Documentarian John Chester and his wife Molly work to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles.
Molly and John Chester had a big dream to run what is now called Apricot Lane Farms, a natural farm that goes beyond organic and utilizes all aspects of nature to sustain itself. The problem was, they had no farming knowledge, no money, no land and everyone they told the idea to thought they were crazy. Their lives changed when they adopted a rescue dog who barked so loud when they left, the constant complaints got them evicted from their apartment. At that moment, John made a promise to this dog that he would give him a happy life.
As they told their story, it spread fast and before they knew it, they were able to get the money to fund their dream. They found land spanning over 200 acres that seemed to have completely lost all faith in life. Determined to figure out how to make their dream happen, they read every book on farming they could think of and then they met a man named Alan York who became a mentor. Alan showed them how to rebuild the soil and stressed the importance of planting an abundance of fruit trees.
After years of hard work, Molly and John were successful in rejuvenating the land and growing food, then Alan passed away from cancer. Without his guidance and lots of help, they had to finish creating their dream farm which was extremely difficult and had become expensive because they had already spent their entire budget. Over eight years of shooting this documentary, Molly and John learned a lot about nature that was not pretty. They run into problems with coyotes constantly eating tons of their chickens, birds eating all of the fruit off the trees, snails ruining the plants and groundhogs eating their vegetation. Faced with many dilemmas, the couple had to figure out things on their own and how to use the animals’ nature to help keep their farm running naturally. Over time, they learned that ducks love snails, coyotes love groundhogs and hawks love to eat the birds that eat the fruit off all the trees. It was amazing to gradually see how everything in nature took care of itself. I thought this was not only an informative story of how natural farming works but how nature has its natural order that we sometimes don’t understand but it’s beautiful when we do.
In theaters Friday, May 10th
