Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke

Dean Kuipers

Dec 2008 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Visit www.burningrainbowfarm.com
On a mission to build a peaceful, pot-friendly Shangri-La, Tom Crosslin and his lover Rollie Rohm founded Rainbow Farm, a well-appointed campground and concert venue tucked away in rural Southwest Michigan. The farm quickly became the center of marijuana and environmental activism in Michigan, drawing thousands of blue-collar libertarians and hippie liberals, evangelicals and militiamen to its annual hemp festivals. People came from all over the country to support Tom and Rollie's libertarian brand of patriotism: They loved America but didn't like the War on Drugs.
As Rainbow Farm launched a popular statewide ballot initiative to change marijuana laws, local authorities, who had scarcely tolerated Rainbow Farm in the past, began an all-out campaign to shut the place down. Finally, in May 2001, Tom and Rollie were arrested for growing marijuana. Rollie's 11-year-old son, who grew up on Rainbow Farm, was placed in foster care - Tom would never see him again. Faced with mandatory jail terms and the loss of the farm, Tom and Rollie never showed up for their August court date. Instead, the state's two best-known pot advocates burned Rainbow Farm to the ground in protest. County officials called the FBI, and within five days Tom and Rollie were dead. Obscured by the attacks of September 11, their stories will be told here for the first time.

Ratings and reviews

The author was a freelance writer residing in California when the events written about in this book occurred. The Rainbow Farm shooings happened near where he lived as a child and he heard about it during a family reunion in Michigan. If you want the condensed version google the Rainbow Farm Playboy article. It should have been written by someone who knew the people involved. Kudos to the author for being the only author to write about it for the record, but I doubt the accuracy of the book.

How can a person that never knew the place existed right a book about it. Half the the book was written in degrading the family. He only got information from one side amd never bothered to ask the other.

I am biased, as I am in the book. I found it to be informative, entertaining and truthful despite the dark, sad events described therein. Now I know why I was never a big fan of former Gov. Granholm.

About the author

Dean Kuipers is the deputy editor of Los Angeles City Beat and the author of I Am a Bullet and Ray Gun out of Control. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, and Playboy. A native of Michigan (twenty miles from Rainbow Farm), he now lives in Los Angeles.