Environment, Food: the real dirt on farmer john

A friend tipped me off that Farmer John is coming to Brisbane to speak at Ahimsa House this Saturday about his revolutionised organic community farm, Angelic Organics. If you need more back story, like I did, he’s the star character of The Real Dirt on Farmer John, an American documentary that’s won awards at just about every arts film festival its been screened at around the world (last count, 32). The doco was filmed over 25 years by Farmer John’s friend, director Taggart Siegel, who started the camera rolling when John was a teenager and took over the family farm when his father died. Described in the film as “an outrageous artist, a maverick environmentalist, a homespun rebel, a pink-boa-wearing eccentric, a playful provocateur,” John developed the farm into a haven for artists, hippies and radicals and a living experiment in the fusion of art and agriculture. That was, until the American farm debt crisis of the ‘80s triggered his farm’s sad collapse and, just as the economy had turned on him, so too did the rural community, driving him from his home. The documentary’s mission is a grand one – to inspire audiences to express their own lives more creatively, have the courage to powerfully commit to things they believe in and examine more closely their prejudices and judgements about others. Farmer John’s now appearing at cinemas around Australia, sharing how he redeemed his own life and created one of the largest organic community farms in America.