More than 50,000 apply for job that included offer of free land
Cape Breton sisters desperate for staff resort to giveaway that attracts families
WHYCOCOMAGH, N.S. — When a land-rich family in sparsely populated Cape Breton wanted to attract workers for its understaffed country store, it offered free land to anyone who would come and work for five years. The family expected a few dozen responses; more than 50,000 poured in — and the calls keep coming.
“I expected a response, just not one as huge as this,” said Sandee MacLean, a who came up with the idea with her sister.
Cape Breton, a scenic 4,000square-mile patch of rolling forest and farmland jutting into the northern Atlantic Ocean, has only about 130,000 residents and has been losing well over 1,000 people a year for the last two decades. As Cape Bretoners become increasingly frantic about stemming the tide of outward migration, giving away land just might be a solution.
“It is validation that land is an attraction,” said Chris van den Heuvel, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture. He hopes the strong response to the giveaway will help his group’s effort to create a land bank that would make farmland affordable and bring newcomers to the province.
In Nova Scotia, the overwhelming response also is a measure of how many people, unmoored by the global economy, are hungry for a sense of community. To many, the proposal seemed to present a connection to a famously rich regional culture full of Scottish fiddling, community suppers and square dancing.
All of that was far from mind when Jim and Ferne Austin decided to turn their store over to their daughters this year. For the two women, MacLean and Heather Austin Coulombe, the most immediate concern was where to find employees.
“We were in a panic, we were so short staffed,” Coulombe said.
The Austins opened the business, the Farmer’s Daughter Country Market, in 1992 in Whycocomagh after a life spent dairy farming. The combination bakery, produce market, ice cream parlour, fudge factory and gift shop now occupies a collection of barn-red buildings along the side of the road on a quiet stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway.
Austin’s father, also a dairy farmer, had amassed more than 600 acres; after sell-offs, about 200 acres remain. The land that is left is mostly mountain woodland — pretty to see, but not of much value unless it were logged. No one in the family wants to shave the hillsides for that.
By the end of this summer, the country market was down by three full-time workers, making it difficult to meet a local grocery chain’s demand for baked goods from the Farmer’s Daughter. The baking business helps the operation stay afloat in the bleak winter months.
MacLean and Coulombe tried hiring locally, but said capable and dependable hands were not available. The visa process for foreign workers was too cumbersome, too. That is when they came up with the idea of giving away land. The women put together a questionnaire that emphasized commitment and values and made it clear that the land they were giving away was remote and well off the grid.
Around 10 p.m. one Sunday in late August, the sisters posted a gentle appeal on the market’s Facebook page under the title, “Beautiful Island Needs People.”
In about 500 words they offered a job, community and two acres of land to anyone who would come and work at the market for five years. They have since raised the offer to three acres to allow for a septic system.
By morning, the appeal had been shared 200 times. Soon national radio and TV stations were calling and the land offer was the top trending news story on CBC’s website. When the report was picked up around the world, the floodgates opened.
The sisters had already zeroed in on several candidates well before their appeal went viral. Within a week of the original post they had interviewed the people they eventually hired.
The newcomers consist of three families: the Andersons, the Walkinses and the Taits, who arrived in time for a Thanksgiving Day feast at the Austins.
All three families said that it was the promise of community in a simpler, beautiful place that was the biggest attraction. Each parcel of land is worth only a few thousand Canadian dollars, and Cape Breton has plenty of land for sale.
“I never even asked about the land,” said Sonja Anderson, a former mortgage banker who drove nine days from Vancouver with her 10-year-old daughter and two dogs.
Micah Tait said that he and his wife, Trish, had long dreamed of making such a move.
“Everything was exactly what we were hoping to work toward and we just took a sort of shortcut,” he said.
Both said they missed the “feeling of belonging” in their life in Vancouver, where they worked as security guards.
The new arrivals have challenges ahead. They arrived in the midst of Cape Breton’s beautiful fall foliage display, but a long frigid winter and then the region’s famous black fly season await.