The Biggest Little Farm (2018)

Directed by: John Chester | 92 minutes | documentary

When filmmaker John Chester and his wife Molly bring the neglected dog Todd into their home, they make a promise: Todd will remain part of their household until the end of his life. However, the adoption soon poses a problem: Todd won’t stop barking when left alone. When the situation turns into a mountain of complaints, the landlord of their tiny Los Angeles apartment is relentless: either the dog out or John and Molly themselves. The couple stays true to their promise and chooses the dog. This was just the last push the two needed to get serious about a big and long-dormant dream: starting their own organic farm.

John and Molly manage to buy a plot of land at a bargain price about an hour’s drive from the City of Angels. It is immediately clear that a lot still needs to be done to turn this piece of land into an organic farming paradise. The bone-dry soil has been stripped of any vegetation and therefore largely barren and rock-hard. In addition, the farm is surrounded by large-scale monocultures and the remnants of Egg City, once a gigantic poultry farm where millions of chickens laid their eggs (two million a day) in cramped cages. With a healthy dose of optimism and support from the eccentric and knowledgeable biodiversity expert Alan York, agricultural laymen John and Molly begin their mammoth job. Their goal: to turn the brand new company into an eco-friendly and self-sufficient farm where wild nature can also flourish.

That this is no mean feat is apparent from the many bears that John and Molly find on their way. For example, the new-fangled farm couple has to deal with a snail infestation, coyotes that occasionally cause a slaughter among the chickens and ducks that walk around the farm, extreme droughts and spreading forest fires. And just as the problems and complications pile up, their mentor Alan falls away after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Nevertheless, the organic farm develops through trial and error into a healthy business and refuge for a mixed bag of wild flora and fauna. And it is precisely this transformation that also provides solutions for the problems that the farm initially struggles with. John calls it ‘creativity through observation’; by looking closely at the natural processes that take place everywhere on the farm and imitating natural ecosystems as much as possible, the solutions present themselves. So he decides to let his ducks loose in the orchard, which leads to the birds eagerly feasting on the surplus of leaf-eating snails. The coyotes cursed earlier in the documentary—combined with the various other predators that settle on and around the farm over time—ultimately solve a cheek pouch rat infestation.

In less able hands, a movie like ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ could easily have turned into an average episode of ‘I’m leaving’. However, John Chester’s background as a wildlife filmer (he has made films for National Geographic and Animal Planet, among others) results in a beautiful portrait of both the wild and farm animals on his estate. We see how young pigs, sheep and cows are born, but are also treated to beautiful images of barn owls, hummingbirds, bull snakes, cheek pouch rats (goffers) and a great diversity of insects and mammals.

The continuously present philosophical undertone gives ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ extra cachet. Living nature and the farm are presented as complex systems driven by the transience of life, a delicate dance of coexistence made possible only by the perpetual cycle of life and death. Dead animals become bait for other animals and eventually reused in the form of minerals and nutrients that enable plant growth. By zooming in on the mini-ecosystem developing around the Chesters’ Apricot Lane Farms, ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ also holds up a mirror to modern man. With our desire for immortality, convenience and enjoyment, we have increasingly placed ourselves outside the natural, circular ecosystems, which has led to an unnaturally large pressure on both the earth and the natural resources that the planet provides.

Unfortunately, the film does not answer a few important questions that many viewers will have to face. Where do John and Molly get the money they need to build their dream farm? And where on our overcrowded planet do we find the space to roll out such projects everywhere? Such questions may not fit with the (over)optimistic message that a feel-good film like ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ wants to tell. The print therefore resembles a fairytale, complete with a dark dimension that shows that the web of life cannot exist without finiteness and death.

‘The Biggest Little Farm’ is the visual chronicle of an ecological success story full of cute nature images, animations and drone shots. As a viewer you like to dream away from this agricultural utopia, but you miss a serious reflection on the global feasibility of the agricultural idyll shown.