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November/December 2005 Featured Stories
The Real Dirt on Farmer John

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a character study/docudrama depicting a 55 year span in the life of John Peterson and his rural Illinois family farm. It is a gripping, emotional story of the transformation of the individual and his community: The terrors of nonconformity within an insular, traditional society, its resistance to change and diversity, and the necessity for innovation and risk in response to changing circumstances. Through the power of personal acceptance, and the melding of tradition and activism, John reinvents the family farm as a chemical-free, consumer-involved paean to food and all its rich sensual delight.

Filmmaker Taggart Siegel, in documenting John Peterson’s struggles, bears witness to the vivid conflicts inherent in a man whose love for the land and his family’s farming heritage coexists with artistic sensibilities and the self-reflection of a gifted writer. A rich immersion in the past, detailed in beautifully evocative Super-8 home movies shot during the 1950s by John’s mother, Anna, offers the audience to a truly sympathetic understanding of the lost idyll of this way of life.

As the renaissance of the farm comes about through consumer support for the farmer, we share the exhilaration at the success of Angelic Organics. The transformative views of luscious vegetables, tended by townies who become disciples to the intricacies of pitchforks, herald a new dawn for agriculture and a new meaning of "back to the land." Farmer John’s spare, reflective prose, in voice-over narration, punctuates the story with generous glimpses of his personal struggles -- the failed relationships (his real soul mate is the farm); the demons of guilt and depression fueled by his connection to the soil itself, tended by his father and grandfather for 100 years, and the fear of losing it all; his farming heritage and family history.

Anna Peterson’s home movies allow us to witness firsthand John’s upbringing on the farm, the hands-on learning gradually passed down from his Dad and Uncle Harold. We see Uncle Harold persisting with traditional farming methods, continuing to plow with a team of horses long after tractors are resident on every neighboring farm.

His mother’s joyful embrace of ordinary daily living and the simplicity of country pleasures -- wiener roasts and toasting marshmallows, 4H animals, neighbors pitching in at harvest and in raising a barn -- shines in every frame. John’s strong relationship with Anna is a constant for him in uncertain times. As the conventional farming economy collapses and debts threaten to derail his relationship with the soil, his mother grounds him in the past and the traditions worth saving.

Honed by a lifetime on the land, farming runs in John’s blood and fuels his spirit. His knowledge comes from observation and experience, of the changing seasons, and savoring the taste of good soil. The cycles of planting, tending and harvest haunt him as he seeks expression in artistic creativity away from farming. Farmer John is continually pulled back to the farm and his heritage.

The film emphasizes the crucial turning points in John’s life on the farm. Uncle Harold’s sudden, inexplicable suicide when John is 10 years old removes an important role model and leaves a deep wound. He later comes to see this act as a diminution of the old ways, and the painful beginning of the long decline within the local agriculture community.

At age 19, John loses his father as a result of diabetes. He is now alone to tackle the wide responsibilities of caring for the farm and his mother. He attends Beloit College where he seeks a college education only eight miles from the farm. The experience exposes him to the accelerating cultural changes of the ‘70s, and his new friends come to the farm and flood it with a riot of artistic expression, rock music and freedom. The neighbors begin to ostracize John; he grows his hair long; he blasts The Doors’ music from his tractor as hippies twirl in its dust.

Eventually, he is demonized by his neighbors as a drug-dealing cult murderer of animals and children, and blamed for the general decline in farm fortunes. The debt crisis of the ‘80s forces John to sell his equipment at auction and most of his family’s acreage, along with the dairy cattle, leaving the farm as an empty shell and an echo of its former glory.

A deep depression follows in the wake of this dark time and almost sinks John. He is powerless and lethargic, rigid with deprivation and loss. Unable to redefine himself or to summom up the strength needed to farm, he takes to his bed in a blue funk. Footage from Siegel’s first documentary about John and the farm, Bitter Harvest, contributes striking blackand-white scenes from this time of loss, underscoring the power of the farm’s eventual transformation.

Farmer John travels to Mexico, seeking to heal himself from the perceived failure as a farmer. He begins to write down his reflections on the past. His writing creates an opening to the future, as he finds space to finally forgive Uncle Harold’s suicide, an event that traumatized a 10-year-old John. A relationship forged with a Mexican peasant, who reminds John of his lost uncle, fills the emptiness left over from that tragedy with a new surge of creativity.

Acknowledging his roots in the soil, John returns to the farm in the ‘90s and sets out to heal the land and himself. Eschewing chemicals and the single-crop monocultures of his farm traditions, backed by his mother’s investment and belief in him, he is experimental and optimistic. But financial success eludes him as insects feast on the diverse crops and hand weeding drives up labor costs. Angelic Organics is a belief system in practice but the realities of distribution start to sink the dream.

Facing failure once again, John is approached by urban consumers in Chicago who are seeking healthy food, organics they can feel confidence in feeding to their families. Angelic Organics was known to the group only as a sticker on a lone organic onion in their city supermarket. But it eventually leads them to John’s farm. Initially skeptical, he finally agrees to create a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, in which the consumers invest in the expenses of producing food in order to receive a weekly distribution of varied produce.

We see the farm transformed -- children planting seeds, meeting animals and experiencing country life in a learning center, members taking part in the harvest, and joyous open-house days for city dwellers -- 1200 families forging a connection to the land and the food grown there. In a moving scene, the team joins together to raise a new barn. At the film’s conslusion, this revolutionary farming community provides a blueprint for the future and a final redemption of John Peterson’s love for this land.