This documentary chronicles the real-life struggle of John Peterson, an Illinois farmer who turned the family homestead into a commune for hippies, radicals and artists in the 1960s. However, after the farming-debt crisis of the '80s, the business end of Peterson's enterprise started falling into disrepair and his neighbors viciously turned on him. Trying to run him into the ground, the neighbors tried to tar Peterson with the reputation of being a "dangerous" radical, and they constantly harrassed and bullied him. The kindly Farmer John, though, kept to his ideals and turned his farm around into one of the biggest in the U.S.A.