First Nova Scotia Snow

Yesterday we had our first Nova Scotia snow storm. It rained all morning and turned to sleet/snow in the afternoon. As you can see in the pics everything got covered with ice really bad. Now I understand why there are so little Maple Trees here; hard wood would snap too easy. Most of the trees pulled down by ice are birch trees so are bendable. Once I knocked the ice off they snapped back up. 

The storm was super cool. It actually thundered and lightening for several hours during the snow storm. How unusual!

Unfortunately I was not able to accept some work today as the fella would never of made it down the driveway. 

So, here's some pics. The first three are of my driveway. Most of the trees I have back up now.

This photo is of Turtle Lane. WOW! I have never seen anything like it before. It was breathtaking!

And Kappa Cove. It is completely iced over, though the ice is thin and fairly easy to break through.

You'd think I took the photos in black and white! Everything was so surreal this morning!

New Internet

Well, I got new internet today. I sure hope it works better than the crap I had.

I had Xplornet. Xplornet is a satellite internet service. I was getting a whopping (insert sarcasm) 50 GB of bandwidth for $82 a month. For some reason I am yet to figure out, I would hit my 50GB limit within two weeks and than get my internet throttled for the last two weeks. I have no idea how we were hitting 50GB in two weeks! We didn't download anything! I think they were scamming us. It makes no sense! In addition, the internet goes out all the time here, its very frustrating.

I now have Seaside. It's a radio tower internet service. It's $50 a month for unlimited bandwidth. I have had bad luck with radio tower internet before, but I figured Xplornet was so bad, what did I have to lose!

Thankfully Seaside gave me a two week free trial, so if it sucks I can cancel and it won't cost me a penny! YAY!

$30 a month is a considerable savings and having unlimited internet would be sooooo nice! I really hope it works ok so I can keep it!

I expect that Seaside will be just as bad as Xplornet when the weather sucks. I expect Seaside to be just as slow as Xplornet. But I figure $50 for unlimited crappy internet is better than $80 for 50GB of crappy internet.

Fingers crossed!

Hugs and love!

Health Update

Hello Friends! Happy Weekend! I hope you all had a fantastic week!

I have had a bunch of people asking about how my health is doing so I thought I'd just make a quick post to give you all an update.

The sarcoidosis is in my lungs and lymph nodes.I have pain inside my upper body almost every day of the week. Usually it starts around half way through the day and increases as the day goes on. The more active I am the more pain I end up in. Two-three advil or a cannabis cookie will generally take away the pain; on a really bad day I may need both the advil and the cookies.

In addition to the pain, I am dealing with some breathing problems, nothing serious at the moment, but I have been noticing it getting worse over the last month. I'm going to need some special steroid ( Prednisone ) drugs in about a month to get it back under control. (It's just something that is probably going to happen for the rest of my life. The steroids help for a few months than it flares up again)

I am also dealing with crazy temperature changes; intense hot flashes and freezing cold, plus sleep issues and severe exhaustion (It don't matter if I sleep 2 hours or 10 hours, I'm always tired). The exhaustion is probably being caused by lack of oxygen.

I find I have 2-4 hours of energy daily. 2-4 hours that I can get things done every day, and then I'm done for the day. Simply out of energy.

Some of my problems may be coming from a thyroid issue. Thyroid problems are extremely common with sarcoidosis. I am going on Tuesday to get some tests done for it. The hot flashes, extreme cold, and exhaustion could be caused by an overactive or under active thyroid.

I am also dealing with some serious anxiety and depression problems, which is extremely unusual for me. I have never had a mental health issue in my life :(.  The Doctor believes that is ether coming from the thyroid issues or its PTSD from living in Coe Hill (or both).

Unfortunately all my health issues, mental and physical, can be traced back to Coe Hill. The specialist believes I have had sarcoidosis for several years, but it never got really bad and was always healable, until Coe Hill. Between the stress, the mold (in the house and in the forest), the wood smoke and the cold (the house ended up being a three season home, not a four season like I was told, so come winter with no heat source but one poorly set up woodstove, I froze), the sarcoidosis got pushed into overdrive and is now really pissed off :(

Stress and sarcoidosis don't meld well, and the stress in Coe Hill was higher than I have ever dealt with in my life. The people who owned the property yelled at me and belittled me constantly for the first 4-5 months (until I blocked them). It got to the point that I was actually fearful to even go on Facebook and every time I saw that I had a "Private Message" I felt sick to my stomach. Even today, I still get ill feeling when I see I have a Facebook private message, I think someone is going to yell at me.

To add to my stress, the solar panels didn't make enough energy for me to work. (I actually knew that was going to happen (that there wouldn't be enough energy come winter) and told the property owners that I could not move in with the solar panels the way they were. They LIED to me and promised more would be put in ... of course it never happened.) The piece of crap generator that came with the house was just that a piece of crap and kept breaking down (again, I got blamed for that too cause somehow I wasn't "using it properly"). Everything is so very stressful.

I couldn't work online, was going broke (went broke), kept getting sicker and sicker, my stress levels kept rising, I lived in constant fear. I was terrified for my family.

When I finally got out of Coe Hill, I was so messed up that I would start shaking in terror at the slightest thing. A big noise would send me into a panic attack. The slightest mean word would bring me to tears. I barely slept. I couldn't concentrate and found doing my online work very difficult. Even today I still have 3-4 panic attacks a day and am lucky to sleep 3-4 hours a night.

Hence why the Doctor thinks the anxiety attacks and depression I have been struggling with may be PTSD.

Who would of thought that so much damage could be done in only 8 months.

I'm ok and will be ok. I'm getting better every day and will eventually get back to myself. I'm friggin' tough as hell! Of course I will get through this! I thank you for all your caring and kind words. Life can be tough. We all need a little help sometimes.

Hugs and love!
Trish

Busy

Hi! Hope you are all doing fantastic! I've been having a pretty good week. I have been working on my Etsy store, wildcrafting (for my Etsy store) and breaking paths and clearing shoreline at the back pond.

These are Birch Polypores. They are one of the major things that I am selling in my Etsy store. People use them for craft and jewelry making. They are also suppose to be crazy good for you; one of those "super" foods (those you don't eat them, they get made into a tea,tonic or tincture.)

The big polypores you see in the pic sell for $10-$25 each.

The back pond! I have shoreline! We manged to clear about ten feet so far. We are just gonna keep working on it till the snow flies, hopefully we can get at least another ten feet cleared. 

 The path to the back pond :) I can walk from my front door to the back pond in under two minutes. It's a lovely walk! The dogs of course love it! There are a lot of ticks sadly I took one off myself today and I take them off the critters daily. My hens need to work harder!

My hen Willow hurt her foot again so is in lock down. She's a house hen for the next week. She actually laid an egg in the house today! :)

And now for some duck pics ... :)

Goobles and Ethel

The ducks coming up to the house :)

My Muscovy girls. I LOVE my Muscovies, they're the best!! :)

 And I leave you with Walter the Rooster. Hugs and love!

Etsy Store

I opened an Etsy store today :)

If you don't know Etsy is an online market place for handmade and vintage items.

I'm selling wildcrafted crafts supplies in my Etsy store. So, stuff like birch bark, moss, polypores, mushrooms, feathers, sea shells etc.

I only got two items in my store today because I spent most of the day working on the path to the back pond. Its suppose to rain all day here tomorrow so I'm going to spend the day working on it tomorrow

https://www.etsy.com/ca/people/burdicktravis?ref=hdr_user_menu

It's in my son's name cause its important that some of this business stuff is in his name. He does just as much of the wildcrafting as me! :)

Have a great day! Hugs and love!

Spread Some Love

I don't know about all of you, but I'm a little sad and confused over Trump winning the USA election. I get the Clinton wasn't great, but seriously, Trump?? The man spews hate and is certainly not qualified to be President. He has no emotional control! I just don't understand it, its like a bad joke that just won't stop ...

So, how do we fight fear and hate? With some love!

A dear friend of mine Dani has had some serious health issues this last month. She is a small business owner and runs a seamstress shop in SW Ontario. She's a good person. She is a mom. She has already survived  cancer, she is a strong person. She is a member of my religious community (hence the photo on her GoFundMe :) You know us crazy Pagans! Dani vends her awesome handmade clothes at fests. She is an amazing designer and seamstress.

She needs some help.

She had a crazy big cyst in her stomach removed Friday past. She's in a LOT of pain and simply cannot work. She just needs a month off. You'd think she was asking for a friggin' miracle- Unemplyment is giving her $200 a month (Ya, that's no help); can't get disability because it's short term; and cannot get Welfare unless she sells her business ...

If you are looking for a good deed to do, here's a great one. You will seriously make her cry with joy if you can donate even a small amount. I was in her place last February, I know how she feels. It's truly horrible.

Here's her GoFundMe page:
https://www.gofundme.com/ys2ce844

Spread love :)

Hugs!

Sigh

Sigh, the ridiculousness never ends.

As you all know I purchased a truck from my neighbor well over a month ago. I got it so I could hopefully get a plow for it so I could use it for the driveway.

The truck was only $400, purchased "as is"

The guy I purchased the truck from didn't bother to clean it or even remove his personal property from the truck (despite me paying it off over a two week period and him knowing damn well when I was picking it up). I was kind enough to put all his personal stuff in a box and returned it to him. I didn't need to do that. Legally everything in the truck was mine once I made the final payment, was given my receipt and the keys. The guy didn't even say thank you!

Now, the guy actually wants to come over and trade the tires. He says he meant to do it before I purchased it, but didn't get it done. So, he wants to come remove the good tires that are on the truck and put on crappy tires ... is he fucking kidding me?

This guy needs a serious reality check! to say the least!

I am so sick and tired of people trying to bully me and take advantage of me!

So obviously I told the neighbor NO and obviously he's all pissed off now.

What the hell is with people? So frustrating and upsetting.

Oh well, such is life. If I catch the guy on my property i'll sick my ducks on him LOL

Thanks for listening to me rant! Hugs and love!!

The Pond

Today the new ducks got the go to the pond! YAY! They of course LOVE it! Most domestic ducks only get a little kids swimming pool to play in so having a whole big pond is awesome :) Ducks are not quite as crazy as chickens when it comes to accepting newcomers to the flock. My Muscovy ducks gave the newcomers a bit of a rough time, but overall everyone is already getting along pretty good. In a week, they'll all be best buddies :)

Here's a short video I took at the pond today.

New Ducks!!

Some pics of my new ducks- The three blacks are Indian Runners, their names are Yacko, Wacko and Dot. We believe the drake is the one with the green head.

The other two are Saxony ducks. The drake is the dark coloured one. Our beloved Saxony drake, Mikel, passed away last month, so we needed a new Drake. The Drake's name is Goebbels and the lady Saxony duck's name is Ethel.

They have to stay in the coop today, but should be able to go to the pond tomorrow :)