LOS ANGELES — While Shannon Green’s career in L.A. has taken her a long way from the Oakwood farm where she grew up, she says she sees similar values in both places: an immense love of nature, storytelling and food that comes from farming.
Green hopes to make that connection evident in her latest effort: the 12-part docuseries “The Biggest Little Farm,” a sequel to the 2018 film of the same name.
Green served as a producer on the series, which she worked on from 2021 to 2024 and which is set to debut Sunday on “The Biggest Little Farm” YouTube channel. Two 30-minute episodes will be available immediately, with the rest released once a week.
The 2003 Oakwood High graduate said this has been her favorite project to date.
“It’s super wholesome and family-friendly,” she said. “I’m just excited for everyone from home to see it.”
The 2018 documentary follows John and Molly Chester and their son as they create a sustainable farm on 200 acres in Moorpark, Calif., about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
“I think a major theme for the film and the series and our team when we were making this is, just lean into curiosity about everything,” she said. “And I hope people feel that when they look at it. It means to be a very hopeful-feeling series.”
Green, the daughter of Kevin and Sue Green of rural Oakwood, said she hopes the series inspires viewers to be curious about things instead of approaching them with judgment and preconceived notions, and to see the beauty around them and relish it.
She said the production team got access to original footage from the Chesters’ efforts to restore soil to productivity at their Apricot Lane Farms, and also had a full crew document three years of progress on the farm, featuring the family and their animals.
Green said as is common in the entertainment business, it’s taken a couple years to get the series ready for its debut. In that time, the Chesters have also moved on; Green says while 99 percent of the series was shot while they were still on the farm, it ends with their decision to begin a new adventure in Oregon.
Apricot Lane Farms is still operating and functions as a farm and farmers market, also offering tours.
Family roots
Green said her upbringing helped her fit right in with this project. Both her grandma Dolores and mom visited her on set.
Green’s parents couldn’t be prouder.
“She has gone a long way since selling sweet corn out of the back of a pickup truck during her school years at Oakwood,” said Kevin, who was recently getting caught up on planting cover crops on the acres where he grows soybeans. “We have followed her career in the media, beginning in Chicago, then working out of Los Angeles. To be a producer at this level in this industry these days is quite an achievement in itself.”
Kevin said Shannon’s childhood on the Illinois Centennial farm her great-great-grandfather started in 1891 gave her “an awareness of the four seasons and their effects on plants and animals, how conservation is an integral part of agriculture, and where one’s food actually comes from,” which enabled her to offer insight into the production of “The Biggest Little Farm.”
Sue said her daughter “has established a good name for herself in production, and has proven to be reliable, knowledgeable and very efficient in her job. Her strong Midwest work ethics, love for nature and animals, and excellent people skills were truly an asset to the filming and producing of this series.”
Shannon said growing up in Vermilion County and the Midwest was “amazing” with the amount of freedom she had.
“I love cities and being in the country,” she said.
Big-city bound
After graduating from Oakwood High, Green went to Lake Forest College in the Chicago area, studying communication and art and graduating in 2007.
She interned with two Chicago radio stations, Q101 and The Loop, and worked there after graduation. That experience catapulted her into the entertainment industry.
Through a random series of connections, she was offered a job as a production assistant on a television show and said she “just fell in love with the lifestyle.”
“It’s a hustle, but I love it,” Green said. “It’s super dynamic and it kind of goes back to the way I grew up.”
She stayed in Chicago a couple years, had a stint in the Amazon rainforest in 2009, came back to Illinois, then moved to California.
Green is now a full-time freelance producer. She’s also kept up her interest in radio a little bit, she said, as she really missed the Chicago market.
She said when she’s working on a job, “they own my time,” which can include 12-to-18-hour days for a while.
“It’s a great rush,” she said, adding that the crew becomes family.
She said she also loves the freedom of travel afforded by her work.
“It’s a very dynamic lifestyle,” she said.
Back to the farm
Green said “The Biggest Little Farm” series is “my absolute favorite I’ve ever worked on.”
She said the original documentary, which she saw twice during its small theatrical release, is stunning in how it depicts farming and ties it to nature.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said. “It reminded me a lot of growing up on my farm.”
She said as farm kid, she wasn’t drawn to the lifestyle for her adult life, but the way the film portrayed the full-circle aspect of farming in such a beautiful way made her excited about it for the first time.
She said she became obsessed with the film, talking to people about it and wanting to visit the farm. That led pursuing a meeting with its producer, Sandra Keats.
“The timing was just kismet,” Green said.
In talking with Keats about a sequel, Green told her about her journey from a farm kid in the Midwest to a producer living in the heart of Los Angeles. She said she was inspired by the film and would love to be part of the sequel series.
“It was pretty cool,” she said.
Evolving project
At the beginning, she was hired just to do a three-month project that would culminate in an Earth Day special for Disney Plus, but as things progressed, she was asked “to help crew up” and turn the special into a series.
The production was looking for crew members who would move to the farm and live there while making the project — something Green originally said she couldn’t commit to. She ended up commuting through the mountains every day, about 100 miles, for the dream project. An old barn was converted into housing where she could stay overnight as needed.
She said it was a really unique production and it was “incredible to work with like-minded people” on it.
They worked together to get the perfect shots, whether it was an intense coyote shot or one of an insect stinging an olive.
While part of her job was recruiting people for the team, she said as a producer, her main role was to bring the vision for the project to life. While she wasn’t involved with financing or fundraising, she acted as a right-hand woman to the director and often found the work be like an air-traffic controller. Other producers on series had backgrounds in natural history and other areas and came from New York, central California and right out of college.
“People really dedicated their lives to this for three years,” Green said.
There were story and film teams, livestock and poultry teams, garden and orchard teams and other departments.
“It’s a regenerative farm, so they have a pretty substantial staff,” Green said.
Green was in constant contact with everyone on the farm and worked with the editor and composer to make sure the storylines were represented and transferred smoothly to a television screen.
“At the end of day, I make sure the director gets what he wants and the entire team is healthy, happy, and there’s clear communication on needs,” she said.
She said being the hub of communication is her favorite job.
She said on this project, she felt she was working with people from rural, farming and nature-based backgrounds who understood where she came from, and they got to put a shiny Hollywood bow on the series.
That’s a wrap
Since the series’ completion, Green has stayed busy. She’s currently producing a short comedic film with a team who came through Second City improv in Chicago that is set to start shooting.
She’s also following her other passion of music by serving as a content producer for music festivals. One is Darker Waves, where she’s in charge of photo and video teams. Among the acts is the Smashing Pumpkins.
In reflecting on her childhood on the family farm, surrounded by corn and soybeans, she said her family was always involved in conservation. She grew up composting, and Midwest values were instilled in her very early on.
“I just think it was very cool to be able to take those values and see them implemented in an entirely different part of the U.S. and a different way of farming,” she said.
