Borscht and Biscuits for Dinner

 Simple vegetarian borscht, with some gluten-free "cheesy" herb biscuits.

Thoughts on The Biggest Little Farm

The Biggest Little Farm, as described on its website, "chronicles the eight-year quest of John and Molly Chester as they trade city living for 200 acres of barren farmland and a dream to harvest in harmony with nature. Through dogged perseverance and embracing the opportunity provided by nature's conflicts, the Chesters unlock and uncover a biodiverse design for living that exists far beyond their farm, its seasons, and our wildest imagination. Featuring breathtaking cinematography, captivating animals, and an urgent message to heed Mother Nature’s call, THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM provides us all a vital blueprint for better living and a healthier planet."

This film has been brought to my attention on several occasions since its release in 2019, sometimes by social media algorithms assuming it would be up my alley, and at other times by excited explorers who are getting involved with an intentional permaculture community on a similarly sized chunk of land. At first blush the film piqued my interest. Since sustainable agriculture is a life goal for my family, and a lot of people were finding inspiration from this movie, it seemed like something we should watch and decide for ourselves. So Caera, Kate, and I gave it go.

*sigh*

You've got to believe me that I want to love movies like this. It's about living off the land, it's about intentionally moving away from the environmental harms of conventional factory farming, it features permaculture design, and there's lots of stunning cinematography. In a way it reminded me of another film I saw recently called My Octopus Teacher, in which Craig Foster, a white filmmaker in South Africa, documents his time with an octopus every day for a year. It's a breathtakingly beautiful film, and like the couple featured on The Biggest Little Farm, I imagine these folks had at least some genuinely good intentions for the movies they created. Even giving them that benefit of the doubt, I've got some major issues with them, as you've probably guessed by now. Part of my exasperation comes from my concern that so-called "documentaries" like these are becoming more popular, and they're getting overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Okay, time for a little sidebar. Take a moment to do a mental exercise the next time you watch a documentary, particularly an autobiographical documentary. Zoom out from the screen's perspective during each scene and try to visualize the cameraperson (which most likely includes a whole crew of people). You know that they're there, just as you know there's someone editing these videoclips and adding music and voiceovers. That visualization is a useful reality check on situations that are presented as real, genuine moments, but the very nature of them being filmed (including scripts, multiple takes, editing choices, etc.) undermines their authenticity. For me, this zooming out is a useful exercise in helping to distinguish between more honest documentaries and ego vanity projects.

The Biggest Little Farm has a cute (I guess?) framing device. John and Molly Chester live in an apartment in the city and have a dog whose barking allegedly necessitates their moving to the country... onto a 200-acre farm... and not knowing anything about farming. Even if we're to take them at their word, that they were going to be evicted because of a noise complaint and the dog just knew they needed to move to a better place (yes, really), that's a pretty damn big leap. Right from the beginning, there's this weak set up with the dog being the catalyst that gets them moving on their dream of living on a farm, and it comes off as contrived, overblown tension (along with the opening foreshadowing that a terrifying wildfire will come later to wreck their whole operation, but despite the big build up, nothing actually happens to them). The truth is that the Chesters already had comfortable careers and privilege, and right from the start they try to paint themselves as struggling against the odds, choosing to do the hard, righteous thing to save their poor dog and heal the planet. Again, I don't doubt these charming white folks have good intentions, but the self-congratulatory way they present themselves is suspect from the start. There are countless struggling farmers, especially BIPOC farmers, who have worked their whole lives to make ends meet by growing food, and despite that wisdom and experience and grit, they will never have the opportunity to achieve even a fraction of the stability and success the Chesters do because they lack privilege in a capitalistic system rigged against them.

From there the audience is taken on a skillfully curated version of their years-long process of rehabilitating the soil and building the farm, whose operation includes an impressive variety of livestock, fruits, and vegetables. They rely heavily on both the heartwarming images of adorable farm animals and the faux tension of the brutality of nature to pull at the audience's heartstrings. It's moving imagery, and it taps into the (what I find to be frustrating and manipulative) psychological phenomenon where people get more emotionally connected to cute animals than they do to the suffering of people, or to the actual logistics of creating a farm like this. It distracted from the increasingly urgent curiosity I had as the film went on about the people who made this farm function. The film creators give screen time to Alan York, the eccentric white permaculture consultant on their team, but otherwise barely acknowledge the tremendous amount of labor -- especially from Hispanic workers and interns -- that went into making their dream a reality. We catch a glimpse of these workers from time to time, but we do not hear their perspective, we do not know how many people work there, we do not know how their labor is compensated, and we don't actually know what their living and working conditions are like. That is massively important.

The other glaringly problematic issue that ruins the film for me is the complete absence of any financial information. Outside of the movie, people have asked the Chesters to explain how they funded such an enormous undertaking, and they refuse to give any details. I'm going to guess making a propaganda movie about the farm had something to do with it, you know, since making movies is literally what John Chester does for a living. 

Furthermore, the film is riddled with faux-suspenseful scenes and pseudo-enlightened navel gazing that grated on my nerves. These aren't candid glimpses into the pains and triumphs of livestock struggling to survive or give birth or solve the farm's problems. When you "zoom out" and see a heartfelt scene being filmed by the crew, it dampens the sincerity of the moment. All of these scenes are choices. Is an enlightened moment really that meaningful when it's being filmed like this? For instance, in the opening scene of the film, the audience is greeted with foreboding sounds and images of the wildfires that we're led to believe might endanger the farm. We see Molly Chester's worried face as she listens to the bad news on the radio, there's smoke in the air and workers scrambling around the farm, while sirens and tense music play in the background. That's why I find it useful to zoom out. If this is real footage of the actual event, isn't it a little strange to be pulling out a camera for these perfectly framed shots in the midst of an emergency? And if it's not actual footage, that means it's being completely recreated after the fact for dramatic effect. And dramatic effect is all it ends up being, because later on we're shown that the fire doesn't reach their farm, so...? I just feel like I'm being toyed with, and this kind of technique happens over and over and over again throughout the film. 

You're so negative, Jami! But what about inspiration? Doesn't that count for something? Doesn't it bring awareness to the ideals of healing the planet with better farming practices? Doesn't it show how people can get in touch with their deeper selves through an intentional connection to the earth? This couple seems to gain something celestially spiritual out of their permaculture project -- couldn't it be argued that they're teachers helping other struggling souls find meaning? 

*sigh* Yes and no. 

Here's the thing. If you're going to make an authentic documentary to teach and inspire and subvert the status quo, you need to be radically transparent about the gigantic variables that can make or break a massive undertaking like this. It's true -- people are waking up and realizing how detrimental our food systems and city/suburban ways of life are, and they're yearning for something different, more meaningful, more real. This is a good thing. However, a lot of folks are using their privilege to bypass the personal and societal analysis that should be happening when they decide to transcend convention and move to the country. I think this is partly why so many permaculture farms and intentional communities end up being heavily made up of white people. If you can't be honest and humble enough to mention your resources and luck, how can you claim that you are making the world a better place? Even though it's not immediately obvious, it continues the individualist, capitalistic, exploitation model. To me, a film like this just feels like a vanity project, and the inspiration it's supposedly trying to create is undermined by how utterly unrealistic it is. 

I like what reviewer Jared Mobarak had to say:

Nowhere in this film is a thesis of how the Chesters’ model can be used on a grander scale. All it shows is that what they accomplish is possible with the privilege to undertake what most people never could. Is it inspiring? Sure. But it’s also a flash in the pan scenario wherein the big dramatic moments of true conflict are averted. Do they ever run out of money? Not on-screen if so. Did Mother Nature swoop down and destroy everything they built for no reason other than bad luck and climate change? Nope. Chester even admits every problem faced is born from the system York taught them. They’re creative in their ways of rectifying each, but there’s always an alternative approach they reject.

So why not talk about why they have the room to think? Why not mention the bubble in which they exist that lends the morality to be holistic when others simply can’t because shooting a coyote dead could mean whether they eat that month? I blame the lens of letting John Chester control his narrative. He flippantly says at one point that a neighbor would have no issue shooting a predator as though he’s better than stooping to such villainy when the reality is more that he doesn’t have to in order to stay afloat. He’s an award-winning director and cameraman and Molly is a successful flood blogger—this is a dream rather than last chance. It’s dismissive to say, but this is their hobby.

And Joel Mayward at Cinamayward:

For all its focus on being organic and authentic, there is something distinctly artificial and performative about the film’s polished aesthetic and narrative. It’s like a Thomas Kinkade painting as brought to you by the Hallmark Channel, but with a West Coast granola vibe.

Despite the Chesters’ strong advocacy for examining and knowing one’s culture and ecosystem, the film is mostly absent of examining the larger ecosystem the Chesters are a part of, namely California and the USA. Apart from encroaching wildfires which tragically destroyed so many California homes, this is the Chesters’ wonderful self-made, self-edited world, and we’ve been given the honor of catching a glimpse of their vision. Indeed, The Biggest Little Farm is slick marketing, and the Chesters’ sell themselves well. Based on the huge amounts of renovations and equipment–not to mention people to work their farm for them–they must have found significant investors to afford such a project, and probably are hoping this film helps spread the gospel of Apricot Lane Farms.

Finally, I'll end with a great review of My Octopus Teacher, which brilliantly and entertainingly sums up why I'm getting tired of vanity projects disguised as documentaries: