For several years – beginning as early as 1970 – Stanford meagerly supported himself (and his second wife) by working as an unlicensed land surveyor. The profession permeated his poetry in numerous instances, as in the poem "Lament Of The Land Surveyor". Broughton and Stanford made a 25-minute documentary about Stanford's work and life — filmed in Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri, discussing the land surveyor's experiences, and interviewing friends on whom Stanford's literary characters were sometimes based — titled, "It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood", which won one of the Judge's Awards at the 1974 Northwest Film & Video Festival.