Good Things Await

What does a cow pie from a healthy cow look like? Do farmer Niels Stokholm’s biodynamic steaks really taste better? Phie Ambo's Good Things Await about Stokholm's biodynamic farm Thorshøjgaard, supplier to the world's best restaurant Noma, is opening the Berlinale Culinary Cinema, a celebration of film, our environment and the joy of food.
How do you tell from a cow pie that its owner is a healthy cow living according to its instincts and in harmony with nature and the people around it?
Niels Stokholm, the 80-year-old protagonist of Phie Ambo’s Good Things Await, will tell you that the cow pie should have a healthy, dark colour. That’s a sign that the cow has had access to a lot of grass. The cow pie should have a firm shape and resemble a cream puff. If you hold your hand close, you should be able to feel a slight heat arising from it – and you shouldn’t have to hold your nose.
Stokholm and his wife Rita run their biodynamic farm Thorshøjgaard, 50 km north of Copenhagen, based on 40 years of observing their animals and the nature around them.
To Stokholm, biodynamic farming is about engaging in dialogue with your surroundings and striving to understand how everything thrives. His daily routines are based on observing the animals’ well-being – for instance by ascertaining the quality of a cow pie. You might even call it research of a kind.
“Everything can’t be measured and weighed. I can’t measure the impulses that go from humans to animals. But I know they’re there, and I can tell that it matters to the animals that they have human contact. It makes them calm and secure,” Niels Stokholm says.
Another significant observation Stokholm has made over his many years as a biodynamic farmer is that the more the animals live in accordance with their instincts, the better their meat tastes – and the better it is for us.
Not surprisingly, as Ambo shows in Good Things Await, this idealistic farmer with his far-reaching ideas is a thorn in the eye of the authorities. The food and agriculture department is threatening to deprive Stokholm of his right to farm livestock.
But Stokholm is not alone in contending that biodynamic farming is important to the quality and taste of foods. Thorshøjgaard supplies produce to some of the best restaurants in Denmark, including
Copenhagen’s Noma. Chef and co-founder René Redzepi regularly buys beef from Thorshøjgaard because, as director Phie Ambo puts it, “it simply tastes exceptionally well” •

In her new film, Phie Ambo goes to bat for sustainable agriculture. Good Things Await is about Niels Stokholm, a farmer fighting with the authorities to run his farm – supplier to Copenhagen's acclaimed Noma restaurant – his way, biodynamically.
When Phie Ambo was a tot she went to a Marxist kindergarten. Not that her parents were particularly leftist, but this was the 1970s, and since there were
very few kindergarten spots open in their area, they took the first one they were assigned.
“I remember they had these Marxist structures in my kindergarten that were impossible to live in. There was a sandbox patrol of kids who would make the rounds and make sure the other kids behaved the way they should – that the sandbox stuff was kept inside the sandbox, that kind of thing. I did not do well with that at all,” Ambo says.
Ever since, the award-winning director of documentaries like Free the Mind and Mechanical Love has had a hard time with authority. In general, Ambo is not very comfortable in surroundings that value efficiency and structure over contemplation and reflection.
“As soon as we pulled into the driveway, I could tell this was where I needed to be. And I could tell there was a film in Niels.”Phie Ambo
Ambo puts these principles up for debate in Good Things Await through her protagonist Niels Stokholm and his unique biodynamic farm Thorshøjgaard, located an hour’s drive north of Copenhagen.
It all began with a farm field trip that Ambo’s daughter was going on with her Rudolf Steiner kindergarten. The filmmaker went along with her camera to photograph the kids and the farm animals. Ambo had heard that Stokholm’s produce was praised by gourmet restaurants like Noma, that his produce was top grade. But she didn’t know anything about the farm or how it was operated.
“As soon as we pulled into the driveway, I could tell this was where I needed to be,” Ambo says. 
“And I could tell there was a film in Niels.”
Contemplating a Snail
To understand life at Thorshøjgaard and its appeal to Ambo, you have to understand what kind of farmer Stokholm is. He runs the farm according to the principles of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner that are the basis for biodynamics. Instead 
of considering weeds an evil, Stokholm thinks of them as part of the farm’s circulatory system, 
where everything has a function.
There is no soy feed here, no pesticides or industrial production. The animals are on pasture all year round, including when the ground is covered in thick snow. Stokholm’s cattle, an old dairy breed known as Danish Red, are so nimble they look like deer more than the heavy, industrial swollen-uddered cows you usually see in the Danish countryside. This resonates with chefs like Noma’s René Redzepi, who regularly buys beef from Thorshøjgaard, because, as Ambo puts it, “It simply tastes exceptionally well.”
“I needed to get out of the whole efficiency mindset that we’re quickly lulled into in our modern lives,” the filmmaker says.
“What are they talking about? We have a global account that doesn’t add up. That we use more resources than we have is above discussion. The planetary store is all sold out!”Phie Ambo
“I needed a chance to be somewhere where you can spend an hour contemplating a snail moving along a leaf, the kind of thing that I think is good and important to spend time on but that we usually don’t have time for in the day to day,” she says.
“Niels is an extreme contrast to the rest of society, which is all about efficiency and quantity instead of quality. He is 100 percent uncompromising. If he can sense that his cows need milking in the middle of the night, that’s what he does. He follows the rhythm he finds in the farm. He is an organism on the farm interacting with all the other elements. Nothing is subjected to 
his rhythm – he slips into the animals’ rhythm.”
Positive Alternatives Do Exist
Still, it was more than her personal need to spend time at Thorshøjgaard that compelled Ambo to make the film. Looking at the 40-year-old documentarian’s back catalogue, her anti-authoritarian worldview shows through everywhere. Free the Mind looks at how meditation can help soldiers with PTSD and children with ADHD-symptoms. The Bailiff is a glimpse into a system that puts debt-ridden people out on the street, while Mechanical Love is about robots being used as substitutes for human relationships.
The impression is of a filmmaker looking for the good life, who wants us all to stop and ask ourselves if the world really is organised in the best possible way. No exception, Good Things Await demonstrates that alternatives do exist to how farming is done today and to how society is organised overall.
“I’m always looking to push a positive development in society,“ Ambo says. “When I arrived at the farm, I saw a real alternative. For me, it’s incredibly inspiring to see someone actually doing something instead of just talking about it. 
We live in an age where the industrial and capitalist worldview is collapsing left and right in some pretty hardcore ways. I think the way Niels and his wife, Rita, live presents a positive alternative, even if it is extreme simple living.”
Ambo is surprised to hear trend researchers dismiss the whole issue of sustainability as a passing trend.
“What are they talking about? We have a global account that doesn’t add up. That we use more resources than we have is above discussion. The planetary store is all sold out! For the first time in human history we face these climate and resource changes caused by our excessive consumption. I can’t see how anyone could call the solution to that a passing trend.”