Sorry for the delay in my replies to everyone, here's whats been happening

Good morning everyone.  Since my last blog, which I need to update about, we've been extremely busy and I'll share why in a moment.

Since the last blog about the fire, which was horrible but we were safe and all was okay here. The fire burned for 4 days and nights with state and local fire crews keeping it in check. There was a corral burned down and a set of older sheds or wind breaks, plus two HUGE stacks of round bales of hay and a HUGE silage pit but a huge historical barn was saved by the dedicated fire crews as well as two homes. No animals were lost either although several head( approx 50) had to be moved from their river feeding to higher pastures, a safe distance away. This fire wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the wind hadn't been gusting up to 65 mph and then blowing at wind speeds of 35-40mph. A helicopter worked dumping 1,200 gallon loads for over 4 hours, to help save the structures. It was scary and yet exciting at the same time if that makes sense.

Now what we've been up to. We've had my parents here since beginning of March and we've helped them with many different projects, from replacing their hot water heater to installing a water softener and many other small projects.
I've been going through an EMT training course which takes up all of my free time just to keep up with the reading of the materials for each weeks assignments and tests. Last week we took our CPR training and test and I'm now CPR certified. :o)  This course was supposed to start beginning of January, but the materials were back ordered and the course didn't start until mid Feb.  This puts me in a sort of pickle because now instead of being done by first of May it won't be until mid June and this is when I'm needing all the extra time I can muster to get garden stuff taken care of but Mike and Cortney assured me that they'd  pitch in and help me.

We've once again, PTL!, sold out our CSA shares and now our work begins. The fruit trees have all been pruned of their sucklers and dead wood, the composted manures spread and two of our three garden plots tilled and ready for planting of the potatoes and other early crops. the main garden still has a pile of top soil that we're working on building raised beds with, so each evening we shovel and wheel barrow the dirt to a new raised bed, then we'll turn in some composted manure and those will be ready for planting. The seedling, which I'm so blessed to say we have had close to a 98% germination rate on all seeds planted, with exception for some new herbs, but they take longer to germinate. The tomatoes, peppers and cabbage are all at the stage of growth to be re- potted into their 6" pots then into the garden when the time is right.  We've started lettuce, radishes, kale and chard in the greenhouse and everything is up and growing great!  As soon as I have the time to actually draw out my 2012 garden plan, it's in my head*wink* I'll look back and see when it was we started the cooler weather crops and get them going in the main garden raised beds, the time is close but want to be sure of last hard frost dates of the last couple years. I keep a journal, trying to write in important info each season, then this is my reference, plus what the weather is doing this season and we've been so warm and dry compared to the last two years that it's going to be hard to judge. We're praying for rain, which is forecasted to come starting Thurs. through the weekend and even though I dislike mud I'm not saying a word about it simply because we are so dry it's frightening!

I do have pictures of our Easter and of the kid goats and promise to post them soon. Praying all of you had a very blessed Easter. Now off to catch up on some of your blogs. We did have some computer issues as well, our monitor died and we had to save some $$ to purchase a new one, we also bought a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Blessing to each of you. :o)