Shit Happens, Thank God

The Biggest Little Farm a film by John Chester.  With Molly Chester, Matthew Pilachowski.  ****1/2

My wife and I had a million questions when we walked out of The Biggest Little Farm, the charming and rather amazing documentary that we almost didn’t notice, then went to at the last minute.  Where, first of all, did John and Molly Chester get the money they needed for this venture?  There is a short section at the beginning where they’re living in a little apartment in Santa Monica, and their dogs’ barking disturbs their neighbor to the point where they’re about to be evicted.  They need to find a dog-friendly place to live, and Molly has always wanted to run a sustainable farm. 

No problem!  They do a half-assed funding campaign among friends and suddenly have enough money to buy 200 acres an hour from Los Angeles.  The land is run down and looks worthless, was a fruit farm that went out of business, but it can’t have been cheap.  Land in Ventura County?  And then, when various disasters happen almost immediately—they mention casually that they’ve spent the first year’s budget within six months—they continue nevertheless, with no problem.

It was my wife who pointed out most of these things, along with the fact that John, who was previously a filmmaker, easily acquires the skills of a veteran farmer, to the point where he’s the midwife for the birth of seventeen piglets from one sow and a major calf from a cow.  He even shoots a coyote.  This from a guy who used to live in a tiny apartment where his wife grew cherry tomatoes?

So I wish the movie had addressed a few more of the technicalities, and answered the questions that any intelligent person[1] would have.  The couple did have a lot of free help, young idealistic people who were interested in learning how to run a sustainable farm.  They also had a couple of old farmhands, one of whom had worked on the farm in its previous incarnation (again, where did these people live?  How were they paid?  How did everybody eat every day?).

Most of all, they had the vision of a single man, who appears in the film but isn’t listed in the credits, Alan York.  We’re told little about him except that he’s an expert in sustainable farming.  But he’s the person who, from the very start, says that they want to make the farm as diverse as possible.  Don’t plant one kind of fruit tree; plant all kinds.  Don’t just have chickens: have chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, pigs.  Raise all the food you need to eat, with plenty left over to sell.  And the longer you keep the operation going, the easier it will be, it will be like riding a wave in the surf, because the diversity of the place is what will sustain it.  The biodiversity will take care of things.

So we see the ordinary miracles of farm life, like that calf being born, also that incredible litter of piglets (like all those men coming out of a little car at the circus).  We also see a lot of Walt Disney type wildlife shots, everything from worms to gophers to maggots.  That’s no big surprise, since Chester had been an award-winning filmmaker, but the nature shots are one of the major pleasures of this movie.  We also see disasters, chickens that have been killed by (apparently) a coyote, other livestock killed, birds who attack fruit trees and ruin a beautiful crop of peaches.  The Chesters had hoped to be a major presence at the local farmer’s market, but for a long time all they sell is eggs, because that’s the only thing that’s working out.  From the hens that hadn’t been slaughtered.

But what is truly brilliant about this film is the way we see that gradually, over time, what Alan Yorkredicted becomes true.  What farmers normally do when a coyote is killing their livestock is to kill the coyote, and Chester succumbs to that strategy at least once that we know of.  But as he eventually finds out, the coyote isn’t the real culprit, or at least isn’t the only culprit.  And coyotes have other uses around the larger farm; they kill the gophers that are gnawing away at the trees and killing them.  The farmer just has to wait long enough and the system takes care of itself.  Or you observe the ecosystem and figure out how to make it work for you.  If you do something to attract birds of prey, and can wait long enough for them to show up, they will attack the birds who are ruining your fruit, and you’ll suddenly have the greatest crop of stone fruits in the world.  Oh the poor little birds, we think, attacked by these vicious owls.  Well what about the poor little peaches.  And what about the poor little people who wanted to sell those peaches?

What emerges from this movie is an overwhelming lesson that life lives off other life, everywhere in the world, and it’s all necessary.  The world, as the Buddhists say, is perfect as it is.  Yes it might be painful to see a hawk attack a bird, or a coyote kill a gopher, but those things are part of the system.  And a major component of the system, what we could see as the secret ingredient, is poop.  It’s worm poop that restores the soil in the first place, and as the livestock wander around the farm pooping in various places they’re doing vital work to keep the system going.  Shit happens, as the expression goes, and it’s a good thing too, because we need it.  Shit makes the world go round.  (And you thought it was love.)

Ultimately this movie isn’t about the Chesters—as remarkable as their story is—as it is about the ecosystem itself, and the various ecosystems that will arise if we let them do that.  It’s about the way that life lives off life and that life goes on, in the most remarkable way.  Watching it is a religious experience.  I had thought I wanted to be cremated—a tradition in my family—but this made me want to do a green burial, so I can help life go on.  Food for worms, as people used to say disparagingly.  We’re all just food for worms.  It turns out that’s a good thing.

I want to be food for worms.  Then move on to my greatest incarnation: worm poop.

[1] I refer here to my wife.  I was thrilled by the movie and rather oblivious.