In gorgeous, unflinching detail, the film “The Biggest Little Farm,” seared through my senses from my theater seat with its cinematic beauty pulsated by the ebb and flow of a farm, punctuated by a couple’s dream. The award winning documentary captures John and Molly Chester’s journey to turn a “dry, nutrient-depleted dirt of a former horse ranch into a self-sustaining, biodynamic farm” called Apricot Lane in Moorpark, California. It produces fruit, vegetables, freshly laid eggs, meat for restaurants and local farmers markets, in the Los Angeles area.
I am highlighting my viewing experience of this film, a departure from leveraging this blog space with my interaction with objects of art, because their eight year immersion in farm life is embedded with lessons. Their leap of faith and comfort from their city jobs to a life of hard work and surrender is applicable to creatives, artists, writers. Just as a field will bear crops after months of waiting, our labor will eventually produce results if we’re willing to put in the work, the hard work. As the film shows so poignantly, the “magic happens when we keep showing up.” Along the way, their story shows, the importance of practicing patience and gratitude.
Check out the trailer (link is below) and then go see the film, in a theater if possible, the visuals are breathtaking! Spend a part of your day with nature and then put yourself in front of the blank page of a notebook, or the canvas, or block of clay and make work.