5 Best Free Films about Gardening, Farming and Permaculture

A couple weeks ago I shared with you my favorite homesteading/farming/gardening books. Today, continuing in the same vein, I thought I would share with you some of my favorite farming videos.

Now, some of these videos are longer, feature length, films but they weren’t big box office hits. They are small independent films and I just love them for the reality that they capture, the good, the bad and the ugly that farming and gardening is.

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Both of these first two films are similar in idea and content. They both feature three different “small” independent organic farms in three similar areas. The major commonality they all have is that they feature first generation farmers, meaning their farms haven’t been passed down from generation to generation.

The first film I’m going to share with you is the Canadian version called To Make a Farm. This film features three different farms, Green Being Farm, Cedar Down Farm, and Littlepath Farm.

Pat and I saw this movie in a theatre a couple years ago. I really enjoyed it and Pat was suitably impressed :). You can click on the link below.

If you live in Canada, you can go to the TVO website and watch the whole thing there, but apparently, it doesn’t work if you live outside Canada.

My other favorite movie is called Small Farm Rising and it is the first farm-related film I saw. It features Essex Farm (home of Kristin Kimball, author of The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love and Good Husbandry ) it also features Asgaard Farm and Dairy and Fledging Crow Farm.

You might remember from my favorite farming/gardening and homesteading books post that I’ve read The Dirty Life a few times and just loved it, so it was really neat to see a bit of the farm in action 8 yrs or so, after the book was written (the book is the story of the Kristin and Mark’s first year on the farm).

Next, we have some of my favorite Youtube channels and websites dedicated to farming, homesteading and permaculture.

First up is Curtis Stone, (the urban farmer not the chef!)and his intro video is below or you can just click on his channel here. I have also read and highly recommend Curtis’s book The Urban Farmer: Growing Food For Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land.

And next, we have Geoff Lawton. Geoff Lawton is a world renowned permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. He first took his Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course in 1983 with Bill Mollison, widely considered the “father of permaculture.” I learned so so much about permaculture farming from his videos. His Youtube channel is here as well as his website Geoff Lawton Online.com where you can sign up for his series of videos that are 100% free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHBhN4UraOw

Ok one last one is Mr. Charles Dowding. Charles is an acclaimed innovator of no dig, organic growing since 1983, and since 2003 of new ways to crop salad leaves. His original, weed free methods give superb results in both small and large areas. Click for his website here where you can learn and be inspired by his no-dig method.

Here is a sample of his videos below.

So there you go, my favorite movies about farming! I love watching and reading these types of things, especially in winter, it gets me so inspired about doing what we want to do (although probably not as big of scale as these 🙂 Have a great weekend!