The Joy of Feeding People

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Taking a closer look at kohlrabies. Copyright 2006 John Peterson and Angelic Organics. From Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables. Reprinted with permission of Gibbs Smith, Publisher.

John Peterson has spent more than 40 years working the same piece of land in northern Illinois that his grandfather bought during the Depression. The farm, originally 350 acres, is much smaller now. Peterson, who took it over at age 19 following the death of his father, lost most of the farm to foreclosure in 1982. But after years of struggle, he has transformed the remaining 22 acres into a thriving Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) biodynamic farm called Angelic Organics. This interview focuses on the evolution of the land Peterson managed to keep – and his own evolution as a farmer.

His story is also told in Farmer John’s Cookbook, The Real Dirt on Vegetables, Seasonal Recipes and Stories from a Community Supported Farm and in a documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, which has reaped awards at film festivals throughout the United States. 

The cookbook offers recipes for fresh vegetables, stories about the farm, tips on long-term vegetable storage and preservation methods, and “food for thought” from nutrition experts, shareholders, farm workers and Farmer John. The film – a fascinating and moving exploration of 50 years on the farm, with archival footage taken by Peterson’s mother – has been shown on the Emmy award winning PBS series Independent Lens.

Peterson continues to live on the property in a restored schoolhouse that his father attended and in which, later, his mother was the grade-school teacher. He is also a writer, performance artist and producer. 

What were the origins of the family farm? What was it like being a farmer’s son?

The Peterson dairy and poultry operation started in the 1930s when my grandfather bought the land; he had been farming next door since before 1920. When my father and mother were married, they moved to the farm, raised hay, corn and oats, and had chickens and dairy. What was it like being a farmer’s son? Well, a lot of things you don’t examine until later. It never bothered me to work hard, but it didn’t seem like work, it seemed like life. Later on in high school, I became more excited about the work. Being a farmer’s son, I learned a lot, but I wish I had learned more. When my father died, I really didn’t know enough to take over the farm, but I took it over anyway. I had to learn on the fly. Farming is its own world, its own culture.

Like many farmers in the 1980s, you lost a large portion of your farm to foreclosure. Although people may lose money in the stock market or housing market, most of us will never know how devastating it is to lose a family farm. How did you cope?

Losing a family farm is more than losing a business. It is losing a way of life. How did I cope? I could hardly get out of bed for two years. I was miserable, a mess. I had no ambition. I don’t know if that’s coping. Perhaps most therapeutic was going through all the junk – farming and art residue – that had accumulated through the years in vast spaces of the barn. I went to Mexico; I started farming again; I did performance art.