A CSA Saved My Soul: The John Peterson Story
Monday's farm report continues with coverage of The Real Dirt on Farmer John, which played at the Northwest Film Forum over the weekend, thanks to the itvs people. The hour-long documentary (see the trailer) is scheduled to play on KCTS sometime in June as part of the Independent Lens series. (It played at SIFF last year.)
John Peterson is a third-generation farmer behind Angelic Organics. (Locals Pioneer Organics were at the post-screening Q&A.) Thanks to the magic of home movies, Peterson's circuitous route to farmer fame begins with his childhood in the 1950s. Then comes the death of his father from diabetes when Peterson is 19, and his post-college engagement in 1960s and '70s counterculture while trying to run the farm on his own. By the 1980s, swimming in debt, he has to sell most of his land. He revives his fortunes by switching to organic farming and forming a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Now, Angelic Organics provides 1500 families in the Chicago area with weekly fresh produce.
None of it looks easy. While it's easy to romanticize "the land," it's not so easy when it comes to the people who live on it. Peterson, who'd probably have been a happy Berkeley pagan, lives in Illinois, where his love of unfarmerly fashion has never gone over particularly well.
His neighbors, for decades, have seized upon his difference and beat him with it. He's been labeled a animal mutilator, a satan worshipper, and a murderer; had a building burn down; been tormented nightly by kids and police patrols; and is suspected of drug abuse. Despite the fact that 1 million farmers had to sell their farms in the 1980s, members of his family still believe that his father wouldn't have let it happen -- and that it must be John's fault. (Today, according to the U.S. Family Farm Coalition, a whopping 0.13% of the U.S. population supplies 83% of our food and fiber.)
If you'd like to eat fresh from the farm, and give a poke in the eye of the staid, slanderous, salt of the earth while you're at it, visit here to support alternative farming.
