When you are living out on a farm it’s not a 5 minute drive to the grocery store.  In the case of this farm the closest place was Athens which was about 10-15 minutes.  If wanting to do some serious shopping you’d probably choose Brockville which was 30 minutes away.  But Athens had a little grocer, a pretty fantastic thrift shop, the nicest employee at the convenience store, and most importantly a post office.

Before coming to Canada Mr. Plate and I had decided we would like to throw our ticket in to win a gift of good land

Bluebird Hill Farm Essay Gift of Good Land

This involved writing a one page double spaced essay (around 200 words please) and a single spaced one paged resume each.  Selection is based on those things as well as the owner needing a minimum of 600-1500 entries.  A clerk is numbering the applications so that they are anonymous.  Our goal is to:

Step One: Get in the top 20 that is selected by the farm owner and then sent to 3 judges who will pick then winner.

Step Two: Be the winner!

Well you get the idea.  We wrote our essays, polished our resumes, sent both out for review and editing by some amazing friends.  Everything was all lined up to go.  Little did we know that the hardest part would be getting our hands on some USPS stamps while in Canada!  We could not order them online, print them out without special labels, or buy them locally.  We needed to include two self-addressed envelopes with our entry so that the gift givers could verify they received the entry and another in case they needed to send the entry fee back (in case of not enough applicants).  Whew. . . we were nervous to cross the border again for stamps after the hassle border patrol gave us the first time.  We had to have  them mail ordered from my mom which made for a few very expensive stamps.  But, we are all in so fingers-crossed that this can be the next adventure in our future.

We literally had to run for our money to get the cash needed for the entry fee. . . our debit card wouldn’t work here in Canada.  Found an ATM that worked though.  Yay!

We are Excited!  Finger’s crossed The Gift gets enough entries

Cutest Post Office Ever to Mail the Lucky Application From