And everyone shows up at once…..

Time (n) the concept that keeps everything from happening at once.

Funny, it did not seem to be in play this week. We have been on The Island now for close to two years. We have not had many visitors, in fact we have been visited by our Niece, Abbey, and last summer and otherwise, the house has been ours.

Well this week we had a few guests. Arden (a dear friend, and our current tenet on the Texas farm) had been planning a visit. He was headed back from a WHO conference on dementia in Germany and decided that if he was flying through Newark, it would not be that tough to come a little further north for a visit. This visit has been in the works for a few months. We have looked forward to this visit and had made a few plans for some of the things that we wanted to do, but mostly it would involve hanging out and being cool.

Ten days prior to his arrival, I got a call from my paternal Aunt. I had not spoken with her in some time, e-mailed infrequently, and kept up primarily through her yearly missive outlining her travel adventures from the previous year. She had come across some American Airlines super saver mileage fares and it would allow her a trip to Halifax on the cheap. Apparently she had been in touch with Dad, and soon things were squared away for a visit to Canada. Once she had settled that, she got in touch with me to see if it would be possible for a visit to the Gentle Island. Having not seen her or Dad in some time, it sounded like fun.

“When do you all plan on arriving?”
“We will land on Tuesday and try to come see you on Wednesday.”
“Next week?”
“Yeah next week.”

So suddenly we had Arden here, and then after a few days, Charlie, Nita, and Ronnie would be spending a few days in our neck of the woods. The schedule was changed, but what the heck. So, after a little bit of work, we had recommended some lodging in the area and things settled down.

Thankfully the weather held for most of the week so that everyone got to see the island at a pretty moment in time. It was not as warm as we would have liked, but you can’t get everything. We have more visitors for the summer yet to come. We are expecting another visit from Abbey in June and a visit from Katy and Johnny in July. All in all it will be a busy summer.

Well the Strawberry plants need some attention and I still have to give the garden a quick weeding. Hope your days are as fun filled and that time will keep you from having to do it all at once.

Signs of Spring.....

The calendar tells me that today is the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, the day the sun crosses the equator. In watching the sunrise at 7:20 am and set at 7:27 pm I confirm the calendar, but the arrival of spring seems so much more than the length of the day or the date on the calendar. Spring does not greet you with a harsh slap on the face like winter, and it does not induce nostalgia in tones of sepia as autumn. Spring is quiet, gentle, easing your senses out of their slumber after a winter’s nap. It is a comfortable season, you are surprised when you look around and find that it has arrived while you were attending to other business.

On the island, spring gives you subtle clues that it is coming. We did not appreciate those clues last year as we were being pummeled by a snow that continued to fall well into April. The island weather has been gentle this year and we have kept our senses open for the changes that indicate the subtle arrival of the gentle season. The undeniable urge to start going through the garage and discard anything that you have not used in over a year is surely one of the first signs we encountered. The fact that we built a barn this year and had a significant amount of construction debris likely played a small part in the early arrival of this impulse. It was on one of our ‘dump runs’ that we noticed several other signs of the season.

As we finished loading the back of the Suburban with the construction debris, we paused for a moment to listen to a sound that had not been heard since November. The sound of several hundred nesting seagulls that inhabit a small sand bar in the middle of the bay our house overlooks. Their raucous caws and cries were a welcome sound, complimented later in the day by several over flights of geese returning to the island from the winter feeding grounds.

Along the roadway we noticed Islanders going about their business, clearing away the road sand that had gathered in their drives over the winter. Like the seagulls, the Islanders began to pop out of the homes, cleaning their cars, washing the front porch, and hanging laundry on the line to capture some of the sun’s warmth that had begun to arrive. In the flower beds, the first of the paper-whites have begun to erupt from the snow cleared ground, and in the pasture, the horses are all enjoying long rolls in the soft earth as they work to shed out the winter coat.

In a short time, the days will warm and lengthen; summer will surely arrive with the obligations of the garden, the yard, and the flower beds. But for now, with an afternoon of sun, the chores completed, we take a moment to sit, breath in the changing of the season, and rejoice in the arrival of spring.

County Fair

Summer would be incomplete without a county fair, and so far we had not had a chance to take in one of the local fairs. It seems that every time we wanted to go to a far something else got in the way. Well today we made up for lost opportunity and took in a day at the Prince County Exposition. This exposition has been an annual event since 1926, and it is exactly what you would expect from a county fair. Yesterday was the judging of all the home economic contests. The baking, sewing, knitting, cooking, gardening, farming competitions had all taken place, so we had the chance to wander through the various halls looking at all the goods. Now I know that some of you are probably chuckling a bit at the idea of strolling through the exhibition of crops, but I tell you, if you have horses, finding out who won the hay contest is very important. It is also nice that you have the chance of taking a close look at the hay, and it was definitely a cut above. Since the contestants name and address were on the entry slip identifying the hay, we wrote it all down and will be calling soon to place an order.

Today, the focus of the fair was on the livestock competition, so we got to take in the farm animal judging as well as the horse show. It was cute to see all the 4-H kids competing. The afternoon held the delight of another horse pull, always a very good time, and then the evening had the best of all, a live concert by a local group, ‘The Grass Mountain Hobos’.

The Grass Mountain Hobos are all local lads who have been playing together for over 10 years, and their work has paid off in the form of an East Coast Music Association Bluegrass Album of the Year. They play bluegrass music in a way that makes even those with an allergy to such music have a good time. In watching them play I am reminded of my favorite bands Brave Combo, in that these guys are exceptional musicians, and enjoy their craft as much as the audience does. I recommend them unapologetically as a must listen album. So take a moment and head over the their website and listen to a little joy from Prince Edward Island .

Just a horse Crazy Couple

The Danny Ellsworth Memorial Horse Pull

Most people are crazy about something; it is just a matter of figuring out the thing that you seem nuts about. In my case, it is horses, anything about horses. With this in mind Nancy and I found us sitting in the rain watching draft horses pull huge amounts of weight. It was not a planned event, mind you, but rather one of those serendipitous things you run across in life if you are looking.

It started innocently enough with a drive to Tignish to see if the Co-Op store was open so we could look for a desk for Nancy. Well, it was Sunday, and since Tignish is predominantly Catholic, the stores in town were all closed up tight. As we drove through town, we noticed that there were hand-lettered signs indicating a horse pull was taking place in town. We followed the signs and wound our way back past the park, and onto someone’s farm where we found the event. It was the first annual Danny Ellsworth Memorial Horse Pull. It seems Mr. Ellsworth was mad about horse pulls and so after his death, the Island Horse Pullers Association decided to have an event in his honor.

Now, for those of you that have never been to a horse pull (as we ourselves had not been prior to today), it is a fairly simple process. The goal is to pull a specific weight for a distance of 72 inches (6 feet). You have two attempts at each weight, and during each attempt you can pull once (i.e. the horses can pull forward once, but once they step back, the pull is complete). To mark the distance to be pulled, a six foot chain is fixed to the back of the sled with a pin that holds down a spring loaded flag on one end and a stake on the other. The judge drives the stack into the ground, and once the sled has moved past the length of the chain, the pin comes out and the flag pops up indicating the completion of the pull. The teamster who is driving the horses has to keep them straight so that they do not get disqualified for leaving the track, and the hitcher has to make sure that the metal hitch gets properly placed on the sled at the start of the pull.

It all sounds easy enough, but as we sat there watching, it became apparent that it was not as easy as it appeared. The horses are all very excited about getting to pull, and as the driver is trying to position them near the sled so the hitcher can attach them to the sled, these horses are getting more and more worked up. Some of the teamsters were able to calm their horses and allow things to proceed with ease and grace, others seemed like one step short of total chaos. Once attached, the driver sounded off and the horses start to pull for all they are worth. Mind you, some of these horses were pulling two to three times their combined weight. It was impressive!

Even more impressive was the fact that each of these horses was turned out neatly, well cared for, and excited about the job at hand. The drivers seemed to have the best interest of the horses at heart as several bowed out of competition if their horses had seemed to struggle with a particular weight class. As we arrived, the weight being pulled was 5200 pounds (20 cement blocks at 200 pounds each on a sled that weighed 1200 pounds), and the winning horse from the mid-weight class pulled 8000 pounds 68.5 inches and the team of horses weighed in at 3190 pounds.

We watched, enthralled, for a full two hours until the event was complete. It was magnificent to see these horses at work, and for a couple of horse crazy people, it was a little slice of heaven. To see all of the photos, click on the scrolling photos to the right.

Merry Christmas From PEI

It’s Christmas Eve, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is on the TV, snow is gently falling outside (making our own white Christmas), the furnace is piled high with logs, and I am putting the finishing touches on our yearly Christmas greeting. Our Christmas greetings come to you this year from the North Atlantic Island of lobster, potatoes, and ADL. ADL? ADL is the maker of the BEST milk, chocolate milk, butter, and cheese you can possibly imagine. Drinking a glass of their chocolate milk is like drinking a little slice of heaven (I just finished a glass!). Well, our greeting comes to you, as you know, from 83 Lewis Road, Union R.R. 1, Alberton, West Prince, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

We left the U.S. in August, leaving the dog days of summer in Central Texas (the day we left was 107 degrees with 100% humidity), and headed across the U.S. moving up the east coast. So, here we were, Gil and I, accompanied by 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 1 Lucy Bird, pulling our horse trailer filled with things we thought we would need until our household goods arrived, headed for Canada. Gil and I had never driven through the states lining the east coast so we were really looking forward to seeing the land. An added bonus, especially when traveling through the southern states, being in the land of really really good grits! Yummmm. The only part of the trip that truly sucked was going through Atlanta with a horse trailer, and we didn’t even go through at a rush hour time. Thank God Alli and Jesse gave us the wonderful gift of a GPS before leaving or the suck factor of Atlanta would have been significantly worse!

We stayed for a few days with Alli and Jesse in Swanzey, New Hampshire and the rest was greatly welcomed by us and the animals. We had a wonderful time with Alli and Jesse and got to spend some time watching Aaron, their 7 m/o son, being Aaron. He is a truly happy and delightful child. Even though this is their first and they have little parenting experience (7 months to be exact!), I told them they HAVE to be doing it right or he wouldn’t be so happy and well adjusted to life. He is a joy to be around. We had such a wonderful time seeing Keene (Swanzey is just a couple of blocks from there) and Walpole (where their family business is located). We brought sausage from Green’s Sausage House in Zabzkville with us and Gil made a huge pot of his gumbo. We had our usual trio of gumbo, baguette, and wine, accompanied by lots of wonderful conversation.

We crossed into Canada at the border crossing located in Houlton, Maine. We were prepared with a file box full of papers which were required to get us, the animals, and the car across the border and fully expected to spend hours going through papers and getting it all sorted. We were shocked and pleased that it was so quick and painless. Gil got his work visa and I got my Canadian papers and we were across the border in less than an hour (none of the documents we worked so long and hard to get in the U.S were asked for!). As we drove through New Brunswick headed to PEI, we looked at the scenery passing us in a different way than we looked at Canada all the times we had visited. This was our HOME now, and it makes you look at your surroundings quite differently.

The horses made it here about a week after we got here. There was a bit of difficulty getting them across the border. The transporter called me in a panic at midnight saying they weren’t going to let them across. We finally got everything worked out so the border agents understood why we were bringing them here and finally in the wee hours of the morning they made it across into Canada. When they made it to me they had a bit of a deer in the headlights look, but that is to be expected. They were on a transport from Texas to Maine for 3 full days without stopping, stayed over in Maine for 2 days, and then were on another transport for another 12 hours here.

Cowboy and Olivia have settled in and done well. I have been riding Cowboy and although it took him a bit of time to settle in and get back to where we were in Texas, he has been just awesome. In the past, when he traveled, a show was at the end, so he was in full (and I mean full with bigness and glory!) saddle seat mode. We finally got the dressage brain engaged again and he has been spectacular. I have been lunging and long lining Olivia since arriving, but haven’t ridden her yet. She has continued to be sound as can be and I have looked long and hard to find a driving trainer that I could continue lessons with and perhaps start Olivia driving. We attempted it once before with my trainer, Tom O’Carroll, in Texas, but she didn’t stay sound for it. Since then, we have had her on Naproxen, and she has stayed sound. The bad news is I can’t find a trainer. Most people on the island harness race which is, of course, not the same at all. I have, however, made a couple of friends who drive (not competitively) – carriage in the summer and sleigh in winter. So, I am going to get a bit of sleigh experience this winter. I am really excited about getting to sleigh this winter. The two horse experiences topping my list for PEI were riding on the beach and sleighing.


As most of you know, our Ophelia sustained a devastating injury on a back leg on Thanksgiving Day and the prognosis was extremely poor. It was felt by all that it would have caused her great suffering to attempt to fix it and in the end, we would have been putting off the inevitable. So, the decision was made and Gil was with her until the end. Of course, Ophelia was out of my mare, Olivia, and we were there at Dr. T’s when she was born. Alli took care of the farm while Gil and I spent every evening/night at Dr. T’s watching Olivia on the monitor, playing lots and lots of cards, until finally 3 weeks later, at 2 a.m., Ophelia was born. She would have been 3 years this January. This has been extremely difficult for both Gil and I, but especially Gil. He was bonded to her (and her to him); the way Olivia and I are bonded. It is so tragic and sad and we will miss her so much.

Gil started working on 01 September and is really enjoying small town medicine again. He sees patients at the clinic in O’Leary and also has some on-call time at the O’Leary Hospital. Of course, he has beat the “evidence-based medicine” drum since arriving and is now back to doing some teaching. He has just gotten a medical student who will be doing a one month rotation with him. Since he was a hospitalist at S&W the last 8 months or so before moving here, he wasn’t doing any teaching, so he is really enjoying having a student and teaching again.

There are lots of changes in medicine going on here though. For many reasons, they are consolidating services on the island and toward that end, they closed the ER and hospital (acute care beds) in Community Hospital O’Leary, where Gil works. Alberton’s hospital, which is 15 minutes from O’Leary (and closer to where we live), will serve as the local ER and in-patient hospital for acute care and when Gil is on call, he will work out of Alberton. All that sounds good, but we are not entirely convinced that Alberton’s ER/hospital will remain open either. It seems, what would make the most sense, is to have all ER and acute care in-patient in the 2 largest centers – Summerside and Charlottetown. Eventually the only services left in the small communities would be clinic/urgent care. These decisions and changes are very unpopular with the people of these communities, as all the individual communities want their own fully functional hospital/ER, so I imagine these changes are going to come piece-mill and slowly, but I think they are inevitable. So, this makes it difficult to know how to proceed with the horses.

Aside from helping a great deal with this kind of change, Gil is also doing here what he does everywhere he goes, seeing what needs to be changed to make patient care better and setting to work. Providence seems to have led him here for this reason, above all. There are many huge changes which are occurring here and change is something that is difficult for anyone, but it seems especially difficult for the good people of Prince County. The way they have done things in medicine for the past 50 years is being turned on its head and they are being catapulted into the 21st century of medical practice. In so many ways PEI is like the U.S. was in the 50’s and early 60’s and it is refreshing, but not in medicine. It will take probably a good 5 years to really implement these changes and have them running well. For all of you who really know Gil, that will be the time we will be ready to go on to our next adventure…

Willa and Isobel are very happy here. They love the snow, although it is s a little difficult to see Isobel dashing through it as it usually deeper than she is tall!! Lucy bird is great too. It is somewhat cold for her and we have to keep the house a bit warmer than we would otherwise and I keep an oil heater on next to her cage. She seems very happy there though. She is dangling off toys in her cage and talking smack constantly! We also brought Dory, one of our barn cats from the farm. She is now an inside cat, as she doesn’t care for the snow or the cold much!

Gil and I learned what it is to prepare for winter in a north Atlantic region. Everyone here utilizes two sources for heating – oil and wood. Oil is extremely expensive, so everyone uses it sparingly. So, we ordered our 7 cords of wood for the winter. Wood makes more of a warm/cozy heat than oil does as well. Our wood was dumped on the front lawn, 3.5 cords at a time, by the entrance to our basement and we had to get it down there and stack it. I won’t lie – it sucked. I am used to walking over to a thermostat and putting it to whatever temp I would like the house to be. Well, that really isn’t an option here. As our good fortune would have it, Alli and Jesse came for a visit for U.S. Thanksgiving and helped us with the second 3.5 cords. What a huge help that was. Gil had discovered on the first 3.5 cords that he isn’t 20 anymore!! After helping to get 7 cords down to the basement and stacked, I like the thermostat thing even more. Imagine this though – there are 70 and 80 year old men here who stack 7 cords by themselves every winter. Holy cow!

We really like it here though. The pace is MUCH slower here than in the U.S. I will say that has taken some getting used to. I tend to approach most everything with a snap, snap, snap, get it done now approach. You can forget that here. No one is in any hurry ever for anything. There is no such thing as running by someone’s house quickly to drop something off. If you go by, you have to come in for at least an hour for hot tea and conversation! Everyone here loves to talk. Even if you go into a store in search of something and have to ask for assistance, you will usually get at least 15 minutes of conversation before you get the answer. We went into a shop in Charlottetown which has woolen knitted clothing to look for a sweater for Gil – one sweater – we came out about 2 hours later! Even in the checkout line at the Farmer’s Co-op (grocery in O’Leary), a bit of conversation occurs within the check out timeframe (and if you don’t conclude it and move on, they will keep talking while folks just stand behind you and wait – and they will just stand there and wait patiently for however long and listen to your conversation!!) and it will almost always include comments about the weather. EVERYONE loves to make a comment on the weather conditions of the day. In fact, the other day I was sitting at the kitchen table working when I noticed the recycle garbage truck coming down our street and realized I hadn’t yet put out or recycle bags. So, I rushed to throw on warm clothing, grabbed the bags, and ran out to the street just in time. The garbage man, took my bags, threw them in the truck, and then proceeded to talk to me for the next 15 minutes about… the weather!!! He told me all about a horrible snow storm they got in the 1982 and how the snow was almost to the top of the telephone poles and how winters here have been really mild in comparison since… and on and on for 15 minutes. The garbage man even loves to talk! He was very pleasant and we had a very nice conversation.

I will have to say though that the folks we have become good friends with the quickest here are also people from “away”. That is was the locals call folks who move here and are not from the Island, even if you have moved from Nova Scotia. They say, oh you are from “away”! When folks say that to me, I say yep, we are from “way away”, 2400 miles, to be exact! Our good “from away” friends Pam and Jim, originally from Ontario, but have lived many, many places, are headed to Nunavut (above the 60th parallel) for the next year for Pam to work. It is only one year and they will be back, but we will miss them so much. We have had so many wonderful dinners with them and, in fact, that is where we will be on Christmas Day.

Being on PEI has been such a wonderful learning experience and we have only been here a short while. We know what it is like to stand in the midst of a blizzard, drive in one (the first snow of the season was pretty close to a blizzard and I had to drive home from the barn – 45 minutes away!), drive in a mixture of snow and then rain (slicker than poo you’d find in microbiology!) the smell of a woolen mill, the taste of exquisite ADL dairy products, the flavor of fresh (out of the ocean less than 2 hours, boiled in ocean water on the boat) lobster, and what it feels like to stack 7 cords of wood.

So, that about wraps up our year. It has been one of learning, joy, and sadness. We are still at the same e-mail addresses and you can always find what is new in our day-to-day lives by visiting Gil’s blog.

She will be missed

She was ojnly 22 months old.

We had to put Ophelia down today due to an injury to her right hind leg. We are not sure how it happened, but it was clear that it was an injury from which she would not recover. She had bisected the superficial deep digital flexor tendon as well as the deep digital flexor tendon and incised the skin through to the periostium. After discussion with the vet, Nancy, and the barn owners it became clear that she was not likely to recover from this injury. In short, it would likely be a long hard road and she would not ever be able to be ridden or worked in any way. With this in mind we made the decision to have her put down. It was a hard decision, but it was the right decision. In the end, being a horse owner means that you often have to make the very hard decisions and do what is right by the horse.

Ophelia was a lovely horse and she has taught us all so very much over her very short life. She was the first, and I dare say the only, foal that we had from Olivia. She was the product of a breeding of Olivia and Bergamon. She had lovely movement and loved to jump, going out of her way to jump things even if they could have been walked across. She taught me to be a better person, and taught me how to put my energy and emotions in check in order to better serve the hose at hand. As horses go she was a very special horse, always full of energy and full of herself. She was a horse with a very big personality and that personality touched everyone who worked with her. She was an extraverted horse and that made her very tough in some respects. She was a constant challenge and tested the boundaries at every turn. If she was thinking something you knew it immediately since there was no filter between what she was thinking and what she was doing.

She will be missed more than words can express. Born January 16th 2005, died November 26th 2008.
Ophelia Viedo
Ophelia Photos

Has it already been a week?

Let’s review the latest happenings.
Eight days ago we arrived in our new house having passed through customs without so much as a long glance. We spent the first night on the floor, and then slept in hotels until our mattress and other household goods arrived on Tuesday the 19th. We have been painting furiously, although it amounts to two rooms, they each required several coats of primer and two coats of pain in order to cover the colors that were there previously. We have unpacked kitchen stuff and are finally cooking instead of eating out, and the horses arrived on Wednesday the 20th and seem to have settled in to the new routine. Since we are new in town, we have established our electrical service, a new bank, received our Social Insurance Number (i.e. Social Security Number) and been treated to lobster for four separate meals.

So what is left to accomplish?
We have our internet coming to be set up in three days. Currently we are poaching the internet form our neighbors across the street that thankfully have a G-band wireless router that is unsecured, and an unobstructed view of their house. We still need to get Nancy set up with cellular service, and the hospital has been kind enough to supply me with my service (although I do not yet have my permanent number). I still need to apply for my malpractice insurance through the medical society and I have yet to receive my billing number from the government (although I am told it will be ready by Monday). There is some cleaning up from Texas that still has to happen, specifically I need to contact the state medical board and let them know that I have moved (same with the drug enforcement agency and with Medicare). That will pretty much clean up the loose ends from the states, and we will be free and clear professionally to jump into work here.

What are the differences?
Prices are higher for some things, lower for others. For example, in Texas it cost roughly $100 to fill up the Suburban if it was below a quarter tank. It costs more like $125 to accomplish the same task here. The costs for soda are marked up about the same amount, as are some other staple food items. The biggest differences that we are seeing at this point are the people. Things here move at a slower pace than they did back in Texas, and it feels like that mythical place called Mayberry RFD. People do not lock their houses, they leave their keys in the car at the store, and think nothing of letting their kids run around the neighborhood playing all day.

More people are walking or biking, especially in the small towns where it appears that everyone walks to lunch or to run their errands when they are at work. The tellers at the bank already know our names, and when we go in we do not have to have the deposit/withdrawal slip already completed, they do all of this for us while chatting about the latest news from around the town. We run into people we already have gotten to know when we go to the local store so every trip turns into a social visit.

Litter does not exist as far as I can see. There is no rubbish on the sides of the streets, no junk in people’s yards, no plastic grocery bags floating down the streets. People seem to take a great deal of pride in their yards which are al neat, tidy and full of flowers. The same holds true for the local parks and green spaces. They all look as if they have been freshly planted and mowed, and rarely do we pass the local cemeteries without seeing at least one that is being mowed and clipped. Speaking of which, every little church has its own local cemetery, if not right next door, then usually only one or two lots down. The churches themselves are an entire blog entry and once I have some photos of them I will be writing about them in depth.

Grammatical oddities……
Civic address= home address
Hydro= Electricity as in hydroelectric
You people= Ya’ll
Never hear tell of it = I haven’t every heard of it
Dairy Mart = Ice cream shop
Licensed (sign in restaurant window) = they can serve liquor
With the Works = indicated that the meal comes with brown gravy and peas
I will try to post more of these differences as they become known to me through my work as I am sure they will once I am in the clinic.
Finally, once the internet is up and running full time, I will post some photos from the house, and the surrounding area for all to see. Also, I hope to set up a web camera that will provide some real time glances out our front window so you can get a sense of what the weather is like and how the apple trees are doing. Remember we are two hours ahead of you time wise so you will want to look at the live photos before the sun sets out here.