Finding Home

“This can’t go on all the time…all this franticness and jumping around. We’ve got to go someplace, find something.” ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

What does a person do when they hit an early mid-life crisis at age 32? They run to their mommy, of course.

I had recently broken up with a man after seven years together. We sold our beloved funky, downtown Toronto row house and I was living alone in a basement apartment north of the city. A smattering of continuing mental-health issues and general angst brought me to a weird place emotionally.

My Thoroughbred Mac was my passion and salvation. When I wasn’t at my job as managing editor of Horse Sport magazine, I was usually at the barn where I boarded Mac, loving on him, while simultaneously making the humans uncomfortable with my broodiness.

As my best friend, my Mom was doing her best to guide me through the morass. One day, sitting on bleachers at a horse show, we came to a tentative and, for us, extremely uncharacteristic decision. We were going to buy a horse farm!

I would write freelance and teach riding part time, something I’d already dabbled in and enjoyed. Mom, retired, would help me get started.

But where, oh where, would this horse farm be? We considered several Ontario locations before deciding Prince Edward Island, Mom’s home province – and by extension mine, too – made a lot of sense. Property was much more affordable, we knew the Island and its quirky ways well and we would be closer to my then 96-year-old Grammie, who was living in a long-term care home.

After looking at a few farms in PEI, we saw one that fit the bill – a turnkey boarding barn with an indoor in a great location. A bonus: the large house could easily be split into two generous apartments.

Then, Mom and I visited a little place called 29-Acre Farm. A Standardbred breeding operation, it was situated on – yep – 29 acres. There were two small barns, a three-bay garage, a 1/4-mile grass track, woodland and even a bit of beach in a sweet cove.

The house was cute and cozy. Translation: it was pretty small for two adult women living under the same roof after many years of not cohabitating together.

Nevertheless, Mom and I knew right away this was the place.

Admittedly, everything hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns since we landed on PEI on the Canada Day weekend 2003, but we can both say the farm has given us roots, a legacy, amazing experiences and, most importantly, a home in more ways than one.

Unlike the Kerouac quote at the top of this post, we no longer had to search for our someplace, our something.

We found our Get-Away Farm.

(Now, how we actually got two horses, a cat, a budgie and all our belongings here is another story. Stay tuned.)