“Hey, this may be way out of left field, but I’m intrigued by the idea of you and your brothers rehabilitating the family farm. There may be a show here.”

This is the message that popped into my inbox on October 28th, 2020. This was 16 days after I had started the farm account, which at the time was still named “Hunts Farm”, and it was about a month since I got back from Ottawa. Let’s jump back a bit though.

The origin of the story

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we had the brilliant idea to film our antics at the farm. The three of us always found ways to do redneck things that we probably shouldn’t have. The truth is, these things would be hilarious on video. We had talked about starting a YouTube channel for years, knowing that people would relate to a trio of brothers, well, being brothers. That alone wasn’t enough to tell a story and the missing part was the emotional hook; the dying farm and an undying spirit to save it. Romantic comedy stuff, to say the least.

The one thing that constantly made us lose our momentum was the old man. We’d start cleaning something and he’d throw one of his notorious tantrums and we’d walk away. It’s tough to convey through comedic Instagram posts just how difficult it was to deal with someone hellbent on his own gem’s demise.

So, a few years rolled on and we all had our own things in the oven of life. Justin was busy working hard, as he does, in another town. He’d come down on weekends and do what he could, but the old man never made it easy. Jordan and I were working to build a photography business which wasn’t without its challenges. Just as we were about to make a move to amplify our chances at the type of business we dreamt of, the world closed. Our flight out West was cancelled three days before departure and we were tossed into a tailspin of uncertainty.

What are you left with?

When the dreams you had been building are yanked away, you often find yourself going home. In this case, we all found ourselves with a whole lot of time and a farm that, despite being an eyesore, kept calling us home.

I’ve always been interested in storytelling. Creating worlds in my wild imagination to share with people. When I was young, this came in the form of drawings. In adulthood, I found my love for photography. Being back at the farm, with no return to the real world in immediate sight, I started documenting our shenanigans. This was about June 2020 and we mainly focused on small projects or random absurdities to fill our time.

The summer carried on and I saw a small glimmer of hope that the photography business that we were building could survive if I headed for the city. With things slowly trying to open, I made one last push and went to Ottawa to see if the market was right. The market wasn’t right. So, with my tail between my legs, I headed back to the farm and Justin and I spoke, once again, about documenting our little journey.

With no real plans or hope left for my own business, I secured an email, an Instagram and a Facebook account for the farm and simply began posting. There was no real direction or plan other than to share what we were doing and hopefully connect with some people.

We knew the old man would be an issue, but decided that the satisfaction of completing this farm rebuild would surpass the headaches he’d bring. We wanted a homestead for the kids. A place for them to enjoy all the perks of growing up in the country and, a way for us to relive the childhood we had, skipping rocks on the ponds and falling out of trees(a fun Mother’s Day gift provided by our sister in the form of a broken arm).

I had made the decision that I’d post daily. I would collect content when we went and distribute it until the next farm days. I also had this reserve of images and video clips that I had been saving for the past few years. As with anything, it started out slowly. With no real end goal in mind for the social side, I just posted what was real. I used tactics I had learned through my other accounts, and several years of experience, to time the posts, target them and make sure that they found their audience. I won’t use this post to explain how I did it, though if you’d like to know more, drop a comment below.

Two weeks go by and traffic to our little Instagram page is growing as we are having a blast on the farm. Knowing that we have an audience somehow pushed us to “perform”. The methods we used to complete various tasks became just a little more ridiculous and the laughter became a whole lot heavier. The country bug was biting us hard. It has this way of drawing you in that you never want to leave. The cricket sunsets, the crackling bonfires, the smell of the fields with a morning dew, all take you to a place that feels like, for lack of a better word, home.

October 28, 2020

The little red notification appeared on my Instagram icon. I was sipping a rum and coke, playing Farming on Xbox and texting with Justin(who was also playing farming on Xbox because we are really that cool). As my workers continue their harvest on the beautiful wheat fields of a digital farm, I tap to see which forex guru nonsense had swung into my dm’s. The message read, “hey, this may be way out of left field, but I work for ******* television. Working with networks like *****, &&&&& and @&$&. I’m intrigued by the stories of you and your brothers rehabilitating the farm, maybe there’s a show there. Let me know if you wanna talk further.”

I swiped the app closed and continued farming. My brain took a minute to replay the message contents; It had to be fake. A couple minutes later I opened it and tapped on the person’s profile. It definitely didn’t look like a tv producers profile; as if I had any idea what a tv producers profile would look like. I closed the app again and continued farming. Curiosity is a real bitch sometimes, so I opened the app again and searched the company he said he worked for. Sure enough, they followed him. Hmm, maybe there was some validity to this. Like a wine-fueled ex trying to cyber-stalk your new life, I embarked on a fact-finding mission to uncover just who this guy was. All the roads led me to reality. The message seemed legit. This guy had worked on some big-name stuff and helped launch a show that I had been watching for years. I called Justin and told him about it and we decided to hear the guy out. A few messages later and our conference call was scheduled for the following Monday with this media company.

45 minutes

We dialled into the conference line from our respective jobs during our lunch hours. As we waited to the tune of some pretty bad music, we texted about how weird this was. We didn’t really have a clue what to expect from this guy. What we got was a 45 minute call that flowed in a direction much closer to home than we would have expected. So many things about our past were intertwined with this guy on the other line who we had never met. When it came to talking about the potential for a show, he was sold, and so were we. Normally, at this stage, you toss the producers a little clip explaining who you are and your story. Often these clips are filmed from your cellphone and just help to paint a better picture as to who you are in front of the camera. The step following that is called a sizzle reel. A videographer and small crew are sent to help you create this reel that is a couple minutes long that will eventually be used to sell the show to a network. Given my field of expertise in photo and video, it was agreed that I just go for it and produce the reel myself. We finished the call and immediately called each other back to go over what had just happened.

I spent the rest of the week formulating a shot list in my head that I wanted to capture. We would have action shots, sweeping landscapes and drone coverage. We’d also film reality tv style interviews of each of us talking to the camera. The craziest part is that I wanted it to all be done in one weekend. I figured if I got it to the producer quicker, it might speed up the process. This was a laughable idea that I’ll explain a little further on.

3,2,1…..Action

We all arrived bright and early to the farm on a beautifully sunny Saturday morning and wasted no time getting ready to film. I’d use Saturday morning to get the interview shots, Saturday afternoon to film itemized plot shots and Sunday for action and drone. Things went really well, except for someone snapchatting his gf while he was supposed to be watching focus on my interview shot. This is around the time that Justin and I realized that this was our project. Whether it succeeded or failed, everyone else was just along for the ride. We had something more invested in telling the story. Justin had, and still has, a blind love for that little piece of property in the hills of Quebec. While I appreciate the land, the story and, most of all, the brotherhood, I was invested in making amends for the photography company crashing when Covid hit.

Sunday came quickly and I was soon sitting at my kitchen table combing through 2 hours of 4K footage. Let me tell you something about editing 4K footage. My laptop is fairly capable, having spent more than I probably should have to have a reliable editing tool. It took an actual fan, aimed directly at my laptop, to keep it from overheating long enough that I could trim the clips. At this time, I hadn’t yet learned about editing proxy footage.

In two days I combed through the clips and put them into one smaller clip of 14 minutes. They wanted a sizzle reel, they were going to get it.

Waiting…

If you have visions of the television world being this fast-paced, make-it-happen world, that wasn’t our experience. We spent two weeks just waiting to hear back about our clip. Obviously, it was well-received and things progressed to the next stage. The producer, along with his editor, began chipping away at our footage to find the story they wanted to tell. We would hear from him about once a week and he’d ask questions or just touch base on the project. The goal was to have it ready to market to the networks by the end of January when they’d be shopping for the next season’s shows. Finally, in December, I received an official contract that had us signed with this production company, in the form of a “shopping agreement”. Basically, it means they have exclusive rights to market and “shop” the show around for a buyer and financing. With Christmas just around the corner we knew we wouldn’t hear much else until about January 7th. Then it would only be a short two weeks until we heard news of the convention. Looking back, we were very naïve to think this was actually going to be the case.

The end of January came and we just kept getting messages about how it was almost ready. These messages came until the end of February. This is when we heard the news that pissed us off the most, up to this point. Our producer’s boss loved the clip and our reel impressed the team, but he made a decision to not take it to the networks for another month. He claimed that they had just sold two shows and wanted to keep the network reps from getting overwhelmed. So, we were left waiting, once again.

Friction on the farm

When you start a project and decide to make things happen, the energy level and enthusiasm tends to be high. We were beyond excited to get the farm project underway and make it into the dream property we knew it could be. The projects we spoke of completing would be a lot of work, but well worth it, if we could only get them started. You see, as we waited for all of this television stuff, we couldn’t really tackle any of the projects on the farm that we had submitted for episode plots. Talking about the projects is great for a week or two, but Justin and I are both easily bored and we wanted to get moving; to see progress. There was definitely friction as we tried to keep focused on the big picture and waste our weekends waiting for a team that we felt was less than motivated(our producer excluded-I’ll briefly summarize this at the end).

While all of this waiting is taking place we are fielding questions from the rest of the family on when things will move forward, with a certain skepticism in their voices.

We pushed through the month and received no message of good news. I fired a text to the producer and asked for any sort of update. He messages me back quickly, “give me a call when you have a sec”.

Matters in my own hands

I jumped on a call with the producer and asked him politely, how much more waiting we were going to have to do before someone made a move. At this point he was caught between us and his boss, who now tells him, after waiting a month, that he wonders if for the International audiences we need an ensemble cast that displays diversity. He thinks having two to three other farm stories that vary from ours might help us sell outside of Canada. He tasks our producer and his casting producer to hunt down these other potentials. While I’m having the conversation, the wheels are turning in my head, calculating that this will push us months further, and into the valuable summer months. Waiting was hard enough when there was snow on the ground, but we needed to plant in the Spring. Our producer assured me he had the utmost faith in his casting producer and she would find the families we needed. I let it be and went back to waiting. There definitely wasn’t a phone call to Justin immediately after with much profanity and anger(read the sarcasm).

One week went by, then two. I asked the producer for an update on how the search for more families was going and he said it was proving to be a challenge. This is where my temper(and my ego) spiked.

“When are you free for a call?” I messaged.

“Give me 15” he responded.

I had been sitting on the sidelines long enough and twiddling my thumbs. If this wasn’t going to move forward without me, I was damn sure gonna move it.

We jumped on a call and I asked for the update. He said that his casting producer had reached out to agriculture societies, associations and agents in the U.S, but was having a hard time sourcing good stories that differed from ours.

“What if I help find them?” I proposed.

He said that any help would be appreciated and that if I could get some leads through my social media skills, it might just speed things up. I hung up and got to work. This was on a Tuesday. I hopped on Instagram and began hashtag surfing and account diving. I used Google to verify that a story was interesting and then sent my pitch messages to the potential families.

By Wednesday I had 20 phone calls lined up spanning from Quebec to Calgary and all the way down to Houston. One call that ended up cancelling was even scheduled for England. From Wednesday to Friday I spoke with 20 different families from various walks of life. The stories I was hearing were great. Some of them made me question why ours would even stand out. I spoke to a real down-home country couple in Ontario, building on a family history of farming as they built their life together. I spoke to a man in Texas who was teaching inner-city kids about sustainable farming and really making an impact in his community. I spoke to a woman down south that was creating a hemp empire through some amazing marketing, a strong message and a spirited character. There was a bison ranch in Saskatchewan, a llama farm just past the border beneath us, horses, pigs, weed and poultry were all around. I chose the ones that I fell in love with and prepared four proper pitches. I’m talking full storyboards with write-ups, pictures and I even had the families send me their own little introduction reels. I was literally gift-wrapping this casting producers job and handing it on a silver platter. I delivered all of this on Monday, six days after my call with the producer. His response was pretty epic and I’ll post a screenshot of the message I received. We hopped on a call and the ball started rolling again, seemingly much quicker. Now there was talk of actual meetings and dates scheduled with networks. There was a plan that relied on an actual timeline and not random texts and phone calls.

The worst decision

To this point, the producer had made it abundantly clear that we were a passion project. He held stories of regrowth close to his heart, and the very first conversation we had uncovered so many similarities in our own personal tales. To the point that we’d share random pics of items from our family history and general conversations not related to the show. I can’t be sure, but I feel like having this project so close to his heart, probably made him push his boss a few times to get things rolling. While I was caught between the family and the producer, he was caught between me and his boss; the lot of us just trying to satisfy the networks.

With the pitch dates fast approaching, we were getting excited. We would pitch the show with our reel and have the others as supporting families for an ensemble series that would jump from family to family and show the vastly different images of farming that we all represented. There were some back door showings to network reps and the response to our tape was epic. Words like charisma and energy were thrown around and we were beginning to feel excitement. What could go wrong? A week before the official pitches, our producers boss made an executive decision to withhold the other families from the pitches and just go with our tape. He claimed that to develop these other stories would take far too long and once again delay things.

It all came tumbling down

All of the meetings were met with high excitement and promising remarks. We even snagged the attention of a network that had been elusive to our producer throughout his long career in television. Network reps from California, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and overseas had seen our tape and loved it.

At the farm, things had gotten rocky due to the stress of trying to build an entire show around a story that was largely put on hold. The old man had become increasingly difficult to be around for everyone and there was talk of divorce on the horizon. I won’t go too deeply into personal matters of the family, but when you see the stubborn behavior that lead to the demise of the farm, I have framed it in an almost comic way for social media. The truth is that the farm had become a toxic environment of sneaky, childlike behaviors, anger and full out deception. Our love for the farm was being sucked out and everything we had hoped it would become looked to be farther and farther away. At this point, a common thought between Justin and I was, “The show will fix things”, though we were blindly optimistic.

Networks started getting back to us with their decisions. There was a resounding theme of “lack of diversity” that pissed me off to my core. Not only had I found exactly what we needed and gift-wrapped it, but now we were being told that it’s the one thing that could have saved us. Most networks were polite, despite the obvious undertones. One network was not polite. They gave it to us straight. They said, “At this time we can’t put a predominately white cast show on tv. It would look bad for our image.” This wasn’t television or creative arts, this was politics. This was maintaining an appearance for a network. This was also avoidable if our producers boss wouldn’t have pulled the plug on the other families. I’m in full accord that there needs to be diversity in farming. The entire agriculture industry is dwindling over high prices and a generation of primarily white males that, quite frankly, make farming archaic. They’ve been of great service producing the food that we all take for granted every single day, however, in these changing times, we need young, energetic, enthusiastic farmers to be showcased. We need the next generation to see farming as a fun experience. A place of growth, laughter and dreams. We need to give them the “stars” that make them contemplate a life on the farm, producing for the next generation, instead of idolizing the next batch of fake-lashed reality stars with fabricated drama and plastic surgery. More importantly, we need to show every one of them, every gender, color, size and location, that they can build in this world. The networks were protecting their asses. Our producer was listening to his boss. His boss made the decision to cut our stance of diversity and hope in agriculture, in favor of getting it out the door.

What next?

We were told to not lose faith entirely, that someone might still represent the show. It didn’t matter to us. We had wasted an entire year on waiting, pushing, juggling and we were burnt. It wasn’t our desire to build that was burnt, but our love for the farm had dwindled as it rotted itself from the inside. Now, it stands as a shell of lost hope, overlooking what is still one of the best views on that long, dirt road in the rural hills of Quebec, Canada.

Our producer left his job after all of this took place. I had spoken to him candidly about tv politics and the tiresome nature of conforming against our will. He said that after his decades in television he had had enough and wanted to work where stories were told because they had purpose. He wasn’t lying on that call, as only a week after we got that highly political response, I received a message that he was turning over his reigns at the company to someone else.

Working with him was a pleasure and there is no bad blood over the year-long experience. I’d still happily toss back a beer over a campfire with him and talk about the possibilities of kickstarting an attack on this whole concept, only with us in control.

Will I go back?

I’ve since moved on to building back my business(kind of). Instead of focusing on photography, I’m focused on helping brands tell their stories(turns out I have a knack for it). I’ve started a social media management and content creation business that is based out of Saskatchewan. I’ll be flying all around this beautiful country and working with companies that I believe in to uplift what they bring to the table into a relatable and interesting brand story.

I had to leave the farm. I still think about it every day and often scroll through the feed and enjoy the memories. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll ever go back, but for now I need to create on my terms and explore.

Jordan has also left the farm and is building a new view on life in a city which is vastly different for him. If he uses his creative eye and converts his temper to drive, he’s gonna do quite alright.

Justin is still back at the farm. It’s tough to say how invested in it he is, because his dreams of rebuilding it span back farther than the rest of us. He’s wanted to be a farmer since he was young and the only thing stopping him has been his own father. It’s a sad story, but he’s a strong young man. If the call ever comes that Justin has full control of the farm, there’s a strong chance you could see a series produced. For now, I only wish he saw the opportunities elsewhere to thrive.

Thank you

I genuinely want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read this. It’s personal and it’s real. You all joined in and invested time and possibly some hope in our project. We’ve had meaningful interactions with so many of you and thoroughly enjoyed most of them. To those that were inspired to document their own farming journey, thank you so much for sharing it and carrying on.

This is not goodbye. Simply, see you later.

-Canadian james

No Place Like the Homestead