Canada: What You Should Know Before Moving From City to Farm
The dream of fleeing the city and living off the land has never been more popular—but what does it really take to get off the grid and grow something?
By Eve Thomas
Elle Canada
Oct 19Th, 2021
Excerpt:
About 100 kilometres away from Fitzsimmons, in Quebec’s Chateauguay Valley, Stephanie McBride confesses that she, too, was incredibly naive when she first established her farm, Old Wood Hollow. “I thought all chickens could lay eggs, even roosters,” she says. Four years later, with help from an agricultural-start-up grant, the 35-year-old mother of three grows no-till vegetables and raises heritage Mangalitsas (the “Kobe beef” of pigs), sending out weekly community-supported agriculture boxes and supplying top Montreal restaurants like Elena, Lawrence and Park. Her husband works on the West Coast most of the month, so it is often a one-woman operation, along with a staff that’s been made smaller during the pandemic.
Although McBride—with her smooth skin, wavy brown hair and crisp overalls (“I swear I don’t wear these all the time; it’s a coincidence!”)—could easily pass for an influencer, she only created her website at a friend’s insistence, and when she does post, the sunsets and pony rides are balanced out by unflinching honesty. “Nature doesn’t care if you had a bad day,” she says. “Sometimes I’m so tired that I cry the whole time I’m working.”
Just a sample of her morning routine is enough to snap any city mouse back to reality: up at 4 a.m. to do paperwork, quality control on last night’s harvest and health checks on 26 pigs and piglets, make breakfast for her kids and dogs and attempt to move an enormous shelter for the free-range animals.
