June 2004....Enormous skies…..infact enormous everything were my thoughts as I took my first peak at Canada through the glare of sunshine and polished chrome at Halifax airport in Nova Scotia. Almost slightly embarrassed about our tentitivity as we lingered outside the main doors of the airport we eventually set off to the car hire opposite to pick up the newest car that we had ever had and to drive in the direction of Lunenburg County to locate our new home and new lives in a place and country that up until now I had only read about. It all seemed quite surreal and even slightly bizarre that were now the proud owners of a Canadian smallholding……the bizarre bit being that we were now longer owned a home in the UK and that we had used our small amount of capital from the sale of our Welsh farm to buy a property in a country we were only entitled to ‘holiday’ in! (more about this later).

The first scary experience came almost immediately and that was of course negotiating the roads on the wrong side (actually the right side as Canadians will tell you!). David had luckily visited Canada for the first time earlier on in the year and having driven around during this time in treacherous & snowy conditions, in my mind, this made him an expert and of course the honorary title of ‘official taxi service to strange family from the UK’ was bestowed upon him…….it would take many weeks before I plucked up the courage to relieve him from this title on occasions!

An hour and a half later we were nearly there having turned off the main highway 20 miles back and now finding ourselves in a vast rural area filled with rolling hills, lakes and trees with small brightly coloured homesteads appearing in clearings or near the roads. It was hard to take everything in not least because we were extremely tired after an emotional roller-coaster of a day (cue my family at Swindon train station blubbing) and now the anticipation of catching my first glimpse of our new home had given me tunnel vision somewhat and I think even the children were transfixed on the road ahead……and then it appeared and we all cheered loudly.

If anything the place looked even more lovely than the photos…….The little wooden house stood back from the road surrounded by majestic maple trees with a pond to its left and a garden of small shrubs and trees to its right and acres of grass all around it. Slightly behind the house and pond was the renovated barn of which the top level was on rent to our tenants as this had been converted to an apartment by the previous owners. This, we hoped, would help a little with our living expenses during our stay having no guaranteed income!

Further back and to the rear of the front garden stood the other barn which looked enormous if not rather scary but worth further investigation (wonder what we would find in there?). Behind the house was a view to die for. Being in a slightly elevated position we could see miles out onto layer upon layer of tree covered hills and we stood quietly for a few moments in awe of it all before being brought back to reality by our tenants, Lynne & Tony, who had popped out to say hello and who kindly presented us with a lovely bottle of locally produced wine.

We nattered away for several minutes before being ‘rained off’ by our first experience of black fly who obviously found our incomers flesh rather tasty, and we hastily retreated inside to see inside our ‘little wooden house’ for the very first time.