Director:
Writers:
Stars:
THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM traces the difficult life of a couple as they leave city life to establish a farm that are and grew.
As the song in the famous TV series goes: “Green Acres is the place to be; farm living is the life for me; land spread out so far and wide; Goodbye Manhattan just give me that countryside.”
These are the words pretty much in the minds of the couple, John and Molly. They attribute the change from city to farm life to their barking black dog who cannot keep quiet when left alone. The only option, besides putting it down is to move to a farm. They settle on one an hour north of Lo Angeles, which they fondly name Apricot Farm.
John the subject is also an Emmy Award winning director. In the doc, they establish
that like the comedy Green Acres, everything can also go wrong from the wild California fires to drought and flooding but they always somehow get back on their feet. One must give the couple top credit for perseverance.
The film preaches the natural order of things – how the eco-cycle should not be broken. There is a sad scene of a coyote being shot at one point in the film with John’s voiceover lamenting the deed. John is sad at what he had done. He had sworn it would never have come to any sort of killing. But John reveals eventually how nature performs her miracles. The ducks devour the snails that were destroying the crop; the coyotes eat up the gophers that were eating the face crops and at one point, the coyote population was diminished due to lack of food, thus increasing the gopher population (poor cute creatures) that were again taken down by snakes,
The film turns too preachy at the end even telling the audience to go to the website to continue their story. But at least the message is worthy enough that the preachiness be overlooked.
THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM is a crowd pleasing documentary. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. It had its second screening at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named second runner-up for the People’s Choice Award: Documentaries.
Festival Reviews 
Reblogged this on WILDsound Festival.
LikeLike