John Peterson grew up on an iconic Midwestern farm in Illinois with big red barns, dairy cows, expansive fields and neighbors working together to harvest crops. His father died when John was a teenager, so he took over running the farm. Over the next decade, he went deeper and deeper into debt and eventually had to sell everything except the farmstead and 22 acres.

It's an old story ? thousands of farmers across the United States have lost their farms. Many moved on into regular jobs and suburban lifestyles, but John took a different path and started over as an organic farmer. The journey of this eccentric artist-poet-farmer is the subject of the acclaimed documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

Much of the movie's footage came from Farmer John's childhood. His mother, Anna, filmed happy 4-H meetings and workday picnics; barn building and threshing; her elderly father collecting eggs; her children running through sunlit fields and riding on the tractor with their dad. But this sunny picture of farming gives way to its darker side as the movie progresses, exploring the sad fact of farm failures and healthy soils lost to suburban sprawl. In one poignant interview, an old farmer chokes up as he says, 'I just hate to see all that concrete being poured into the land.'

The Real Dirt finally offers redemption when the film shifts to an exploration of a new way of farming: the small-scale, organic model that Mother Earth News readers know so well. Eventually, Farmer John dives into community supported agriculture, launching one of the country's most successful CSAs,