The Biggest Little Farm: Evicted from Santa Monica

The Biggest Little Farm (2019)

Directed by John Chester

Neon Films, 92 minutes, PG.

★★★

I think Emily and I may have been the last two people in the Connecticut River Valley to have seen this film. If you live outside of the region, it’s a feel-good documentary about one couple’s decision to leave the L.A. rat race and dive head first into organic farming.

It could have been subtitled “Evicted from Santa Monica.” John Chester is an accomplished figure in the greater Hollywood film industry. In 2011, he and his wife Molly, a private chef, adopted a rescue dog named Todd. Todd was a “barker,” a talent unpopular with neighbors. The Chesters were eventually evicted from their apartment and decided to tap into their savings to pursue Molly’s dream of living on an organic farm. The Biggest Little Farm documents their 7-year struggle to bring Molly’s dream to realization on Apricot Lane Farms, a 230-acre mixed-use holding in Moorpark, California, about 40 miles from Los Angeles.

Before I interject skeptical notes, let me say that I liked this film and I understand why it is so beloved. I admire what the Chesters did and they are right that among the things we must do to save the planet is discover ways to live in harmony with Mother Nature. Bolivian president Evo Morales put it best, “What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” A lot of young folks here in Western Massachusetts are deeply interested in sustainable farming and distrust the industrial agriculture complex that rapes the land, relies upon toxic chemicals, and is more concerned with shelf life, scale, and profit than resource management, product taste, or consumer safety. I find those youthful values admirable and their efforts heroic.

If you want to make a film like Biggest Little Farm, it helps to have a filmmaker, cameraman, and cinematographer on board, which is what John Chester was before he also became a farmer. He knows how to build drama, wring emotion from an audience, and cut and sequence raw footage. What we see on the screen took 16 months to edit and assemble. If you think you can’t get nervous about a pig giving birth, shed tears over a scraggly rooster, or get excited by a hand full of worms, see this film and get back to me.

What the film does best is drive home the message that living in harmony with nature is both an act of surrender and one of balance. Life and death are integral to farming; when a coyote kills sheep, you slice away the pelts and move on. Do not get overly attached to that ever-so-cute calf that you will one day butcher and consume. Sustainability also requires a rewiring of standard operating procedure. What’s the first thing most farmers do when coyotes kill livestock? Easy: Load the guns and set out poison bait traps. Problem: Kill all the coyotes and you have a rabbit problem. Solution: Accept that a balanced number of mutton- and poultry- eating coyotes are necessary. Love fruit? So do snails if the trees aren’t sprayed. But there’s an answer; snails are like crack cocaine for free-waddling ducks. Are gophers undermining root structures? Build owl houses.

Once we get past the drama, herculean labor, and ingenuity, different sorts of balance conundra emerge that highlight the gap between what we wish to see and what is left unexplained. First, there are a few internal personnel issues. The Chesters’ role model was the late Alan York, who may have been wise and prescient about all things biodiversity, but comes across as beloved but also like a blissed-out cross between a hippie and a guru. Maybe you have to be from California to get him, but to this Easterner he seemed more flake than prophet. Second, the farm was Molly’s dream, but the movie quickly places John at its center and reduces Molly to the often-peripheral role of worrier and Earth Mother. Finally, there is only an oblique reference to the fact that Apricot Lane Farms has a staff of 60. This makes it a small big farm, not a big small one.

One should also acknowledge that John Chester so skillfully assembled the film that it takes a sharp eye to recognize its Edenic qualities. There really isn’t any drama as to whether the farm will succeed. It is telegraphed in part by the drone shots of the lush concentric circle orchards. It is even more overtly presaged with an early establishing shot of a green pasture in which sheep and other farm animals lie contently in the grass as a venomous snake slithers among them. Check out Edward Hicks’ famed painting “Peaceable Kingdom” and you can infer divine sanction of the experiment.

Here’s the biggest little lie of the film. What you really need to replicate what the Chesters did are deep-pocketed investors. The land wasn’t really as barren as the documentary implies. Yes, the soil needed revitalization, but most of the property was run-down, not dead. Conspicuously absent from the film are specifics about money. Those who’ve looked into this say that the farm’s purchase price was a cool $10.5 million. I would imagine it also cost quite a sum to build the state of the art composting facility that led to soil replenishment. How much more to buy animals, farm machinery, seedlings, feed, fencing, and miscellaneous supplies? There is a reference to crowd sourcing, but that could not have paid the bills. Who are the mysterious “investors” who are merely mentioned? I’d like to know, because we need thousands more of their like before Apricot Lane Farms can be replicated on a significant scale*.

Let me reiterate that I admired John and Molly. I also admired the film. It is an inspiration, but let no one blindly see it as a blueprint. It is where we should go, but not where most can go at this moment in time**.

Rob Weir

*The investors must be in for a really long haul. The farm’s classification is that it makes less than $250,000 revenue per year.

**Here’s something that’s more immediately attainable. As we strolled through the fields of our CSA farm share in late August, every step among the cherry tomatoes raised dozens of birds. Clouds of butterflies and bees were busy amidst the flowers in the adjacent field. Hawks soared above the mountain ridge on the other side of the road. If you build habitats, Mother Nature’s creatures will come.