A look at Nova Scotia's first bison herd

This is the herd of bison that is now making themselves at home in the Muscadabit Valley. 41 of them were transported to the area from Ontario in two trucks 2 weeks ago. They got here really calm actually. We went inside and took the bolts with the talk to them a little bit today, come up and out of sleep. They were actually so relaxed and yeah, so it was really much better than we expected it to be. I guess they settled in really well after a couple hours. Physically getting these animals to the farm was actually much easier than the behind the scenes work. When they came from Germany, they operated a deer farm and they had to go through a lot of paperwork to make everything happen here. The permitting process was also not the easiest one because bringing a whole herd from bison to Nova Scotia is kind of the first time that we somebody did this. So we had to understand how everything is working and to whom we have to contact in order to get all the permits that we need. The cheerlings packed up all their belongings and heavy machinery into shipping containers and sent them to Nova Scotia to their new property. They had to build a 1.7 kilometer Rd. around the bison enclosure, which is a mix of pasture, land and woods, but they saved a lot of money by using their own gravel pit on the site. The post for the fencing also came from trees on the property that were knocked down by Hurricane Fiona, which was another cost saver and helped clean up the property at the same time. We got it all done and settled, but it was long days and long hours. But it worked out. Everything went well and we built the road entirely ourselves. We had to open up our own rock pit here and we moved in. Total, on the road you're walking today, 40,000 tons of gravel. But the hard work is far from done. Now they have an entire herd of bison to look after. The herd grew from 41 to 42 last week when this calf was born. The Tierlings are planning to market their farm as an Agri tourism destination. They are encouraging campers and tenders to visit the farm and are designating locations next to the enclosure, so they will be guaranteed to see the animals. They've also purchased a nearby cottage and will be building new ones to encourage more visitors to come. They are able to just park their RV right beside our bison fence and I think that's pretty pretty unique to Nova Scotia and also like for like Canada. So that's I think a good start. One of the next projects is to finish the on site butcher shop and prepare their own retail space to sell bison meat. They will also be renovating the old Co-op store in Middle Muscadabit where they will have more retail space and a small restaurant. Paul Palmeter, CBC News, Lindsay Lake.