Smith attended dedicated courses for ex-servicemen at Gwebi during 1947 and 1948, learning skills such as ploughing, herding and milking; he gained practical experience at Taylor's dairy farm near Selukwe and on a tobacco ranch at Marandellas. In 1947, he met Janet Duvenage ("née" Watt), a schoolteacher from the Cape in South Africa who had come to Selukwe to stay with family after the death of her husband Piet on the rugby field. What Janet had planned as a short holiday for herself and her two infant children, Jean and Robert, turned into a permanent move when she accepted a job-offer from the Selukwe junior school. Smith later wrote that the qualities that had attracted him most to Janet were her intelligence, courage and "oppos on principle to side-stepping or evading an issue ... her tendency was to opt for a decision requiring courage, as opposed to taking the easy way out". They became engaged in 1948. Meanwhile, Smith negotiated the purchase of a piece of rough land near Selukwe, bounded by the Lundi and Impali Rivers and bisected by a clear stream. He and Janet gave the previously nameless plot the name that the local Karanga people used to refer to the stream, "Gwenoro", and set up a ranch where they ran cattle and grew tobacco and maize.