Hub and Spoke. Audio Collective.

This is Rumblestup, America Heilman.

I said in the last show that I am working on a complex show that's taking a long time. I am closing on it, I am almost there.

But I heard recently that Peter Dunning died. He's a farmer that I interviewed a number of years ago.

So I want to play this story again.

He was an extraordinary man.

So here's Hill Farm with Peter Dunning.

Thanks for listening.

I was a slave here.

This has been my existence for 40 years and I can't imagine not being here.

I don't know, I say I'm up here I'm cut off and I like it.

People say, well, what are you going to do now? Now that I'm not farming, I don't know. Peter Dunning's farm is a Vermont hill farm.

136 acres of forest and orchards and wet spots and steep rocky pasture picked over by

farmers for hundreds of years, the kind of place that does not lend itself to the industrial production of anything.

Instead, it lends itself to the production of everything.

Peter has farmed here, mostly alone for nearly 40 years.

Wives have come and gone, children have come. mostly alone for nearly 40 years.

Wives have come and gone, children have come and gone.

And now he's getting done.

The animals are gone, and the farm is growing up around him. Here's Peter Dunning.

We were the first people to look at the farm just accidentally.

And the people who had the farm before me,

...