I found the community gardens, searched all nearby structures, checked and checked the rest of the map for the woman who is supposed to provide a fishing pole. I'm completely stuck in the game and cannot progress. I read the document so see if I was missing anything, and the document also says Matilda should be at the community gardens. I had my husband sanity check me to make sure I wasn't just overlooking her. I'm not! She isn't there!!! I am on Mac OS.

Hi iateurcrayonz, sorry to hear that. It could be a bug of course. Be sure you checked the proper communal gardens, there are two of them, Matilda is located in the communal gardens of Kilknoloch. First you need to ask Sophia about fishing (in Donensbourgh town). Then find Matilda (in communal gardens of Kilknoloch), pick up the money and buy an axe. Peasants are working during time day and they are sleeping during nights (check at different times during the day, not very early in the morning, not too late in the evening).
Because it's just the first thing to do in game after found your home, you could just try to restart the game, it will take just a few minutes to reach same point if you do that. I hope you will not have the same problem if you restart the game.
Good luck and thank you for trying my game.

Thank you! I found Matilda. I was at the wrong community farm. Just FYI though, the game doesn't run very well for more than 20 minutes on my MacBook Pro. It's a 2019 MacBook Pro with 32 RAM, but the game overheats my computer and it crashes the game. There is also no way to minimize the game or change windows. I work from home, so this is a problem.  I will try it on my Windows gaming computer.