The Disney+ Earth Day specialThe Biggest Little Farm: The Return, from National Geographic, continues telling the story ofJohnandMolly Chesterand the Ventura County farm (first introduced in the documentaryThe Biggest Little Farm) that they spent 10 years transforming from barren land into a complex and biodiverse world interconnected with nature. While the work the Chesters have done on the farm is truly remarkable, it’s the animals, from Emma the pig to an adorable young lamb named Moe, and their individual personalities that are the true stars of the story.
During this interview with Collider, John and Molly Chester talked about how it feels to be where they are now after all the challenges they had along the way, how meaningful it is to them to know that they’re inspiring others, why they never stopped filming on the farm, continuing to tell the story of the interconnected way of life through the experiences of the animals, seeing the farm through the eyes of their son, and what they’ve learned about 10 years of farming and working in nature.
Collider: When you guys were at your lowest point with the farm and were wondering if it was ever going to turn around and what you were going to do, if it didn’t, could you ever have imagined you’d get to where you are now and not only have one film, but now a sequel about your journey and to have so many people know about your story?
JOHN CHESTER: That’s a really good question. This is a very strange response, so get ready. I feel like, before I was born, I was totally happy being inside there. I had no idea how many other options there were until I got out. It took a while to appreciate how much better life is out here than it was inside that small little area. I think we could have never imagined, having gone through what we went through, how much more beautiful this life could become for us. It’s still very challenging, but the wonderful ways in which we’re learning, and we’re able to grow have been unpredictable for both of us.
MOLLY CHESTER: I’m the forever idealist, so there was a part of me that didn’t know the specifics of anything, but I believed it would work out. I’m the fan when it comes to [John’s] work. He’s the filmmaker, and I’ve always known how talented he is, so I don’t get uber-surprised that the world thinks the work that he puts out there is fantastic. But I have been surprised and moved by the number of people that are making changes in their life to follow their bliss and their dreams, and have become reconnected to the land. That has gone beyond. To experience what you think maybe could happen and that you could have an impact, if you followed some path, has always felt bigger. That’s been pretty special.
JOHN: To hear people say that they’ve watched the film, not once, but some people tell us they’ve seen it ten times and that their children now want to farm, it’s truly been inspiring to see how it’s pushed people into a whole different way of seeing and feeling about the planet. It’s what we could have hoped, in our dreams, but seeing it has been amazing.
I would imagine you probably get a lot of people who think that, since you turned the farm around, it must be easy now. Are people surprised when they find out that it doesn’t get, less challenging. There are just different challenges, constantly.
JOHN: It’s different challenges, yeah. I think they get disappointed to hear that it’s not all fixed, but like with anything in life, you just get a little bit more accustomed to uncertainty and you realize that you have the tools to get through a lot more than you thought you did, in the beginning. Not every failure is terminal, just like not every success is gonna last forever. It’s more that we have less anxiety about every problem. We know there’s a solution.
What made you decide to keep filming? Did you just never stop?
JOHN: First of all, how much people were supportive of the movie really let us know. And the stuff we thought they wouldn’t care about, they really cared about. We were really inspired by that support and love that people felt were, so we just kept filming, in the hopes that one day we would turn it into a series.
MOLLY: John actually creates things to relax. He creates things to create, and then he’ll create other things to relax. I don’t know if there is an off button that you’re able to hit. I think it’s in his bones to just keep documenting things that he’s seeing, that he thinks are beautiful. He tried to quit and that did not work for him.
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How did you want to approach this film? Did you know that it would be a 30-minute film for Earth Day?
JOHN: We’ve partnered with National Geographic and Disney+ on a series, and then they asked us if we would be interested in giving an update on where the farm was now, for an Earth Day special on April 22nd. It really came from the series that’s launching, as a way to connect with the viewers again, and give them a little bit of an update on where things are going and how things have been developing since the movie.
The movie is an overall story about the farm and the animals and everything that goes with it. This feels more focused on the animals. What do you want to do with the series? Are you going to focus on different things with each episode?
JOHN: That’s a really good question. I’m trying to tell less of the story about the humans. It’s way more about the experience that we learn from watching the interaction between wild animals, domestic farm animals, various insects, and other organisms. Without over-anthropomorphizing them, we’re simply telling the story of the interconnected way of life through their experiences. It’s diving deeper into the little vignettes that were within the movie, about Emma the pig or the coyotes. We’ll be going way deeper into those worlds now. In the end, we will have spent 14 years making this. For this special, it’s probably 12 years of footage and storylines that go into making it. In the special, you start to see it dip back into that animal storytelling that was a part of the film. It’s really through our observation of the animals’ journey, in what it means to live in an interconnected system.
Emma really became the star of the farm and a highlight of the first film. How hard has it been to see her go through her own struggles?
JOHN: You mean, how hard is it to have a primadonna that weighs 675 pounds, and who now thinks she has an agent and should be here, speaking on our behalf? There is a relationship with some of the animals on the farm that’s pretty deep. It’s like having a dog or a cat. We always anthropomorphize these creatures, but there is truly something real about those relationships, which is a loving connection and dependency that takes us into the richness of life. It also requires us to be comfortable with the idea that none of this is permanent. While so many things have become easier, there’s also a deeper attachment to the things that are alive.
Molly, what was it like to work with an animal like Moe where you have to feed him like a baby? Is it like raising another child, in a way?
MOLLY: There is nothing better than when those little baby lambs end up being with us for a little while, at the beginning. It’s so fun. They just become another little character in our house. And it’s really good for Beaudie, who loves animals so much. He gets so much out of it. Moe spent a couple weeks with and we all bonded to him. When you feed these animals by bottle, at the beginning, they become a little human in their interaction. They’re more like dogs. So, when you go out in the field now, whereas most of the sheep will walk away from you naturally, because you’re a predator, Moe always comes right up to you. Whichever one you spend time with at the beginning, you’re bonded to forever. It’s fun. They’re so cute.
What has it been like for you guys to see the farm through your child’s eyes? He grew up there in the most pure form, not having to go through all the challenges that you guys did. Does it give you a different outlook or appreciation about it all?
JOHN: There is so much fear and panic over what our relationship with the planet has become, and will things work out and are we at the end. But really, hardly with any teaching, our son just says things to me like, “Dad, sometimes I like to sit here, like a little frog, and just watch.” I’m like, “Who are you?” He’ll say things like, “I love that we get to live inside of nature.” They have, innately, an appreciation for this way of life that cannot be undone. The challenge for all of us is, if we weren’t given the opportunities to see this stuff, how would we know what we’re missing? Now, there is this whole generation of young people and kids that come to the farm with an awareness for the complexities of things that I didn’t understand when I was in my thirties. Imagine if I had those 30 years, with that same level of awareness. You can see profound changes in the air, just by opening up these kids and their way of seeing this world in a more complex way. It’s quite profound for me. And Beaudie is a bit of a testament to that.
MOLLY: For sure. It’s wonderful. We have developed a school on the farm, called The Farm School, and there are 10 kids here who are learning, in connection with nature. I wish that for every child, that they had time spent with their education being about the connection into the natural world because it’s the foundational connection. That’s what we are. We are of nature. When we don’t listen to the rhythms of nature, our biological rhythms are completely thrown off and it thwarts our ability to have both connection and creativity around solutions through observation. It’s been a true joy to watch that kid come alive with the farm, and we love sharing it.
How hard was COVID on the farm? What was it like to deal with that, and then to figure out how to find a new or different sense of normal, once you could shift things again?
JOHN: Being that we’re outside in a very biologically diverse system, we were luckier than most. We’re not in a city, we’re not using an elevator, and we’re not living in this fear of proximity. It certainly taxed us and our team, and it prevented us from having tours for a while. But it brought people to us that wanted to eat healthier because they were realizing there was a connection between COVID and diet. It actually opened up the farm to a world that maybe didn’t prioritize health in the same way.
MOLLY: And a lot of people watched the film while they were home. Our events did get scrapped there for a little while, but our essence of our core business has a sustainability to it, in that we’re developing food that is needed during those crisis times and we’re also connected to our customers through outdoor air markets. That’s a place that you’re able to have space, whenever terrible times like that happen, so in that sense, our model was proved successful with its sustainability. It was the same headaches that any business owner had, during that time. Everybody has different schools of thought and you’ve gotta all meet in the middle, as best you can.
What are the climate changes that you guys are dealing with and how do you adjust to those changes and adapt, when there’s nothing you may do about it?
JOHN: There are those things that we understand and can control, and then there are those things that we don’t fully understand, that we may or may not be able to control. There’s a consciousness for resources, like water, power and fuel. These are scarcities that don’t live in limitless forms without a regenerative mindset. One of the ways in which we can engage with our farm, to be able to hold those things and use those things in a sparing way, has really just brought more awareness to that, for us and our team, and the opportunity for more creative thinking. We’re not at the end. We’re nowhere near the end. We’re at the point of reconciliation, where suddenly we realize that our awareness for our impact can be enough to create and invoke a resiliency in nature that exists, that’s waiting to be tapped into. Sometimes it takes these big scary events to pick us up out of it. I see that as the greatest opportunity in front of us, as a species right now. We’re collectively scared enough to be like, “Hey, what else can we do?” And that brings out this beautiful opportunity for connection to nature.
You guys started all of this with no farming experience, and more than 10 years later, you have all of this farming experience now. What would the you now go back and tell the you then? Is there something that would have been helpful to know, when you started all of this?
MOLLY: What we didn’t know, at the beginning, is that you don’t really know how to listen to what’s working on the farm and build outward from that. You think you might, but you come in with an idea and you attempt to put that in there because you think it’s healthy, but as you get wiser, you realize that you need to figure out how to get to know yourself. You certainly don’t know what some other living being need, so you need to be receptive and receive and listen.
JOHN: When you’re looking at the land, start with what’s working. If there’s an area or a system that’s healthy, build something contiguous to that, before expanding over here and trying to create this new island of health that has no chance of survival because there’s nothing else really working around it. If you may build out from what’s already working, you can start to assimilate with the system, in a way that it’s meant to be assimilated with. Then, you’re actually harnessing the power and the forces of nature to your benefit versus working against the forces of nature when you attempt to recreate the planet on Mars. This idea that we’re gonna find refuge on the moon or Mars, before we understand how the mechanism of this machine works, is complete insanity. The greatest possibility that we had, from the beginning, was to just stare at our land, listen to what’s working, and try to adapt our needs to it, a bit more than we did. I wish we had spent more time with that, but we learned through failure.
MOLLY: There’s another little piece that we’re developing on the farm, that we ended up taking on because it finishes out the property, and we get to now, with 11 years of experience, listen to what that is. It’s so fun to do that with a team that is really bonded. It’s gonna be fun to watch that journey. Right now, it’s dust, so it needs some help.
JOHN: When you talk about experience, we have virtually no experience in farming, still after 11 years. I’m not a baseball fan, but Cal Ripkin is a good baseball player. He swung the bat three thousand times in a season. Every time we grow a tomato plant, that’s one year. We have 10 times up at bat, taking these swings. It takes a long time to get your 10,000 hours in farming. You’re also approaching it with this level of humility. We may not always have the answers, but we continue to show up, to take a swing a different way the next time. We have to be patient with ourselves. It took us a lot longer to get to this time in life, when we feel so much despair. It took us a lot longer than the time we really want to give ourselves to climb out of it. We have to be patient with the time for repair.
Are you guys always filming? Do you ever take a break and take a day off?
JOHN: No, it’s seven days a week.
MOLLY: We just went camping on vacation, and it was Beaudie, John, me and John’s camera.
JOHN: My camera was in the front seat, next to me. I had a few people helping me on the movie, but now with the partnership with National Geographic and Disney+, I was able to bring on an even bigger team, so now it’s seven days a week. We have surveillance camera traps out all the time, focused on certain animals that we’ve been tracking. It’s pretty intense. It’s chaotic. It feels crazy, but there is a method to the madness.
The Biggest Little Farm: The Returnis available to stream at Disney+.
