drown out or wash away.

When the river flooded the water would back up in the lowlands along the river- logs and trash would back up. As kids, we would try to walk the logs as they floated in the back water. You know if you fell in the logs, they would close back up on you and you could drown. One of my friends and I both fell in the backwater but we were lucky enough to get out!

We fished a lot on the river, everybody did back then. My Dad had old time, hand built flat bottom boats. Before he would go to work, he and I would run the trout lines. We’d come in and there would a sink full of fish for my Mother to take care of which sometimes she wasn’t so happy about! He also raised and trained bird dogs. We hunted quail. I remember that he sold dogs for $600, which was a lot of money back then. At the end of the hunting season, the best hunter was decided by who had the most quail in the freezer. Usually it was my dad.

Dad switched jobs from the lumber company to work for the Murray Tile company. He went there as vice president of sales and he flew all over the United States. That’s why we moved to Louisville so he would be closer to the airport.

When we moved to Louisville, in 1957, we moved to a subdivision off Westport Road that had been a cornfield and I absolutely hated it! I was used to having free roam and I was devastated- it was a small ranch house, Dad was gone all the time. I entered as a freshman in Waggoner High School. We would hang out at Frisch’s Big Boy on Shelbyville Road and ate Brawny Lads and Big Boys. My parents bought us (Les had a sister) a 59 Buick convertible. Beautiful car! I was in style- it was white with a baby blue top. It had no power steering. Those were fun and memorable times.

I wanted to be a football player when I was a kid. When I would go to Owensboro I would hear about the Owensboro Red Devils football team. When we moved to Louisville, the guy that lived three doors down to me, Pat Malone, played football. So I began to play with Pat on Saturday’s in neighborhood games that fathers had organized.

I went out for football at Waggoner but I went out as a guard because my friend Pat, was a guard. I decided I needed to gain weight and I began to lift weights. By the time I was a senior, I weighed 190 lbs. They moved me to end and defensive halfback.

The Coach was Marti Deim. One of the Assistant Coaches, Jim Gray, I still see and have lunch with. My Senior year we had a football camp in Danville and I started as a right halfback for the first time. In an exhibition game I made 5 touchdowns. I continued to do that. Shelbyville High School used to have the Burley Bowl and they invited us to play. It was cold and ice was frozen on the concrete benches. That year I won the Pearce Trophy in Jefferson County for the most points scored. I was recruited by Duke, UK, Wake Forest and other colleges. During my last High School game at the Shelbyville game I injured my knee- it was a traumatic injury and they said I would never play sports again. I had a caste on my leg for months- they didn’t know how to do knee surgery back then. All the schools that recruited me backed off except for Wake Forest- and they signed me. One of my friends, Brent Robbins, he and I still do farmer’s market, we played tennis all summer before I went to Wake Forest and it made my knee better.

I went to Wake Forest at the same time Brian Piccolo was there. We were on the Freshman team together. He was the Fullback and I was the right Halfback. Later Brian went to the Pros, The Chicago Bears, a Movie Brian’s Song was made in his memory. Unfortunately, Brian died from cancer in his second or third year of Pro Football. As sophomores at Wake Forest, we lost every game we played. I couldn’t handle loosing- it just messed with my mind. In the first game of my junior year we were playing Army and I caught the opening kick-off and got tackled. And I felt something crack in my backbone- they couldn’t find anything- I would play but then as the game went one, I would lose feeling in my legs. It was during that time that I began to learn about drugs because if you had an injury, they would give you drugs to help lessen the pain. And I began to drink- and when I drank, I couldn’t just stop with one from the very beginning. This was the beginning of my journey with alcohol.

I withdrew on a medical withdrawal from Wake Forest- I wasn’t 100 percent and I couldn’t take that- I left and by that time I had gotten into horses in North Carolina. One of my girlfriends, in North Carolina, was a rider from Georgia and she found a farm where she could ride in Winston Salem and I went with her. I got a job with the guy that owned the farm and then I worked on the Cone Estate near Ashville and learned how to drive carriages. I began to drink more and that was beginning to be a problem- I would drink until I blacked out.

I left North Carolina after a year and went back to Louisville where I got married in the Fall of 1964 to Pat Scott. We were married for seven years and I went to work for American Tobacco Company as a supervisor on 18th and Broadway. Pat and I had two daughters. I leased a farm on Wolf Pen Road and moved there, our daughter, Monica was born there. I had horses there and I was training them for western riding and pole vending. I was entering my horses in small western horse shows and met this guy over at Middletown in a horse show. He had a beautiful palomino and he asked me to be his team member in the rescue race. You have a guy standing in the middle of the ring and this guy is on his horse and charges at you and without stopping you throw yourself up on his horse and race to the end. He would come riding over to my house, he lived about 5 miles from my house and we would talk. One day we road back to his house and had breakfast and bloody Mary’s. He asked me if I ever thought about changing jobs, and I said well, yeah. I knew he worked at Ford. I said how would you get a good job at Ford? He said you would talk to me! He started me as a supervisor in the paint department. He knew I was a good worker- he liked my history of horses and farming and football. The paint department was a high pressure job with a lot of union labor and union issues.

I couldn’t do any wrong the first seven years that I worked there- I was a weekend drinker to keep it under control but I was an alcoholic during all those years. During the last few years I was there they put me in Our Lady of Peace several times for alcoholism- they didn’t call it alcoholism at that time- they called it passive, aggressive anxiety. It was embarrassing to me to be an alcoholic. I thought it was a personal weakness or a moral issue and did not understand why I was not able to overcome the problem. I did not know I had a disease. I remember how I looked down at people that they said were alcoholics- what was going on up until 1982 was a constant effort to polish it in some way- denial that I had it. I’ve got a job, I do this and that, I can’t be an alcoholic- the smarter you are the harder to succeed in a recovery program.

I separated from my first wife in 1970 and my boss had a farm on Spann Lane and I moved out to LaGrange to manage it. I loved it. I was working a highly stressful job on Fern Valley. I trained the guys in the paint department- but it was a hard job, lots of chemicals. But I was making good money. I bought my boss out on the farm and I had horses and cattle and farm machinery in 72 or 73. During that time,1971, I met my second wife, Pam, and she is still my wife. I had two tickets to the BB King concert and asked her to go out with me. Pam was a legal secretary in Louisville and then worked out here. She would come out and make me one of her Lebanese salads, cook supper, try to help me on the farm and clean the house for me and then go back to Louisville. Her visiting became more frequent and we learned together how to work on the farm and decided to get married in 1975. We had two very dear neighbors, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Smith, that would help us and teach us. They were very instrumental in our early farming experiences.

I lost my job at Ford in 1976. Pam found out that Tommy Gowin was opening a farm supply store, called The Farmer's Market, up there at Jim King’s buildings along the railroad tracks - it was only open five years. I went to work for him and was making only 10% of what I was making at Ford. I was in the asylum three times during that year due to my uncontrolled drinking. One day the phone rang and Irene Garrett up at Southern States gave me a call and asked me if I wanted a job. She said there was new manager at Southern States and needed someone to work in the warehouse. They decided to put me through their manager training program and learned about their fertilizer program and agronomics and animal feeds, etc- I worked for them for four years. I was an assistant manager at that store. I became more interested in doing things on the farm and in 1982 I quit. That was also the time, January 21, 1982, when I had been in a black-out for four days. I had actually taken tobacco to Shelbyville and sold it and got a check for $15,000 or $20,000 dollars and Pam wanted to know what I did with the check, and I didn’t know. Well I had deposited it but I didn’t remember it- when I came out of the black-out I thought it was still Monday and it was actually Thursday. That’s how alcoholics get on the road and cause wrecks.

Pam knew I had a drinking problem, which was now affecting our lives. She reached out for help and learned about a Recovery Program. We checked them out together and I was told that I was not responsible for my disease of alcoholism but I was responsible for my recovery.

From 1974 to 1982 I would have periods of sobriety and then I would think I was over playing this thing and I would drink again. I found a spiritual plan of recovery. Which was the foundation of my recovery. Finally in January , 1982 I took my last drink. Prior to my last drink Pam had taken the girls and left. They could no longer live with my drinking as they knew it was killing me. My parents helped me to get to a program and found a treatment center called Cumberland Heights down in Nashville. When I returned home, my wife and children were here waiting for me. We were finally on the right track of getting our lives and the farm back together.

I started raising 18 acres of tobacco and about 5 acres of produce on my farm and by 89 I was raising 50 acres of tobacco. People in Oldham County started asking me to raise their tobacco. By this time in my life, I had regained my self-worth and the respect of the people in Oldham County. I did this by working hard and being honest. By the mid-80s we became produce wholesaler’s – the first few years I thought we should raise everything but I decided to specialize in three crops, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash. In 1989 we utilized local people that were used to seasonal work- I would hire 10 to 14 people to work on Monday and by Friday no one would come to work. So I became involved in using migrant workers.

It seemed to me that Oldham County was a unique county because I could lease tobacco for a much more reasonable rate that surrounding counties. In 82 we had 18 acres by 83 we had 30 acres. We had borrowed money to expand and in 83 we had a drought and couldn’t pay any of the loans. Pam saw that we could apply for a disaster loan. We got a loan on all the money we owed and then added that they would do it at 5 ¼% - it saved our farm. People were losing their farms all over the country because interest rates at that time were 12 to 14 percent- we were very lucky.

When we started tobacco, we would tie tobacco in hands, put it on sticks, load it by hand onto wagons. Bobby Blakemore was one of the first to have a greenhouse to grow tobacco plants in and seed them, that was in 89. In 1982 I discovered there were growers in Florida that grew tobacco plants in greenhouses and as I increased the acres of tobacco my dad and mom would go to Florida and pick up plants for 6 or 7 acres and by the time we got those set, our plant beds would be ready and we would start pulling our plants.

A year or two later, we would buy plugs(which are tiny little plants) and grow them in the greenhouse. And then we began to grow our own plants from seed in our new greenhouse. We were told that we couldn’t do that but we found we could and we did! It got to where I would sometimes lease people’s tobacco and I would also work people’s tobacco on a share basis. By the 1990's and 2000's we were raising tobacco on 7 of the biggest farms in Oldham Co., including our own farm on Spann Lane, totaling about 55-60 acres.

At cutting and housing time, Pam wound drive the tractors in the field and ran the loading crew while I managed the crews in the barn. Through all our farming, I could not have had a better partner than Pam. Not only on the farm, but I could not have picked a wife on my own who had given the love and ability to raise our two girls, Monica and Serena.

When we started out we would use seasonal workers and used a number of folks around Oldham County, farm hands, people laid off- tobacco money paid pretty good money- but by 1989, we got where we could not depend on those people anymore. A lot of those people were drawing SSI, or unemployment and people were getting older and couldn’t do that work anymore. We would have 12 acres of produce or 30 or 40 acres of tobacco in the field and everyone was supposed to be there to help and no one would show up! That would happen week after week after week. It was so stressful because you couldn’t depend on anybody. This problem was happening to all tobacco farmers. There was this guy in Shelby County who could get migrant workers from Mexico so I signed up and split 20 or so workers with another farmer. So I had my first crew of five regular workers and they were there everyday. In addition to the increase in tobacco , our produce acreage increased as well. We were now raising about 12-15 acres of produce, still selling wholesale.

One of the first days that the migrant workers came, we had been topping tobacco for 10 hours and we were ready to quit, and I heard the workers rumbling. And the one that could speak English said they wanted to work more hours- and that was great because the folks I had before usually wanted to quit by noon! If I was going to farm, it was a joyous occasion to have people that actually wanted to work. Some of the best workers I ever had came from Florida- they were orange pickers. We absolutely would not have anything to eat (in the United States) without these migrant workers.

Housing for the migrant workers was a problem- I had to have housing and initially had trouble getting a permit because some of my neighbors didn’t want workers around but most of the people around me, knew me and trusted me. I got the permit for two years and I have continued to renew it. I think it is so important that people realize that without these workers, much of the work in the US would simply not get done. When we decided to go this route, we checked into the rules and regulations of having migrant workers. There was a lot of legalities to employing them. However, our farm was not going to keep producing if we did not comply with these rules. It was costly, but very much worth it. In addition to our part, we had to be sure that our workers were "legal" and had proper papers so that we would not be fined and "shut down". At one time the Dept. of Labor visited us to check on our housing for our workers. We were extremely nervous, but we passed. And so Sunshine Farm continued to grow.

I got involved in the Family Farm Project, which is a CSA, with my produce- which actually started in Japan, by Japanese housewives who began to buy shares of produce from the local farmers. It moved northeast and in the mid-west in the U. S. In Kentucky, Steve Smith, an organic farmer who prior to 2002, when we started the Family Farm project, had been growing produce for at least 12 years. He got in touch with Eliot Coleman in Vermont, I think, who was one of the first guys in community farming. About this time (in 2002) the State started the buy-out tobacco program and Kentucky started to take some of the money that it had been awarded, through the attorney general from the suit with tobacco companies, to allocate money to local counties for various new diversified agricultural projects.

Steve and I were chairs for each county (Trimble and Oldham) to distribute tobacco money for projects. We had some meetings with other produce farmers to try to decide how to better sell our produce. There has always been a large presence of produce farmers in Trimble County. We started the CSA to develop a way to introduce fresh local produce to the public and introduce the grower at the same time which resulted in cutting out the middle man and a better price for the farmer. Lynn Winter, of Lynn’s Paradise Café, got involved. She and Steve and I met down here at the Cracker Barrel in LaGrange and she thought we could do something. Lynn knew Bill Wheland, down at Glassworks, wanted a produce project across from Glassworks, down on Market St. Lynn went around to downtown Louisville, and called people in the downtown area, eight block area, and she got people to sign-up for subscriptions to our CSA. They paid $425 for 26 weeks of 6 to 9 items of produce each week. The items were molded to fit a family of four each week. The first year we had 10 growers that started. Some of these growers are no longer participating and now we consist of 3 growers. Our Family Farm Project CSA is now in its 10th year. Mayor Abramson, was always the first to sign up every year to renew his subscription. We have had as many as 160 people sign up for the Family Farm Project which is our CSA.

Right now I do the Heart of St. Mathews Farmers Market, the LaGrange Farmer’s Market and we do Westport Village and the CSA. My first farmer’s market was actually the Harper’s Restaurant. Sarah Fritschner did an article on me in the Courier Journal and the owner of Harpers from North Carolina read it. He was a tomato nut and he wanted fresh tomatoes so he bought them from me and featured six dishes around my tomatoes in his restaurant.

My favorite tasting tomatoes are the Heirloom tomatoes. I like the Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Japanese Black Truffle and one called Great White. I start the seeds in my greenhouse.

I plant about 5,000 tomato plants each year. If I was growing just one plant I would probably grow the Celebrity tomato. Most people make mistakes with their tomatoes because they don’t put them in full sun. Tomatoes are a heat crop- it’s like tobacco, it’s in the same family as tobacco. It’s in the black nightshade family. In August when it is so hot that we don’t want to go outside you can almost see tomatoes grow. The biggest problem is also that people don’t evenly water them. Tomatoes get bottom rot when they are too wet. If you don’t water them at all, and then you have a big rain- they are going to get bottom rot. I recommend keeping the soil moist- we use black plastic. We make raised beds covered with plastic using drip irrigation tape.

I feel so grateful that for the last 35 years that my wife and I have been able to work in an occupation that we truly love. The good and the bad. I am truly blessed. And my hope that the public will learn to respect and honor the small family farms and help us to protect the green space around Louisville, while doing so, we continue to put "Fresh Local" food on their tables. From our farms, to your tables.