Every farmer experiences not-so-idyllic slices of life. That’s just part of life. Some experience far bigger cuts of it than others.

Baring them in the “Peter and the Farm” documentary film was Peter Dunning’s way of seeking poetic redemption. The movie’s gripping story of this Springfield, Vt., organic farmer’s struggle on his 187-acre Mile Hill Farm is being released Friday, Nov. 4, in theatres, on-demand and on iTunes by Magnolia Pictures.

The film is a cautionary tale for our times, warns producer and Vermont native Tony Stone. It sifts through the potential energy of a human life, that which is used and that which is squandered. The farm’s 38 harvests have seen the arrivals and departures of three wives and four children, leaving Dunning with only animals and memories. And Dunning had the inner strength to share it.

Stone was just 9 years old when he first met Dunning at the Brattleboro Farmers Market. “Peter always stuck out with his wit, and he could really hold court,” he recalls. “Everyone felt his charisma and his pride in his product. He cared for his animals, and you could taste it — even see it in the flesh.”

How the film came about
Several years ago, Stone invited Dunning to play a bit part as a turn-of-the-century logger in a short film. Then one day at the market in 2015, Dunning invited Stone and his film crew to his farm.

“Point-blank at the farm, Peter said we should make a movie documenting his suicide,” adds Stone. Taken aback, the film director refused to have anything to do with that. “Peter laughed it off that we were merely meek.”

But this aging farmer had just spent a year and a half land-locked on the farm due to a suspended driver’s license. His little bit of “Noah's ark” respite had turned into a prison.

Stone describes Dunning as “a product of the 1960s counterculture whose poetic idealism had soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken, self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape he spent decades nurturing.”

The film crew captured Dunning’s hard-won agricultural wisdom, even as he doubted the meaning of the work he’s fated to perform until death. “Peter veers between elation and despair,” notes the filmmaker.

His life ranged from being an orphan from the lower East Side, to the adopted son of a gentleman farmer, to being a Marine Corps sniper instructor, then a hippie back-to-the-land artist. Dunning’s complexities are rich and deep — lessons for others — from a rugged individualist in the extreme, a hard-drinking loner and a former artist who burned bridges with his wives and children.

Dunning’s memories and reflections are a mix of humor, tragedy, even anger. Don’t be surprised if you see slices of your own life reflected in his.

Learn where the film is showing and how to buy tickets or how to download it for home viewing at Peter and the Farm.