The Restaurant Guys' Regulars

John Peterson Dishes The Real Dirt on Farmer John

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The Restaurant Guys' Regulars

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This is a Vintage Selection from 2006

The Banter

The Guys talk about premium products and how much is too much to pay. From wild salmon to select chocolate, everyone has their spending limit…and The Guys wish theirs was a little higher. 

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys meet Farmer John Peterson to hear about the documentary The Real Dirt on Farmer John. John shares his story of suffering financial and emotional hardship to creating Angel Organics, one of the largest Community Supported Agriculture farms in the US.

The Inside Track

The Guys were eager to talk to John after seeing the documentary. John equates modern farms turning organic to people finding sobriety.

“When it's going from a chemical based system to a natural system, it has to be repopulated by the microorganisms. Maybe it's a little like someone going into an addiction clinic and then going from a dependent life to a healthy life. We were raising very unhealthy crops that the insects were invading. It took a long time to figure out how to build things up and how to get the soil healthy,” Farmer John Peterson on The Restaurant Guys 2006

Bio

John Peterson was raised on his family’s farm in Illinois. At an early age, John helped with the poultry chores. By his ninth birthday, he had been promoted to the dairy, where, morning and night, he helped with milking and feeding the cows.

The financial calamity for the farming community hit the Peterson farm in the 1980s nearly closing the farm for good. John decided to rebuild using sustainable farming practices rather than the modern chemical-reliant approach. In 1991, Angel Organics was born. They opted for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model which continues to this day.

 Info

The Real Dirt on Farmer John documentary

https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-real-dirt-on-farmer-john-2005/


Info

Local Harvest (find CSA near you)

www.localharvest.org/


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Mark:

Good morning there, mark. Morning Francis. How are you this morning? I'm doing pretty well. How about you?

Francis:

I'm doing all right. Thank you very much.

Mark:

Yep. So I gotta tell you, I'm, I wanna start out this, this show, talking about fish a little bit. I. Alright. There's been a lot of, uh, press about, uh, uh, actually not a lot, but certainly on the West Coast there's been a lot of press about the cost of wild salmon.

Francis:

Something fishy there, huh?

Mark:

Oh golly. Uh, wild salmon has sold for as much as$37 a pound for Copper River Salmon in, uh, supermarkets.

Francis:

Let's backtrack and explain a little something to our guests. Um. There's a big controversy now. Wild. Well, not controversy. There's a big choice to be made between wild salmon, which tastes better and is better for you usually. Uh, and that's my own personal opinion, so no one should sue me for it. Um, um, between wild salmon and farmed salmon, um, now among wild salmon, there are different kinds of wild salmon and. The different rivers, especially at the mouth of the rivers in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska. Mm-hmm. Copper Rivers is a specific river in uh, Alaska. In Alaska where the fish are known because it's such a hard river to get up the particular type of fish. And remember when we talk about specific rivers, because salmon always return to the same river they return to where they were hatched to spawn. So. Different rivers will have different types of salmon, certain characteristics

Mark:

in the salmon, not just different breeds, which there are obviously different breeds of salmon as well, but the salmon themselves will have different characteristics

Francis:

and you know, the, the Copper River is a very tough, uh, river to get up. And so the salmon build up a huge store of fat at the beginning of the year when they begin the runs And, um. There that fat, it translates to flavor. Mm-hmm. I mean, translates to beautiful, beautiful flavor. But you were talking about prices.

Mark:

Well, so last year we had this big controversy over counterfeit salmon in the marketplace. New York Times did a front page story on it. There was a lot of talk about, uh, uh, people selling wild salmon, uh, farmy salmon as wild salmon, right. Counterfeit, which was a, which was a real issue this year. The problem is, as. More wild salmon's gotten more and more press and more and more people talking about the, the health benefits of wild salmon. Uh, what we're seeing is a huge increase in price, 50 75, a hundred percent in some places, copper River salmon in, in a supermarket. And that's what I started to say before.$37 on restaurant, a pound 37, a pound, a pound on restaurant menus,$55 a portion, uh, on the West Coast. And I think this, that's a two part. Issue. And the first is simply supply and demand. It's very early in the season, so you're not seeing a ton of salmon in the marketplace. So people are, are just spending whatever they need to spend to get wild salmon. We spent a fortune last weekend on an ivory wild salmon, a king salmon, uh, from the, from Alaska as well, but at the same time, they're spending a lot of money because there's just such a huge demand for this fish. You know, but I just, I'm not, I'm not ready to pay$37 a pound.

Francis:

I'm not ready to pay 37 bucks a pound for. It's

Mark:

spectacular though. It's something, it honestly, if it were$37 a pound and that were the price of it for forever, it's something I, it would become a once in a while thing for me. Once a year, right? Where, where now? Wild salmon. I must eat it in the 6, 8, 10 week season where it's really abundant. You know, this late spring, early summertime. I eat it, four times a week. Mm-hmm. Which, because I love it so much, it's, it has got a, a much richer flavor profile than, than the farm raised salmon that we've all kind of become accustomed to.

Francis:

But again, there's a difference between just general wild salmon and Copper River wild salmon. Absolutely.

Mark:

And there's also different breeds of salmon and that's something that people need to realize as well. The salmon that we tend to use in our restaurant, whenever possible is king salmon. king salmon is, is a salmon. That's, that is, obviously that, just from the name of it you can tell us is kind of the biggest of, of all the salmon and is, tends to be very rich and, uh, has a lot of fat content. When a product is scarce, when it's rare and a lot of people think it's really special and really want it, price will go up.

Francis:

Crazy stuff, you know, reminds me of there is a chocolate that is Mark and my favorite chocolate in the world as far as raw chocolate. There's, there are several, uh, C Chocolatier or um, c Chocola, Laier. Thank you. Thank you. C

Mark:

Chocola Tears. I'm sure they'd love to be called. It's like a mouseketeer, but you make chocolate, you wear the hat, you don't wear the hat. It's different. It's different.

Francis:

Um, but the ears would melt. Um, but if you go to, um, like the GVA store mm-hmm. Um, GVA does something better than almost any other chocolatier. I. It's the boxes, the, the golden boxes, very attractively packaged, beautiful box of, they've done a great

Mark:

job

Francis:

packaging chocolate.

Mark:

Uh, I don't think, honestly, for me, I don't think it's chocolate. I just think that there are chocolates that I like better that are. 12% of the price, 15% of the price rather have a Hershey bar. I would not rather have a Hershey bar, for instance, special dark. I, I still, I would, I'd rather have good divers chocolate than a Hershey bar. But, but the next step up from Hershey Bar, I'd rather have

Francis:

than in, in the world of chocolate. I mean, there's packaging and there's also real chocolate taste, and it's not just about cocoa content. Mm-hmm. It's about here's how chocolate's made. I mean, it's, there, there are four ingredients to chocolate. It's cocoa, uh, cocoa butter. Mm-hmm. Uh, vanilla and sugar. That's it. That's all you get in real chocolate. Right? And, and how there's a corn syrup in there. You should. And how that's done Well, even among high-end C chocolatier, uh, what they usually do, uh, among high-end c chocola, laier. Thank, I just can't say that all the time. You're just

Mark:

gonna keep saying C chocolatier. I know. It just sound fancy schmancy. Then you're gonna keep getting that look from me from across the studio that you've been getting every time you say it.

Francis:

But, but what most high-end, chocolate makers do it like Valona is, is a great high-end chocolate maker. They actually make chocolate, but anything smaller than that. Those people buy chocolate and make candies. Mm-hmm. Um, there is a small company in Italy and Valona is a, a chocolate maker. Is a c Chocola here, and you can buy Valona chocolate. We use Valona chocolate in our restaurant.

Mark:

Yeah. A couple places like Cole Foods, there's a, there's a lot of stores that not carry Valona.

Francis:

Um, but Amadei, uh, it's A-M-A-D-E-I mm-hmm. Is an Italian, uh, cha laier, um, C chocolatier. Um, and, and they make chocolate. They don't just make candy. They make some of the highest end chocolate in the world, and it's just become available in the country again for like. A hundred bucks for a pound of chocolate, which is just crazy. We actually, when it was, there was a, um, when it was in the country last, um, we got some, and just before they lost their last distribution, we picked up a bunch of it for 20 bucks a pound. We picked up like. 75 pounds of it for a hundred and, and awesome. I mean, at 20 bucks a pound an absolutely awesome talking. It was tremendous. But at a hundred bucks a pound, that becomes again, a once in a once in a while, know, I think,

Mark:

I think a hundred dollars a pound and you're almost never gonna get to hear me say this on, on the radio show for something that I adore. I think it's too expensive.

Francis:

Well, it depends. You gotta make more from the radio show. I'm just,

Mark:

or perhaps I'm not wealthy enough. I think that're you're, you're outta the AM Lee.

Francis:

But the thing about Aade chocolate is they actually make chocolate. They buy raw cacao and make chocolate there, and they have an expiration date on the chocolate. And it really is, I'll tell you if you, if you see it out there,'cause it's gonna become available, it's in a few shops in the United States. Mm-hmm. The world has changed, huh? Yeah, I was

Mark:

talking to somebody that, that AADE chocolate's no longer available in the United States and they, they sent me a little email like 12 minutes later. Sure it is. Look right here. I Googled it. I think you have it shipped there. It is.

Francis:

Uh, worth trying. It is probably the best chocolate in the world, but unless you're rich, I don't know. Might just give yourself a habit. You can't, uh, you can't live with, Hey, listen, we're gonna be talking with, with. Farmer John is the subject of a new documentary that you can find on PBS coming up next week, or you can find through our website. Really tremendous. Stay tuned. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Our guest today is someone I've been waiting to give on the show for quite a while. His name is John Peterson. He is a lifelong farmer, uh, and he also runs the, largest community supported farm in the country. Angelic organics. Um, more than a thousand families get their vegetables delivered, uh, from John's Farm Weekly. He's also an artist and a writer. The real Dirt on Farmer John is a documentary spending decades of his farm's struggle near bankruptcy, rebirth, and return to solvency. It's also about him. It's also about America.

Mark:

John, how are you today? Welcome to the show. I. Good,

Francis:

thank you.

Mark:

Or should we call you Farmer John?

John:

A lot of people

Francis:

call me Farmer John. So, so John, the, the film is about your farm and your family's been farming since the thirties and you went through the, the debt crisis of the eighties and you had to sell a lot of your land, and you've been able to reinvent the farm and make it solvent again. This film spans your whole life. Um, is the film about you, is the film about farms or is the film about America? Um.

John:

Well, it, it's basically my life story and that includes the farm because the farm and I have been woven together since I was born.

Speaker 5:

Mm-hmm.

John:

And there are people, they were talking to me about creating a, a site on the webpage that correlates my personal history with that of the,. the. Macrocosmic history of American agriculture. Mm-hmm. So I haven't seen that yet, but, um, you know, there, there, there's a lot of, correlations. But then I'm, You know, I'm not a real typical farmer, and so there's gonna be some deviations too. For instance, I, I immersed myself in the hippie era and a lot of other farmers did not,

Francis:

yeah, that's not our image of farmers. But still,

Mark:

but I would say from the time that you put the farm into a, into a lot of debt based on, on, uh, I don't wanna say promises from banks, but certainly, false expectations. Uh. From that moment forward, I think that, that your plate was very close to exactly what a lot of the small farmers in the United States faced. And, and that was what I really related to in the movie.

John:

I went through a very funny, weird program about my, about the film recently, um, where experts were doing the commentary on my life and it was a really interesting thing that they. Yeah, I, I went in disguise because I was told that the experts were the ones who were gonna, tell my story and that they could do a good job of it. And I was, I said, well, no, I, I think I could do a better job of it since I was living my life. And anyway, it was interesting to hear these experts, uh, analysis of the situation and. And I, I had to finally, uh, you know, stand up and reveal myself to the whole audience. You don't strike

Mark:

me as the kind of guy who would not reveal yourself to the whole audience.

John:

I farmer John in disguise. But the interesting thing was, they said millions of farmers worked hard. They were no nonsense. They, they were great farmers and they lost their land in the early eighties, and it just happened that farmer, John Peterson lost his farm at the same time, but he lost it for very different reasons. He partied.

Francis:

Oh man.

John:

And, and you know, it's interesting, when I finally revealed myself and I was wearing this goatee and this wig, and I had all this makeup on, I spent the whole afternoon at a costume shop in, uh, on Broadway in 11th in Manhattan

Speaker 5:

Uhhuh.

John:

I, I just thought, well, this is gonna be really interesting to hear what people have to say about my life. But the thing is, I felt agriculture should be celebrated.

Speaker 5:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John:

I felt that. It had become very barren, very void of actual life of, of, of a kind of a heart relationship. And so in the seventies I felt that besides running a farm, we needed to acknowledge that we were on a farm and that we were growing food and that we were in a place of. Of life.

Francis:

You talk in your, in, in the, in the, in the film, it follows you on a sojourn or a number of sojourns to Mexico, and it draws some stark comparisons between American agriculture and Mexican agriculture that sort of speak to that. You wanna talk to us about that?

John:

Well, in the fifties, before the farm chemicals came in and, and started to dominate agriculture, I, I feel that, uh, American farmers really. We're truly closer. They were close to the land. They lived out of a relationship to the land. It's a much more authentic relationship. And then when chemicals came in it, they, they just got in the way of that. They, they got in the way of that profound intimate connection to the land. There's still a connection, but it's different. And so I think the whole character of. rural society began to change out of people farming with chemicals and that changing their relationship to the land.

Francis:

How so? How did it change the fabric of the society when people started farming with chemicals?

John:

Well, it made it so farmers could farm more land, and the consequence of that was that they were. Less associated, less connected to each unit of land that they were farming. Suddenly they went from these 160 or 300 acre operations up to the thousands of acres. And so it kinda, I, I'm gonna use the term as maybe not quite accurate, but it, I'd say it commodified agriculture. It turned it more into a, uh. A, a business and a, a system of production and a way of life and a relationship.

Mark:

I, I think that's fairly accurate.

Francis:

and also I think that one of the things that film deals with a lot is it changes rural agriculture in that each person becomes more isolated. I wanna talk more about that in just a moment with John Peterson. He's the subject of the documentary, the Real Dirt on Farmer John, It's an amazing fun, a wonderful documentary that talks about all the stuff that we talk about, community farming. Organic farming, and the plight of the American farmer in general. And it's also a, a lot of fun Now, John, you've also written a companion book to the show, the Farmer John Cookbook. Right? Right. What's that all about? Is that just a cookbook?

John:

Well, I, I'm so excited about farms and I felt that, uh, a cookbook that I write would have to include the, the story of the farm itself. So it takes the reader or the cook right out to the farm and, Gives an experience of how the vegetables were raised. Um, not in a technical way, more in a dramatic or poetic way. Uh, the weather dramas the, um, the cook on the farm writing in a, in a very colorful way about harvesting the vegetables, the photographs in the cookbook are of the vegetables growing in the fields or of the people working with the vegetables, because I feel that. So often the, the food arrives in the kitchen and then it's, well, what now? What do we do with it? Well, where's the relationship with the food? Where's the relationship with the history of it? And so I really wanted to bring that in. And, um, also, I think Rudolph Steiner is an extraordinary, or was an extraordinary man who offered a lot to, civilization and he's not very widely recognized or read. And so I brought some Rudolph Steiner and some of his insights into food where he often regarded food or, or, uh, expressed food as a material of forces that it has to do with forces at least as much as it has to do with substance instance. He said that. Stimulated the rhythmic system.

Mark:

Mm-hmm. The

John:

circulation and the, the breathing.

Mark:

You, you're talking about the biodynamics of, of agriculture

John:

biodynamics. And a very interesting thing that he said, which is really the basis for, uh, the, the, his lectures on, on agriculture, which became biodynamic farming. He. Food no longer carries the forces that allows people to transform their will into action or their will into results. That the Earth's forces are dwindling and that they need to be re stimulated, reactivated, because people live in their dream states. They live in their. Their, their desires, but they're not able to transform them into actions. Then

Francis:

we're gonna have to take, we're gonna have to take a quick, quick break there for the news John. We'll be back in just a moment. Talking with John Peterson, he's the subject of the documentary, the Real Dirt on Farmer John, back in just a moment. Our guest today is John Peterson. He is a lifelong farmer and, owner of the largest community supported farm or CSA in the country with angelic organics. Than a thousand families get their vegetables delivered weekly from John's farm. He's also an artist and a writer. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is documentary spanning decades of his farm struggles. You can find out about it on our website. Uh, he's got the Farmer John Cookbook as well. the documentary is great in that it, it talks about. A traditional farming family, how you, you know, took over your family's farm at a very young age due to some family tragedy and how you weathered the storm of, of the eighties and, and how you brought the farm back and what exactly a, a community supported farm is, is all about. Can you talk to us about how you, how you've reinvented it that way?

John:

I went down very hard in the early eighties,

Mark:

like a lot of farmers,

John:

like a lot of farmers, and, um. And I, I went from being a very exuberant, enthusiastic, hardworking person to being big, almost bedridden with grief. And, um, and I was sick, or at least I, I, I felt sick and, uh, and how did I recover from that? It was a very, very long journey here. I'd lost most of the family operation. My machinery was gone and, um, you

Mark:

had to sell off a lot of the family land.

John:

Yeah, I, I, I was humiliated and ashamed and, and so I gradually restored myself. I mean, how I did that, I, I encountered, classical homeopathy, which, uh, I think actually was my bridge later to biodynamics. And that works on a, deep constitutional level, the classical homeopathy does. And so that gradually helped to restore me. Actually going through and sorting out all the stuff that had accumulated on the farm. I, I, I started to organize my exterior world. It took a couple years of painstaking work. There's a lot of junk, a lot of clutter around, and, I, as I began to work with my surroundings in that way, I think it started to reorganize myself internally.

Francis:

And, and so tell us how you, how you changed the farm and how you changed the, the business model of the farm.

John:

Right. Well, I wanna say I was, I was on a creative journey too, and I was doing a lot of, I was writing screenplays, I was performing, I was studying to write the story of my life. So a lot of these things converged to. Empower me finally to have the strength to just think, oh, I can, I can move forward. So when, and you asked the question, I just wanna pick that thread up. You said, well, how, how was the United States different from Mexico or the real culture different? Well, in me, when I started going to Mexico, which I, I started doing regularly after I lost the land people there seem much closer to the land and the culture that the society there seemed more. Sort of, I'm gonna use the word rustic, but I, I think it's more like landed more grounded. So the way people talk and walk and move and, and then just looking out into the fields, often you'll see people walking or standing in the fields. The, the landscape of Mexico is actually populated by human beings. Mm-hmm. Drive through the heartland of the United States and you'll hardly ever see a, a human being out in the field. it rekindled that feeling of relationship to the land to be in this, this great country where people were, were actually living close to the land. And that was something that I could remember from the fifties where it seemed that my own countryside was more populated by. Much more populated by human beings for people, livestock, and, um, more life, more vibrancy on the farms. Now there's shelves, mostly in the Midwest, but in Mexico, you still get a feeling of life. Just wandering around and inhabiting the, the countryside.

Mark:

I wanna talk about community supported agriculture. I want, I really, really want to get into the, the CSAs and, and how that has changed, uh, your farm and, and kind of brought it up to date. And the, and the first question I want to ask you about community supported agriculture is, is do you think it could pierce the mainstream, the way the hippie culture pierced the mainstream in the sixties? Do you think that, that that can happen now 40 years later? With CSAs?

John:

Great question. I talk about this quite a bit because what I'm noticing now is, well, 20 years ago there was no community supported agriculture farm in the United States, and now. There are probably, uh, a million people that get their food from a community supported agriculture program.

Francis:

Just briefly to explain what a community supported agriculture farm is, that's where people get together and they buy a share of the farm up in the beginning of, of the season, and you subscribe to the farm and you get the ve you get the produce so that farm throughout the season. And so you absorb some of the economic risk of the farmer and. You put yourself in the hands of nature as to what's seasonal and what's harvested when, and you, and you have, uh, coming from John's heart, you have over a thousand people who get every week, get a box of vegetables from the farm, not knowing exactly what's gonna be in that box. And, and that's what we're talking about with community supported. And, and,

Mark:

and just so people know, stage left and Lombardi belonged to, a local CSA in order to get some of our products.

Francis:

So we interrupted you, John. Go ahead.

John:

Well, uh, from our farm, there are probably about, uh, 5,000 people that are eating every week, which I think is just, it. It's a, it's a form of a sacrament, really. I mean, in a way it's a table. The farm is a table. 5,000 people are eating from that farm's table every week. And when you think about. A million people in the United States that are doing this. And, and when they do it, many of them are thinking about that farm that they're, that they're, um, a member of, uh, that it's not necessarily an an ongoing intentional re um, relationship or pondering, but it, it has to come into people's consciousness frequently when they're eating the food, when they get the box.

Mark:

I think it especially comes into their consciousness when they encounter something new and, and in the movie, you, you, you, uh, bring kohl robe out and, and when they encounter some product that they may not have encountered in the past.

John:

Yeah. Or, oh, wow. Weather, weather affects the, the, yeah.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

John:

I'm, I'm now connected to the weather. It's so extraordinary when you think all these people now are thinking about a place that they call their farm.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

John:

Now they have something that they call their farm and, and they go out, they take their children out, their children see these, these, uh, vegetables growing in the fields. And sometimes the people get involved in, in, um, you know, helping on the farm, volunteering to work in the fields. And it, it re enlivens agriculture. And it, it, you know, it, it re reen nobles, the farmer. The farmer is acknowledged and, and held in a different regard because. Now it's the farmer. The farmer for this group of people that belong to the farm.

Francis:

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and if you wanna find out about how to join a CSA locally, there's an organization you can go to and we'll put it up on our website. You can go to local harvest.org and, and find out how you can become a member of, of a CSA. One of the nice things about that I like about the film in the end is, is how the families do bring their children back to the farm and, and sort of participate. Now you write newsletters and you encourage that, right?

John:

Oh, yeah. It's a very, very important part of it. completes the picture. And, and, you know, and it also, it, it just transforms the model that we have of the, the consumer and the producer. It's, it's a different model because people come together. They, they get to know one another. They get to know one another's needs. And then, for instance, in our case, we needed land to have a, the right size farm and our, our shareholders. Uh, came together and they bought that land and then they, they leased it to the, to the farm. And so now we're able to have half of our land fallow every year building up the fertility with, uh, alfalfa and clover. And that's because these people who are our customers, you know, often the customers and the the producer have an adversarial relationship. They're just trying to get, you know, the both sides are trying to get the better deal. But in this case, there's cooperation, there's understanding, there's communication, and. Magical things have come out of that, you know, and

Francis:

that does, that does twist things on its head. I mean, while it, it's certainly still a capitalist endeavor with, with our farms. I mean, we are, once we get, get on board and come up with a, a way to support things early on, we're all in the same boat together. And that's what a CSA is all about. Now John, one of the things I think that. People don't realize when they, uh, when they pay extra for organic vegetables, um, it's more expensive to produce organic vegetables and to get someone to make the change. I thought one of the great services the documentary did was to talk about that period when you changed over from chemical based agriculture. To organic agriculture and, and how you got from, from one point to the next.

Mark:

And one of, one of the things you just mentioned is you, you allow the half of your land to, to lay fallow for dirt for the year. So you can switch areas one year to the next. Very expensive.

Francis:

But even more than that, in making the switch. I mean, you, you liken the, you said the land can become dependent on chemicals, like people become dependent on drugs and there's a period of withdrawal. You wanna talk about that in your experiences with it?

John:

yeah. When, when it's going from a chemical based system to a natural system and it has to be repopulated by the microorganisms and, maybe it's a little like someone going into a, a heroin, uh, clinic, an addiction clinic getting from a, a dependent life to a healthy life that the person was just laying there on the bed in a panic and huge pain. And so you, you can't see a farm rise like that, but you have a feeling that's what it's doing because it seems like it shuts down, like the system shut down. And, and, and we were raising very unhealthy crops that in, that the insects were invading. And, uh, and it took a long time to figure out how to build things up and how to get the soil healthy. And, and a lot of other systems have to be in place, not just about, uh. Healthy soil, but, but that's a cornerstone of it. And yeah, it took several years before we could actually start getting, you know, full boxes on a regular basis.

Francis:

You know, um, I, I, I thought one of the other really very interesting parts of your, of your story was there was basically a point where when you came back to the farm and you decided to rededicate to yourself to the farm and decided to go organic and, create the farm in the way that you had it in your imagination, in your mind. Um, it wasn't exactly a smooth reentry into the community. There were, there were lots of people that seemed to think that you were a drug dealing, child killing Satan worshiper are, are you really a Satan worshiper? That was facetious. Uh,

John:

yeah. That, that still persists a bit in the community. Although, um, uh, I, now that there's this movie out, um, people just seem to think. I'm a much better human being'cause I was, I'm in a movie, but really, I, I, I don't think that makes me a better human being. I think, I think that redeeming a farm, getting a farm back on its feet is a, a, a worthwhile and a, and a, a noble endeavor. And I'm very happy that I did that. But it's interesting that in the community, no one's ever came and said, Hey, this is amazing. You brought a farm back to life. But there are people who say. Oh, that's so great. You're in a documentary film.

Mark:

That's funny. Well, I, but I do think that, that what you've given people a chance to see is, is behind the scenes, what actually happened over that period of time. I mean, it is amazing the amount of, of footage you have from your early life and from the early days on the farm. I, I just don't think most people have that much footage of, their early life in the, in the fifties and sixties.

John:

Yeah, no, and my mom loves the bounty of the farm. She loved farming, and so you can really see that in her camera work. Mm-hmm. She just, uh, when we had a good oat crop or a great corn crop or a new piece of equipment, she'd go out there and document it. and wanted to, you know, show it to the neighbors later.

Francis:

Well, now, now your neighbors had some trouble with you when you came back and, and restarted the farm and turned things around, but you're obviously successful. Forget the documentary for, you know, you've turned a farm around and made it economically viable again in a vibrant business. Are your neighbors following suit? Are your neighbors asking for advice? Are is what's going on in the other farms around you? Are other people turning farms around other ways?

John:

the most of the farms, they're really huge corn and bean operations, or big livestock operations in the area. And, and very few of those people are interested in, in raising vegetables at all, even if they're struggling, uh, with their own operations, the vegetable operations, so dramatically different than the kind of farming that they do. But when you go. And you find pockets of, of farmers that are interested. And there's a, the CSA learning center at the farming non-profit organization has a, a program in the winter where they help train farmers into, uh. Transitioning to organic or they help farmers get or help people get started farming. Mm-hmm. There's an interest, but, uh, right in my local community, it's just a, it's just corn and beans and happens on a massive scale, which I, I wanna point out before the, the show ends. I, I don't know if you, uh, know this, but, the film won the Slow Food on Film Golden Snail Award for. And we're going to be presenting it in, in, uh, Italy in late October to about 5,000 chefs and farmers, and it's very exciting that the film is, is recognized by the Slow Food organization as a kind of a, a, you a model for agriculture. Well,

Mark:

the, the film has won a lot, a lot of awards and, uh, slow food is just one of them.

John:

25 awards.

Francis:

It's, it's amazing. And it's amazing to me that everybody in your community isn't like, just hasn't seen the film and seen that the, the point behind it in, in what you've done with the farm. Hey, John, I, I, the, the, the success nationally and internationally about this film in, in, at least in cult film circles, it's got, it's, it's gotta be really surprising and shocking, but it, it are you getting more recognition farther away from your home than you get at home.

John:

Yes.

Francis:

I think that, I think that's bizarre. Well, I want to thank you for coming on, on the show, the movie's Great. What you've done with it is great, and the message that that's coming out is terrific.

Mark:

a really interesting and and riveting program, which I, I think especially when you're watching this movie, the first 20 minutes or so of the movie. Looks like the movie's kind of going in, in one way and then, your life kind of changes and the movie kind of turns with it. I found it very interesting.

John:

Yeah. I wanna say I'm probably gonna be in Europe for several months in the fall and winter, because the film's got quite a, quite a run going on overseas, probably in theaters and, and in festivals. So it, it's really getting out all over the world. So it's. Very exciting. But then again, being on a tour is not farming. And farming is, uh, uh, its own form of excitement. I was just about to

Mark:

say, you're not gonna quit farming on us, are you?

John:

Well, I definitely wanna have more time to perform and, and to write. That's very important to me. And, and I think my mission was more to get the farm back on its feet than it was for me to be personally farming, because as you can probably tell from the film, um, I, I got a lot of other creative interests, so. The, the farm on its feet. Now it gives me a whole new opportunity for my own life.

Francis:

Well, I think that's great, and the work you do is really tremendous. it's amazing what you've done. Thank you. Take care of that. That was John Peterson. John Peterson is the subject to documentary The Real Dirt on Farmer John. It's a great. Film. I mean, even if you don't care about farming. It's a great film. It's a tremendous documentary and it's about John. It's really interesting. It's about John, but it has a lot of lessons for, for, you know, where our food comes from today and a lot of what we talk about. So hope you've enjoyed the hour listening to the restaurant. Guys. I'm Francis Shot.

Mark:

And I'm Mark Pascal.

Francis:

We are the restaurant guys, central Jersey 1450. The time is 12

Mark:

noon.