Farm to Fable: Following Where Life Leads

The new documentary Iowa Vet underscores that life is an unpredictable adventure for one gay man and his husband.

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

It’s axiomatic (and perhaps a bit of a cliché) to say that we never know where life is going to take us. How we experience life, then, is more determined by our responses to the inevitable curves thrown our way.

Many have mused on this point for centuries, and no lesser sage than the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music tells Maria to go out and find her life, to “look for it. Have the courage to try.”

Few people’s searches end up quite as dramatically as Maria’s, and the mountains we climb are more likely to be metaphoric than literal, but the premise holds. Grace, openness, and acceptance allow us to be more fully alive and participate in the great adventure of living.

That’s the heartfelt message of the new documentary Iowa Vet: Dogs, Cats, Corn & Murder. It’s the story of Dr. Alan Younkin who grew up on a farm in Iowa, became a vet, married, had children, watched as the world changed his industry, lost his wife, found a husband, and moved to New York. It has been a life, as Lady Bracknell observes in The Importance of Being Earnest, “crowded with incident.”

Through it all, Dr. Younkin has maintained an openness and generous spirit that radiates from the screen in his many interviews in the documentary. That is not to deny that some of the challenges he’s faced haven’t been difficult, but what one takes away from watching the film is that he takes life on life’s terms and responds from a place of curiosity as to what the next chapter or adventure might hold. (He’s particularly generous of spirit in response to the cadre of Mormons who have decided that his Iowa farm is the exact location where Jesus walked in America. Indulgent, yes. Allowing excavation, no. Seems like a healthy balance.)

Yet perhaps the best illustration of Dr. Younkin’s approach to life is in his coming out story. As he said in an interview, he grew up on an Iowa farm and was sheltered. “I didn’t know gay people,” he said. “I always connected to guys physically and didn’t know what that meant.” He adds that many of his friends from his youth have come out as gay.

Dr. Younkin loved his wife dearly, and they raised a family together. However, he continued, “Once my wife passed away, I had some time to think about it, and I thought this time I would like to find a boyfriend.

“I didn’t recognize who I was at a younger age, so I didn’t have to go through the strain of denying who I was.” He did still recognize that he didn’t’ want to come out among his group of conservative friends where he was living at the time, so he moved to New York to experience that freedom.

Dr. Younkin met his husband Michael Schelp through a dating site, and a first date over time turned into a commitment and then a marriage. Schelp, an international TV producer is also a documentarian and produced the movie. Schelp, too, had been married to a woman and raised a family, and while both loved their wives (and continue to love and be involved with their children), they both reflect on how their lives as men together is different than what they experienced previously.

It’s fascinating in an age when many people feel pushed or forced to be something identified to—or by—others that these two men have simply found themselves by courageously following the paths in front of them.

It has been, you might say, another adventure, though Dr. Younkin didn’t seem to think it was a very exceptional one. It was Schelp who on hearing the stories came to believe that there was a film in there. As Dr. Younkin says, “Michael doesn’t take no for an answer, so we spent nine years in the collecting stories and five more years of shooting it.”

The result is rich and complex with almost as many twists and turns as Dr. Younkin’s and Schelp’s offscreen lives. It is also a testament to how we must climb those mountains, confront challenges and changes, and keep looking to find the lives we were meant to live.

The movie will have its world premiere June 5-18 at Cinema Village in Manhattan, 22 East 12^th Street. All information on the screenings is available at iowavet.net.

Published May 18, 2026
Featured image: Younkin and Schelp.
All photos provided by the production, used with permission.