Parents need to know that The Biggest Little Farm is a poignant, multi-year-spanning documentary about Southern California filmmaker John Chester (an Emmy-winning documentarian) and his wife, personal chef Molly Chester, who embark on a journey to go back to the land and run a traditional farm. With help from an expert mentor and a team of both experienced and new-to-farming staffers, the Chesters deal with the ups and downs of starting an organic, biodynamic farm just an hour north of Los Angeles on a 200-acre plot that was initially parched earth. While there's no sex, language, or substance use, you can expect several potentially upsetting scenes of dead animals, including some blood left on the predators. Animals also die due to environmental reasons and giving birth, and John is shown loading a gun and chasing a coyote. A beloved dog dies after several years, a human friend's death from cancer is discussed, and there's wildfire-related fear. Families will have lots to discuss after the film, from the importance of eating locally, supporting farmers, and understanding how farms work to character strengths like teamwork and perseverance.
THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM is filmmaker John Chester's love letter to his wife Molly and their joint vision to live a life of purpose -- all thanks to a dog they rescued. John, a cameraman and documentarian, and Molly, a private chef, bring their rescue dog Todd to their tiny Santa Monica apartment. But because of his incessant barking, the landlord evicts them. This prompts the Chesters to fulfill a shared dream of living a rural life on a fully self-sustainable farm. So, after writing a business plan and sharing their vision far and wide, they find enough investors to embark on their journey. John and Molly enlist help from biodynamic farm expert/mentor/guru Alan York, who mentors and designs the entire farm for them, making sure they understand the importance of biodiversity -- from the animals they raise to the microorganisms in the soil to the 75 varieties of fruit trees they plant. John, who narrates the film, films over seven years; the documentary begins with the panic of the 2018 wildfire and then rewinds to share the year-by-year ups and downs of facing and overcoming challenge after challenge.
This powerful, deeply personal documentary is both a memoir and an exploration of the Chesters' quest to make their dream of living on a fully sustainable farm come true. John and Molly are fascinating subjects. Even though they don't seem to know much about farming (although she's an avid gardener), they somehow convince investors to loan them substantial amounts of money to finance their dream. (The specific hows and whys of their budget are never discussed, which is a tiny bit disappointing, considering how open they are about most aspects of their early days.) Daunted by the task of turning their dry, desolate property into a thriving farm, the couple receives nearly magical amounts of mentorship from the enigmatic York, who seems to have all the answers all the time about their vision for Apricot Lane Farms. He's a fantastic character, and it's very sad when tragedy strikes fairly early in his time with the Chesters.
It's difficult not to feel fully invested in John and Molly's vision, even though they make it clear that other, more established farmers think they're setting themselves up for failure. John's narration and cinematography are excellent, and audiences will keenly feel each of the couple's various setbacks, whether it's coyotes attacking their egg-laying hens, slugs rotting their trees, birds eating their fruit, or Emma the pig nearly dying after a furious case of mastitis. Viewers will also feel attached to some of the Chesters' animals, from dog Todd and sow Emma to two Great Pyrenees livestock guard dogs and the kooky rooster who's Emma's companion. Based on York's advice, the Chesters want everything from the microorganisms in the soil to the predators and prey on the land to be in harmony. But that balance takes them and their team -- which includes far more experienced foremen and a group of young adult volunteers -- several years to accomplish. One small quibble is that the film doesn't go into details about the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program that provides the Chesters with free live-in labor in exchange for room and board (that's why so much of their team looks under 30). Still, this is a wonderful, beautifully shot labor of love that should inspire viewers to commit to lives of purpose that serve the earth and others.
The Chesters and the farm meet cute, thanks to Todd, their rescue mutt. "This all started with a promise we made to a dog," explains the movie's narrator, who also happens to be John. He and Molly vowed to keep Todd for the rest of his life, so when they're evicted from their Santa Monica apartment because of his frequent barking, they decide to head for the country.
The city folks are not prepared to become farmers, but they do have some relevant experience: Molly is a chef and food blogger, while John is a cinematographer for wildlife documentaries. They know how to tell the story, even if they don't know what it's going to be.
The creatures complement, and sometimes befriend, each other. When York's utopian vision is being fulfilled, the farm animals also interact usefully with the wild ones attracted by the lush new landscape. But "interact" can mean that they eat each other. That's good when ducks snack on snails and owls consume gophers. It's bad when coyotes massacre the chickens whose eggs are the farm's first hit in the organic-food marketplace.
John himself kills, putting down hopelessly injured farm animals and training his shotgun on coyotes. But he cuts away from the slayings themselves, and never pictures animals on their way to slaughter. However it's done, the butchering can't be as gentle as most of what the film depicts.
The story opens with the threat of wildfire, a tease of the Chesters' final on-screen crisis, and then rewinds to tell the farm's backstory with an animated sequence. This cartoon prologue is a little too precious, as is Jeff Beals' folkie-classical score. But the rest of the movie is clear-eyed and mostly candid, even if it does skimp on information about the farm's finances and crew of idealistic young workers, both of which seem too good to be true. The Biggest Little Farm is not a guide to establishing a thriving organic farm. It's unlikely that anyone who sees the movie will think, "I could do that."
But the documentary does show that a eco-conscious farm is viable and sustainable, even in the dust bowl of drought-parched California. That the Chesters' spread is exceptionally picturesque is just a bonus.
Supposedly the Chesters got the idea to move to a farm because a dog they'd adopted, Todd, was so badly behaved that their landlord evicted them from their apartment. Not many of us can afford to just pick up and move on short notice to give a better home to a dog, much less to a 240+ acre farm that's been envisioned as a self-contained ecosystem experiment. Livestock, seed, labor and equipment are all expensive, and aside from a fleeting reference to "some investors who saw this old way of farming as the future," there are no details about how they made all this happen, only that they did. The adorable animated interludes; Jeff Beal's Aaron Copland-esque, Americana-saturated score; John Chester's "And then I learned..." narration, and the many lyrical images of the Chesters and their employee backlit by honeyed sunlight, are all a bit much at times: more selling than telling.
But once the Chesters get settled in and realize just how many moving pieces there are on even a small farm, the movie starts to feel more grounded and transparent. The farmers are repeatedly required to figure out solutions to urgent, everyday problems, such as how to stop snails from infesting their lemon trees, how to keep coyotes from killing their ducks without having to kill the coyotes, too, and how to get an orphaned lamb to adulthood without having to put it down prematurely. "The Biggest Little Farm" is most fascinating as an account of people who made a dream come true, then realized that keeping it alive is hard, often heartbreaking work.
The film is captivating as it covers the farm throughout its growth, showcasing the devastating winds, majestic rains and cozy sunshine that have graced the Apricot Lane Farms. Unimaginable closeups of bees buzzing around vibrant flowers and ladybugs crawling on crisp leaves, dripping with morning dew, can leave you with a sense of wonder and hope.
While the film promotes sustainable living and the ability to maintain an old-fashion farming lifestyle, John also gives insights into the difficulties and dreams to coexist with the animals and nature that surround him and his family. John is forced to deal with his actions of shooting a coyote in order to keep his chickens alive, which leads him to question his belief of the power of an uncompromising idealism where humans and animals can lead separate but convergent lives.
38c6e68cf9