Peter Dunning, the Springfield, Vt. farmer depicted in the new documentary Peter and the Farm, comes across as a difficult character.
The hard work of farming alone, now that he is estranged from his four children and two ex-wives, wears on him, but there are also moments when Dunning remembers why he chose this life nearly four decades before.
In a moment of reflection, the white-bearded farmer looks over a green, lush landscape and asks “What am I complaining about? Thirty-five years on this beautiful farm.”
Viewers come to see that through the years, Dunning and his farm — like a long-married couple — have become so intertwined that it’s hard to see how one could go on without the other.
“This farm becomes me, I’ve become the farm,” he says at one point.
Now 70, Dunning is an aging former Marine turned back-to-the-lander and he has no clear heir to take over the farm, its work and its beauty.
The title of the film is very deliberately not Peter’s Farm, said New York City-based filmmaker Tony Stone in a recent phone interview. Instead, the film aims to show the two characters, Dunning and the farm, in dialogue with each other.
“Will it still be a farm?” Stone said. There’s “love and pain in how to preserve all this work … (it’s) so loaded. That’s what it’s about: The weight of Peter and his existence.”
The story’s narrative emerges through the work on the farm and through Dunning’s own storytelling prowess. As Dunning cuts wood with a mechanical wood splitter, he tells the film crew the story of how he nearly lost his hand in a sawmill accident as a young man.
“It’s a f—-d up mess, but I’m used to it,” Dunning says in the film of his gnarled but still functional hand. It works for most farming purposes, but foreclosed on a hoped-for career as a visual artist.
The film documents the difference the seasons make to the work of the farm and to Dunning’s mental health. Sounds of the National Weather Service radio and vistas of hayfields and animals at pasture help to set the scene.
Winter, when the land is blanketed in white, is very clearly a darker time in more ways than one. The season seems to aggravate Dunning’s depression and alcoholism.
“I’m living in hell right now,” he tells the film crew at one point.
Stone, who spent childhood summers in an off-the-grid cabin near Brattleboro, Vt., has known Dunning as a fixture at the Brattleboro Farmers’ Market for years. But it was through the process of shooting the film that they really became friends, Stone said.
At Dunning’s invitation, Stone first visited Dunning’s Mile Hill Farm four years ago. The time seemed right to capture the story.
“Peter had just been at the farm for a long while and was ready to share,” Stone said in a phone interview earlier this month.
For Stone, Dunning’s lifestyle embodies a “self-sufficient existence.” The filmmaking reflects this admiration for the hard work of farming. Dunning’s daily labors provide evidence of his committment to the animals and the land.
For example, Dunning’s baler breaks as he’s making hay and fixing it delays the task’s completion. The camera captures the series of tractor trips across the field required to cut, rake and, eventually, dot the field with square bales. The film crew gives Dunning a hand as he stacks bales in the barn’s haymow.
Getting up close to the machines helps push the film beyond a more common superficial depiction of farming, Stone said.
“When a machine passes by you, it’s very powerful,” Stone said. “Somehow it spurts out a hay bale, (yet there are) all these things that can go wrong.”
At the time of the interview with Stone earlier this month, Dunning had been sober a year. It’s still unclear what the future holds for the farm.
Though Dunning started at Mile Hill Farm in 1978, it was a farm for 100 years before that and it will be some sort of farm after Dunning departs, Stone said.
The 92-minute Peter and the Farm can be viewed online through a range of platforms, including iTunes and Amazon Video. Links can be found at magpictures.com/peterandthefarm/watch-at-home.
“The farm is penetrating through the digital vortex,” Stone said. “Peter’s sort of infiltrated the system.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or (603) 727-3213.
