The "Biggest Little" Apprenticeship 🎥🐷

Read Time: 5 minutes

Apricot Lane Farms has inspired and introduced countless people worldwide to ecologically minded farming and regenerative agriculture.

When I first saw their film, it moved me emotionally and spiritually. Seeing the dedication, commitment, and possibilities inspired me to commit to regenerative agriculture fully.

If you have seen the film The Biggest Little Farm, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, you should find time this weekend to watch it.

For six months, I had the unique opportunity to live and work on this one-of-a-kind farm, gaining a genuinely immersive and behind-the-scenes experience.

Farming on a Movie Set

Working within this dynamic business was impactful beyond the practical learnings of farm skills and witnessing the regeneration.

The farm is unique in many ways.

Apricot Lane Farm's location near Los Angeles provides a market for their high-quality produce and allows them to host on-farm events, tours, and workshops for urban dwellers eager to experience farm life.

Because the farm's fruits are films, the animals there are actively regenerating the landscapes while playing pivotal parts in the storytelling, which helps connect with children playfully and portrays the regenerative process to adults.

And because the farm is an active movie set, there is immense collaboration between the farm and film teams.

This was my favorite part of being here, as each member of the farm actively participates in discovering new scenes and assists the film crew in capturing the unfolding of the ecosystem’s reawakening.

On the Lookout for Ecological Anomalies

During our daily work on the farm, we were encouraged to pause, look around, and observe what was happening around us to find interesting ecological manifestations and anomalies.

This was useful to the filmmaking process and helped develop a more regenerative lens for stewarding the land.

To be proper caretakers of landscapes, we must have keen observational skills, listen to what the land needs, see how it responds to our management, and dig deeper below and beyond what we already know.

Around 10-15% of the land is devoted to wildlife, per Demeter Biodynamic requirements, and the habitat restoration team actively manages that land.

This creates ecological niches for wildlife to thrive in ways that don’t occur on monoculture farms focused solely on production.

If we noticed an ecological anomaly or something interesting, we contacted the film crew immediately — often spurring a spontaneous film shoot.

This created a sense of participation in the film side of the farm, which added an undertone of excitement to daily chores, as you never know what you’d find.

For example, I was moving cattle into their new paddock for the day when I saw an electric fence post covered in praying mantis, which I had never witnessed as numerous. And I discovered a Guineafowl nest amongst the tall grasses of the pasture. We contacted the film crew and moved the cattle to the following paddock to allow these eggs to be nurtured and hatch.

Nightly Chicken Checks & Living on the Farm

All four of us in the cohort lived on the farm during the apprenticeship. We were first responders if animals escaped in the middle of the night, performed chores on the weekends and holidays, checked on sheep during lambing season, and split nightly chores, which consisted of making sure all the chickens, ducks, sheep, and guard dogs were properly put away for the night.

Living on the farm fosters a profound sense of reverence. Seeing it at night and during holidays with fewer people around allows a connection to blossom beyond simply showing up daily for your job, no matter how passionate you are.

Nurturing the Next Generation of Farmers

Throughout the apprenticeship, we split time between all the departments on the farm, spending two weeks at each one for a total of 12 rotations—livestock, poultry, market garden, pack house, orchard, fertility and compost, habitat restoration, and farmers market team, to name a few.

Aside from the filming and storytelling, this gives you some context on how diverse the farm is. The apprentices were threads throughout the farm, weaving through each department as they focused on their roles and tasks.

At each one of these departments, there was a plethora of young people who were enthusiastic, passionate, and skilled. Despite the average age of farmers in the United States approaching 65, the story here was the opposite.

Being from a small town in Nebraska where farmers were our parents and grandparents, it was refreshing to see such vibrancy taking root there.

This may be due to the farm's proximity to Los Angeles or the uniqueness of the farm and the film's notoriety. Still, it was inspiring to be surrounded by the eagerness of the next generation to pursue farming fully.

Regenerative Response to Record Rains

The California landscape was blessed with abundant rain in the spring of 2023, but not without massive erosion, flooding, and landslides.

On Apricot Lane, they ended up keeping much of the rain they received, infiltrating and being soaked up by healthy soils.

During the last 12 years, they have transformed desolate orchards into functional ecosystems that soaked up the historic rainfall, keeping erosion and runoff to a minimum.

“Thanks to its high amount of organic matter (from cover crops, compost, and grazing animals), over 228 MILLION gallons of water was sequestered this year.“ - from their Instagram caption 

But the surrounding farms had a completely different reality. They experienced massive runoff, soil erosion, and water pooling for days after the rainfall events.

As rainfall becomes less consistent and unreliable, it is more important to ask how much water we keep rather than how much falls. Their dedication to regeneration proved profitable when the historic rains finally fell.

Inspiring Change Through Commitment

One of the most inspiring parts of being a part of Apricot Lane was that they led by example and focused on what they had control over.

They practiced what they preached but rarely preached at all.

They were more focused on the walk than the talk.

Their farm is surrounded by conventional lemon, avocado, and berry producers.

But their vision was clear - lead by example and inspire through storytelling.

They didn’t set out to change every farm in the area, tell them how to farm, or criticize them for what they were doing “wrong.”

They had a clear goal, and they stuck to their ethos.

“Our focus is seeing and utilizing the interconnectedness of nature to help build soil health, maximize biodiversity, and regeneratively grow the most nutrient-dense food possible.” — from their website.

And to showcase ecological interconnectedness through storytelling, which continues to inspire countless people worldwide and introduces the next generation to a world of regenerative possibilities.

Thanks for reading,

Mitch Hinrichs

P.S. — This reflection is based on my experience working there and does not speak on behalf of Apricot Lane Farms. I respect their mission and team, but I want to make a clear distinction between my personal account and their work.

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