Wanted: Two couples willing to spend a year carving out a homestead the way prairie settlers did more than a century ago.
Qualifications: Should be strong, hardy, intelligent and willing to forgo the amenities of modern-day living. Some knowledge of farming would be an asset.
Salary: The two couples each will receive $100,000 if they tough it out on the homestead for a year.
Apply to Winnipeg’s Credo Entertainment, a film production company. The deadline is May 12.
Credo Entertainment hopes to have the two couples chosen and at work on their homesteads in time to plant a garden and to break sod for a crop this spring.
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The company said May 5 it was already getting scores of calls from wanna-be homesteaders.
“The phone is ringing off the hook non-stop,” said Credo’s Michael Scott. “We’ve got four lines going.”
But hold on folks.
Before dreaming about that $100,000 carrot, think about the comforts that would be left behind.
That’s 365 days without a telephone, electricity, gas-powered automobiles, a television set or the convenience of running water.
The house will be whatever sod or log structure one manages to build. Transportation most likely will be limited to walking on foot, riding horseback or hitching up a cart to a horse or oxen.
“It’s going to be a serious challenge for anyone who takes this on,” said Scott.
“If they succeed, it’s going to be a very rewarding accomplishment (for them) personally.”
Credo Entertainment plans to film the endeavors of the two couples and to then package their experiences into 13 half-hour episodes to be broadcast on History Television and Life Channel starting this fall.
Scott said they are looking for people between 18 and 60 years of age.
The couples will each homestead a plot of land the same size as what settlers got in the 1800s.
They will get coaching before being transplanted onto the land. That will ensure they know some of the basics about cooking on a wood stove, finding a source of water (possibly by drilling a well), building a log or sod abode and cultivating the land with equipment typical of the late 1870s.
They will be dressed in clothing typical of that period. Some of the clothing they will have to make themselves.
“We’re not going to take it easy on them, but we’re not going to throw them to the wolves either,” said Sean Hicks, an executive assistant with Credo Entertainment.
“By no means do we want them set up in a situation where they will be more likely to fail.”
Scott said several of the people at Credo Entertainment have ancestors who were settlers in Western Canada. Those rural roots helped provide the inspiration for Credo’s latest undertaking.
One of Scott’s great, great-grandfathers jumped ship at Halifax in 1867 and eventually settled in southern Manitoba.
Scott hopes the 13 television episodes will give viewers a greater appreciation of what settlers went through when they arrived on the Prairies.
The plots of land for the homesteads had not been chosen as of May 5. Scott said they are looking for a location in southern Manitoba.
