man: i was the perfect soldier. i always put the mission first. announcer: after 3 tours in iraq, one wounded warrior returns to build a new life. woman: to those that are coming back, they have been changed. announcer: filmmakers alix blair and jeremy lange document the daily struggle... man: these are my antipsychotic pills. i feel tranquilized a lot. announcer: to heal the unseen scars of war. man: when i start to black out and get the flashbacks, i lose control. woman: hopefully eventually it will get better, but it might not. man: i tried to get help. i tried to kill myself. it didn't work. we want to be able to have normal lives. we don't want to be like this. announcer: "farmer/veteran"-- now, only on "independent lens."

announcer: this program is made possible in part by the corporation for public broadcasting, the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, the national endowment for the arts, and from contributions from viewers like you. thank you. [animals bleating]

man: here's her back feet, and there's her front. just standing right there. just young. oh, well. pretty neat to see. i wasn't gonna shoot him. i just wanted to see him. female interviewer: is there anything that you would want people to know? woman: oh, i think the biggest thing people need to realize is that...

everything isn't the way it seems. [woman humming] [rooster crows] [goat bleating] i know you're not happy. i know it, buddy. if you leave that on there, she'll get sorer.

man, voice-over: hi. [chuckles] my name is alexander sutton. i am retired from the u.s. army. i am... [whispers] 32. 32 years old. alex, voice-over: this is my fiancée jessica. 1, 2, 3. [goat bleating] [baby goat bleating] alex: we're just gonna clean out in here a little bit for you, little buddy. so the front of the property is like this. there's a little cut in right to the farm, and then we have the goat pen. alex, voice-over: my grandfather was a korean war vet. he came back from the war, and he bought 40 acres. i seen how happy it made my grandpa.

i retired in july of last year. i was medically discharged from the army and was 100% disabled. in my last tour in iraq, i got hit with an ied, and it tore me in-- up really bad. [chuckles] um, after a bunch of surgeries and doctors and everything else later on, you know, they told me, "hey, you're either gonna have to "retire, or you're gonna have to take a desk job." and i just-- i couldn't do it, so i picked the retirement. man: what's wrong with this? alex: you can try it. it might stretch out. [laughter] man, you got to let us do something, man. let's go knock this one down, bo. he's gonna go ahead and pull this one out. he think he gonna do everything, bo.

come on. let's move it out. alex, voice-over: what i'd love to do and my future goals, i'd love to have a couple of little cabins out here where vets could come out. we'd teach them a little bit about farming, about working the land. so many people have been there to support me. it's my turn. [chicks cheeping] jessica: they got covering down their legs. all the way down, and... alex, voice-over: poultry is like the beginner level. it's really forgiving, you know? [chuckles] we have barred rocks, delaware, silver sebrights, blacktail, buck, japanese, mille de fleurs, standard cochins, giant cochins. that's chickens. and then we got pigeons, quail, the narragansetts. we have the standard bronze, purple, pied, blue, maybe a pink one somewhere.

jessica, voice-over: there's no pink guineas out there, alex. alex, voice-over: oh, that's the elephant-- and then the pink elephant. [jessica chuckles] alex, voice-over: when you are a soldier, especially a combat soldier, you notice every detail. you know everything that comes by. you know everything. farming keeps you in that same awareness. just to watch this little bitty plant come out of the ground out of nothing-- it's like, "wow." it's an adrenaline rush, you know? i get the same feel from watching my babies hatch as i did pulling the trigger of a .50 cal

and watching somebody's head explode. jessica: hi, stephanie. i was calling to make an appointment for my fianc-- silberhorn, but i'll be a sutton on the 19th of next month. [laughs] we said 2:00? and also, do you guys have a "talky" doctor-- an actual "talky" doctor, not a, um--a social worker? a "talky" doctor--talk therapy? [stephanie, indistinct] jessica: yes. thank you. ok. yeah. he's been doing that one for his meds, but he's needing one that he can actually just do talk therapy, not the meds. ok. [birds chirping] [dog barking] [crunching]

[indistinct] [chickens clucking] come on. come on. you're gonna hang out with me. jessica, voice-over: when we first met each other, we had only seen pictures-- you know, from, like, the waist up, obviously. i had posted an ad on craigslist that i was just looking for a friend to go fishing with me. when i--i first saw alex, i was like, "oh, yeah. he's just gonna be a friend." [chuckles] as i learned more about him, i immediately fell in love with him. i remember the little battle in my head is to, "do i tell him now that i have feelings for him, or do i wait?" [chuckles]

you're all sweaty. jessica, voice-over: and i remember that first night i said, "i love you." it was insane. [laughs] i don't know why i said it, but it was just, "well, what if something happens and he never hears it?" look at me. [chuckles] mwah! [chuckles] female interviewer: tell me about your tattoos. well, of course, there's my infantry tattoo, and my crossed rifles is the sign of the infantry. that's where i started, and that was my first one. and then the dragon--i've always been a mythical person. this one is bettie page. just stay up here. don't show my fat belly. that's my zodiac, that's my daughter's zodiac, and that's my ex's zodiac.

my ex-wife has the exact same one, except hers is right there. female interviewer: it's part of the hope of this story, in sharing your story, is to help educate people to what happens in war. some of the other bad stuff is families having-- alex: i don't want that part in the story. female interviewer: ok. jessica: yeah. it doesn't need to be in the story. alex: does it? female interviewer: the reason we're interested in it is with her picture on the wall, we feel like it's a part of your life now. alex: my family was destroyed because of the combat and the [bleep], and i don't like to think about it because it brings up way too many bad memories.

[chatter] alex: good job. you see any more in here? she won't hurt you. [chicken squawks] here. you want to hold my hand? alex: come on. i got you. look, reach in there and grab the egg, ok? i'll protect you. good job. we get our chickens in kentucky. we have about 100. and then we came out-- alex: we have a hatchery inside. oh, gosh. man: it's all-- every single thing at the va has been hard. jessica: you have that, too. well, that's what a seizure is.

jessica: he has that, but he doesn't like it. he doesn't take it. alex: yeah. why don't you take it? i just don't like taking all these pills. i don't even know what they are. i forget. that one's helped me a lot, is fluoxetine. well, maybe you should actually do it. they gave it to him, and he took it for, like, a week, and he's like, "i don't like it. i'm not taking it." alex: yeah. woman: it'll be like zero to sixty. alex: so you got that same problem i do-- you know, the little conscience, the little dude that's in your brain that's supposed to tell you what's right and wrong-- mine's down on the beach somewhere. it won't come back. he does not have that. male interviewer: alex, do you mind telling us a little bit about your career in the military? there's some stuff i can tell you. male interviewer: right. anything you can't, obviously no pressure. female interviewer: whatever you feel comfortable... male interviewer: yeah. whatever you feel comfortable. well, it's not so much comfortable; it's-- female interviewer: whatever is legally allowed. there you go. confidentiality. um, i came in right out of high school.

uh, i went into basic training, became an infantry soldier. and that's when all hell busted loose. that's when the towers crumbled. alex: coins are given to you for achievement, exceptional performance. this one's from a one-star general. he gave it to me after a convoy, after i kept him safe on convoy.

i thought i had more than that. the purple heart is if you're wounded or killed in combat. alex, voice-over: i always put the mission first. i never questioned. i never asked. i just had my mission. i did it. i was the perfect soldier. this is an m4. 556 is the rounds that the military use. see? the rounds went right through. didn't explode or anything? no. if you want to see it explode, i'm gonna get the 12-gauge. no! alex, voice-over: you know, we only wanted

the best of the best. we weeded out the little wussies that didn't want to be real people. boy: imagine. i'd like to imagine. jessica: you're showing off, and now the peacock's showing off. boy: oh, look! the peacock! it's put its feathers out. alex, voice-over: and you know, as soldiers, as true soldiers, we're bred for pain. [goat bleating] before i had my rebuild on my legs, the doctors told me, "you're not gonna be able to do this. don't do this. don't do that." i told them to [bleep] off. female interviewer: alex, can you talk about what exactly happened in your rehabilitation with your body? alex, voice-over: august 2008, i was blown up, med-evac'd back, and i spent the next couple of years

getting put back together. i had to rebuild. i had to have titanium rods, support rods, put in. a lot of it was experimental, what they were doing, you know. it was new procedures. female interviewer: you have titanium in you? alex, voice-over: they make a thin titanium coat on your bone, and it disintegrates after a while, and it's just like internal shrapnel. it just tears you apart inside. female interviewer: and so when you-- you said it was experimental. can you talk more about that? alex, voice-over: there's been 8 people that have had the procedure done. it was a german doctor that came up with it. it's not registered through usda or licensed or anything through the states. out of the 8 people that have had it done, 6 are dead. it's all under classified records.

they told me that, you know, probably within 7 years, i'll be dead, but i've fought every other battle and won. i haven't lost yet. [rooster crows] [chickens clucking] come here, buddy. hey! come here. woo hoo.

jessica: are you ok? alex: did i get him? jessica: no. [rooster crows] jessica: you shot coco up. [gunshot] [chickens squawking] i'll get it.

[engine running] woman: ok, now, we got this. second woman: mm-hmm. thank you. i suppose we should save the tops in case we don't finish it all. woman: that's probably a good idea. well, i call alex the accidental farmer, and, um-- to his face. i mean, that's a joke between us, but, um, he's really a tremendous soldier, but he's not a good farmer...yet. woman: our daughter was living here at the home, and jessica knew we liked this young man. you know, we weren't biting our tongue. his desire to become a part of a family and then, thank goodness, part of our family was, uh--was endearing to us. it really was.

his parents left him when he was just a small baby, i mean, and went off in two different directions, and he was raised by his grandma and grandpa. jessica's father, voice-over: and the military had been his family from the age of 17 until 33 or so, when he met us. i wasn't frightened of him, um, but i was leery. alex went through a really bad period over at fort bragg because he was having problems with all the uniforms. he was having flashbacks and things, so his doctor thought it wouldn't be bad for him to get off post. [chatter] jessica's father, voice-over: so he--he stayed here for a while, and, uh, that seemed to calm him down quite a bit. you know, it's a very difficult thing,

what these men come back with. jessie, i got drugs. what are they? i don't know. they are... oh, they're my happy pills. oh, your [indistinct]? yup. they're my "i don't kill people" pills. no, they're not. those are the pills that keep you working. oh. oh. female interviewer: how many different pills do you take? well, prazosin-- nightmare control. concerta--these are my energy pills-- oomph to get out of bed and go. zolpim-something- or-another. oxycontins, fluoxetine-- these are the ones-- these are my antipsychotic pills. lunesta, robaxin, klonopin-- my anxiety pills.

dioxecine, imitrex, and fish oil. that's supposed to help with my blood pressure. male interviewer: how do you feel, like, in--in your head? alex, voice-over: the mental side? yeah. i feel tranquilized a lot. i mean, that's the best way to say it. i mean, it's better than the alternative-- locking me up someplace... [chuckles] or sitting on a water tower with a sniper rifle and... female interviewer: do you really feel like that would be the alternative, knowing yourself, that it's those extremes? alex, voice-over: yeah. [chuckles]

jessica: you know, to be honest, growing up, i never thought i'd get married. i had self-esteem issues, and, um, so i just... i don't know. i just didn't ever think it would ever happen. [chatter] alex, voice-over: you want to see how sappy i am? i wrote my own vows. "i, alexander, take you, jessica, "to be my lawfully wedded wife. "i will have and hold you even though you've been "out birthing goats or pitch-forking manure "out of the barn. "i have you for richer or for poorer, "and i will try not to panic "when you spend a chunk of the already-spent farm check on new animals." woman: yeah. i like that. alex, voice-over: "i will honor you "even when you put health food in my lunchbox. "i will love you "in a messy house or a clean one, "in insulated coveralls or a beautiful black dress.

"i will stick with you until both of us "are returned to the land that we have worked and loved "for our entire life. i will love you forever and always." woman: ok, guys. hey! [chatter] singer: ♪ ...to be loved by you ♪ [different song playing] singer: ♪ apple bottom jeans, jeans ♪ ♪ boots with the fur, with the fur ♪ ♪ the whole world was looking at her ♪ ♪ she hit the floor, next thing you know ♪ ♪ shorty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low ♪ i knew it. but, i mean, i just-- i looked at her. i was like, "it's possible," but i--i was surprised when he told me. she smells pregnant, too. thank you, and i love you, too. does this smell pregnant?

oh. it smells like deodorant. [laughs] we're gonna have a baby. you know what his name is? jelly bean. yeah. that's the baby's name for right now because i told him one day it was like, yeah, this big. it's, like, the size of a jelly bean. alex: this is gonna be the baby's room. right now it's the man-cave, and this is the start. hmm. i had every wolverine card there was. alex, voice-over: well, i was a big kid already in high school. i was kind of like the mama hen of the nerds. this is my real father, my blood father. male interviewer: what happened to him? alex: sperm donor. he's dead.

this is when i made 85, but it's got a picture of my grandpa on it from the korean war. the shellshock bothered him a lot. if we went out in public anyplace there would be koreans, he wouldn't be comfortable. just that hatred for koreans, and i never understood, and now i do. there's my tags. and i have that same hatred for the middle east, you know? i will do my damnedest not to show my kids that side. i don't think it was one of hers. i don't know where it came from.

hey, jessie? i don't know. with the memory loss, i don't know. jessie. jessie! jessie? jessie! alex: did i have it before? yeah. i wonder if that's from my grandma. i think it's from your grandma. that's got to stay in here, then. ok. it'll stay. ok. jessica, voice-over: i guess kind of like a mother tries to protect her children, i try to stay aware of our surroundings as far as, you know, wherever we're going,

who we're gonna be around, how that can impact alex. i know he sometimes thinks he's a burden. um, you know, he's always asked me, because he's already lost one wife, you know, "what would i have to do to-- when would you want to leave me?" and i said, "you pretty much would have to be "trying to kill me or, you know, "i'd have to be in either mental or bodily harm for me to leave you." female interviewer: and leana--how does it stand, like, in terms of him having access to her? he has no access to her. he has none. um, his only hope at this point, as far as we know, is that as she gets older, she'll be curious about her-- who her, you know, biological father was and maybe will seek him out.

[chatter] [rooster crows] but it's only 9:00. here we go. uh... [indistinct] yeah. just sprinkle it on the floor for them. yeah. [buzzing] [heartbeat] [heavy breathing]

[helicopter] [speaking arabic]

what did you tell him in his language? i said, "thank you. now [bleep] leave." [speaking arabic] "get out of here." [speaking arabic] did he understand you? [speaking arabic] yeah. i didn't see him. what? i didn't see him. oh, you didn't see him? how did you miss seeing him? [rooster crows] alex, voice-over: you have to calm down to heal. [chuckles] you have to calm down to heal, and i never get that.

all the drug does is repress. my self-discipline-- i lose control of it, and that's when it gets really ugly. [chuckles] that's when--when it really kicks in hard and when i start to black out and get the flashbacks really bad. alex, voice-over: we want to be able to fit in with the normal "pop." we want to be able to have normal lives. we don't want to be like this. i mean, people think, "oh, wow. yeah. you get nightmares." no. it's a lot more than that, to the point where i don't even know if i'll even be able to have a child just because of that. i don't even know if i'll ever be able to hold my baby because of that. i can't even have my little daughter next to me because i... [chuckles]

man: it's great to be around all these friends and, uh, more importantly, veterans here, and a lot of folks in america do not understand

that--that there are folks that want to change our way of life and take charge here and, uh--and some of them want to kill us-- maybe about 10% of the world. we have to keep our military strong-- the ones that protect our freedoms, protect our way of life, and that's you-- each and every one of you. [bell jingles] different man: there we go! [woman shouts] [gunshots] did you get both of them? [indistinct] alex: damn them hawks.

this is all from the hawks. hawks, foxes, neighbor dogs. i mean, there was our fault, too. we made a lot of mistakes. [rooster crows] i don't want to talk anymore. jessica: it's hard to not want to give up when you're not succeeding. and then, of course, pride comes into play. i think it makes him feel like he's a failure when he knows there's stuff to be done and he just simply can't do it. it's not his fault. it's from the injuries. they said that, you know, he might only have, like,

7 years from the time of the--the accident, when the blast was. um, that was when his body would give out and something bad would happen. [music playing] jessica, voice-over: i think at this point, um, there's times that i get worried, you know, but what kind of life is it to live where you're afraid of your loved one's dying? [man speaking on tv] male interviewer: did you read any of it when they gave it to you? [bleep] no. no.

i was having issues with it after the first conflict in 2003, 2004. male interviewer: that was the first deployment to iraq? alex: mm-hmm. i went to visits with the docs then, but it was more like, "yeah, suck it up, "wipe the sand out of your crack, and get on with the mission." male interviewer: and this is a point of clarification for us because you've told us a lot about your leaving iraq... and everything i could find

in the medical records about you leaving iraq says that you were med-evac'd out for post-traumatic stress and for depression. after the blast, yeah. it was after the blast? male interviewer: ok. because-- so here. i mean, this is what i'm talking about. it's, like, the air-evac. everything i found, it says post-traumatic stress and major depression. there is absolutely nothing about the blast. should be. i was sent to kuwait after the blast to try and recover and get back in. to get back into iraq? mm-hmm. so you were mostly physically well enough to think that you were going to be going back? no. i was tore up. i was tore up pretty bad, but i didn't care.

tore up how? i had [bleep] shrapnel through my legs. i had a cast on both my legs. i had steel rods going down through them. i didn't care about pain. i didn't care about injuries. i didn't care about [bleep]. i just wanted to get back and kill the guys that killed me

and killed my soldiers. but i couldn't. i couldn't straighten my head out. my mind had snapped. it was too much. it pushed me beyond my point, and i lost it. um, "dod directive states that members "on mood stabilizers should not deploy, "but somehow this patient was cleared for deployment on it."

it was my mission. i do what i have to do. obviously there was a reason i still had to go. i went, i did my mission, and i continued on with it.

[bleating]

it's called "stars and stripes," i think. jessica: that is so cool. and that's what the quilt looks like.

alex: oh, my gosh. they made that for you. oh, my gosh. jessica's father: i'm gonna get a picture of you sitting in your chair with your lap quilt over you. all right. jessica: it's cool that you're wearing your airborne shirt like always. [laughter] you guys did not have to do any of this. jessica's father: no, but i've got a lot of people that reached out to me and wanted to do things, and... alex, voice-over: i've been talking to my doc, and he said, "it's good to let go of the past." so i decided, on my own, that i was gonna cut back on my tactical rifles and get them, you know, out of sight, out of mind. and i don't need all them damn firearms around with a kid in the house.

jessica's father: you guys have the most beautiful little baby girl. she is so sweet. i don't think i've ever seen a cuter baby. [whispers] i love her. thank you. [baby crying on baby monitor]

today is my first day by myself with the baby. i've been pooped on, peed on, pooped on again. god don't give you any challenges he don't think you can't handle, so... that's what i got to keep telling myself and remembering. you just have to be strong and not give up. and i almost did. i tried to give up. i tried to kill myself. it didn't work, and then... that's when jesus kicked me in the ass, and that's when he showed me jess.

that's when we got to start this life out here. [crying] hey, what's wrong? [crying] what's wrong? [crying] [indistinct] [crying] oh, come on, baby. [crying loudly] [crying stops] ♪ o hail, o hail, o infantry ♪ ♪ queen of battle, follow me ♪ ♪ nothing in this world is free ♪

♪ the infantry is the life for me ♪ ♪ late at night in the drizzling rain ♪ ♪ i am hit but feel no pain ♪ o ranger, ranger, have no fear ♪ ♪ the infantry god is always near ♪ ♪ o hail, o hail, o infantry... ♪ jessica, voice-over: well, it's certainly interesting between having two children now. um, clara has just about turned--oh, gosh--

uh, i think she's 19 months now, and james just turned 8 months. seems like yesterday that he was born. [james babbles] this has been my winter project. i've been buying old-- old reels, and i've been rebuilding them. stingray, sea trout, weakfish, red grunts, cobia, blacktip shark. there's nothing like the rush of saltwater fishing-- being hooked on to, you know, something that you know could eat you. where's daddy going? [alex humming] [chuckling]

she knew you were gonna get her. [blblblbl] jessica: beep beep. alex: where's my beep? beep. jessica: beep beep. alex: beep! jessica: good job. alex: beep beep rowr. jessica: it's a big horn. alex: honk honk blblbl. alex: want to touch the cow? jessica, voice-over: i honestly think the innocence of our children have done the most help, along with medications. alex: say "mrrrh." clara: ooh ooh ooh. jessica, voice-over: the blackouts and the flashbacks and things have really subsided. he's, you know, still aggressive at times, but it's to a dull roar at this point.

jessica, voice-over: we have to be understanding to those that are coming back that they have been changed. hopefully eventually it will get better, but it might not. for me, it's all up to alex, you know-- what he can handle, what he can't handle. he's the most important thing in my life, you know? female interviewer: do you think he's better because he did farm, or do you think he would have been better off if you guys had found fishing at the beach sooner? jessica: i'm not sure. i know he's happy at the ocean, but he was happy here, too, at first. i wish i had the answer to that.

i really don't have the answer to that. i think the farm has given him great purpose and, uh... what are we doing? aren't you supposed to be watching children... alex: yeah. i got bored. and not--and not breaking machetes? i got bored. i was wondering what y'all were doing. we're interviewing. oh. what are you interviewing about? where's clara? in her seat, eating. is she still eating? yeah. i just keep giving her more food. what? she's gonna look like, uh, what's that gluttonous boy? glutus, or whatever it was? who? i don't know, but i'm supposed to be doing an interview, and you're disturbing it. am i? yeah. fine. [laughs] bye!

women: ♪ hardest work i've ever done ♪ ♪ is working on a farm ♪ the easiest work i've ever done ♪ ♪ was rolling in your arms ♪ swing and turn, jubilee ♪ live and learn, jubilee ♪ if i had no horse to ride ♪ you might find me crawling

♪ up and down this rocky road ♪ looking for my darlin' ♪ swing and turn, jubilee ♪ live and learn, jubilee ♪ it's all out on the old railroad ♪ ♪ it's all out on the sea ♪ it's all out on the old railroad ♪ ♪ it's all out on the sea ♪ as far as i can see ♪ swing and turn, jubilee dad sent me 20 pictures and resumes of matrimonial candidates.

totally normal, right? different man: objects are a big part of how we tell our story. woman: that was the moment that separated the brave people from the scared people. announcer: great documentary films that stay with you-- "independent lens"-- streaming now. announcer: this program is made possible in part by the corporation for public broadcasting, the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, the national endowment for the arts, and from contributions from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪ pbs your home for independent film

[ bells play tune ] [ theme music plays ] -♪ i think i'm home ♪ i think i'm home ♪ how nice to look at you again ♪ ♪ along the road ♪ along the road ♪ anytime you want me ♪ you can find me living right between your eyes, yeah ♪ ♪ oh, i think i'm home ♪ oh, i think i'm home -today on "cook's country," ashley makes bridget the ultimate pasta with sausage ragu, jack challenges bridget to a tasting of fettuccine,