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PEACEABLE KINGDOM: THE JOURNEY HOME offers a touching portrait of five animal farmers struggling with the ethical tensions inherent in their way of life. On the one hand, the forces of economics and tradition dictate that the animals on their farms be valued by the income they produce, their purpose being fulfilled when they are sent to market. On the other hand, their humanity asks them to respect the animals they care for as individual beings, to acknowledge they have relationships with one another and the people who care for them, and a strong will to live.

Interwoven with the farmers' stories is the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose sense of justice puts her at odds with the law she is charged to uphold. With strikingly honest interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and intense family bonds of animals most often viewed as living commodities, PEACEABLE KINGDOM: THE JOURNEY HOME shatters stereotypical notions of farmers, farm life, and perhaps most surprisingly, farm animals themselves.

Growing up on a Michigan beef farm, Harold Brown instinctively felt that the animals his family were raising for food were not so different than his pet dog or cat. While he noticed that other farm kids struggled with this, like them, he did as he was told and set his feelings aside. 'The last thing you ever want to be is weak,' recalls Harold. 'Weak farmers don't survive.'

Later in life, a remarkable encounter with a rescued steer at a sanctuary opens the door to Harold's past, launching him on a life-changing quest to reintegrate the parts of himself that were fragmented as a child. With striking honesty and emotional courage, Harold attempts to come to terms with the violence he both witnessed and participated in as a routine part of life on the farm.

A fourth-generation farmer from Montana, Howard Lyman transformed his family's modest cattle ranch into a sprawling agribusiness empire. When Willow Jeane married him, she was new to animal agriculture, and at first, she was struck by the cruelty of some of the procedures she was taught to perform on the animals. 'The funny thing is,' she recalls, 'after you do it awhile, it's just accepted. It's your job and you adjust to it, and you get hard to it.'

Meanwhile, Howard's single-minded ambition has blinded him to the dangers of his chemical-based approach to controlling the land and animals in his care. It is only after he is struck down by a life-threatening illness that he realizes he is well on the way to destroying everything he loves.

Howard's struggle for redemption ultimately returns him to his humble beginnings, where he must come to terms with how his actions have hurt others, and find a way to make amends.

When Cheri Ezell met New England dairy farmer Jim Vandersluis, he was milking cows and she was a hobby farmer with a dream of opening her own goat dairy. Once married, Cheri's dream came true, and they began raising and milking goats at Maple Farm Dairy.

But their idyllic vision would soon crash head-on with the economic realities of animal farming. In order to produce milk, dairy animals are bred every year, leading to more offspring than are needed to maintain the herd's numbers. While Cheri had hoped to sell the baby goats as pets, she finds there are just too many of them, and too few willing adopters. While Jim knows very well what must be done to pay their mounting bills, he finds himself, like Cheri, struggling with feelings of attachment and regret.

As their inner conflict grows, Cheri and Jim must decide if following farming tradition is worth going against their own instincts and emotions. Just as their friends in the local farming community begin to turn away from them, an unlikely phone call opens a possibility Cheri and Jim had never considered: that they are not alone.

Jason Tracy and Cayce Mell were running a small animal sanctuary in Western Pennsylvania when they were asked by law officers to assist with a cruelty investigation. They had no idea how their lives were about to change. Upon discovering hundreds of sheep, goats, geese and other starving animals in crisis, their small refuge was transformed overnight into the staging grounds for a massive rescue operation. Not long after that, they would find themselves coordinating the rescue of over 6,000 hens trapped in an enormous egg-laying facility demolished by a tornado.

Despite these successes, Jason and Cayce often find themselves powerless to stop the injustices they routinely encounter in their rescue work. Even when Cayce undertakes the training to become a humane police officer, she finds that her new authority does little to address the underlying problem. 'I thought getting a badge would allow me to do so much good,' she laments. 'But it's very hard to help animals that people view as commodities.'

In the end, Cayce and Jason must learn to make peace with all they have seen and experienced, and it is in their work helping animal farmers transition to a new way of life that they find the greatest hope.