What inspired you to make The Biggest Little Farm?
John Chester: For the first several years that we were running the farm, I was not convinced that there was any reason to encourage anyone else to do what we were doing in the way that we were doing it. And by that I mean I wasn’t sure that it was going to work and I didn’t want anyone to be encouraged to drink the Kool-Aid, to think that this collaboration with an ecosystem was possible. But around year five I saw the return of various wildlife predators that were actually rebalancing the pest infestations that we had been fighting. The real inspiration came when I started to notice how the things that we thought were problems were turning into things that were actually helping us and the species that we thought were no longer even around were coming back and helping to balance out-of-control fungal or bacterial or pest issues. The farm has its own complex immune system and I was watching it recover and rebound. We were shooting the whole time but I never really committed to the idea of making the film until that year. At that point I thought that we actually had something to say, something to share.
How challenging was it to be filming when you were also so deeply immersed in the farming itself?
JC: Doing both is probably the most insane thing I’ve ever done. It’s hard enough to deal with the complexities of a farm let alone shoot what is basically a nature documentary within the ecosystem of a farm. We were shooting 365 days a year for almost eight years. There were times when we gave more priority to the filming but most of the time the needs of the farm were more of a priority. The cool thing about nature and the farm, though, is that they have their own rhythms, so you can anticipate when something is about to happen. You start to see routines and it becomes easier to work filming into the fabric and flow of the farm schedule. It was really challenging to allow myself to film the problems and the mistakes that we were making. I had to shut off the ego and not worry about exposing mistakes. Lots of times we would have interns with us on the farm who became really confident shooters, and they would encourage me to allow them to film things that I was uncomfortable with. I knew that they were right but that was a constant battle that went on in my head.
The film was obviously unfolding as you shot it. What was the most surprising and unexpected thing that you witnessed over the course of that time?
JC: I didn’t expect the things we did to make the habitat better—things to regenerate the soil, to create efficiency—to create more problems for us. And I didn’t expect that we would have to walk through so much darkness without any promise of finding any kind of balance. And I didn’t expect that when the solutions came, they would be solutions we never anticipated. The problems were solved not directly by us but by giving the ecosystem a chance to rebalance itself. So really, it’s two things: I didn’t expect enhancing the biological diversity of our farm to work against us so intensely, and I didn’t anticipate having to walk through so much darkness to come to the other side and discover that the system itself had a solution.
It’s clear from the film that one of the largest lessons you learned is that if one is going to be a farmer, it is essential to pay close attention and to see and understand the interconnectedness of everything. I wonder how that lesson has expanded to your wider life?
JC: Albert Einstein said, "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."It was something he wrote to a friend whose wife had died. The mystery behind the human condition, the infinite possibilities that we see in nature’s complexity, are metaphors not only for how we live but for how we face all obstacles. You need not go any further than understanding the hierarchy of natural systems. They’re not based on right or wrong but on a higher law of consequences. I feel like that’s constantly reflected back to us. We put ourselves in a situation where we are required to understand how we fit in and what level of control we may or may not have.
Farming was clearly the culmination of a dream for you and your wife Molly. So having lived as farmers now for almost a decade, what would you say is the most delightful thing about life as a farmer?
JC: One of the really inspiring things about farming in this way, where we prioritize the cultivation of beauty, is the amount of inspiration and energy we get even in the throes of some of the most difficult challenges and struggles. If you wake up every day and you’re inspired in some visual way—by the type of cow that you farm with or the crops that you intermingle in the fields—if you’re constantly reminded of the remarkable beauty and complexity of nature, then it’s a place you want to be, it’s a place you want to solve problems. Wendell Berry said it best. He said, “It all turns on affection.” We’re never going to see the potential in a troubled person that we do not already first love. And I think for us the cultivation of beauty has allowed us to fall in love with the land in a way that is very different and much more complex and much more unconditional. That has made us willing to stay with it through the hard times. And it’s brought about the opportunity for us to maybe see solutions that we might not have otherwise seen if we didn’t just first and foremost feel intoxicated by the beauty with which we farm.
And what is the hardest thing about life is a farmer?
JC: It never stops. You’re always having to make tough decisions, needing to look out and ask yourself, “Is this going to be mentally and physically sustainable? Financially sustainable?” You constantly have to make decisions about what is and isn’t working.
The film opens with a dramatic wildfire nearby and fires are now being called “the new normal” in California. How is the farm dealing with the threat of fire?
JC: The only thing that we can do as a farm is to make sensible decisions about where we’re going to move animals if and when a fire breaks out. We’ve experienced an intensity in fires around the farm over the last three years, and the fire season is now starting several months earlier than it has in the past. In the last month alone, we’ve had three fires within about ten miles of the farm. The only thing we didn’t have was the seventy-mile-an-hour winds and they’re coming because we get them every October. All we need is the right combo of events—which is what happened with the Thomas Fire and the Carr Fire—and we’re done, regardless of our intent and how honorable we are with nature and the earnestness of our stewardship. We’re not immune to the times that we’re all living in and these massive fires.
All over the world, farmers are dealing with climate change. How do you personally deal on a day-to-day basis with the very real changes that everyone is now seeing from climate change?
JC: We are trying to be an example with our patch of the quilt. If our methods of regeneration have a positive impact and other farms do similar things, the patches on that quilt will spread. Obviously I don’t think that we alone or any one farm alone can change the climate crisis. But I think that if we each do our part for the ecosystem then that will be how we solve the problem—or at least a part of the problem, because I don’t believe it’s all agriculture’s responsibility. But agriculture is pretty significant, especially when it comes to the degradation of soil and the use of glycophosphate to kill any and all things growing on top of soil. Those plants are the way that soil is able to sequester carbon.
What are your hopes for The Biggest Little Farm once it’s released?
JC: I hope that viewers will see that a collaboration with nature offers infinite possibilities. Those possibilities have always been here but we’ve been distracted from seeing them. I don’t know that I want anyone to feel like this film is trying to promote a way or the way to farm. I hope that it just inspires the viewer to trust that nature has the answers for us. And those answers won’t all come at once. It’s taken us a long time to get where we are when it comes to soil degradation and desertification and it’s going to take us time to back out of it. It won’t be any one generation to solve it all. But we have to leave everybody the building blocks to continue in a direction that no longer threatens the existence of the planet—or at least the existence of the planet as we would want to inhabit it.