The Rich Roll Podcast - Soil Is Everything: John & Molly Chester’s Biggest Little Farm

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

Biodiversity. Regenerative agriculture. Ecological sustainability. Carbon drawdown. Climate change reversal. These are popular themes that recur regularly on this show. But in practical terms, what do they actually mean? I wanted to better understand these subjects. Not from the perspective of an academic, scientific researcher or political pundit but rather from the direct experience of actual practitioners — people who live and practice it every single day — farmers. Nine years ago, personal chef Molly Chester and her filmmaker husband John Chester traded their life in urban Santa Monica for 200 acres of infertile land nestled in the foothills of Ventura County — an arid and desolate plot called Apricot Lane Farms. Hence began a journey to build a new life from scratch. The vision? An organic, biodiverse farm based upon regenerative principles, thriving in harmony with nature. It began with repairing the draught-laden, nutrient deplete soil, followed by planting 10,000 orchard trees. Rooting over 200 crops. Introducing a myriad of animals. Managing the chaos that ensued. And patiently stewarding the farm from inert to irascible and ultimately into what it is today — an awe-inspiring symphonic ecosystem in vibrant, sustainable co-existence with nature’s rhythms. Along the way, John chronicled every daunting, obstacle-fraught step, plying his storytelling skills and masterful wildlife cinematography to produce The Biggest Little Farm — an extraordinary documentary that evidences the planet's innate power to heal itself in synchronous partnership with humans devoted to restoring its precious biodiversity. Uplifting and wildly entertaining, it dispenses with the dystopia common among ecological fare, instead leaving audiences uplifted — and in love with the hard-earned possibility of positive change. I was quite moved by this film. Compelled to know more, me and my team spent a day touring Apricot Lane — an educational and eye-opening experience that left me with a deep appreciation for the Chester’s achievement — and the nuanced complexity of their mission. In the wake of my visit to Apricot Lane, I posted images from the experience on Instagram, accompanied by an expression of gratitude and respect for manifesting what environmentalists unanimously urge mandatory to repair the rapidly vanishing biodiversity of our precious soil (literally the planet's microbiome). To sequester carbon and create sustainable food security. And to serve as a viable model for the future of farming. John and Molly didn't just protest climate change. They got to work, taking an action-based stand against the glyphosate-laden, chemical-based industrial, conglomerate owned, seed-controlled, GMO-infused, animal intensive CAFO factory farms that monopolize our current food system to the great demise of human, animal and ecological health. More than anything, Apricot Lane proves that regenerative farming isn't just possible, but profitable. And that it doesn't just work, but exceeds conventional methods by yield volume and nutritional density metrics. Meanwhile, it controverts planetary warming by drawing down carbon and building long-term, natural resilience against pestilence, drought and soil erosion without the products and practices ‘BigAg' wants you to believe are mandatory. ... Enjoy! Rich

For me, this film is a love story, and it reflects the love of this farm and this piece of nature that we've experienced. And so I would love if people walk away inspired to begin to create that connection in some very small way for themselves. And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas or the conversation around economics or practicality or logic, stay focused on that reconnection. Stay focused on that reconnection because I feel ultimately what we're all starving from starts with that reconnection to nature and then from there to each other. That's Molly and Jon Chester.

This week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How goes it? What's happening? Rich Roll here, your host. So about a month ago, I watched this documentary called The Biggest Little Farm. It's the story of this couple, Molly and John Chester, who have this dream of owning a farm, not just any farm, not just an organic farm, but a farm based on regenerative principles, run, conducted in alignment with nature, no pesticides, no GMOs, no chemical fertilizers. And what unfolds over the period of watching this movie is the incredible and very hard-wrought eight-plus

year journey that they undertake to transform this 200-acre plot of what is essentially completely desolate land and turn it into a thriving, biodiverse ecosystem. And I was very moved by this story. It's beautifully shot and chronicled. It's emotional. It's educational. It's super entertaining. It's just beautiful. And it left me wanting to know more, not just about Molly and John and this farm. It's called Apricot Lane. It's about 30 minutes away from my home. But also to learn more about many of the issues and themes that recur on this show, how a regenerative farm actually works, how you actually create, foster, and maintain biodiverse soil, what is entailed in sequestering carbon, and how difficult and complex and nuanced it all is, not from the perspective of a doctor or an academic or a scientific researcher, but from an actual practitioner, somebody who lives it up close and very personal every single day. So a few weeks ago, me and my team, including Joy and Nick from

Joy Cafe, the vegan restaurant in which I'm a partner, we spent the better part of essentially an entire day touring the farm with John. And I got to say, the experience exceeded all expectations. It was incredible. It was eye-opening. It was inspiring. And then we followed it up with this conversation. And I can tell you that I learned a lot and I'm better for having spent time with these people and their team. I've got quite a few very important prefatory remarks I want to say about all of this before we dive in, mainly because I know there are some hardcore vegans out there who were upset with my decision to visit this farm and I want to address it. But first, let's take care of some business.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care,

especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from Thank you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help,

go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. So some of you may know that after visiting the farm, I posted a few pictures on Instagram from the experience, along with a caption explaining how much I learned, how much I enjoyed the experience, and how much respect the work that John and Molly and their team have done to do what so many said was impossible. To accomplish basically everything that environmentalists and health advocates unanimously urge must be done to improve our food system and repair the rapidly vanishing biodiversity of our precious soil, the planet's lifeblood, to create food security and sequester atmospheric carbon by pivoting away from the

glyphosate-laden, chemical-based, industrial, conglomerate-owned, animal-intensive, CAFO factory farms that dominate our current system to the demise of human, animal, and ecological health. And returning to regenerative principles, natural rhythms, and perhaps most importantly to serve as an example that sustainable practices not only work, but work better than conventional methods by increasing yields, producing more nutritionally dense fruits and vegetables, drawing down carbon, and building resilience against things like water and soil erosion. practices that several past podcast favorites, people like Zach Bush through his Farmer's Footprint organization, and like Paul Hawken through his Project Drawdown, David Bronner through Climate Collaborative, and also like next week's guest, Ryland Englehart through

Kiss the Ground, all vegans, by the way. Stridently and passionately, these are people who advocate that this is one of the most important movements that we must embrace if we want to solve climate change and not just maintain but rebuild and secure the planet's beautiful, robust biodiversity. In any event, that Instagram post was mostly well-received but was also met with a very, and I think it's fair to say angry, response by certain strident members of the vegan community, expressing disappointment, betrayal, and even calls to cancel me because apricot farms, albeit predominantly an agricultural farm that produces an incredibly wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables, an incredibly wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables, also makes use of some animals, pigs, chickens, sheep, cattle, as part of the soil regeneration process, and that a small number of these animals are later sold for food. So let me first say this. I get it. I hear you. I understand

the response, and I appreciate and deeply respect your passion. I consider myself a compassionate vegan. I don't like the idea one bit that any animal is slaughtered, no matter how it's slaughtered and no matter how much it was loved and cared for during its life. I made the choice to not participate in that cycle over 12 years ago. And I would like to think that if I was John or Molly, that I wouldn't make that choice, but I'm not them. I'm not a farmer. And although, yes, I am, of course, aware that there are veganic farms, I can't say I truly understand the difficult realities of actually running a farm day to day. What I do know is that as much as we would like to believe that these issues are binary, they are not. Nothing is truly black and white. And if your perspective is that you cannot or

you refuse to learn from somebody who has different ideas than you, that has an experience-based perspective that differs from yours, then that's your loss. So I refuse to stand in judgment of these people. In fact, I have great empathy for them, people who are not keyboard warriors standing on principle without action or criticizing without doing, but instead people on the front lines who are actually living in the solution of climate change reversal every day. On the black and white issue, as I said, I consider myself vegan. Maybe not vegan enough for some of you, but vegan nonetheless.

But also somebody whose allegiance is to truth over dogma. And the truth is that no matter how vegan you are, none of us are exempt or immune from harm or negative impact. If all you eat are fruits and vegetables, that's great, but don't delude yourself that your lifestyle is entirely cruelty free because harvesting produce results in countless animals, rodents most predominantly, having to be killed. If you're procuring your produce from a conventional farm, you're not only participating in that cycle, but also contributing to soil depletion by way of monocropping, to the pollution of the water table by way of chemical pesticides, and a whole litany of other harms. My point is rather simple. None of us, none of us are holier than thou. And that we can all do better, be better. I certainly can. But to do that,

we must choose to learn from those who know more about these issues than we do, and most importantly, have empathy and respect for people who might not align perfectly with your perspective, but also have something valuable, maybe even critical, for us to hear and learn from. something valuable, maybe even critical, for us to hear and learn from. A central tenet of veganism is compassion, not just for the animals, but for each other. So let's all try to practice that a little bit better, because what the world needs now more than ever is empathy, surely for the animals, but also for each other. This is me and Molly and John Chester. Well, I'm delighted to have you guys here.

I love the movie. I think it's quite an accomplishment. It's such a beautiful, amazing story about so many subjects and themes that are central to this show, from environmentalism to creativity to balance to overcoming obstacles. Like it's all packed into this really finely honed and really fantastic story. So first of all, congratulations. It's quite an achievement. Thank you. I don't know what is more of an achievement, the movie or the farm? Probably you would say the farm,

but I think they're both quite up there. How do you think about it? Because now you've had some perspective. It came out in May and it's been a minute. Yeah. I mean, the film was predominantly carried by John. And so you'd have to say which was harder because for me, definitely the time that John was crafting the film was a difficult time because we had still the full breadth of the farm and that. Yeah, the fact that we're still married is probably the achievement. Yeah, I can imagine. And a three-year-old at that time or two-year-old. He's four now. But I would, you know, so for me, the farm was something that I was more on the inside of.

But for you, which was harder? I can't even pick. I mean, I think it all was. I think the meaning behind the pain that we were feeling was driven by the farm more than anything else. I think the farm is the child you're raising that you'll do anything for. And I think that's probably the greatest crowning achievement.

Well, the movie chronicles basically an eight-year period from like 2011 to essentially present. But from what I understand, you didn't actually make the decision, although you'd been documenting everything all along, you didn't actually make the decision to move forward with a full-fledged documentary until you were at like year five, right? Right. I never wanted to admit it to anyone else or to myself

because I wasn't even sure if the farm was going to work and nor did I want to get trapped in this idea of making a story about, you know, a husband and wife team sort of fish out of the water story that I feel like had been told of people moving from the big city to, I wanted to tell like a deeper story about nature and this interconnectedness and these mutualistic relationships, but I didn't know as a storyteller really who the players were. But by year five, it became very evident which animals, which elements of biodiversity were actually balancing our farm against these epidemics of pests and disease.

And then I was like, wow, I've actually inadvertently been shooting a lot of these Keystone players. That's the story I wanna tell. And I spent the next three years really, really focused on making it as cinematic as possible so that it was worthy of a film. And there's this moment where you have this realization

that you're actually one of the antagonists. Yeah. Right. And I didn't realize that until a couple edits you have this realization that you're actually one of the antagonists. Yeah. Yeah, right. And I didn't realize that until a couple edits in telling the film during the editing process. And I was sitting there and I didn't include my skepticism. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah, and I realized.

You thought you were all in. I thought I was, yeah. So I started reviewing the footage. I was so excited to be able to present this film where I was like this great idea, this idealist like my wife and who was so optimistic. And the truth is, is that I was, you know, both, but I was also very skeptic and scared. And so I was constantly questioning whether or not I was going to be let down and be told at some point that Santa isn't real. Yeah.

So I put that in the film. The hero. I mean, who do you think is the hero in the movie? Is it nature? Is it nature? Is it soil? I mean, there's a beautiful, you know, humility to the whole thing and this theme of arriving at this place where you realize, like, you can't conquer this thing.

You have to collaborate with it. You have to, like, be more in the allowing and kind of gracefully dance around its edges rather than trying to kind of harness it and, and force it to, to succumb to your will. You said it. I think the, for me personally, I think the hero is our humility within the admission of our vulnerability and need for nature. And I think that was the part that was hardest to learn. And then nature can become a hero if you're willing to connect with it in that vulnerable way.

And where I'm from on the Eastern shore of Maryland, you're kind of shamed out of that whole idea by being called a hippie or a tree hugger. So you don't get to go deep. But yeah, that's my personal, what's yours? What do you think? As far as the hero, well, if I just look at it for just flatly and think I'm watching a film and what excites me,

I mean, you really do all of the characters of nature or what you celebrate and come through and pull it off. And so I would definitely say from the coyote to the ducks, I mean, the moment when the ducks unfold out of their coop and you see what their purpose is, you want to cheer. I did. And I got to just watch it because I wasn't editing it. So I had that experience of just wanting to cheer. So I would definitely say the nature characters. Most, I mean, this is fundamentally,

I mean, it's entertainment, it's educational, it is an environmental documentary. I think it's fair to characterize it in that way. But most environmental documentaries are very educational. There's a lot of talking heads. There's a lot of charts and statistics and research cited and expert testimony and the like. And you made a very conscious decision to not do any of that. So talk me through that a little bit. Yeah, that's, you know, I grew up watching films about nature. And I think what I've noticed in most documentary, a lot of times what happens

as a byproduct of sort of taking a position as a storyteller is you create a polarization around the issue. And with the environment, what I feel like the missing element in the story of the ecosystem is one where we're not acknowledging that fear driving the conversation, we're not acknowledging the destructive pattern and response that both sides have to fear. One side gets mad and blames the other, and the other side shuts down. And what we need is a culture of great curiosity, not confrontation.

Because the missing element is a society that is encouraging innovation and that's what we've lost is this innovative way in order to sort of interact with the ecosystem and so I wanted to make sure I told the story that would open people up to the to the to the element of change that I experienced and that was I fell in love with it so I became more curious about it and so as a sort of a book that Wendell Berry wrote called it all turns on a affection and I and I think that that that way into this conversation is so important. And so telling a story where there's experts and pointing fingers and assigning blame only does more to divide us in a time where we need great innovation and bipartisan buy-in. What do you think, Molly? Yeah, I would agree definitely. And to kind of

bounce off of what you were saying about curiosity, we were just talking about that yesterday with children that this generation, because there's talking about that yesterday with children that this generation, because there's so much screen time, not that screen time is a bad thing in and of itself. It might be. Yeah, maybe so. But that it limits that ability to be curious because you just have a video image in your head of how to play. So you act that out rather than creating and having that spark of inspiration. So I do think that the film's curiosity can stimulate that in us and that feels naturally good to us.

Yeah, you fall in love with the process. You appreciate all the obstacles and what it actually takes to accomplish what you've accomplished, um, without fear mongering and without, um, you know, playing the victim card, like, like the planet is the victim and we're bad and there's a lot of shaming and a lot of, you know, sort of dystopian narrative surrounding it. Rather you fall in love with possibility and it's very hopeful in that regard. Yeah. What I liked, I spent time on the website for the movie today and what I didn't

realize until this morning was that you have like these curriculums for kids. You can download these programs that basically, you know, take a classroom through an educational experience as a microcosm of what you guys have learned. Yeah, that's a new thing that started with the film. Yeah, the impact campaign with the film was something we thought about before it even released. And really giving teachers a chance to be able to sort of take some of the things that are introduced, ideas that are introduced and sort of turn them into lesson plans. But, you know, there's so much science behind every frame of the film. Like you could, there's like a, there's a couple of scenes like between ants, aphids and ladybugs and it's like three seconds, but there's, there's a whole sort

of lesson that creates a lens of understanding of how the entire ecosystem works just in that. And so without getting too heady in the details with the film, you the entire ecosystem works just in that. And so without getting too heady in the details with the film, that's all part of that impact campaign afterwards. Yeah. Did you have to resist the temptation in making the movie to not dive into that? I mean, when we did our visit the other week, I think I said to you something along the lines of like, well, in the movie, like at all, you know, you, you, you, you're very conscious of making sure that, that everything you say and everything that you show is very grounded and relatable. Um, but then in talking to you,

you were going off on these crazy monologues. I was like, this guy's knowledge base is like 10,000 times what you would suspect by watching the movie alone. Yeah. Not to say that you dumbed yourself down, but you were like trying to make sure that, that, you know, you were, you were, you weren't trying to impress people with how much you knew. You were just trying to create that like emotional and intellectual connection with the work. Yeah. I felt there was a real, it was, it was hard at times because I was, yeah. Here's what I learned though. For the eight years in doing this farm, we were touring people around the farm. Occasionally we would do tours.

And regardless of what they believed about the environment or whether they believed there was climate change which was related to human impact or not, how they felt about veganism, vegetarianism or animals, or not, how they felt about veganism, vegetarianism or animals. There was this takeaway that a lot of them would say to me after the tour and it broke my heart, but it was a lesson. And that was, they would say, wow, so it's all connected.

And I'm like, we've not been meeting people where they are since the beginning of this conversation. Because that's the fundamental core message of all of it. Right. But what does that look like? No one's ever been able to show an audience, in my opinion, what interdependent interconnectedness is. We talk about it. We say words.

But what is this thing? And you needed to give it players and actors and in a way mythologize it with things they can relate to. So rather than pick like an Asian citrus psyllid as a character, I pick an aphid because people know what an aphid is. Or rather than pick tamarixia, which is sort of attacks the Asian citrus psyllid, I pick a ladybug.

So I was trying to discipline myself into using these keystone players in nature that people already know. And now I've got the Serengeti built and I can go deeper and get into the science and get more into the details. But I needed to meet people where they were. And that's not to say dumb it down, but that's to really just give people the chance to have it visualized. Yeah.

Yeah. And anthropomorphize the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, the biggest anthropomorphization I made was when I tried to claim that a rooster impregnated a pig. I apologize for that. Which created a lot of confusion. If you're still explaining that to your husband

as to how that's not possible. And I will say kids never asked me if that's possible. It's usually someone who is in their forties or fifties. Yeah, and we won't spoil it for people that haven't seen the movie, but remember what we just said when you watch it. Well, I wanna get into the broader environmental discussion and the themes of sustainability and regenerative ag and all the like. But let's walk our way up to that.

I mean, this whole thing really begins with you, Molly, and a dog named Todd. So let's start at the beginning for people that haven't seen the movie to kind of contextualize everything. Sure. I was a private chef before a farmer. And the reason why I got into cooking in the first place was that I dealt with some different health issues in my 20s and started to make that connection about how what you eat really affects how you feel

on the most fundamental level. And going deeper and deeper into that brought me to a love of food and culinary school. And there I learned about the fact that it wasn't actually even the choices you're making in the kitchen, although you can soak and sprout and ferment and do all of these things to increase the nutrient capacity there. But it's actually the choices the farmer makes because you have to start with nutrient dense food in the first place. So once I went there, I started cooking for clients from all of those different perspectives.

And we started visiting farms to find farmers who were cooking in the way that were really treating that top 10 to 12 inches of soil in the regenerative way to then allow the nutrition to be available to the plant. And once we found a few that were really great in the region, but we couldn't find someone who was doing really great eggs. And we started to say, what if we did really great eggs? And simultaneously, our dog had severe separation anxiety and we could not figure out what to do with this barking dog. So we thought that would solve that problem as well. Yeah, you're living in a small, I don't know,

like a one bedroom, two bedroom apartment in Santa Monica and you essentially get evicted because Todd won't stop barking. Yes. Right, which kind of accelerates this whole thing. But when was the first moment where you kind of looked at each other and said like, let's be farmers or?

We had talked about it for a long time and we're telling everybody about it. And that was the thing we agreed on is that we weren't gonna let people, cause they would be like, what do you guys know about farming? Yeah. And we were just like,

let's not let people like shame us out of this. We didn't know that word back then, to be honest, but we were like, let's just keep telling everybody. And so we would say it with a straight face. And then around the time that Todd got evicted, we had also met someone who was looking to invest in a farm, believe it or not, of this type and knew that the future of food was all about creating nutrient density, right? And creating a regenerative ecological impact. And so it just was a weird thing because we were only thinking

we'll go get five to 10 acres somewhere. And so that all happened in this, we were in disbelief for weeks after we had this conversation. So this person that was interested in backing a farm like this, what convinced that person that you guys were a good bet? I mean, you're coming into this with like no experience,

right? How did you tip that scale and make this person believe like, you know, we're the ones that you should get behind? We created a three page document with pictures. Five year plan that he still laughs about. Yeah, he still laughs about it. And we were like, and then we're going to do this, and then we're going to do this. And I don't know. I mean, well, he really connected with Molly on the food part. There was a really, really deep fundamental connection about the importance of

fats and the importance of proper farming and all of these things. So from there, it grew outward. And it really, back then, it was hard to find people who were in that same space. So I think we saw there was something that was sparked there and the trust was able to build from there. And then you set about trying to find a farm to buy or what did that look like? We had many arguments on the way to-

Yeah, we had a breakdown on the side of the 101, not a car breakdown, but literally mental. We were like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? As we're going to meet our first real estate agent. No, you were saying that. What's that? You were doing the, what are we doing and why are we doing that?

No, no. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was clear. That's always me. I'm trying to be the voice of reason. But yeah, and then so we looked at several farms and then this one real estate agent kept telling us, you've got to see this one farm. It's like, I've been trying to sell this farm for 12 years. And we're like, that does not sound like a good farm.

So we kept ignoring this offer to go see this place. And we finally just said, let's just go see this farm that Terry's talking about. And we drive up to the front gate and we look at each other and we're like, we have to make this happen. We got to make it happen. It was like when you walk into a house, you know, you're going to buy. It was just, that feeling was overwhelming. And we thought we saw bees. We thought we saw bees and we were so, we didn't realize how dead the soil was. We didn't, we couldn't see, it just looked like Maryland back.

Right. I just, we hit it at a good time. Yeah. Yeah. Spring, rolling hills. 200 acres. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and when I visited, I was amazed at how, I mean, desertified soil aside, like how much of the structures that I saw were there when you first visited? Because it's incredibly beautifully and well-appointed. It was an old- Like from the gate, even from the gate, like everything about it is like really well done, beautiful. Originally it was a lemon farm and they were breeding like thoroughbred racehorses there.

So there was a whole nother agenda with this place. The fortunate and unfortunate thing is it had been sitting on the market for so long and it was coming out of 2009, right? Right. And foreclosed on a couple times. Yeah, and the previous owner was really looking to get rid of it. So there was just a sort of converging of moments for us. But the structures on it made it appealing for where it could go in 10, 15 years,

but it definitely made no difference to how healthy the farm was going to be. So like I say, old horse farm, abused pastures and fences. So you jump on this thing, and I'm just like, what's the first day like, I mean, we didn't even say like, you're coming from a filmmaking background, you worked on nature documentaries and all kinds of different, you know, sort of cinematic animal nature-based projects. But you're not coming from, you know, some kind of regenerative farming background other than growing up on the Eastern shore. On the Eastern shore, yeah. Where I thought, cause I live near chicken farms

and drove tractors on a couple of like corn farms that I knew farming, but I didn't know anything. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if day one was like, wow, there's a lot of avocados. And I remember picking up a lot off the ground, like that was gonna end. And I was like, oh, we have a endless supply of avocados.

But the idea of like what we were really up against didn't come into focus until we really got Alan involved. Yeah, but I would say there was this feeling almost like it only happens a couple of times in life where you literally feel so buzzily alive, like a dream just came true. You know, it's one of those true. You knew it was the right thing. This is your past.

I can even remember waking up John, I couldn't be there yet because we had so many things that were still irons in the fire because we didn't know this was going to happen. I wake up and I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh, this feels like a fantasy.

Almost like how the girl in those silly movies finds out she's a princess. It's like I found out that I was a farmer. It felt so good and so alive. I can remember the calla lilies and the smells. And still sometimes I'll smell a smell on the farm. And it brings me back to that very first day. It's so good. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you maintain that level, at least by appearances from watching the movie, you maintain that level of enthusiasm pretty much throughout, which is kind of like, I look at it like you're this constant in that regard that John is always measuring himself up against. Yeah.

In the sense that like, you're holding that place of like hope and perhaps, you know, some mix of idealism and naivete. Absolutely. But that's the strength that like John needs to kind of keep moving forward. Yeah. Is that fair? Very fair. And I think, you know, in so many ways, John, I remember meeting John for the very first time and it was like when my life started.

It's like I needed his grounding to deepen that nature that is me. And without him, I was in culinary school, so I had to be away from him for a period of time. And I was up there and I can get so just like into what I'm doing that that's all I do. You know, I'll just, I was up there, I was learning about food. I do food on the weekend all the time. And one day I was like, man, I've lost my sparkle or something. Something's missing. And I was looking out the window and I remember thinking, oh, my sparkle is John. Like that's his, something about the energy that he brings to my space makes it come alive. So yes, there's idealism and a lot of naivete, but his deepening makes me deep.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You compliment each other in that way. Right. Well, there's that really fun montage early in the movie where you're like, we're going to make tomatoes. I'm going to do this and it's going to be like that. That's real.

It shouldn't even have been a cartoon. I just didn't have it. Which I mean, from that, I just take like, you know, an optimistic enthusiasm and perhaps, you know, some level of idealism. So you go into this whole thing with that idealistic streak of, we're gonna do this differently.

We're not gonna use pesticides. We're not gonna use chemicals. We're gonna do this strictly in adherence with regenerative principles. Like what was the mission statement and what was it like to try to hold that line as obstacles started getting thrown in your direction? Yeah, it started with...

Yeah, I think that because of the food, there was, as far as idealistic as I can be, I can also be extremely stubborn. And in that sense, I did know where I wanted us to head. I knew, so when we had all of these older farmers telling us that we can't do what we're doing or trying to tone it down a little bit or whatever, none of that felt right. So the compass was locked from the beginning. And that's so helpful in any vision, that you know from a seed, you're not gonna change from what your ideals are there.

And then it gets complicated because we did have the ability to move quickly. And that makes you have so much opportunity and nature is so much opportunity. And when you open Pandora's box, you're like in the middle of that. And then that's when all hell broke loose. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How early on do you bring Alan into it? I mean, he, you know, in this kind of hero's journey, this like Joseph Campbell, you know, architecture, he's definitely like the Yoda, right? Yeah, and he was, he felt like that. With a buddy, just like a lot more cursing. Yeah. You know?

So that was like pretty soon after we got there, Molly scoured the internet, but also got connected with, through the Demeter organization, which is biodynamic organization, that there was this great consultant named Alan York who'd done all this work all over the world on vineyards if we could convince him to get involved with this project because it wasn't a vineyard.

And so it truly was another hero's journey thing where he refuses the call three times. He's like, you guys want nothing to do with this. You don't know what you're getting into. You have no idea how long it's going to take. And Molly was her persistent hummingbird self where she just kept coming back with the same enthusiasm piercing. I would have been like, oh, this guy's a grouch. I don't want to deal with this. He doesn't believe in us. Let's find another way. Yeah, no. And he was amazing. There was definitely just this kindred nature.

I have so many wonderful memories from the very beginning of mapping things out. We mapped all of Block M out on this big piece of paper. We sat in the middle of the block that had no trees. It was all dust and colored it with or drew it out with crayons and came back in and almost as an exercise, colored the whole thing in with different shades and things. And I can't find it. I don't know where that thing is. But there was so much with him that was simple.

And I think that goes back to what we were talking about with John with filmmaking. Anytime something has gone through the whole process and come back to simple, it's like how you watch a figure skater and you're like, oh, I can do that. Because they make it look simple. And he was there. So he would leave us every time he left with an outline of what he wanted from us. And it was something that we could do. And I just, that was like the Bible for me.

I would go step by step through it to make sure we were on track. And at that point, we had some compass of our own, but not really the level of depth of what he was talking about was for sure over our head to a certain degree until you experience it. But it was him feeding it to us in the way he did. It's like a guru who only gives you what you know you can do. But it set us to then finally find our own compass through living it out. Yeah. I mean, I think of him as coming in with these core tenets, which are basically like biodiversity is king and soil is everything, right? I mean,

it kind of distills down to that. And then he throws these obscure sort of Zen Cohen-esque, like sort of statements at you that confound you. But he is kind of that high watermark that you're trying to like live up to the standard that he set. And it's a thing that is perhaps simple, but also very much not easy. Oh my gosh. I mean, it becomes like the ultimate whack-a-mole situation.

But not at first, you know, and one other thing that he did that like spoke to me as a filmmaker, because there, and I see it with you, you have a great aesthetic and I see that that must motivate you and inspire you. And I think Alan would always say, regardless of the science of what we talk about, the most important thing is that we make it beautiful.

Because the beauty is what is going to encourage you to want to be here and look as deeply as you need to look into this to find these solutions. You need to create beauty. That cultivation is full of endless possibility. And I'm like, I can get down with that. And that was something that made it fun while trying to build essentially this immune system that was the science and the soil.

And Alan was never shy about making that as important as anything else that we were to do. And I can remember in the early days of Alan, John and Alan would be down on the ground digging in the soil, looking at things. And I'm looking at the early days of Alan, John and Alan would be down on the ground, digging in the soil, looking at things. And I'm looking at the to-do list like, guys, we got to go. We have all this stuff to get done. But it was in those moments. I was learning everything in that moment with him.

He was teaching me everything. And that goes back to John being my dad. He was there digging in the dirt, going deeper and figuring out everything we needed to really go where we were going. Well, I would say, don't ask Alan so many questions about soil today. I'm like, but it's all about the soil. She's like, yeah, but then we talk about the soil all day long.

I'm like, ugh. Well, I wanna get into the soil. But before we do that, I think it would be prudent to get clarity on what it means to be a regenerative farm and what the differences are between regenerative principles versus an organic farm versus a biodynamic farm versus a conventional farm. Can you kind of break that down?

I think I can break down three of those. I think biodynamic and regenerative can kind of be the same in a way. But so in like an industrialized monocrop farm, it's all about trying to grow high volume product for as cheaply as possible without any type of reverence for the nutrient density of the food and the health of the soil. So you end up creating this extractive method of farming that's just pulling and robbing the regenerative power of soil out in order to grow food cheap. But you get this lesser tasting food that is lower in nutrient density. What is the difference in nutritional density between the produce that you grow versus a conventionally grown, you know, avocado or orange or peach or whatever?

Well, I mean, it's hard to sort of put a one quantifying number, but like our eggs have, you know, three to five times the vitamin A, higher omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, higher lutein. So there is quantifiable nutrient analysis that would change farm to farm, soil to soil. And then those are all the things that go into helping us fight degenerative diseases, right? I'm not sure if I answered the question. No, that answers it. It's that answers it. It's also challenging right now to research really anything with regards to food because one, it's conventional is pumping N, P, and K and another suite of nutrients into the trees.

So when you test, that's not where you're really going to be able to see it as clearly of what's different. But what you can certainly tell is that flavor comes from that difference. So when you eat an apple from a farm that's focused on regeneration, it has a depth of flavor that you can't get anywhere else. We've been sold this story that in order to feed the planet and meet the demands of a quickly, rapidly exploding global population,

that conventional practices are the only way to get it done, that we need to avail ourselves of the pesticides and sort of chemical-laden fertilizers that are required to monocrop at scale. But the truth is something different altogether. Yeah, so that narrative requires, first of all, that we're taking for granted that this idea that there's a food shortage globally is the truth, and there's not. So that's not true. There may be food supply

issues for certain countries, but those are usually politically related. We throw away, what, 30, 40% of the food in this country as UK. Yeah, food waste is one of Paul Hawkins' top contributors to climate change. Absolutely. The methane that burns off just from decomposing, improperly decomposing food in garbage dumps outweighs sort of the climate issue with cows that we have. But I think the narratives around economics are also very short-sighted in that like, okay, if we're looking for the profitability of a farm that's going to transition to regenerative practices in three years, maybe there's an

argument, but at the same time, are we ignoring the dependency on the finite natural resources for which we grow food, feed a nation, create both biosecurity, national security, and deal directly with the public health issues related to food. We are looking at this in completely the short-sighted wrong way. We've desertified or lost a third of our topsoil in the last 260 years, deforested 46% of the trees, and we're ignoring our dependency on healthy soil. So these narratives don't include the long game. Like right here in Ventura County, we're not going to be growing food in Ventura County in 30 years.

There's no water. Regeneration is not happening in that we're not capturing water, putting it back in the ground for future farmers to grow with, let alone all the topsoil that's washing out to the ocean every time we grow crops without using cover crop. So what is the economic viability of a people who can't feed their people? And I think that the conversation has to change around admitting to ourselves that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources that we have been unconsciously allowing to be destroyed. Yeah. And it becomes a national security issue. Absolutely.

Germany post the war. I mean, that was one of the big issues. They were cut off from their food supply. was one of the big issues. They were cut off from their food supply. And China right now is realizing how incredibly dependent they are on outside food sources to where they're not allowing any land to be developed. They're saving it all for agriculture. Ventura County has got an amazing rich valley for which to grow food. And 85% of it is shipped out of the county and 60% is shipped out of the country. Right. How do you explain the difference between a regenerative farm and an organic farm? So the organic requirement is that you can't use synthetically derived pesticides, herbicides, and you can use synthetically derived fertilizers. So it,

while it helps to not further destroy biodiversity, it doesn't take into consideration soil health at a fundamental level where you're really truly regenerating it, nor does it really take into consideration of the habitat restoration that needs to happen on farms for biodiversities to thrive and create an equilibrium. So it's a step. It's kind of like the Prius. It's a step. It's a middle-of-the-road step.

It took us a long time to accept organics. The cool thing about regeneration is that I think it's much more visually understandable for people because it really is now you're creating a flywheel system that is in line and biologically mimicking the planet's natural ecosystem. You're creating a system that is prioritizing soil as king, the grand alchemizer of all death back into life, making it those decaying plant and animal matter, making them available for future life. And once you get that pump started, you begin to realize the regenerative effects of biodiversity and topsoil and how we have all been able to live on this planet and what makes it so

different than Mars and the moon. You just got to work your ass off for like a decade. Yeah. Well, at least in a farm that had been extractively farmed for 45 years. Yeah. But there's, you know, there's some spots in Maryland I know about that have a, you know, an eight year head start on where we are. It's not like this everywhere. And everyone's story is going to be different and the length of time is going to be different. Yeah, so you're new on the farm, you bring Alan in, he's putting you to work. What are the kind of unforeseen things that start to get slung in your direction?

Like the problems that happen? Yeah. Well, mainly Alan was there during the golden period of I think idealistic enthusiasm and excitement. And he described it. He actually said this just to set it up. He goes, the first two, three years, you're going to be so full of excitement. You'll think, how could anyone not ever take part in this life? Then around year four and five, you're going to see all these problems. You're going to be like, or year four, you're going to see all these problems. You're going to be like, we have

screwed up and we need to turn around and go back. He goes, but I promise you by year five into seven, you're going to see the return of the biodiversity that's going to help fight those wars against these epidemics. And so we were here, he passed away year two. So in the beginning, it was all about just ripping out crops, putting in culverts and building fences. It was barely about agriculture.

It felt like it was more about infrastructure. It's just organization at that point. And then all hell breaks loose. Yeah. As soon as the cover crops started, we created the worst epidemics from gophers to pest issues. Well, talk about cover crops because I think we give lip service to that, but I'm not sure people really understand what that means and why it's so important.

Well, the main problem with our farm is it didn't have soil, it had dirt. So it was lifeless and plants build soil, right? And they are essentially photosynthesizing, pumping a liquefied version of carbonic sugars into the soil, feeding microorganisms. These microorganisms are these alchemizers turning death back into life, like turning death back into available nutrients for future life.

So we had to make sure there was no bare soil. That was rule number one with Alan. No bare soil ever. That's a complete violation of our standard. So we were planting a mix of legumes and grasses. Not only are they rebuilding the soil through that process of feeding microorganisms, they're creating porosity.

So allowing water and rain to seep in, right? They're increasing biomass and organic matter, which helps to create a sponge-like effect with soil. Like an interesting anecdote is we increase soil organic matter which helps to create a sponge-like effect with soil. Like an interesting anecdote is we increased soil organic matter between or up to 3% in the seven years. A 1% increase in soil organic matter per acre has, first of all, requires 21 tons of atmospheric carbon to be drawn down in order to build that. But it also has the water holding capacity,

that 1% per acre of about 16,500 to about 25,000 gallons of water in the top four inches. So you're holding swimming pools with every one of the increase. So- Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but that was one of the things that was super impactful when we visited.

It's a pretty stark contrast when you're kind of up on a high hill and you can see the surrounding farms and how different they look to yours. And you were talking about how, you know, when the rains came, we had heavy rains this past winter, that the, whatever topsoil existed

on those surrounding farms, just got washed away and gone. It goes into the water table or whatever. Whereas your farm was able to just hold all of that water and create this amazing aquifer. Yeah. And like probably a sponge-like layer of that was kept in the top 12 inches and whatever it couldn't hold went back into the ground deep into the aquifer to recharge it. So you're building soil, you're sequestering water, and then you're actually, these plants that we thought of as weeds, but these weeds and these grasses and legumes are actually helping to surface and cycle nutrients.

Like, persilin is a weed to people, and we look at it differently. When you have an acre of persilin, that's 400 pounds of potassium that you have living on the top of your soil. And as that decays, it sort of filters down past root zones and gives plants an access to potassium, your crop plants. So you're building the fertility, right? And then you're also creating habitat for predator species of insects that are fighting the pest species of insect. So it took us three or four years to see the ladybug population come back to such a number that it could override the ant population that was protecting the aphid population. Yeah, right. Right?

And that's like to say, oh, I'm just waiting three years while this destruction happens for nature to return is not a conversation you can have with a lot of people. It's a scary proposition. But ecosystem response to these issues takes a long time, especially when you don't have the habitat in place. But now the habitat's in place. You've got this cover crop. It's part of the habitat equation. It's not the only thing.

And so the next season when the pest outbreak happens, you've got predators that are like, oh, damn, I need to have extra babies. I see this. I remember we're gonna lay more eggs here. Literally the ladybugs will lay their eggs right in the middle of an aphid population. And the ants, and no one's the wiser, they're running around trying to protect the aphids. And they have no idea that in a few weeks, there's going to be this hatching colony of ladybugs right in the middle of their house.

It's brilliant. I mean, it becomes this like almost game of three-dimensional chess, right? You're, you're, you're sort of lording over this symphony and trying to figure out how to conduct it. And the minute you kind of figure out a natural solution to one of these problems, it just creates another problem. And the human instinct is to clamp, like, let's crush that problem and it will go away. Like this very like dualistic sensibility that the way to solve that problem is by doing this without an appreciation for the domino effect that that occurs. And it's a journey to understanding that, you know, the interconnectedness is so much more

profound than you can imagine. And the implications of everything are almost impossible to track because they're so profuse, right? So whether it's the ladybugs or the aphids or the ants or the bees or the birds who are now eating all the fruit and then all the snails that come out,

it's just a constant learning curve of trying to figure out how to like corral all of this and get it to work in harmony. Right. And part of that is just patience. Right. And getting out of the way. Totally. And I think, you know, we all are looking for the right and wrong ways to navigate our lives and to be able to identify, right, this is right, this is wrong. I believe this. I believe that. And we try to oversimplify this thing called life with these right and wrong perspectives. And what nature teaches you is that it's all about consequences. And consequences are the truth and consequences are not always gonna happen in 30 minutes.

They may take 30 years to understand the decisions we make and the consequences of those requires great patience and observation and humility to know that the answer may come in a time that we are not comfortable with. And so to begin to realize that the answer may come in a time that we are not comfortable with. And so to begin to realize that nature also does not have a reason necessarily, a yes or no reason or a right or wrong reason why it does something, it really truly just works off this consequential sort of system of events is to free yourself from having to know what's right and wrong and just be, um, be, uh, very disciplined to, uh, possess the skills, I think, to observe and acknowledge when you've come to that conclusion.

And, and from there you can say, you've got some sort of information to make the next decision with. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a big thing of the big theme of the movie is, is, is, um, having that humility and investing in curiosity and observation as, as fuel for innovation, right? Like how can we just stop and really pay attention to what's going on here and get, you know, as granular as possible and as curious as possible. And, and that's kind of, that's the, you know, pardon the pun, like the fertilizer for finding the way forward, like the sustainable way forward. Yeah. And being surrounding yourself in a community and a culture that supports that. And that, and that, and that's the trick, right?

That's, that's what we've got to get to because I think we're all desperate. There's a, there's so much fear out there with what's happening. Even whether you believe in man-made climate change or not, it's indeniable that we're all a little bit like, well, that hurricane was a little stronger this year, that windstorm. There's only been 10 fires in the last month. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if man created that, but I know that that doesn't feel right to me. So yeah, we have to acknowledge together that that is something that is prescribing or signifying an imbalance. And there's a reason for the imbalance.

That's what we should get curious about. We had an earthquake, pretty big one, right? Like not too long ago. Biggest one in like, what, 20 years. My son was in the living room and he was freaked out and he was asking me a million questions and I'm like telling him it's going to be okay. And I'm like, you know what? Do you know what an earthquake is? And he's like, no. And I'm like, let's watch a little video and let's learn what's happening. Immediately, 30 seconds later, he was completely

calm. He had been able to visualize what was happening. It answered enough questions for him to sort of feel connected to it. And I think the things we are afraid of, we can no longer turn away. We must be curious and not confrontational. Yeah. In terms of surrounding yourself with a supportive community, Molly, what was the reaction of the surrounding farms and farmers when you guys moved in and started doing things a little bit differently? It probably could have been more aggressive. People would kind of leave us alone to a certain degree, but it definitely wasn't. We were doing something very different and nobody understood what we were doing. And you have to deal with that feeling of a little bit, not embarrassment, but you're just kind of on the outside of the situation,

and you really just have to pull the resources from yourself and the community that you find in other ways. And it's a challenging thing to go about that. I mean, John and I have always spent different times not with our people necessarily. And so you sort of are an island and that's not ideal. Everyone wants to live in a community. But now with the movie out and all of that,

you're like, ooh, it's celebrity. Has it changed? I mean, they must be, especially when their soil runs off in the rain and yours doesn't like, they have to be thinking, well, what is this? What are these guys onto? Like, are they, are they, are they demonstrating that kind of curiosity now? I think, yeah, it got better a little bit before the fall. And yeah, I would give them a little credit, but I think a lot of it was, well, you can't feed the world with this way of farming. And I'm like, well, that's an interesting, I would give them a little credit, but I think a lot of it was, well, you can't feed the world with this way of farming.

And I'm like, well, that's an interesting – I wasn't trying to feed the world. I was just trying to feed my community. And is that enough in my head? I'm thinking – I didn't say that because I was like, oh, well, I guess you can't feed the world. She's right. But they're now – after about six years, they started coming around and asking questions. And we never have like looked at the way our neighbors grow as like pointing fingers at them and saying that they're wrong because they're responding to a vote that we have all culturally supported. And that is like, I just want my food cheap and I want to have my blueberries in the wrong time of year. And,

you know, so they're just responding just like Monsanto. It's like, it's really easy to like point fingers. I don't agree with what Monsanto is doing, but they are a product of our own making. So we never really preached to our neighbors and our neighbors now are seeing the health of our plants and realizing we're not having these certain pest issues. And they're like, so tell me about, you know, the, the, the ducks and tell me about this. And that's great because that's what we need. We need that open dialogue. And that was before the movie. So to give them credit now after the movie, they're probably just like, I don't know what they're imagining. But, but I will say there has been a transition of

appreciation. Yeah, that's cool. Well, let's talk about soil. I wanna dive deep into that. Soil is everything. And part of the process of restoring this soil has a lot to do with the composting and the composting tea. And it's kind of an amazing elaborate thing that you guys constructed as part of this whole journey. So yeah, I think,

so there's a couple of different ways we build soil. One is cover crop. The other is straight compost, meaning like we'll bring in everything from horse manure to the cow manure on our farm to landscape scraps and turn that back into sort of a soil compost. And then the third, it's like the top secret ingredient of our farm

is this vermicompost operation, which is essentially compost where worms are doing the work of breaking down organic matter. And the cool thing about worms is that they're inoculating that soil with up to 48 different types of bacteria. And then from those castings, the worm poop,

we then brew a tea, a compost tea, which increases the diversity and microbial count of the brew. And then we literally inject that as a homeopathic sort of level of injection, a small dose into the irrigation water to put all these warriors, these microbes back out onto the soil to go to work,

you know, creating that flywheel effect of breaking down decaying matter. So there's like our three components to sort of helping build an established diverse, you know, microbial soil. Yeah. We, we had the opportunity to, to put our hands in the worm compost and actually, yeah, it like, it smelled, it smelled great. It smelled like, like really good coffee grounds or something like that. Right. There was some coffee grounds. I don't know what, what that was, but it was, we do, we feed the worms coffee because it keeps them working a little bit.

Not true, not true, anthropomorphized. And then you take like, it has a porous bottom to it, this sort of carafe where you're creating this compost and you take like a couple inches off the bottom, right? Yeah, once a week. And then you put that into this kind of brewing machine that creates the tea. Giant 500-gallon tea brewer. Sorry if I oversimplified the steps. No. It's like cooking. Yeah, exactly.

And then it's a big old jacuzzi full of air, lots of aeration stones. So we want to create these aerobic conditions to avoid a domination of the anaerobic bacteria. And that's for 24 hours, that's brewing. And then it gets, like I said, injected into our irrigation system or sprayed in a foliar way, like on the leaves, because plants are like eight to 10 times more efficient in absorbing nutrients through their leaves than through their roots, which is pretty crazy. Right. Yeah. I wouldn't have thought that. Yeah. And another thing it does is it colonizes the leaf surface with a diversity of bacteria

that helps to prevent these epidemic fungal or bacterial outbreaks on the leaf. So you're creating competition by spraying it right onto the leaf itself. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it actually was really difficult to get the vermicompost bin working properly. It's an art and it really is like making sourdough bread or people that make kombucha or all of these things. And so it's doing the same thing that we are doing with our body by adding those fermented products into our body. We're doing that exact same thing with the land on a bigger scale.

Yeah, the soil is the gut lining of the digestive tract. Yeah, I was just gonna say there's so many parallels between the two. It's like this microcosm, macrocosm thing with in the way that we try to buttress our own personal immune systems. It's basically the same process of creating biodiversity either in the gut flora or in the soil,

which is the microbiome of the farm or the planet. Exactly. People always ask like, oh, I don't know if I could farm. I don't know if I could do what you guys do. But anyone who's been through a health crisis and has then addressed their food choices as a way to cure their health issue automatically has a four-dimensional understanding of how soil works. And this has been tested time and time again with interns and apprentices that start on our farm. The ones that have been through a health crisis begin to understand what we're talking about when it comes to soil within about 24 hours. The ones that have not been through that, it takes weeks for them to really understand what

we're talking about. And that's what Molly offered to me because she went on that health journey. And then when I changed my food, it changed the way I thought. It changed the way I saw the world. It changed the way I felt. And so I was convinced that there was a connection to gut microbiome and all of those things. And then I'm like, oh, the soil is the digestive track. Yeah. So we were just feeding and cooking for the land.

Right. Yeah, it's cool. Well, one of the things that Alan makes clear early and often is that you need animals. He doesn't quite know why or what that means. Or he doesn't know how to take care of them. He's just like, go get them. But he's like, you need them. So let's talk about the animals.

between ruminants especially and soil is a mutualistic relationship that is the basis for soils real healthy diverse existence because you know like the rumen of an animal like a cow or sheep they don't actually eat grass they take the grass and they drop it into the fermentation tank that is their stomach there's four chambers and essentially drop it into the fermentation tank that is their stomach. There's four chambers. And essentially, it's the microorganisms inside that fermentation tank that actually break down that grass and release these volatile fatty acids into the bloodstream of the animal, which is the food. All the while, their rumens are multiplying these microorganisms and then excess amounts of these organisms come out with the poop and land on the soil. And those same microorganisms go to work doing the same thing on the gut lining of the earth.

And so that relationship is really, really important. And obviously also too, the manure of animals is how we farm pre-chemical, you know, period 75, what is almost a hundred years ago. And so without animal input, you are reliant upon these synthetically derived chemical fertilizers like ammonium nitrate, which is, you know, uses petroleum,

vast amounts of petroleum to make. So yeah, they're a big player. And then also when a cow like goes and bites a piece of grass, I've heard it's the saliva, but also it could be the tugging method of as the cow bites that grass, the root response of that plant is,

oh God, I'm getting pulled out and it shoots the roots deeper. And so as you send your cattle through these fields and through these orchards, you're creating this response where plants- It's like a stress response that creates resiliency. Exactly, they're driving the roots deeper in response. And also they're just making those nutrients

in that grass leaf more readily available to the soil because it's been sort of pre-digested and pre-broken down. To be fair, there are veganic farms, right? There are people that have farms that are strictly on vegan principles that aren't using animals. And I don't know the specifics of how they make that work,

but do you know anything about how they function? I don't, but unless they're you know at some point along the way unless they're using a synthetically derived ammonium nitrate which is heavily petroleum-based uh reliant um then um they're using another form of vegetable that is then using that ammonium nitrate at some point to grow. So I don't know enough to comment on it, but the complexity of the soil system is only informed this way through animal interaction. Right. So you've got cattle, you have pigs, you have ducks, you've got chickens.

What other animals do you have? You have cows, pigs, ducks, chickens, sheep, guinea hens, and then guardian dogs. I don't think I missed anything. Guardian dogs. And a four-year-old kid. That look a lot like my dogs. Yeah. And a horse, right?

So one thing I want to talk about is the reaction that I got on social media after posting on Facebook and Instagram that I had visited the farm. For the most part, there was a huge outpouring of love and support. You have a lot of fans of the movie. A lot of people have seen the movie and they were super excited about the fact that we were getting together. But there was a very loud kind of vocal minority of like sort of a subset of the vegan community who was very upset.

And that upset is rooted in the fact that, not necessarily that you have the animals on the farm, I think, but that some of these animals are sold for slaughter and food. So I wanted to give – I want to talk about this. I want to have a mature kind of like dialogue about your reaction to that, and I'd like to share a few thoughts as well. I just – there's a lot of people listening that just went and turned the volume up a little. It's funny, like I don't court drama on this show. I actually got in my way to avoid it. And there were a lot of people actually

who were kind of upset that I haven't, that I didn't respond immediately to that because I wanted to do it in this context where we're having an actual like grown-up discussion about it. Yeah. So there's a lot... Well, I think we should cover two things. We should definitely cover like the health perspective.

But I think I need to sort of set the stage first and just say this. First of all, we do not believe that there is any one singular dietary agenda that is right or wrong. I think we need vegans, we need vegetarians, and we need meat eaters. But here's the thing that I can say for both Molly and I, we absolutely, if we're going to be eating animals, we cannot allow food, animal meat to be raised in this cheap and inhumane way, period, end of story. The reverence is tipped way far away from where it should be for the sacrifice made. We can get into the other stuff as we go deeper, but I think first and foremost, that's how we feel. And no way are we trying to convert people who are vegans into being meat eaters. In fact, we have a lot of vegans who work on our

farm. Yeah. So I'll just sort of vegans who work on our farm. Yeah, so I'll just sort of set the stage with that. I think you told me Gene Bauer visited the farm as well. Yeah, Gene Bauer who does Farm Sanctuary. Cause he was, after seeing the movie, he goes, well, I'm really interested to understand soil because I don't think I really understood the relationship to the impermanence of life and building healthy soil. And we had this incredible visit and he was really great and gracious and we shared with him our experiences. And I think that's the way it should be.

I get very nervous as does the ecosystem when any one thing, an idea, an ideology, you know, starts to take over without understanding the consequences of that ideology. So I think it's something to be learned from the ecosystem. Yeah. Is it possible to, and this is just, I don't know the answer to this, but would it be possible to, you know, find a place like Farm Sanctuary where these animals could then go afterwards? Or is selling those animals for food like a critical economic aspect that contributes to the long-term viability

of you being able to continue to farm? Well, if we allow the argument for animals, the especially ruminants involvement in building healthy soil, including ducks and their rich nitrogen poop that they've taken and converted dead snails to rich nitrogen poop to fertilize trees, if we allow that to be something that we all can at least agree needs to happen,

if I have, first of all, I am a meat eater, so I'm not denying that, right? But if I have 25 cows that I'm using to help build soil, and then at some point all those cows become geriatric, and I'm now having to lift them up and carry them over to the water trough because they all end up with some form of arthritis at some point. Now my days are being taken with caring for all these sick animals. I'm no longer in a sustainable model of farming and I become overwhelmed mentally and financially. And my

reverence is to just let that animal die a natural death and not do anything with its body. I can put it back into the soil and let the onus of responsibility of how that death was turned back into life, or I can acknowledge that part of living is being a part of the impermanent process and taking that animal's life at a time when I feel like it no longer is able to live in a way that is regenerative on our farm. And this is not going to satisfy everybody's argument about this stuff, but the hoarder situation from which our dog came from is an example of someone who was not letting go of some of these very sick animals that she had contained in her house,

300 dogs, and was keeping them alive far beyond what was humane for those animals. And so there is some issue here where if we don't address the requirement for the impermanence of life, we're all in trouble. Another point I wanna make, and we talked about this, you and I on the farm, is that, again, I'm gonna tell your audience something that not many farmers would ever admit, okay? This happens on all farms.

If you like eating avocados, for a farmer to grow avocados financially, especially biodynamically, where we're enhancing the ecosystem and helping nature, we have to grow at least 20 to 40 acres of avocado. And we have to be able to sell those directly to our market or to our consumer. So here I am farming 20 to 40 acres. That's going to require me to kill at least 35,000 to 40,000 gophers to protect those trees. Hummingbirds accidentally when I spray a non-synthetically derived organic spray, accidentally killing bees, accidentally killing ladybugs, and intentionally killing ground squirrels. There are 50,000 to 100,000 deaths

that happen just to grow avocados. And my point is that none of us are getting out of this without blood on our hands. It's just at what point and how connected were you to the process, but that doesn't excuse you from the reverence and the responsibility for life. Yeah, I think there's a misplaced delusion

that pervades a certain segment of the vegan community who have kind of tricked themselves into believing that because they're not eating animals, that they've opted out completely from this cycle of life and harm. And I think that that's just not, the facts don't bear that out. And no matter who you are,

and no matter how delicately you dance on planet earth, we're all contributing to harm in some way. And I think it speaks to this broader issue of the complexity of all of this, right? Which is, that's basically what the movie is about. This is incredibly complex and dynamic. And the minute you think you have your hands on it, it will surprise you in a new and different way. And my allegiance is only, I said this to you the other day, is only to truth. And I'm always trying to check dogma as much as I can.

And I consider myself a compassionate vegan, but I'm not under the misapprehension that because I only eat fruits and vegetables and grains that that is not contributing in some negative way towards these problems that we all care about and that we're trying to reverse. And I think having a mature perspective on that is more beneficial than slinging arrows at people

and calling people names. And I just think, you know, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And the moment that you start to think that you're better than another human being or holier than now, or stand from a place of judgment is the minute that we lose that ability to have empathy. And empathy is what we need right now.

That is what the world is starving for. And if we wanna see our way forward together collectively, we have to figure out how to unite around our shared principles to do what's in the best interest for the preservation of the planet and to do it in the most compassionate way possible with an appreciation for the challenges

and nuances and complexities of all of this. Yeah. Really well said. Very well said. Molly, what do you think? Can we just end the podcast there? No. And it's tricky and I will say, I said this to you earlier,

like it was painful to see those comments because I'm a member of that community and to see them turn against me as if I betrayed them was upsetting to me. But it also made me think like, would I do things differently? Would I have not visited you? Would I not be having that? No, it's like, these are conversations that I want to have. And if there's a certain sector of the population that isn't unhappy with it, then that's an issue that they're going to have to deal with. Good for you. That takes a lot of courage.

It does. And I mean, we get very occasionally called murderers, you know, and that's really hurtful, especially given how hard we work to create this, you know, regenerative, environmentally enhancing farming system. And it's thankless in a lot of ways. But, you know, it really does beg the question of like, where does life start for people? Like, does it start at the ant? Does it start at the cow? Where does it start? Cause does it start at the bacterial level? Because you're eating on one apple like a hundred billion microorganisms

when you eat that apple and those microorganisms are dying so that you can ultimately digest that apple at some point. I think it's like, I hope for people to become really curious and the vegans that have come and been very curious have walked away, I think, with maybe not entirely changed. I don't wanna act like we've changed anyone, but they've walked away with an appreciation for the complexity of the thing we're all here

on this planet trying to understand. Because clearly none of us understand it. We don't know how it works. We don't know how to fully replicate it. It's hilarious to me that we're trying to think about ways to colonize the moon and Mars. We're going to get up there and re-engineer this beautiful life-giving thing that has never received carryout. Not one day have we received a delivery from another planet for the food that we were given. It is a renewable source of death and life in a sort of infinity sort of symbol.

And we need to take appreciation for what that really means before we try to evangelize our own ideology. We should all be humble students of this. I think that what's interesting is that we're all on board with terraforming Mars because it's sexy. It's like, ooh, that sounds cool. And yet we have so much difficulty getting people behind the idea of regenerating our soil, which is doable and right in front of us.

Well, in order to terraform Mars, we would have to kill a lot of things in order to make that happen. Because there's, I mean, we would have to bring death to Mars in some way. Like it's so much a part of, I mean, Matt Damon grew the potatoes with his poop. That is the decomposition of something that was eaten by him. And then, right? So it is hilarious, right? We talked on the hill at the farm when you visited. I said, it's like going up to Mars and the moon and trying to start it all over

is like saying to your parents who just gave you a car for free, you're like, no thanks, Mom and Dad. I'm going to go build one out of stone, and I've never even figured out how to put oil in the one that you gave me. So I wonder when they get there, if they are not going to look back at this beautiful blue and green marble and be like, oh, damn, maybe that was a better place. How many regenerative farms are there right now, like in California or nationwide? I actually, I know from a biodynamic perspective,

there's a couple hundred. I don't know the answer to the regenerative farm, but there are a number and larger than ours, like in the thousands of acres. Gabe Brown is one that I'm sure you've heard talked about on this podcast. Will Harris of White Oaks Pasture. There's a number of operations that have been doing this far longer than Molly and I that we've actually learned a great deal from in reading their books

and listening to their YouTube videos and stuff. Yeah, Joel Salatin is probably the most well-known or famous. Yeah, and we started it with listening to Joel's stuff and reading Joel's books and borrowed from all of these guys. That's why we never really beat the drum of saying we're all bi biodynamic, you know, 24 seven. It's just a method that we pull from, but I don't believe it's the only way, nor do I believe that, you know, holistic or permaculture or anything is one right way to do it. You should borrow from them. Well, I've had Dr. Zach Bush on the podcast a bunch of times, who's very passionate about this subject.

Podcast favorite, regenerative farming, farmer's footprint, the work that he's doing with that organization I think is incredible. Rylan Englehart is coming up soon and he's got Kiss the Ground. There's a lot of innovation in the nonprofit sector that's trying to raise awareness and education and kind of promote this way of producing food. But what are the barriers that are out there right now that are preventing more farmers from embracing this way of doing things? Well, from young people or farmers that want to actually acquire land, I think there's one barrier there and that just being able to acquire the land to do this, that's a huge barrier. And the other is that farmers that are in the midst of deep financial debt because of the loans that they've taken out in order to grow high volume commodity crops can't just do an about

face very easily and would make, you know, argue that point. But here's the thing. If you don't want to see it, you certainly can come up with a million reasons why it's not possible. What I have seen personally in the last eight years, especially in the last year since the film's come out, is the increasing number of people who own land and are looking for young farmers to partner with to farm their land in the same way that we're doing it. I've also, crazy as it is, like these organizations, these nonprofits that are like land trust groups that go and acquire land to preserve it, have suddenly realized that the land that they buy and preserve is better preserved if put in the hands of a regenerative farmer.

And so there are these lands acquisitions being made by these land trusts, and then they're finding partnerships with regenerative farmers to farm it because they realize that regenerative ag is one of the best methods of environmentalism and the preservation and rebuilding of the biodiversity of the land meant to be protected. So I see great hope in this dynamic. I think for anyone that's looking to do this, it's about talking about it and telling people what you want to do. And eventually you will find and be connected to those opportunities. You know, that's sort of my best assessment of the landscape. What are the numbers in terms of carbon and water sequestration on your farm?

So, like, well, from a numbers perspective on, like, what we sequestered in water this past year? Or how far beneath our allocation, that's interesting. Oh, okay, yeah. So, like, one of the things we were told in the beginning is, like, oh, you guys are going to grow cover crop. You're going to take a lot more water. You're going to be drawing all this water from more park. And we were like, oh, man, I don't know. Is that true?

So we start the farm and within a year and a half, we're like everybody else in California, especially Ventura County, required to reduce our water use by 25%. And we get an allocation based for our farm based on the crops that we grow, not on cover crop. So basically the government says, this is how much water we're going to give you. Yeah. This is the amount you're allowed to use, the number of acre feet that you're allowed to use per year. You get, yeah, you get a penalty. And also from us being like wanting to be these eco-regenerative farmers, it's like kind of like it would be humiliating that we're overusing water. So we establish our cover crops and within two years, we never went really over, but within two or three years, after the 25% required reduction, we're 10 to 35% under our water allocation every single year. And we grow more stuff than any other farm, you know, acre to acre comparison in terms of biomass. So in that time period, we are using

less water, right? Regenerating our aquifer. So we're actually giving back where other farms that are not using cover crops are allowing both topsoil, soil nutrients, and water to rush out into the ocean, right? And so here we have this system that is regenerating itself. There was one other fact you asked a question. The carbon. Yeah, the carbon thing. So the cool thing is that we've increased

that soil organic matter by 3% and a 1% increase per acre of land of soil organic matter requires the drawdown of 21 tons of atmospheric carbon. So across the farm, it's 3% and in some areas higher. So just our contribution is 3%, right? That three times 21 tons per acre of carbon that we've pulled out of the atmosphere. And I never even talked about that in the film because I didn't want the film to be all of a sudden mischaracterized as this environmental film that was purely focused on the carbon issue, which is the elephant in the room, but it is a by-product of regenerative farming. Right. That's amazing. Right? Yeah. It's pretty incredible.

So every once in a while, I allow ourselves to have a campfire and not feel bad about it. How many young people do you have working on the farm right now? The cold thing. Woofers? Yeah, woofers. Like 150 have passed through. Oh, wow. Yeah, so we have a duplex house where they stay.

We have apprentices. They actually live on the farm. Yeah, yeah. It depends on how many woofers we have based on how many apprentices, based on how many beds, but all of those. So you start with our farm by coming in and going through a three-month woofer program, and it's really somewhat fully structured, whereas some other farms aren't. And so they come and they work five and a half

days a week and they're rotated through the different departments. They meet with one of the 12 team leads that we have each Wednesday to learn some aspect of the farm in depth. And you learn a lot through that program. From there, we then take on different apprentices once they have a specialty. And oftentimes those apprentices end up becoming full-timers beyond that so we have this wonderful Avenue to find all of these young minds and sometimes not young different people that come through that program it really works for us did you get like a crazy increase in the influx of resumes one of our director out one of our yeah our director of operations Trevor

who used to be a wolfer and now he's like the center center spoke of the wheel and has taken on the operations position

came into my office yesterday and he's like so I'm gonna need some help going through resumes now would it be okay

if we have Sophie do the first round of interviews cause like it's definitely he goes did the film release in Germany or something I go yeah he goes okay there's like okay if we have Sophie do the first round of interviews? Because it's definitely... He goes, did the film release in Germany or something? I go, yeah. He goes, okay, there's this European influx. He goes, there's like 50 emails today. So that's cool. And the cool thing is we're able to

be a bit more choosy in terms of the qualification. And we're not looking for people who are experts. We're looking for people who have the right perspective, the right openness and willingness. And so I wanted to say, like, you don't have to be an experienced farmer to get the opportunity. You just have to really be the right fit for our, you know, our, our organization. It is cool that there's so many young people who are into this. Oh yeah, it gives me the most hope. It's very hopeful. It really, I have to tell you, like, they know more about me. When I was 35, I started learning about soil.

They're in their 20s, and they know way more than we did. They also hold us to a stand. Well, they care. When I was in my 20s, I can't think of anything I would have been less interested in. Right? Yeah. It somehow is like it's become cool, and they're curious, and they have access at their fingertips to the right information and the wrong information too sometimes.

But they've just got it, man. And people say, how are you guys even hopeful after all that you know? And I say, the more connected we've become to nature, the more vulnerably connected, the more hopeful I've become. The opposite of what I thought. It's like, I realized the healing power that is innate within it. If we allow it to do its thing and allow ourselves to be dependent on it, and then coupled with the influx of young people and how interested they are and how much reverence they show for it, I have way more hope about what's happening on this planet than I did eight years ago. And I'm seeing the people adopting regenerative practices

and understanding it at a much wider sort of audience view than organic has been able to sort of gather since the 70s when it started. I'm watching in five years people suddenly understand more about farming just from the regenerative model that's much more visual than the word organic. We're at a fever pitch pace towards a solutions generation that is all about innovation. Yeah, that's very exciting. Yeah, and they also, what they have that I think I didn't, a lesson I didn't know when I was younger is that they know

I see a problem and now what are my steps that I can put into action? And when I was young, I had a situation where I was nine years old and went to like a camp weekend thing with school and the leader of whatever session we were going to do

during the day led us up into the mountains. I can remember the crystal clear blue day and proceeded to tell us that if we didn't change our ways, that in 50 years there would be no more earth to inhabit. He's got more time on that prediction. I was terrified. I sat there. I can remember. I mean, it was like full on panic attack for me. I just had like the hairs on my neck were standing up. I couldn't figure out why nobody else was worried

about it. I can remember literally the snack that my mom picked me up from that place. It was like burned in my head. And for years and years, it proceeded the same way. I was terrified every time I heard of climate change, anything like that. The ozone layer was during that time. I would hear about that and get terrified. Finally, I was in culinary school in New York City, and it was the time Inconvenient Truth came out. And I was walking around the city looking at all these posters everywhere. I could not get away from it. And finally, I thought, okay, Molly, you're a grown woman. Go see this movie and face whatever's scaring you. hey, Molly, you're a grown woman, go see this movie and face whatever's scaring you. So I went and I sat in the theater by myself and watched this movie. And I got to the end and I thought, well, that's a big problem. It's a problem, but now what, just like any other number of problems we have, nuclear war, desertification, anything.

And so what can I do to apply and try to make this better? But somehow these young kids, they skipped all of those 20 years of me floundering in fear. And they just kind of have gone right from, I see a problem and now I'm going to work on a solution. Well, two things. I mean, first of all, you're definitely, you've found your path. Yes, for sure. Confirm that. I think second to that is that, you know, with our generation, there was no clear path, you know, and that's very different now. Yeah, yeah. That's, thank you. And these young people, they don't have to suffer that trauma.

They might be angry because they've inherited, you know, problems that they didn't create. Yeah. But there's an instinct and a motivation and a desire that's like coming from a very beautiful heart-centered place. Yes, I think so too. So I am hopeful. I hope I didn't say this already. I hope you can edit it out if I did. But I think there is something to what's happening right now.

We were the generation, I think, that was pursuing meaning and purpose. I think that was pursuing meaning and purpose. And there is this hint of an acceptance around and this drive for reconnection. I think all of this, the confrontational elements of what we're doing and creating a side and an idea and grouping up as a community, is really we're looking for connection. Sometimes it polarizes us from other people,

but ultimately the reconnection conversation is a missing part of the triangulation of a happy filled life, meaning purpose and reconnection. But the reconnection part requires that vulnerability. And I'm seeing that in the young people that come to our farm, that they're willing to be a little bit more vulnerable. And that's a humility that you wanna embrace. Yeah, well, you didn't say that earlier in the podcast, so we're not editing. But also, yeah, I think we've never been,

despite how connected we are digitally, I think there's an epidemic of loneliness and disconnection right now. And I think that's fomenting a lot of the angst and anger and depression and kind of, you know, mental lack of ease that people are suffering from. And, you know, what I see in your example is that that connection begins with connecting to our natural environment in the most deep and profound way. And then it can extend to, you know, our loved ones and our families and our communities, et cetera. But you, you really need all of it, I think, in order to be a fully integrated,

self-actualized human. It's so true. And honestly, that's what forced Molly and I, you know, that, that the more we depended upon the ecosystem and were failing in that dependency, the more we had to depend on each other. And the cracks in our relationship were like immediately exposed through that journey. And it made us face the fact that if we were going to keep it together, we had to figure out how to be vulnerable with each other. Yeah. So the land forced you.

It was its own like sort of therapist. It was either going to crack you apart or it was going own sort of therapist. It forced you. It was either going to crack you apart or it was going to bring you closer together. Oh, for sure. Yeah, we definitely reached the edge and had to find support to figure out how to navigate through layers of emotion. I mean, when you're farming, you have to be face-to-face with grief in a way that I had never experienced before. And if you don't process that grief, you're not going anywhere. And so that was a big lesson, but it's honestly what

the soil is. It's the processor. They say about children, the best thing you can do for them is to help create a good digestive enzyme because that's what they kind of are always. Let them get dirty, let them eat the mud, all that kind of stuff. Well, the movie makes it look like essentially every single night you're being woken up at three o'clock in the morning because there's some cataclysm that needs some crisis. That's actually true. I mean, it's for real. It was terrible. The first five or six years, the fences weren't right. If there was a problem to be had, it was happening. I'm like, how – there's no way we can continue to – anyway, so I didn't interrupt.

But that part, we left a lot of that out or no one would ever want to farm if they knew how many times. Because I thought that you were like – all right, you're just picking the moments where you had to wake up. But these are – It could have been eight hours of just complete sheer terror and all the reasons not to do this, but it's not also reflective of the real experience and that is it's more balanced and beautiful too. Right. It weirdly goes cyclically is what I found in chaos

is that even all those years of chaos, it's like, oh no, here it comes. And you'd be woken up and woken up and woken up. And then all of a sudden you'd have like a week where you could sleep through the night and you like get yourself back. And then all of a sudden you'd have like a week where you could sleep through the night and you like get yourself back. And then all of a sudden it comes again. So if you kind of learn even, and probably it's like that in war or with children or all that. Do you have like PTSD from that?

A little bit. When it's going smooth, you're just waiting for some disaster to happen. No, it's restoring you. You have to breathe in the restore. Yeah, but also it's not like it's better. People are like, oh, it's probably better now. It's much easier. It's crazy.

It's actually not, I wouldn't say it's easier or it's all better. The way we view problems have completely changed. I'm not running around wasting my energy on the fear of what that problem indicates now. Because I've experienced it to know that that's one of those I can kind of let and live with for a bit. to know that that's one of those I can kind of let and live with for a bit rather than spend all that energy in the worry that turns into a fight at night with your wife over something else because of all that stress. So we're spending less energy in this state of fear. It's all the same stuff. We just didn't know what to be scared of. We were like literally kids in the walking into the haunted house for the first time. I'm just like scared of everything, you know? And I do think there is

something to that and that's living through the rhythms of life in one spot. We traded an experience of being able to travel around the world and do all these really interesting things for one that put us in one spot to go far deeper than we ever expected. And you really do face all those elements that constantly keep you awake at night. And you realize you can't live with them. You can't live in that state of fear. I want to put my film door cat on for a minute and get into the technical aspects of what was demanded of you to actually make this movie. I mean, to refresh us, this is an eight-year period.

You've chronicled it from when you were living in Santa Monica all the way through to the present day. I think you told me you had like 800,000 clips or like 90 terabytes of like footage. And it's this, I was surprised when you told me that a huge portion of the movie is shot on an iPhone because you remember the very cinematic high-speed photography of the hummingbirds and the bees and all that kind of stuff. But those are just kind of punctuation marks.

Yeah, the iPhone footage sort of does band-aid between scenes and even in shots because it was what I would have at the ready or another crew member would have to film something that was happening in the moment. It's funny. The one thing I had to teach my 20 something year old farm team was to not shoot in Instagram mode, like vertical, but to shoot horizontal. So once I got that taken care of, I started actually having access to more footage. But yeah, no, it was, there was

a lot of times where I was just like something bad was happening and then I would just like film it or something beautiful was happening. And I would just have to remember that, oh my gosh, I should just capture this because I may never see it again. So I was amassing all this footage the whole time. But the way we got like the really cool stuff was I would see these patterns. Like there was a Cooper's Hawk that every time I walked by her nest at the time of year that she had, you know, babies in there, she would dive bomb me. And I'm like, I should probably shoot that because that would be a great shot to put in at the time that I'm trying to explain that the Cooper's Hawk dive bombs starlings. So I have these perspectives that are impossible to get

unless you're tapping into a rhythm and an occurrence that's already happening. And then to simplify it, like with the Greasy and Emma relationship, which is a pig and a rooster, there's a scene in the movie where they kind of go to sleep together. They like bed down

and there's this whole little ritual thing they do in this dance. I watched that 35 times, you know, as I would go out to feed them. And I'm like, man, I should probably shoot that. But since they did it repetitively in the same way, I was able to predict how to cover it, you know? And so it made it look like I was using like, you know, these like kids in animal suits, you know, these like kids in animal suits, you know, because of just the accuracy of the shooting. What is that relationship between Mr. Greasy and Emma? I mean, that's just, that's the heart of the whole movie for me. Like Mr. Greasy, I'm all about him. I know. Yeah. I mean, as you should be, I mean, when, when you can land a beautiful babe like Emma and you're only about a pound to her 650, yeah, that relationship was one of mutualistic necessity. Greasy would hide behind a 650-pound pig in order to avoid being eaten by coyotes every night.

And he was such a scraggly and ugly rooster that he was one that was kicked out of the flock with the rest of the birds. And he found his way into living with this pig. But there was a dance that had to be performed every night in order for him to get access to the house. And so all I can say is, man, love is real, dude. And you can't, don't judge it. So you're sitting on top of all of this footage. Like how do you begin the process of trying to identify a narrative? Well, we went through this to get geeky about it. We spent at least two years prior to the year and a half edit process. I spent two years with two different assistant editors literally stringing out every sort of these fat cuts.

So we had like a 14-hour fat cut of just cows. I had a six-hour fat cut of just hummingbirds and babies. And then I had like a nine-hour fat cut of everything that involved Greasy and Emma. And I got to tell you, I started this whole- Just release like that. Here's nine hours of this and just put it up on the internet. But it's like, other than that, it would have been 90 hours. Like I had to narrow it down.

But Molly very kindly, like when I told her, I'm going to make this film, she got me the Werner Herzog masterclass and I watched it and like, I don't know, eight minutes in, he's like, I feel sorry. You had a heart to kill yourself. Yeah, I feel sorry for filmmakers who think that 650 hours of footage

is going to make a great film. I'm like, oh my God, I've got 650 months of footage. I was like, I stopped. I even never finished it. I stopped watching his masterclass after that and then just went back to work to getting the footage. Well, even though you didn't decide to make a movie until you're in year five, you had the awareness or sensibility to be documenting it all along.

So even if you won't admit to the idea that you were going to be making a movie, you were planning on making a movie. Yeah, and I never raised really the funding for it until the year five. But I will – that's entirely true because in the beginning I can remember Alan, I mean, a lot of that very beginning footage is only iPhone. Right. Because then Alan would say, you have got to document this. And John was like, no, I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do it.

Yeah. Like he really was over it. He's like, man, you're going to regret this crap. You're out here. You have no idea what this shit hole is going to turn into, man. It's going to look like the damn Garden of Eden. He would say that constantly, and I was just like, ah, just teach me how silver works. Did he ever steer you wrong?

No. Not even with that. No, right down to the years of how he would feel. I can't wait to get to year 10. Yeah, there are certain little things we've now ventured out and chosen to do different with Alan, and it's almost like you know your dad. I hear his voice in my head. Oh, that's gonna bite you in the ass, man.

So when Alan passes away, why did you not go try to find another version of Alan? Like you still, it seemed like you were still pretty young in your kind of learning curve. We've tried, yeah, we've tried, but only would find pieces of the puzzle. Like we would bring in, I've talked to several really well-known

pastor consultants, and I realized very quickly that all three of them gave me three different ways of doing something. You can drive yourself nuts with entering into the world of consultants. You shortly realize that it's ultimately up to you at the end of the day. We did try to replace Alan in a way,

but no one kind of like had his kind of mantra that informed, helped us inform our own intuition. You know what I'm saying? Deriving it. I think that we were weirdly at this place where if Alan had stayed alive, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened. Because I can remember struggles where we were starting to come into our own and Alan may have disagreed about something. And we get a little tense there.

And I think that if he had stayed alive, we either would have had to have it out about certain things and him let us have the freedom to do what we need to do or else I don't know that we would have parted ways. But at some point we kind of outgrew certain elements of the knee. We were, even though it did not feel at all like we were ready to have our wings in a very spiritual sense, it feels like Alan's exit was also came with a knowing that it was the time that we were going to be fine if we just flew. I prefer that poetic interpretation. Like there is, there is this idea of like, you know, the universe doesn't give you anything that you're not ready to handle. And even though it might've felt premature, it was sort of like, okay, time to put your, your big girl and big boy pants on and own this for yourselves instead of deferring to somebody else.

Exactly. Yeah. We had conversations amidst the fights at home where it was like, you know what? This is not the time to hedge on anything. It's about going really truly the whole saying, go big or go home. Like we can't begin to be conservative

in our estimates of the need at this point. We must continue to go crazy here. And that was like the best thing I think we both did for each other is that we maintain that level of commitment to, and you brought it up earlier, not putting a foot on either side of the circle. I learned that very early on from a holistic vet. And he's like, look, you're going to continue to have these problems because you keep straddling the line and you just tell me when you're ready to be you know in the when you're ready for preemptive health care like when we can talk about that but i can't help you with these problems that you're creating by straddling both worlds there's a time for antibiotics there's a time for those things

i'm not saying that but if you're relying on that to cover your tracks and the poor decisions you've made leading up to that you learn nothing and we decided that we weren't going to, I mean, we had people on the farm when we had massive epidemics of morning glory were like, you need to spray glyphosate. We were, they were trying to convince us to spray Roundup. And it took us five years to get to this point for someone to say that ultimately that ended that relationship, but we didn't have the solution. He had a solution. We just had a will to sort of keep walking down that path until we could find it. I mean, that would have been a bridge too far. Like every value would have gotten tossed out the window to make that decision. Yeah. It's the choice. It's like parenting that you have to make a choice whether you're going to control or whether you're going to kind of unfold.

And if you unfold. Tell me about it. Yeah. It's a whole lot more tricky. But ultimately you have an established relationship that you actually can pull into when the going gets really, really, really tough. And so we made that choice. And when you make that choice, I mean, all the horses are running wild. Right.

made that choice. And when you make that choice, I mean, all the horses are running wild. When you're in the, when you were in the thick of the film production aspect of this, how did you remain mindful about how you balance the needs of the film versus the needs of the farm? That was really hard on the, on the crew because I kind of sidestepped my way into this project. I mean, where the editing process started and that was a year and a half. So it was challenging enough just to be shooting while also farming. But then during the editing time, I was in the barn. That's where we cut the film. You've got like a whole production house.

Yeah, we've managed two horse birthing stalls with literally kick dents, like marks from hooves being bashed into the walls or all over the walls. But I would run – there would be an animal emergency, like a vetting thing or calving thing, lambing thing, and I would go out and I would be in that and I would be covered with all types of fluids and come back and sit down in the edit. And the editor, Amy, who is from suburbia of Maryland is looking at me like, are we, are you, yeah, we, are you just, are you

good? Is this good? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to, let's go back to the first act and like, just trying to get it in where I could, it was really difficult. It was hard on the crew because I think, you know, their needs didn't always, you know, maybe get met and it slowed down like the, what we were doing on the farm. But I knew that I'm like, I got, I'm like, just please stay with me on this. Once we get this done, you will see what we've done. None of us have.

Like to see it in 90 minutes, what we've done in eight years was overwhelming for us and our team. Like our team was like, I had no idea what we were even working on here. They had an idea, but not the level of transformation that we were all a part of. I had probably seen the film a hundred times

by the time we showed our crew, and we rented out a little theater to be able to show them all. And I sat in the back, and about halfway through, I was like, man, I have this huge headache. What the heck is going on? And all of a sudden, I through, I was like, man, I have this huge headache. What the heck is going on? And all of a sudden, I realized that I was holding back crying. And I cried the rest of the film. And I'd seen it a hundred times.

And it was just because to see it and experience it with these people that we had walked through that, it was unbelievably overwhelming and powerful. Did you know that it was gonna connect with broad audiences or like, what was your sense of like how the movie was gonna do? I mean, I wanna talk about Telluride and Sundance and all that kind of stuff, but even prior to that, like. I knew John's abilities and I knew that he had never, I started to see the team

that was coming around him this time and I was that he had never, I started to see the team that was coming around him this time and I was seeing it be different as far as this might actually be something that people can see. So they actually even get the chance to see who John is. This isn't John's like little hobby project in the garage. Yeah, or just other things that he's done that have had a certain level of exposure,

but I could see that the exposure might start to build bigger. But I would say that I truly always knew that it was going to be really, really good. See, this is ridiculous to me. But it's so true. She says this stuff to me and I'm like, how do you know this? But here's what I did know. I had this feeling that it may not come out of the box and just like blow the roof off of the world in that sense, that it might be a slow build for it to go out and out and out and out. And that has been what's happened. But when we show it, when somebody gets in the theater,

they are moved in a way that is just so satisfying to see John be seen in that way. And that, I mean, obviously what we're sharing is important to us too. In the edit, did you bring some wise counsel in to help you sort of objectively make decisions? Like who's your board of advisors when it comes to the creative aspect

of how you crafted this movie? That's a great question. Well, Amy Overbeck, the editor who I've worked with on three other films in a TV series. Joy Keckin, who was actually involved early days with David Simon on breaking the very complicated story of The Wire and all the different characters. Key word. Just so many characters. How is that going to work, right?

So she was brought on early on to help me weave through stuff. And I brought in Mark Monroe, who's a really good, well-known documentary writer, consultant, who's worked on tons of different films. I mean, most notably recently was like Icarus, et cetera. And Erica Messer, who was a executive producer from the day, who's been a childhood friend of mine, but also from day one was like, you're going to tell, you need to tell this story and you need to make sure that Todd starts it off. This whole story starts with your commitment to Todd and the fact that you're not willing to break that commitment and that will drive you to this innovation. It's so true. It's about keeping your foot and your deal, right? She's a big showrunner, right?

Yes, Criminal Minds or whatever. She's been on television for like 50 years. Yeah, she's been on television for like 50 years. Yeah, she is. And she's very young too. But yeah, she's amazing and very experienced, but someone who I've relied on heavily. And then I brought in Sandra Keats around year five and a half, who's a producer, worked in documentary for long enough

to know that she wanted to be out. And I heard of Sandra and I heard she was quitting and I'm like, oh wow, she sounds perfect though. She's really into farming stuff. And they're like, yeah, no, you're not going to get her. She's quitting and she's going to become a goat farmer. And I'm like, hmm, I might have something. Challenge accepted.

That sounds perfect. So she's like, I'm driving to the Pacific Northwest. I'm done, but I'll stop by the farm. And I'm like, excellent. And so she did and she didn't leave and helped me produce the last two and a half years of the movie um and uh a number a number of other people but here's the thing I did that I didn't do on any other project to the extent that I did this one and that was like I knew with this project more than anything else I'd ever done in my life

that this was incredibly special and that I had captured something that had never been captured before and that the only reason it wouldn't work would be because I got in my own way. And I made the testing part of this way more extensive, testing it with audiences than I had literally had the physical mental constitution to handle. Like I showed it to so many just really tough critics, audiences, privately, small groups of 15, and then multiple groups of like 100 or more, and just took the beating for months trying to figure out where the common issues were. What were the big issues?

Oh, man. I mean, the debates. I can't even go there. There was more of the cosmos in it. Yeah, there was a little bit more. And the original film ended a little bit more in the original film ended a little bit more on the nose with this whole like idea of sort of solidifying that the biggest little farm is really an example of a microcosm of the larger planet. And we are probably in this, all these people listening to this podcast right now that are alive will never know another planet that is a farm in the entire universe. And that it is as special as that. And the point of

the film is to really say that. So I pulled a lot of that out. I mean, the film says it. It's just you don't have to put it on the nose at the end. Right. All the way to the end of the credits, you do back up to the earth. I got the earth back in.

I did get the earth back in. But then I think also questions around there should be more data, there should be more experts, there should be more really polarizing commentary made on environment and climate. And then there was questions about, well, I think it should be very few, but we would get people saying, well, I want to know more about you and Molly. And I can see that compulsion to want to know more. But as soon as we open that can of worms, it becomes about John and Molly. But I'm

telling the whole story of what was happening behind closed doors. If you watch the film three times, you see it, it's all there. I'm just telling it through the stories of these animal arcs. And I didn't want to take, to me, that was the easy road. That would have been the easier thing to do. And so I think just staying really disciplined and like I said, if there is something to be told, I had it written in the edit room, if there is a story to be told, it must be told through the eyes of the animal,

through the eyes of nature is what it actually said. And that was very difficult to make these compelling human condition like sort of statements through a lamb that had been orphaned. Yeah. And how that related to Molly's and my journey, you know, but those were more interesting and compelling ways to say it. Yeah. I think it would have been easier to make it about you guys. And that would have been compelling in its own right, a very different movie, but you make this,

you basically make this ensemble piece where, you know where you're featuring all these different animals and really like creating empathy for them and humanizing them in a certain way. It's all pieces in this grand like interplay. And actually back to, not to bring it up again, but back to like the conflict or the assault that you've received around you know the vegan verse meat eater debate i've done more i think to advance

the non-meat eating movement in creating an empathy and sensitivity for the the these are alive thinking beings so you know say what you will, but I think in a lot of ways, people have actually questioned how much meat they eat after seeing this. And I think that is a really good step towards where we need to find this balance that we're all heading for. Yeah. Well, certainly, you know, you have deep relationships with all of these animals in a way that, that, you know, you're connected in a way that almost nobody is. So you get into Telluride. Yeah. That had to be exciting.

It was amazing. We found out the film hadn't even really been finished. And we were told that, just so you're clear, accepting Telluride, which is an amazing, amazing opportunity, sort of a tastemaker festival. They don't accept a lot of documentaries. I think I could have this wrong. I think it's like five. And they don't tell anyone who's in the festival.

No. You just show up. You literally can't tell anyone until the day you show up that you're in the festival. I told my mom, which was a great risk because she uses Facebook in ways that are inappropriate. But so yeah, that was really exciting. And we had never shown it to an audience outside of these test groups. And I remember we show the film

and I see all these somewhat jaded documentary filmmakers who I know watching the movie. And I'm like, oh, God, here it goes. And lights come up, and we got swarmed in the lobby, and like everybody in the lobby is crying. And I was like, oh, my God. I'm almost going to cry thinking about it. I walked out.

I went out the exit door, and I was just like, what the hell? Oh, my God. It's like worked. It worked. And then Ryan Werner, who was a publicist at the time, came up to us and said, you guys, you've got to see this. And like I'm still processing the experience. And he goes, look what a variety just released the review of the film.

And it was the most incredible review that you could ever ask a critic to write. And it was just like we both were you could ever ask a critic to write. And it was just like we both were like, what the hell just happened? And you felt the shift where this thing now is like, thank you. I got it from here. Because you're pushing these things up these mountains all along. And that's how I feel like I've always experienced as a filmmaker. And you felt the shift and I just saw so many different you know individuals who'd been seen so many different stories be affected so profoundly that they couldn't control themselves

and I was it was just I mean what it was such an amazing thing there in that screening Mark Monroe was there and he was sitting next to this like really older crusty guy that was like kind of like a farmer guy or something and he said that at the very end. Well the guy didn't say anything the whole time. He said nothing. He was silent. Arms crossed really tight. Same face the whole way through. Mark was for sure that this guy did not like the film. And he gets to the end

the credits roll, curtains go out and he turns over to Mark and goes that was a good god damn film. And he hit Mark in the chest. So right there, we were like, yes. He had no idea who Mark was. He said, man, that was a good goddamn film.

That's as good as it's going to get. And then you had, was there a bidding war right away? No, they're not technically supposed to, you know, you're not supposed to like accept sales or bids on a film at that point, but there were definitely. At Telluride. At Telluride, yeah. At Telluride, you're not supposed to like accept sales or bids on a film at that point. But there were definitely. At Telluride. Telluride, yeah. Telluride, you're not supposed to be selling.

And there's no paparazzi. There's none of those. No red carpets. It's very low key. But the distributors are there. Oh, they're there. And we started having loose conversations and hearing the grumblings. And then they were like, well, once you get out of the festival, we'll really start that.

But then it got into Toronto. So we waited until Toronto to have those conversations. I see. And we were told all along the way that each one of these festivals means that you're not going to get into the next big festival. And that was kind of, there was obviously all this. You kept getting it. Yeah. We got in all of them.

It's interesting that you were at Sundance because I wouldn't, after being at Telluride. That's what I was told. And I was like, all right, Mark's like, it'll never happen. Mark's done it a million times. Like it just, it's very rare, very rare. And I respect that. And he's right. Then it got into Toronto and then it got into Berlin, which shouldn't have happened, festival.

And then it got into Doc NYC and we were like, well, there's no way. It's been in like five. And it was opening night at doc NYC. Yeah. And it was five festivals or four or five major festivals. And then we got into Sundance. I'm like, what in the heck? Like no one at that point, then even like, you know, any jaded individual left on my

team was just like, oh, I don't know what the hell this is. I'm done trying to be, I'm done trying to couch your expectations. You do something very interesting, which is you decide to go with Neon for distribution and move in this kind of, you know, down this theatrical road. It would have been very easy for you to sell to Netflix. Yeah.

So walk me through like how and why you made that decision the way you did. Well, I knew like, I, I knew from the beginning and that this is, you know, an audacious thing to always say as a filmmaker, we all want our film seen in a theater. And I felt a lot of shame and being, and beating that drum and saying that that's where I wanted this film scene. It was made for that. It's an important enough subject that it must be shown in an environment that gives it a classic sort of stamp and it's best experienced in that sort of group environment. And I have nothing against any of the streaming services. I just knew that I didn't want it to get lost and be viewed initially in

that form. And I was told all the reasons in the world why that was a bad idea. It was incredibly naive. And I'm like, well, I've been hearing that for eight years about farming. So I'm kind of immune to that kind of advice anymore. Well, the risk you take is that you get a very short tail. Like for a documentary to perform at the box office is extremely difficult. And so these movies, you know, are there for a week or two and then they're gone. And you've kind of lost that opportunity to create media intrigue around your movie.

And, you know, it'll kind of eke its way into a streaming service. And then there you are thinking, well, was that just a big ego thing? Exactly. And it didn't feel like ego to me at the time. It really felt like I wanted it just to have that classic presentation because I knew then it would be treated seriously

for its streaming life and its DVD life and that kids would see it. And that was really ultimately my agenda is that it's made for a very wide audience like a Pixar film sort of does for animation, right? It has that very wide audience, but I knew ultimately kids would be the thing that would change the needle, move the needle for this whole conversation. And so I went with Neon because they came into the room

with their entire team. Tom Quinn brought everybody out, like. There was seven or eight of them, and they were just really enthusiastic. They definitely got it. They saw the importance of its cinematic release. We had other pitches. We had other offers from other distributors who wanted to do theatrical, so it wasn't like they were up against just streamers um but that was a easy decision um at a certain point um yeah it seems like they also had a plan in terms of um kind of the educational piece they were yeah they knew that was important and realizing that you know this was going to be perhaps a you know a longer kind of slower burn. Yep, yep, they have.

There's Dan O'Meara is there, has experience in that space. And Tom Quinn had been involved with Food Inc and Super Size Me, and had a long history in food related films, but also films that sort of did sort of create, stir around conversations and the environment and food. So I liked that. And they understood the value

that the impact was really what it was gonna be. And cool thing is we raised a bunch of money in the beginning before the film was even released and sent 10,000 school kids to go see the movie. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that's been great. And that really helped, I think, everybody see the power that this has over young people.

Because they're like, oh, kids won't sit still for it. And I've watched audiences of 650 kids in middle school just be like, not say a word the entire time. And teachers are like, we can never get them to shut their mouths. And I think that was really cool. Yeah, my daughter who I brought to the farm, Jaya, I mean, I can't get her to watch a documentary to save her life. And I was like, you're going to watch this movie because

we're going to the farm and this is our homeschooling daddy, daughter experience. So sit down. Like I had to like force her, but it didn't take very long before she was just like all in, like she just was all in. And it was like, Oh, you know, like she loves animals and, you know, it was, you know, it was a cool experience for her. So I get that part of it. That's amazing. So we're tiptoeing up against Oscar season now. Like do you find yourselves like fantasizing about that kind of stuff or do you be like, I can't think about that or like that's too crazy or, you know, where's your head with all of that?

Oh, man. I mean, it's tricky. Like, you know, if I say anything, I'm going to jinx something. Yeah, I think, look, what we've experienced. This is going to sound so diplomatic. I mean, the success is so crazy already. I know, exactly. This has been amazing.

I think if it were to be lucky enough to be considered, that would be great. It would be great for the message. It would be great for the awareness on an international level. And by the way, the film is being released in over 22 countries theatrically. And that number keeps going up, which is great. Even China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.

So it's really great. But to have that nod for this film would be great for that reason. But I can't say that our lives would be better for it. But of course, I think- I think it can win. Yeah. I do. Good for you.

I really think it could. See, there it is. This is what I was talking about at the beginning. We have to be that pillar of optimism. And I'll play my- There's many great films out there, Molly. You don't understand the dynamic of this. It's a dog-eat-dog world.

But, I mean, we're trying. We're going around and doing the thing that you do just to share it with academy members. Tis the season. It's important, and I owe it to the film to do it. It's hard to put yourself out there and be like, please like me again. I thought I avoided that once I left filmmaking, became a farmer, but I'm really intrigued by the idea of continuing to make films now,

especially around this space. You know, I had a good experience. I lost, you know, like it's like childbirth, right? After about nine months, you forget the pain you go through and then you have another kid. Yeah. Easy for you to say.

Right, exactly. As a man. So are you like, are you already like, oh, the next movie? Yeah, I am. I am now. As a man. So are you already like, oh, the next movie? Yeah, I am now. We had to work really hard on the farm to figure out how to even get through the process of this movie. And so we now have a structure that enables John to be connected on the visionary level, which I absolutely am completely relying upon him for, while having our operations not suffer. completely reliant upon him for while having our operations not suffer. So, and storytelling,

I mean, how many people get to have a master storyteller folded into their mix to be able to tell the importance of what you're doing? So I think we'd be silly not to have that be fully expressed in whatever it should be. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the Archimedes lever that can really move the needle in terms of awareness and education. There's what you're doing on the farm, but how do you scale that, right? And you scale it through your storytelling skills and acumen. And when I visited the farm, you're also like an incredible tour guide. You took a ton of time with us and showed us everything and explained everything. And I was like, this should just be, you've got to find a way to provide more of that.

I mean, I don't know how much of that you do, but like this is an opportunity because of the notoriety and kind of profile that you have as a result of the movie to leverage the farm beyond just what you're doing in the soil to really educate future generations of farmers and just educate people in general so that they can be better equipped to vote with their choices and their dollars. Absolutely. I agree. This ability to have a storyteller there also enables us to maintain the authenticity of what we do because of that scaling piece.

If we tried to scale and scale and scale and scale and scale, and that was our focus, we would lose some of that connection. It's the lore that's been lost. We don't have the innovation from the past. I don't have a 105-year-old farmer to talk to. And so this generation's job is to capture the stories and mythologize this new lens of seeing in a way that we can pass on. And there's nothing wrong with using, I think, storytelling for that.

And I do feel a burden of responsibility not to turn my back on the opportunity I've been given to convey that message. Yeah, a big part of the movie is you trying to figure out stuff on your own. You have what Alan is telling you and he's full of wisdom, but there are blind spots there as well. And you're kind of stumbling through this. And it occurred to me, like, why isn't there basically

like a rule book for this that could have told you ahead of time, this is what's going to happen. Here's what you do. And now you're in an opportunity with the experience that you've had to kind of canonize this and, you know, create a roadmap so that other people can mimic what you've done and kind of avoid some of the difficulties that you had to weather. Right. And mimic to a degree, because it's all like very unique, right? Yeah, it's going to be different. Right. But like the lenses, like being able to like define what the words like mutualism even means or biomimicry or symbiosis. Those are the three lenses we put on in the wake of every decision. And that suddenly becomes your way of seeing solutions that don't require an expert.

It's crazy, right? And Alan used to always say that to me. You don't always need an expert for every problem. You just need to think about it in the context of these three different things. So yeah, I mean, I think the storytelling enables a visualization of what that filter looks like. Yeah. And the teaching isn't, so basically what I get from that is that the teaching isn't just about when this happens, here's what you do. It's about a way of thinking and about like a certain way of problem solving that requires you to think differently. Exactly.

One size, one way of parenting is not a fit all approach. Each kid within your family needs a different thing. You just need to have the filter of first, I love this kid. I promise I love this kid. And then you start to see the opportunities within that love for this child to sort of connect with it. But it's going to be different from your son or your daughter or one son to the next son.

The principles are also kind of oddly and curiously applicable to the workplace too. Oh my gosh. How do you manage a team of people? And how do you, like, there's all this sort of, there's a surrender aspect. There's the allowing, there's a surrender aspect. There's the allowing. There's the be curious. You know, all of these things I think are powerful tools that have applications, you know, not just on a farm but in our everyday lives. I want to say one thing and I want to turn it over to Molly because this is the area that she's really, I think, focused on.

The first eight years for us was about building the immunology of our land, recreating an immune system that could sort of buffer itself against these epidemics. And what we realized is that it was incredibly reliant upon the cohesiveness of the team think and the way that the team viewed each other and viewed the goals. And that was not something Molly and I were good at navigating. And that's where Molly has really stepped into this role, the next level of immunology for the farm. And that is how we work our culture. Yeah. Yeah.

That's pretty much it. It's just basically you have to. Yeah. So we did, going through the film was really hard on our team. And so then as operations had to come fully in my court, I was able to one, look at the whole, which is something that as we were co-leading, you don't actually get that opportunity as much.

And then just like the coyote, like you wrap your arms around the whole thing and find the purpose in each person. But then my days are basically spent working with the team to either help increase assertiveness on one side or increase empathy. It's like each person is just needing one or the other to be able to find connection and communication. Because ideally, or the other to be able to find connection and communication. Because ideally, they're working as a self-sustained ecosystem, so they don't need me. Most of my job is turning them back on themselves, either individually to find their instincts for the ones that have challenges with that, or turn them together to each other to trust

each other to have the hard conversations. So I love that because I'm getting the different version of what we did with the soil and what I do raising a son and what we do in our relationship. And now it's just applying that there. But ultimately they were going to work me out of a job in the sense that I'm going to have more time to get my hands in the dirt after I go through this process because they won't need me as much as they do. That's the real plan. I foresee a Harvard Business School case study. It's really been amazing to watch. It's really fun. And it's just taken like,

you know, 20 years of therapy for myself. Of course. That's it. I get it. For the bargain price of a house. Yeah. All right. We got to land this plane, but I want to kind of end it with final thoughts on what it is that you most want people to take away from this movie and your experience. Do you want to go first or last? I feel like you need to go last. Okay.

Okay. I'll take your advice. Yeah, put the pressure on him. It's his fault. It's his fault. I might just say ditto after this. No, I'm just going advice. Put the pressure on him. It's his film. I might just say ditto after this. No, I'm just gonna keep it really simple that for me, this film is a love story and it reflects the love of this farm

and this piece of nature that we've experienced. And so I would love if people walk away inspired to begin to create that connection in some very small way for themselves. That's it. Yeah. And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. the conversation around the planet, I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources

of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas or the conversation around economics or practicality or logic, stay focused on that reconnection because I feel ultimately what we're all starving from starts with that reconnection to nature

and then from there to each other it's a beautiful place to end it my friends beautifully put um i applaud you for uh your commitment um not just to the planet but to educating people i do think this movie is a remarkable achievement and it's impacted so many people. I know it's going to continue to do that. And also for, you know, the courage and vulnerability to share so much of yourselves and to put so much of your own personality and private lives into, you know, into this story. I think it allows people to connect with it and see themselves and reflect on, you know, our own relationship to our environment and our communities. And I think it's really cool. So I'm really, I'm really proud to have had you guys here today.

And I'm really, really happy to talk to you and share your message. You're an incredible human being. And like, it's just, you're so easy to speak with. You should do this for a living. Yeah. So the movie is going wide on Hulu on November. This week, right? This week, yeah. Yes, November. Wednesday, maybe? Yeah, so it's beginning of November.

Beginning of November. All right, this is going up in mid to late November, I think, I don't know the date specifically. So by the time this is up, it will be on Hulu. That's probably the easiest way for people to see it, right? Or it's on Amazon Prime and all that kind of stuff, too. Yeah, it's on Amazon. It's on Amazon Prime and all that kind of stuff too. Yeah, it's on Amazon. It's on Google Play, all that stuff.

Then can I tell you one cool thing? Yeah. There's a live orchestra scoring of the film that's going to happen at the Wiltern in LA on December 4th, which is cool. So the actual conductor who wrote the music is going to be there scoring the film live to picture while audiences get to watch it at the

Wiltern on December 4th. That's very cool. I'm so excited about that and Jeff Beal who's the composer, amazing talented guy is putting this together so if you haven't seen the movie great way to see it. Yeah for sure. Are there still tickets available for that? There might be still tickets

available. Yeah they're just, I mean as we're speaking today they're going on sale this week. Cool. Well, I'll find that link and I'll put it up in the show notes. So if you're in LA, go check that out. Cool. Hopefully you can make it out. See you.

All right, you guys. Peace. Thank you. Thank you. Plants. That was it. We did it. That was John and Molly Chester and me.

I found it fascinating. I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you haven't already, please check out The Biggest Little Farm. It's available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, a host of other platforms. It just debuted on Hulu. So pretty much everywhere you enjoy your streaming content and hit them up on the socials and let them know what you thought of today's conversation. You can find The Biggest Little Farm on Instagram at The Biggest Little Farm and on Twitter at Biggest LIL Farm.

And you can learn more about the movie and the work that these people are doing at biggestlittlefarmmovie.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts. Share the show on social media, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts. Share the show on social media, subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to the show

on Spotify and Google Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the show,

Jessica Miranda for graphics, Allie Rogers for portraits, DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Annalema. Appreciate all of you people. Love you guys. I will see you back here next week with a great episode.

It's sort of a twofer on the regenerative agriculture theme that we're doing here with Ryland Englehart. He's the face of the family-owned group of restaurants known as Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre. He is also the co-founder of Kiss the Ground, which is all about regenerating our soil and creating greater biodiversity. He's a super cool guy. He's a friend. It's a great conversation. Here's a clip to take you out.

Until then, let's all try to live a little bit more in harmony with nature. Peace. Plants. Namaste. The principles of sacred commerce or the basic messages, how can you run a business and also awaken the presence of love? And we do see the positive impact of creating a space that uses language intentionally to uplift people and to remind people of their greatness. You know, that was kind of the biggest spiritual epiphany of my life was that love is not something found in a person, place, or thing.

It's something that is ever present in our heart, and it's always available as a gift, and it costs nothing to share it. And yes, we have lots of things that get in the way of that, but if I was to die tomorrow, what I would want people to know and what I would hope that I demonstrated to a fair amount of the interactions that I've had would be like, wow, there was love present that was being given freely from that human being. Thank you.