Author: Karen GoatKeeper

Karen GoatKeeper loves to write. Her books include picture books, novels and nonfiction for science activity books and nature books. A recent inclusion are science teaching units.
The coming year has goals for two new novels, a picture book and some books of personal essays. This is ambitious and ignores time constraints.
She lives in the Missouri Ozarks with her small herd of Nubian dairy goats. The Ozarks provides the inspiration and setting for most of her books.

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Latest From High Reaches

Planning Ahead

So much is said about living in the now, appreciating what you see, feel, smell around you in the moment. That’s great up to a point. However, if you raise livestock or crops, planning ahead is essential.

goat coats keeping kids warm
If I want March kids, the does get to visit with Augustus in October. Part of planning ahead is to have the kids born when the weather is better. It doesn’t always work well as the goat coats on these kids of my Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla say this March was a bit cold. Part of planning ahead is having the goat coats clean and ready just in case.

Livestock Planning

For a few years I ran a commercial rabbitry. There were around 120 does in my barn. These were roughly divided into eight sections. Why?

Gestation for a rabbit is four weeks. Weaning of baby rabbits is four weeks. The only income for a commercial rabbitry is from the sale of those baby rabbits, you guessed it, four weeks later.

Every week I bred some does, put nest boxes in for as many others, weaned babies for that many. If I didn’t keep a schedule, my rabbits went hungry.

It’s the same for other livestock. My goats have a gestation of five months. If I don’t breed in October, I have no kids to sell in the spring for money to put hay in the barn.

Planning ahead for Chinese cabbage
Napa cabbage is surprisingly cold hardy. However, cabbage worms love it. I was a bit late, but mine is wrapped with voile. The garden tubs work well for greens like this one, bok choi, peppers, eggplant and green onions among others. These seeds went in during August, so the cabbage will be ready to eat in November.

Raising Crops

Although I am only a homesteader, the same rules apply for farmers. The summer may be winding down and the summer crops with it, but spring will come again. The garden must be ready to plant then.

As a homesteader, I plant spring, summer and fall crops. January is the month to start cabbage and leeks. The end of February is time for peppers and tomatoes. August is time to plant turnips, spinach and greens along with broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

Without planning ahead for these deadlines, my garden won’t put food on my table and in my freezer. The full freezer is sure comforting in the fall.

a section of my Ozark creek
One of the joys of living out on this property is going walking up on the hills, into the ravines or along the creek. The same walks are never boring as the places change as the weather and seasons change.

Enjoying the Now?

Standing in the barn door as my goats eat their grain, I look out over the pasture to the far hill. A breeze ruffles my hair. Birds flit by or stop on a branch to scold the cat.

Even though I spend a lot of time planning ahead, enjoying the now is important. It’s what makes homesteading special.

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GKP Writing News

Picture Book Illustrations

Traditional publishing companies often control picture book illustrations assigning the text to an artist. Indie picture book authors have two choices: 1) Find and hire an illustrator; or 2) Do their own illustrations.

I am an indie author. That leaves me with the two choices.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
What I found out doing this book was to start with illustrating something you are familiar with and enjoy drawing. After that, other projects aren’t so intimidating.

Hiring an Illustrator

For years I did try to find an illustrator. Good ones are expensive. The amount of work that must be put into the illustrations makes them worth their cost.

My first illustrated book was “For Love of Goats” which presented several problems. Goats are not easy to draw. The book includes several breeds of goats and each one is different.

Additionally, goats have attitudes and behaviors. Someone unfamiliar with goats, working only from photographs, will miss these. And these were reflected in the text.

Goats have been an important part of my life for fifty years. I’ve watched them. That didn’t mean I could draw them. I wanted to finish this book I’d worked so hard on, so I learned.

Picture Book Illustrations

If you’ve been looking at picture books, you know illustrations are done in many mediums. They are done in many styles.

Once the decision is made to illustrate a book, the medium is chosen. It must be one the illustrator is comfortable with.

My medium is watercolor. Why? Because I like the way it looks, the way it is done and the challenge of it. Watercolor is a most unforgiving medium as mistakes never go away.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
People are hard to draw for me. The mushrooms and creatures were done using photographs of the real ones as models. One of the difficult parts was drawing the same mushroom ring for each of may pages.

Waiting for Fairies

After completing “For Love of Goats”, I had the confidence to illustrate the two picture books I had written text for. The next one I tackled was “Waiting for Fairies”.

People are incredibly hard for me to draw. Even now, I look at my illustrations and wish I had done better.

The fun part of doing these illustrations was the opportunity it gave me to add an additional layer to the story told in the text. Since the child was waiting for fairies, there should be fairies somewhere.

Doing picture book illustrations isn’t for every author. I’ve found it is for me.

“Waiting for Fairies” eBook version is free through Smashwords for the month of November. The coupon code is LXLLT.

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Creating Picture Books

A homeschool group has approached me about teaching a short course on creating picture books. The idea is intriguing.

What Is a Picture Book?

This is the first question to answer. The obvious answer is a book of pictures with a story. In reviewing many picture books, this is far too simple.

B.J. Novak’s “The Book With No Pictures” is a picture book with no pictures, all text. Matthew Cordell’s “Wolf In the Snow” is all pictures with no story text. Both are great picture books.

Many picture books, like “The Little Spider”, include a page about the animal or animals shown in the text. The page in this book is about spider ballooning, the method used by spiders to move to new places.

The amount of text depends on the age the picture book is for. Those for very young children like Kate Duke’s “The Guinea Pig ABC” and many of the “Pete the Cat” books have very few words. Another way to appeal to children is with repetitive text as in my “The Little Spider”.

Picture books for older children have lots of text. In these the pictures augment the story, not tell it. Tiffany Hammond’s “A Day With No Words” and Katherine Kirkpatrick’s “Redcoats and Petticoats” are this way.

Another approach is seen in Jim Arnosky’s “All About Turkeys”. There is a story and pictures. Facts about turkeys are on streamers by the pictures.

The obvious answer is right, a picture book is pictures with text. However, there is a lot of leeway in how these are used depending on the age the book is for.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although the text and illustrations in this book are about Ozark night creatures the child sees, the illustrations tell another story about fairies.

Creating Picture Books

I would start by writing down my idea, maybe even some illustration ideas. Then I would look at lots of picture books especially those for the age of the children I wanted to write for. This is not to copy these books, but to get a feel for the type of book that appeals to that age.

Afterwards I can look at my idea again. It’s time for a rewrite because creating picture books is as hard or maybe harder than writing a novel.

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Fall Parade of Asters

Most of the sunflowers have gone to seed. They are replaced by the fall parade of asters painting the roadsides white to blue to lavender.

Although fall is not my favorite season as it is a reminder winter is close behind, the parade of asters is lovely. Wild ones may not be as big or showy as garden varieties, but they are prolific.

One of the small white heath asters
Several asters have large sprays of half inch flowerheads. Some are lavender. This one is white. I’m not sure which one this is – yet.

Which Is Which?

Like the sunflowers, asters are difficult to identify. They are like the sunflowers in that they have a ring of ray flowers surrounding a disk of tube flowers.

In the summer, the fleabanes started blooming. These look a lot like an aster, but their rays are very thin and numerous. Heath asters are the same size and similar in color, but their rays look fat and are a single ring fewer in number.

When I take pictures of the asters, there are several important ones, if I want to identify the aster. There is the flower, but the cup under the flower is important too. The leaf matters as some clasp the stem, others have long petioles. The petioles may have wings.

The first larger aster in the Ozarks parade of Asters
Spreading aster is the first larger aster to bloom along my Ozark gravel road. The flower heads are a bit over an inch across spread out along the several stems reaching out across the ground. The heart-shaped leaves clasp the stems. The cup under the flowerhead is light green and smooth with a few darker green bits.

Some leaves are long with a sharp point. Others are heart shaped. Some plants have basal leaves growing from the ground and stem leaves hanging on the flower stalks. Others have only stem leaves.

Stems are important. Some are smooth and shiny or grooved. Occasional hairs adorn some stems. Short fuzz lines others. Longer fuzz makes the stems look soft and white.

highlight of the parade of asters
New England Aster is a tall plant, up to six feet, with numerous branches topped with flowers. It is sold through nurseries. I enjoy seeing it growing along my Ozark gravel road where the ground is a bit moist. Many pollinators including bumblebees tromp over the many tube flowers sipping nectar.

Admiring the Parade of Asters

The identity of the different asters matters for my Dent County Flora project. However, the asters are worth looking at for their beauty.

My favorite is the New England Aster with its deep purple rays and golden disk. There were lots of these along the road for years until it got mowed too often. They are making a comeback this year.

All of the many asters, large and small, make my fall walks pleasant.

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Montauk State Park Trip

One thing about dairy goats is how they tie you to home. My free day begins at the end of morning chores and ends with the beginning of evening chores. That made my Montauk State Park trip short.

There were several reasons for going to the park. Somehow, they never added up enough to take a whole day. This time the need to get away from the unending “To Do’ list was enough.

Montauk Mill
The Montauk Mill is open during the summer, a time I’ve never been to Montauk State Park. Looking in the windows and reading the brochure, it look interesting.

The Grist Mill

Montauk was a small community that grew up near the big springs forming the headwaters of the Current River. The water allowed a grist mill for grinding corn and wheat to operate. Several mills were built and destroyed until the present one was built in 1896.

The mill is intact, but no longer operates. Over the summer, tours go through. This is fall, so the mill was closed during my Montauk State Park trip.

Montauk spring
The blue of the water in Montauk spring is from dissolved limestone. Karst springs flow through limestone often dissolving large amounts of stone to form caves.

Montauk Springs

Fifty-three million gallons of water flow out of the springs every day. This flow goes out to form the Current River.

Because the water has a constant cold temperature, it’s used for a trout hatchery. The river is stocked with rainbow trout and is very popular with fishermen and women. Opening day, March 1st, draws hundreds to thousands of fishermen to kick off the season.

trout seen during Montauk State Park trip
Montauk State Park is one of three rainbow trout hatcheries in Missouri. The trout are stocked in places around the area as well as in the Current River. These are two of many I saw, most of dinner size.

Wild Plants

Montauk State Park trip fisherman with trout
Wandering around near the Montauk springs, I came out on the river where these men were fishing. One caught a trout.

I’m not a fisherman, although my father tried hard to hook me into the sport. I am interested in wild plants. This is one of the big draws for me for a Montauk State Park trip.

Some years back I found a fire-on-the-mountain along a parking lot. I needed more pictures of it. This time the fire-on-the-mountain was elusive. However, I found a new plant totally new to me and a yellow coneflower along with some more familiar plants.

One other thing I found out. Monday is a good day to visit as the weekend crowd has gone home. That made it a lovely quiet escape from my unending list.

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GKP Writing News

Cheating With AI

AI seems to be everywhere lately. Search engines, word platforms and more beg you to use it. There are legitimate uses for it, but some I consider to be cheating with AI.

Writing and research are two of these. There are many who will disagree, but I stand firm.

AI and Writing

At home I am not online. In town every time I try to write an email, a search entry, check over a blog post, this AI pops up trying to tell me what I should write. This is very annoying as the stupid program starts guessing at what the word is by the time I have two letters typed.

Admittedly my spelling is not always right. However, spell check catches mistakes most of the time. And that doesn’t keep covering over my document or page with lists of words and phrases.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
This wild romp let my imagination fly. Every chapter ended with a cliffhanger. Every name was devised for fun and fit into the character. For me, this is what makes writing special.

Then, too, my novels come from my imagination. If AI writes my novel for me to edit, it is no longer my novel. It is AI’s novel and probably far from my idea of what it should be.

My present novel looks at getting old, relationships to family and friends, immigration and reinventing oneself. The main character has been a recluse for decades for medical reasons, has an abusive background. I have come to know her and those around her. AI would only guess at these pulling from whatever learning material it used.

Stephanie comes from a lifetime of people and experiences. I know what is happening and will happen to a large extent. AI won’t know ant of this and might well distort it if I explained.

If I were to use AI to write my novel, edit the result and publish it, I would consider it cheating with AI.

Research

When I start doing research, I have an idea what to look for. Often it is a bit vague. As I go exploring the topic, I can check out different parameters, fine tune, go off on tangents.

By cheating with AI, I end up looking at only what the program thinks I am looking for. It’s something like the difference between browsing the shelves at a bookstore or library and searching on Amazon. You miss so much.

Perhaps I am just old-fashioned, but I will continue to use my own imagination for my writing.

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Eating Jerusalem Artichokes

The yellow orange flowers of Jerusalem artichokes are along the roads now. My garden patch is just beginning to bloom. This winter’s menu plan includes eating Jerusalem artichokes.

Wild and garden chokes are not the same even though they are the same species. There are several big differences.

Jerusalem artichoke flowers
Like all the flowers in the Aster family, these flowers are really a ring of ray flowers forming the petals and small disk flowers producing the seeds. These are wild Jerusalem artichoke flowers as I can’t get up high enough for the garden ones, although they are the same as I’ve seen other years.

Wild Plants

All the plants along my road are five or six feet tall. They have an array of flowers at the tips of their stalks. The leaves look like spear heads as the petioles have wings and the leaves are triangular with a long taper.

According to Samuel Thayer’s book “Nature’s Harvest” the wild tubers are long, fat tubers. I’ve never dug any up, so I don’t know.

blooms precede eating Jerusalem artichokes
The top of the cattle panel is just below this picture. One of the twines broke and I had to replace it pushing the Jerusalem artichoke stalks up as I went. They are heavy! About frost I will cut the stalks off half way as the goats love the leaves. They don’t take killing frost, only light ones. Over the winter each plant can be dug for the sackful of tubers extending several inches below the surface. It’s impossible to find all of them so next year’s crop will grow here.

Garden Plants

Growing Jerusalem artichokes in the garden is challenging because of is their height. Thick two inch diameter stalks tower over my head. I haven’t measured them, but they are close to ten feet tall. Their roots aren’t deep enough to support this height.

My patch is lined on each side by cattle panels. A rope surrounds the patch with twine running between the panels to help support these huge plants. It’s a nuisance to have them fall over.

These plants bloom about two weeks later than their wild cousins. Each has fewer flowers on the ends of their stalks.

Eating Jerusalem artichokes from the garden is challenging too. These tubers are knobby with tight creases. Dirt clings to them and fills every crevice.

When I dig the tubers after frost, I have a bucket of water with me. First I shake and rub off all the dirt I can. Then I dunk them in the water and shake off more mud. Once in the kitchen I resort to an old toothbrush and often snap the knobs off the main tuber.

Eating Jerusalem Artichokes

Maybe someday I will sample the wild tubers. The description of them makes them sound a lot like the garden ones I grow, but smaller.

I find my tubers can be used like water chestnuts in stir fry or added to stews. Cooked they turn soft and taste a bit sweet. One plant produces lots of tubers, so my garden has a big supply.

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GKP Writing News

October Is Pumpkin Month

Yes, this is September. However, now is the time to get ready for Pumpkin Month. One way to do that is to check out “The Pumpkin Project”.

It is too late to grow pumpkins as frost kills the vines. Fall is when pumpkins arrive in the stores and get ripe in the garden.

pumpkin month honoree
Sugar pie pumpkins are the best eating pumpkins. Larger pumpkins can be eaten, but are coarser and not as sweet. Giant pumpkins are not eaten.

Pumpkins Aren’t Just Decorations

Pumpkin displays start appearing at houses around town in late September. I like to keep track of these as most people putting these up throw the pumpkins away after Halloween. Unless the weather has been very cold, I like to take these pumpkins home.

At my house the smaller pie pumpkins become pumpkin puree for cookies or soups. Some are chunks in stews.

Bigger pumpkins are treats for my goats. I cut them into bite sized pieces and take them out each evening. A few pieces go on each plate of grain.

Different goats eat the pieces differently. Agate pushes hers around as she eats all the grain. Then she eats the pumpkin pieces. Drucilla and Spring attack the dish before it is even set down in front of them as they grab the pieces, then eat their grain.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
The focus of this book may be pumpkins, but it explores many aspects of botany and plants.

“The Pumpkin Project”

This science activity book has lots of pumpkin puzzles and investigations in it. Many of them start with the seeds and growing pumpkin vines.

There are stories about pumpkin history and growing giant pumpkins by people in the U.S., Sweden and Australia who grew award winning giant pumpkins. These are weighed at special fairs called Weigh Offs.

For Pumpkin Month there are more things to do with pumpkins. Of course, you can carve a pumpkin, but then it’s not good for anything but display. Painting one lets you cook up the pumpkin later.

What Can You Cook Up?

There are recipes for making pumpkin puree. Then you can make not only cookies, but pumpkin bread, Caribbean pumpkin bread, cheesecake, soups, pie and more. You can even roast the seeds for snacking.

In honor of Pumpkin Month, you can get a free pdf of “The Pumpkin Project” by emailing me and asking. The book is only available in print or as a large pdf.

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Enjoying the Sunflower Parade

Each season seems to have wildflower colors more common than others. Spring is blue and pink. Fall is purple. Summer is yellow with the sunflower parade.

This begins with brown-eyed susans assisted by yellow ironweed. Then the sunflowers begin.

One of the sunflower parade
This Helianth sunflower is typical of many wild sunflowers with the smaller disk and single row of yellow rays. The leaves are normally opposite. Another group normally has alternate leaves. The disks are usually yellow.

Lots of Sunflowers

To people driving by the many sunflowers look alike. They have yellow ‘petals’ and a yellow or brown center. They are usually tall with big leaves. Even now the fields of tickseed sunflower are just another in the sunflower parade.

If you stop and look, these plants are not all the same. They are alike in that these ‘flowers’ are really flower heads with bright ray flowers surrounding a disk of small, tubular flowers. But these are different on different plants too.

Look at the leaves. Some pairs of leaves are on opposite sides of the stem. Other leaves aren’t in pairs but alternate on their way up the stem. Some have smooth edges, some tiny teeth, others large teeth.

member of the sunflower parade
This sunflower is more like the grown sunflowers with the larger brown disk and short rays. Many of the wild sunflowers produce edible seeds that are too small to bother with except for the birds.

And the Flower Heads

Some ray flowers are short and broad. Others are long and thin. There are notches in the ends of others. Even their colors are different as some are very yellow and others have orange tints.

The center flowers can be yellow or brown. They put out stamens covered with pollen. Most of these are yellow, but not all. Some make a mound. Others are flat.

Naming Sunflowers

I’ve taken pictures of the different sunflowers for years. Most of them have names like 1 Sunflower, 2 Sunflower.

There are easy ones like Prairie dock with its enormous basal leaves. Tickseed sunflower is another one as the plant has a tapered look, the leaves have big lobes and the ray flowers are broad and thin.

The rest of them are still on my list to be identified. There is a key, several in fact. They haven’t helped much. This year I am looking up pictures to compare with my pictures. Perhaps I will spend some time setting up the pictures to put on iNaturalist in the hopes someone more knowledgeable than I will know what they are.

One other thing I will do is enjoy the sunflower parade even as the asters try to take over and signal the end of summer.

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Amazing Pawpaw

Although people might have heard of pawpaws, few of them know what a pawpaw is. When we first moved to the Ozarks, we didn’t know anything about the amazing pawpaw.

The Patch

Along a pasture fence was a patch of these strange trees. Their huge leaves had a tropical look to them. Their purple flowers opened upside down in the spring, but there was no fruit.

Down along the river were some other patches of these trees we identified as pawpaws. These had a few fruits, if you can call green potatoes fruits.

When these ripened in late summer we tried eating them. The next year we gathered pollen from the river trees for out pasture trees. Now these had fruits on them.

pawpaw flowers
Since mid spring blooming pawpaw flowers aren’t interested in having bees, wasps or bumblebees visit, they point down and advertise for flies and beetles. As the tree gets taller, it gets harder to get the flowers pollinated although the amazing cluster is nearly ten feet up.

Pawpaw Facts

These semi tropical trees are a native fruit probably from Florida or the Gulf Coast. Indians liked them, eating the fruit and using the inner bark as fiber. They spread the trees all through the eastern U.S.

Pawpaws are an understory tree near, but not in, water as in ravines or along creeks. With their large leaves, they can and do grow straight even growing in the shade. They prefer growing in the shade. When they like a spot, they put up sprouts around them and become a patch.

In the spring the flowers open facing the ground. They attract flies and beetles as pollinators. There must be two different trees, not another sprout, for pollination.

amazing pawpaw cluster
I hate climbing up ladders and needed to go up one more rung to get eleven fruits in the picture. One is always hidden in the back or underneath. Even with only nine showing, this is an amazing pawpaw cluster. It is not two clusters joined together, but a single cluster. Now we need to keep checking on it to pick it before the resident groundhog with a burrow at the base of the tree gets it. All of the fruits are still hard. As soon as they start to soften, we can pick the cluster.

Fruits

The clusters of green potatoes soften and take on a yellow tinge in late summer to early fall. Usually there are three or four fruits in a cluster. This year we have an amazing pawpaw cluster of twelve!

We pick the fruits as soon as they soften. They ripen on the windowsill. Once they are soft, we can eat the custardy insides discarding the large seeds. If any are left over, they make great sweet breads.

Those left on the trees are soon chewed on. We aren’t the only ones who like the sweet, custardy fruits. Deer, raccoons, opossums, foxes and others like them too.