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

Cabbage Loves Cool

Ozark springs used to be warm and short. This year, like last year, is cool and wet. Cabbage loves cool and wet.

Garlic, Cabbage loves cool
Garlic is another plants that likes cool weather. This patch was planted last fall, started growing over the winter and is now getting ready to send up flower stalks called scapes. These are edible and should be removed.

Cole Crops

Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage are all cole crops. When we lived up North, these crops grew big. They tasted great.

The summers up North were cool by Ozark standards. Frost could happen most months and did. That was one reason we moved to the Ozarks.

Garden Experimenting

For several years we tried growing many of the crops we were familiar with. Cole crops taste bitter when they grow in the heat. In the Ozarks, these crops became fall crops.

New crops moved into the garden. Tomatoes are a real challenge up North as they love heat and need a longer summer. Peppers and okra joined the tomatoes. All of these are good summer crops in the Ozarks.

Squash

Everyone thinks squash loves heat. It is frost sensitive. Up North squash grew big. Winter squash got huge.

World record pumpkins come from places cooler than the Ozarks. You can grow giant pumpkins in Missouri, but they are not world record sizes.

Still, squash, both summer and winter varieties, do grow well enough to give good crops. The winter varieties store well. But the summer varieties are soon over producing and the gardener’s neighbors quickly learn they need lots of squash recipes.

Cabbage Loves Cool

I started cabbage seeds the end of January. The little plants moved to the garden in March. Now there are small heads forming.

When the cabbage first moved to the garden, I had to water as the Ozarks, like much of the country, was in drought. Rain does fall every week now. Most storms only drop half an inch, maybe an inch. It’s enough

Each storm brings in cool weather. The last one brought light frost at the end. Cabbage doesn’t mind.

Frost is a worry now. My tomatoes have moved out into the garden.

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Latest From High Reaches

Spooky Goats

Last night I went out to milk. The chickens were glad to see me. Only one of my spooky goats was in the barn.

Spooky goats checking out something
My Nubian goat herd is coming in. Wait! What is going on over there?

Where Are the Goats?

Rose was most unhappy. Goats are herd animals and her herd was missing. She stood in the doorway calling. No one answered.

The herd had been in the front pasture a short time ago. They were not there now. And, why was Rose alone?

What Happened?

There had been a truck parked in front of the house. People were around the truck.

Our creek is part of a research project this summer. A student working toward her master’s degree is studying cold water creeks, ones resulting from spring water.

Spooky Goats

When my herd came into the barn lot, they saw and heard these strangers. The herd went back out the gate and headed up a nearby hill. Somehow Rose didn’t notice and stayed in the barn.

I have defined goats as perpetual two to three year olds with a double dose of orneriness at a hundred plus pounds. Like young children, they are afraid of strangers.

Years ago, when I took my goats to the county fair, my goats weren’t spooky goats. They were used to noise and people.

None of my present herd has ever left the property. They rarely see anyone other than us. Everyone is a stranger and strangers are run away from.

Now What?

I knew which hill the herd went up. Spring is usually the ringleader.

It was near dark. This is a very steep hill and loose gravel covers the sides. I am not about to go up this hill with a flashlight after these spooky goats.

Instead I went out and called. Usually the herd will come back when I call. They didn’t.

Poor Rose was left alone to have her dinner and wait. The herd did come back before morning pretending they had never been gone.

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GKP Writing News

Read Widely

I came across another book about writing by an author I am unfamiliar with: “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott. Still, I checked it out of the library. Sure enough, one of the first things it has to say is that writers need to read widely and read lots of books.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book came about because we were watching old movie serials. I decided to write one with goats in it.

Fan Fiction

Lots of people love to write about their favorite characters in favorite series. Most of these never show up except, maybe, on a special fan fiction site for that series. This is one way for new writers to practice writing skills.

Sherlock Holmes still has fan fiction written about him. I recently read two. “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” is an anthology by many authors. Most of them were not even close to the original flavor of the stories. “The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes” by Adrian Conan Doyle (the youngest son) had a dozen tales that captured the essence of the originals.

Getting Ideas

Many genres have a rigid formula all the books adhere to. Think cozy mystery or romance. The challenge for an author is to write something within this formula that is still different. If you read widely, you get exposed to many different styles of writing, some of which can be adapted.

True, the author may end up using a plotline from another book. I just finished a Cat in the Stacks mystery that did this. The plot seemed so familiar I knew who the murderer was and what the set up was almost before the murder took place. There were enough new aspects to rescue the book.

Expanding Horizons

Have you ever met someone who has only one subject to talk about? If you have no knowledge or interest in that subject, being stuck talking to this person is deadly.

If you read widely, you get a chance to see the world from many points of view, go lots of places, experience life in other times and do things you would never dare to do for real. Then you can widen your conversation topics.

For the Writer

Yes, some books may not get finished. There are lots of reasons for putting a book aside without finishing it.

On the other hand, you just might find a book that really resonates with you. One you would never have encountered if you didn’t read something new.

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GKP Writing News

What Plot?

Usually, when I write a novel, something is going on. There is a definite plot carrying the story along. As I write about Ship Nineteen, my problem is simple: What plot?

cover of "Running the Roads" by Karen GoatKeeper
The plot happened easily in this novel. Ridge gets his car and starts driving. He ends up in trouble, stranded and helping someone in trouble.

The Premise

This is a survival story of these nine Carduans learning to survive on an alien to them planet. The passengers range from ten years old to seventeen. The crew know little more than flying a space ship.

Marooned on a planet with no hope of going home and, as far as they know, alone, they must find a place to live, foods they can eat, a source of water and a way to defend themselves against the monstrous beings living on their new world.

What Plot Makes This Exciting?

That is my problem. As this is a sister novel to the one on Ship Eighteen and both take place over the same timeframe, both are written on a countdown of days. It is set up by weeks counting down from fifteen, each week split into the six days of the Carduan week.

Every day things happen. Some are dull and routine and short. Others are exciting and dangerous. All do feed into the whole of learning to survive, but each is a separate incident.

One Goal

Obviously the two ships will meet up. That is no spoiler. Sola, the main character on Ship Eighteen, dreams of meeting Tico, her son on Ship Nineteen. He remembers this dream. Does anyone, but them, really believe this dream?

Yet, this may be a glimmer of a plot or, at least, a goal for both stories. Is this enough? I don’t know.

Other Events

There is a bit of a romance. The Carduans are snake-sized snacks. Owls see them as dinner, not to speak of coyotes.

What is there to eat out in the wilds? How would you find out? After all, some plants are deadly poison.

What plot can I find? Perhaps learning to survive is one.

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Latest From High Reaches

Climate Change

Every chance I get I head out to check out the spring ephemerals as they will be gone soon. Some are already setting seed. What I see is how much the area has changed due to climate change.

Confederate Violets
Flash floods flooded the upper Meramec River spreading deep sand over much of the floodplain. I was glad to see these lovely Confederate Violets, a color variation of Common Blue Violets, still grew and bloomed in the area. The flooding washed out wide swaths of river bank washing out many big trees. These trees didn’t just fall over into the river, they left, carried off by the flood.

Skepticism

Some of the people I talk to think climate change is not happening. They have various reasons for believing this.

One didn’t realize this referred to global temperatures rising, not just around here. Others use the excuse climate has always changed from time to time not understanding the rate at which it is changing. Of course, there are those who think people are only along for the ride, not the driver of these changes.

Climate change made most of the lady slippers disappear
Usually I have several places where Lady Slippers grow. These are the big ones that grow in clumps. All I find now are these single plants of small Lady Slippers.

What I Have Seen

For me, everything began changing in 2012 with the extreme drought. Now, I had seen summer droughts before and everything got back to normal in the fall. Not after this one.

May had been the month of high water here for years. Now floods come any month of the year.

Big rains came to cause the high water. They were gradual. Now the rains drop in a short time and cause flash flooding that is washing out the creek banks.

As a Gardener

May has been the time to plant okra, summer squash, tomatoes, peppers for years. Some years warmed up faster, some slower, but the month held. No more.

Now I often have to wait until June to plant okra and summer squash. Planting winter squash that late can mean I don’t get a crop at all.

Adapting

I am trying to adapt to these changes. It’s hard. Planting times can move. Crops can change.

Fixing the creek is another story. The creek divides our pastures, two on the west side and two on the east. We had a bridge.

One flash flood destroyed the bridge that had withstood high water for thirty years. The succession of floods has created drop offs into the creek bed making it impossible to get equipment across the creek. Two hay fields are now inaccessible.

So, you skeptics say, that’s just a minor thing, a simple normal change. I say, yes, if it was only here, maybe it’s a normal change. But melting glaciers, intense heat domes, extreme weather globally, say otherwise.

More important: Changing my lifestyle to accommodate the changes won’t matter, if I am wrong about climate change. Can you and the Earth afford to ignore it, if you are wrong?

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Lawn Mowing

Spring is a busy time of year. Everything suddenly needs attention. And you find you are walking through ankle high grass. It is lawn mowing time again.

pineapple weed lawn mowing obstacle
Pineapple weed may be non native, however, it is a pretty flower. It grows along the edge of the driveway and the lawn mower somehow misses many of them.

Lawnmowers

As soon as my siblings and I were big enough, we were introduced to the task of lawn mowing. At that time, we had a reel mower.

This type of mower is a real challenge to operate. First, it requires a level yard. Second, it requires and builds arm and leg muscles. Third, it punishes you if you don’t mow regularly as it works best on short grass.

We graduated to a mower with a motor to turn the blades. The mower still required leg power, but it wasn’t as finicky about the level lawn and length of grass.

mullein is a big lawn mowing obstacle
Mullein has really big, furry leaves. It is a rosette of leaves the first year. The second year the flower stalk reaches up four, five, six feet and lines itself with lemon yellow flowers. It is a spectacular sight. The leaves make a good herbal tea.

Power Lawnmowers

Our so-called lawn here has slopes and holes. We did use leg power to mow for a time, but age made that difficult. The mower became a self propelled one.

This worked well as we have odd plantings scattered about. And there are wildflowers we want to watch bloom. But age keeps moving along.

There is now a small riding mower for the large areas. It makes mowing easier, but lawn mowing remains challenging.

Daffodils
Only a few daffodils bloomed in places in the yard when we moved here. Thirty years later the daffodils have spread across the yards and into the woods. They make such a lovely sight at the end of winter.

Daffodils

There are people who mow over their daffodils as soon as the flowers are gone. They wonder why fewer of them come up the next year. The time after blooming until the leaves yellow is when the plants store up food to maintain the bulbs until next spring.

We mow around the plants which can make us mow a maze.

Near the barn is another stretch of lawn. It is presently approaching knee height and I can’t mow part of it yet. The milkweeds are coming up.

Milkweeds

Each day new stakes are put in to mark the outer rim of this year’s milkweed patch. Common milkweed is a perennial, but it has an underground stem that shifts one year to the next. The patch comes up in the same area, but not in the same place.

Maybe next week I can start the annual weekly task of lawn mowing that section.

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GKP Writing News

Building a World

Any writing endeavor leaves an author building a world. This is true for nonfiction as well as fiction. It is true for any genre.

New England asters building a world
There are half a dozen lovely asters that bloom in the fall. As I put together pictures for “Exploring the Ozark Hills”, I chose this one as I built my world for the book.

Nonfiction Too?

Nonfiction is set in a real place. It is someplace you can see pictures of or visit. Except that isn’t the place you are writing about.

The author is writing about a place the author sees. It may be based on reality, but the author sees it according to the author’s point of view.

When I wrote “Exploring the Ozark Hills”, I chose the topics. I went out and took the pictures framing them to illustrate what I wanted to write about. It was the real world, but it was also the world I wanted to see.

Real World Fiction

Novels set in the real world, past or present, are like the ones for nonfiction. They may be based on real places, but they are written about as the author sees them.

Plot events influence what is most important in a setting description. Flower kinds and colors don’t matter much during a chase scene. During a romantic scene, these may help enhance the feeling the writer is trying for.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

No matter how hard a writer tries to create an imaginary world, it will relate to what is familiar. We may write about being telepathic, but it is not based on experience. Instead we write about what we think it would be like.

Building a world with strange plants and animals is the same. We have a mental picture of what an animal is, what a plant is. The imaginary ones will conform to these ideas to some extent as we can’t relate to something totally out of our experience.

Melding Truth and Imagination

As I struggle with “The Carduan Chronicles: Ship Nineteen”, I must meld the reality of nature with my point of view of these places with the point of view of these small people. The plants and animals are those I am familiar with. I must see them differently to make my writing feel real.

Building a world for any writing project is challenging. It takes time and thought. In the end, this world begins to feel real and that lets it feel real for a reader.

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Latest From High Reaches

Garden Tub Greens

Spring is here in the Ozarks. It could still frost, but days are warm. It’s time to start those garden tub greens.

Snow Peas in Raised Garden Bed
Although I do grow some taller snow peas in the ground with a trellis, I have much better luck with these shorter purple pod snow peas in the raised bed. Raised beds are a big version of a garden tub.

Which Greens?

There are several to choose from. The big question is whether or not frost will still visit. That takes bok choi off the list for a couple more weeks.

Thumbing through my line of seed packets, I take out Napa cabbage, beets, kohlrabi, green onions, red and green lettuces, tatsoi, red and green mizuna and carrots. These should take a light frost.

Savoy Cabbage in raised bed
Savoy cabbage gets too big for a tub container, but is fine in this long raised bed. The mesh is some voile I found on sale. It isn’t real sturdy, but works well to keep cabbage moths off and is light enough to rest over the plants.

Why Garden Tub Greens?

My garden soil is still cold. The tubs sit out in the sun and warm up. All of the greens I’ve chosen may like cooler weather, but they don’t like it cold and damp.

The one disadvantage is the size of the tubs. Some of these do get big, so I can’t plant very many. My other option is pulling some like beets early for just the greens.

Another consideration is how long these take to mature. Ozark springs can be long and cool. More often they are short and become summer almost overnight.

Mulched Garden Tub
I tend to really bury my containers with mulch over the winter. In a normal winter, most of the mulch would rot. This past winter has been dry, so I am having to remove the top layer when getting ready to plant.

Planting the Tubs

My garden tubs have mulch on them. Most of this mulch needs to stay or the weeds will have a party.

So I clear a ring around the tub a few inches inside. Seeds are planted in this ring.

The weeds will still have a party. At least, they will try. But it will be a small party.

Garden tub greens planted
The ring is down to dirt. The surrounding mulch helps keep moisture in the tub as it, like all containers, dries out quickly. I prefer using a ring around the tub for planting. This has Chinese or Napa cabbage planted in it.

Succession

About the time these greens are ready to harvest, summer will be moving in. I can still grow greens in some of the tubs, but ones that can take some heat.

Most of the tubs will have peppers, eggplant and other summer crops to fill them until fall cools things down again.

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GKP Writing News

Photographic Illustrations

My first illustrated books used photographic illustrations. This seemed the easy way to do them. Reality set in quickly.

Page from "My Ozark Home"
Photographs were the best way to illustrate “My Ozark Home”. Chicory grows along the road. It is a favorite of the goats and groundhogs, so it doesn’t last long in the pastures.

Types of Books

My science activity books use photographic illustrations for the simple reason that these show what I am talking about. They show the steps of the Investigations.

In “The Pumpkin Project”, I have pictures of people with their prize winning pumpkins. A drawing wouldn’t work.

When I wrote “My Ozark Home”, I was showing the hills and pastures of my home. Drawings, no matter how good, wouldn’t be as good.

page from "For Love of Goats"
This illustrations is a blend of watercolor images and computer. There are four watercolor images in this illustration: the pen with hay bales and bedding; the kid; the doe: and the back wall. Using layers to create the final image takes a lot of time, but can be the best option.

Photograph or Drawing?

I am not the best photographer. Some of the pictures for my books took many, many tries before I got them right.

This is a problem with using photographic illustrations. Wind blows plants. Animals take off. Investigations need too many hands to do the work and take the pictures.

Drawings might be easier as the illustrator can plan them out. That raises the question of how good the artist is.

“For Love of Goats” had all the text done. So did “The Little Spider” and “Waiting for Fairies”. These books needed drawings, not photographs.

photographic illustrations for science investigations
I’ve had science experiment books with drawings. Photographs are often much better. This one is from “The City Water Project”, building and launching water rockets.

Desperation

I hated seeing these books sit there. Some books will never get done as they aren’t good enough. That wasn’t the case with these.

Armed with the knowledge I am a goat keeper, I decided to try doing the goat illustrations. Only those who know goats, can really draw goats.

Doing these illustrations gave me enough confidence to illustrate the two picture books. What I found out is that each book needed a different approach.

Melding Watercolor, Camera and Computer

All of my illustrations begin as photographs or watercolors. None of these is ready to put straight into a book.

Photographic illustrations must be cropped, maybe enhanced, definitely resized. Watercolors are also cropped, mistakes corrected and resized. The end result is a book illustration.

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GKP Writing News

Do You Read?

“Reading Is Fundamental” goes one slogan for one program. Accelerated Reading is another program. These are aimed to get young people to read. The important question is: Do You Read?

When I was growing up, there was an antismoking slogan: Do as I say, not as I do. Parents would smoke and lament when their children took up the habit.

It applies to reading as well. If a parent doesn’t read, why should their children? How do you convince a child reading is important, if it isn’t important to you?

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
This is a novel you can read for fun.

Why Does Literacy Matter?

Imagine you are going grocery shopping and can’t read the labels. You must depend on pictures on the labels. Sometimes there are no pictures. Other times there are several choices as in canned fruit: heavy syrup, light syrup, fruit juice. How do you know the difference? There are labels with pictures promoting scents, not what is in the containers.

There was a television program many, many years ago in which Johnny Cash played an illiterate man. He had many work arounds for filling out job applications and getting others to read directions for him. Ultimately, he was always found out.

Getting Information

There are many places purporting to give you the news. How do you know which ones are real news versus opinions about the news? If you can’t read, you can’t even read the headlines.

If you look up directions, you could find a podcast showing the directions. How do you know it’s right? Are there other methods that would work better for you?

Excuses, Excuses

There are learning disabilities making reading difficult. And there are other ways of reading such as audio books. A disability is not a good excuse.

“I don’t like to read.” Such a favorite excuse. There are books on all subjects, at all levels. Novels come in age levels and numerous genres. Some are graphic novels done mostly in pictures. Somewhere there are books to interest you.

Do You Read?

Literacy is the basis of a democracy. Reading lets people know what is going on. Finding out more about the many sides of an issue let’s people make good decisions.

Do you want to make our country great again? Read!