This segment originally aired Dec. 12, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
Sisters Heather Coulombe and Sandee MacLean have received more than 100,000 applications over the past four months to work a minimum wage job in their country store called the Farmer’s Daughter in Whycocomagh on Cape Breton Island off the coast of Nova Scotia. All they had to do is promise their workers three acres of their land.Coulombe and MacLean own more than 100 acres of forested land on Breton Island. When it became clear that their store needed more workers, they came up with their unique offer to trade work for land. Many of their applicants are seeking a new way of life in addition to a new job.Coulombe and MacLean say there’s only one requirement that each applicant must meet to be considered: they must plan to permanently live on Breton Island, which has seen its year-round population shrink rapidly in recent years.“We don’t want anyone who is going to come and then leave,” MacLean told VICE News correspondent Roberto Ferdman. “What we’re looking for is that they see themselves here.”Watch next: Half of the world’s coffee could be gone by 2050, scientists say