Rated: PG
Directed by: John Chester
Produced by: Sandra Keats
Featuring: John Chester, Molly Chester, Todd Chester, Alan York
It all began with a promise to a rescue dog . . . that he has come to live with his forever family.
When John, a wildlife filmmaker, and Molly, a chef with a tiny garden on her porch and a passion for home-grown produce, are served with a notice evicting them from their apartment because Todd, their dog, has a bad case of separation anxiety, the solution seems obvious.
Buy a farm for the dog and spend every day out in the paddocks and the fresh air with Todd. What could go wrong?
Although it could be squarely classified as a documentary, this film is something special. In keeping with the principles of storytelling, there is a powerful sense of being part of a drama unfolding in real time, as well as a sprinkling of philosophy and gorgeous cinematography. I wasn’t expecting to be, but I was entranced.
The film opens with great plumes of smoke rolling across the paddocks toward the house as Molly stands at the kitchen window and stares. With two-way radio chatter and whumping helicopter blades providing the backbeat, John prepares to set the animals loose and Molly belatedly grabs random belongings and flings them into a suitcase.
But all this comes later. First there is the farm. An abandoned orchard encircled by bare hills and large-scale, monoculture holdings. All around, intensive farming methods predominate, and it’s the exact opposite of what Molly and John have in mind.
When the couple start out, their little patch of soil is as unyielding as granite and a cluster of hives they find tucked away among the trees is a ruined monument to its dead bees. So the first thing is to engage a soil expert and the next is to find out what happened to the bees.
In their first six months, Molly and John will spend an entire year’s budget of their investors’ money without producing a thing. But they do find Alan, a board-short clad farm consultant with a passion for compost and a vision. He describes a farm that will function as an eco-system, eventually coming to harness the power of nature, maybe not easily, but as simply as a wave bearing a surfer ahead of its crest.
Alan’s concept is to base the farm upon the greatest bio-diversity possible, from the micro-organisms in the soil to an orchard stocked with 75 different varieties of fruit trees (to begin with), in the belief that such profusion will regulate the farm and inoculate it against the epidemics that bedevil its monoculture neighbours. Well, that’s the theory, and the Apricot Lane Farm is stocked lavishly. Until I saw the trays of chickens and a plethora of piglets arriving, I didn’t really appreciate what it meant to actually stock a farm.
As the soil regenerates, the farm is gradually populated with an array of domestic animals and crops, and the wild species, too, are returning. Among the swarms of bees, flotillas of ducks and gopher gangs moving in, are the hungry-eyed coyotes, running their nightly missions on the henhouse, along with a procession of invaders, such as the squadrons of starlings laying waste the to the fruit crop.
Alan had said that it would all balance out, but he didn’t say how. This time it would be up to Todd to lead the way.
