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.

Latest From High Reaches

Welcoming Rain to the Garden

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 21, 2026
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During times past, gardens were put in and everyone hoped for the best. There were no hoses and water taps. Instead, gardeners were welcoming rain to the garden to get the crops they needed to survive the winter.

Tomatoes are 95% water. Regular rain or watering is essential for them to get big and ripen. When water arrives haphazardly, almost ripe tomatoes often split their skins.

Irrigation Systems

When I was young, my father had large gardens. There was a trough along each row of vegetable. Once a week the hose was brought over and water ran down one trough, then another until the garden was watered.

Now I listen to people at the Farmers Market talking about various soaker systems. Some use hoses with holes in them. Others have pipes with nozzles at intervals.

These soaker systems are better than my father’s troughs as they deliver water directly and more often to each plant. There is less erosion, less evaporation.

Watering the Garden the Hard Way

My garden is across the county road from my house. We are miles away from any city or rural water system. There is an old dug well with a hand pump near the garden, but it can’t water the garden.

There are seven water barrels in the garden. Five of them will hold 55 gallons of water. The others are smaller. Water moves from them to the plants in watering cans. A watering can doesn’t hold enough water to satisfy a big tomato plant busy making tomatoes.

Using the Creek

Once a week during a hot, dry summer, I start up the water pump down by the creek. It pumps enough water in an hour to soak the garden.

This sounds great. In terms of water, it is. In terms of work, it isn’t. The discharge hoses are heavy and clumsy. They must be moved from one side of the garden to the other.

By the end of the hour, I am soaked. Some plants are crushed. And the hose is left draped down pathways to trip me up until the next week when it will move to other pathways as it switches sides of the garden.

The other problem is the creek. It no longer has a deep pool near the garden side. Instead, I have to excavate a pool and trench so enough water flows over for the pump to pull it up to the garden.

Welcoming Rain to the Garden

Last week I ran the pump. The garden was again getting too dry. I hauled water to the tubs from the rain barrels, but most of the garden waited.

I procrastinated.

Then the rain came. Over an inch of rain fell and the garden is watered for the week. And the pump will remain idle until next week. Unless the rain comes again.

Tags gardening, watering gardens

GKP Writing News

Trying to Improve My Writing

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 21, 2026
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For a writer who really cares about the quality of the books written and published, the task of trying to improve my writing never ends. Although there are many ways to do this, I often read what other writers have to say about writing. In other words, I read a book.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper — When writing “Goat Games”, I got to find out all kinds of things about them and visit other goat owners.

Writing About Writing

There are lots of books written by authors about their way of writing. Much of what is in each one is similar to what is in others. So, why bother to keep reading them?

Buried in the similar methods are good ideas. Stephen King in “On Writing” speaks about developing a character by not being too precise, letting the reader fill in the details.

It’s so easy to be too precise in a description. That isn’t my problem. Mine is that I see the character or place in my mind and offer too little description. King’s advice finds me thinking about how much description I need and how much I want the reader to supply.

Importance of Reading

Rita Mae Brown in “Starting From Scratch” emphasizes reading books in a wide range of genres from ancient to modern. This is not new advice. A writer should read widely in many genres. Always the question is in the back of the mind: What do I like about this book and why? What do I not like about this book and why?

Her list of recommended reading is daunting, but I was surprised at how many I had already read. Will I read all of them? No, but I will read more of them.

Having Fun Writing

My latest find was “Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly” by Gail Carson Levine. This book is aimed at a younger writer than I am so many of her writing topics were not very helpful.

However, there is emphasis on many important ideas for a writer. There are so many ways to develop settings, characters and stories. I take note of how she urges the writer to use more senses than sight in describing events. The exercise of describing brushing your teeth using feel, scent, sound makes this important hygiene task intriguing.

Most Important Advice

Write. Write about your own life even though you won’t write memoir. This helps you work through problems and enjoy life more.

Write about people you see making up lives for them. Help your characters come alive on the page.

And most of all: enjoy your writing.

Tags novel writing, reading, writing advice

Latest From High Reaches

Kombucha Monster Squash

Since I have only a few goats now, I decided to stop growing the monster squash. My goats like butternut and so do we. Then I got seeds for kombucha monster squash.

The fence is six feet tall. The gate bar is nearly seven. The Kombucha monster squash vines grew over them faster than I could try to turn them back. Sometimes it seemed as though the vines added two or three feet overnight. I gave up and let them go.

Why Another Big Squash?

Of course, the packet didn’t admit it was a monster. It was just a big, winter squash.

Years ago, our market had sold kombucha squash in the fall. We tried it and liked it.

The squash was medium in size. It had a nice texture baked and a good flavor. Of course, it never showed up again.

This year Pinetree Seeds offered Kombucha winter squash. It immediately went on my seed list.

There are several easily spotted Kombucha squash growing on the ground. They are roughly round and ribbed.

Maybe I Should Read the Packet?

Kombucha is a hybrid squash between a Cucurbita moschata and a Cucurbita maxima squash. It requires a pollinator like butternut or Hubbard.

Most summer squash is Cucurbita pepo as are sugar pie pumpkins and cucumbers. These are bushy or have shorter vines.

Butternut and a couple of other winter squashes are Cucurbita moschata. They have longer vines.

Giant pumpkins are Cucurbita maxima. These have huge leaves, huge vines, in other words, they are monsters.

Look at the Leaves!

I planted several butternut and kombucha seeds in my squash section. The little plants didn’t look like a problem.

Then the roots hit the stash of compost under their hills. The leaves spread to a foot and more wide. The vines approached the thickness of my wrists and started streaking across the section.

Kombucha Monster Squash

The vines filled the squash section and climbed the fences. One climbed the mulberry tree in the little chicken yard. Others began spreading across the tops of the tomato vines next door.

One thing seems to be true. These squash vines are prolific. There are squashes on the ground under the vines. There are squashes hanging from the fences. One is hanging in the tree!

We and the goats should have plenty of squash to eat this winter. That depends on when I can get into the squash section to retrieve them.

And, perhaps, I should mark out a bigger, more isolated squash section for next year.

Tags gardening, growing squash, Ozark gardening

Latest From High Reaches

Nubian Breed Characteristics

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 7, 2026

There’s a book put out by the American Dairy Goat Association that details breed characteristics for the dairy breeds they register. As I filled out the forms to register my Nubian buck High Reaches Pamela’s Kingpin, I had to mark these off. More important, I knew he showed these traits.

Look at those ears! No other breed has ears to match those of a Nubian dairy goat. They don’t just hang down. Muscles do move them around.

The Ears Have It

Most people recognize a Nubian by their ears. It’s the first thing people notice in kid pictures.

The breed characteristics list these ears as pendulous. This means they are long and hang down.

What I notice about ears on a buck is that, no matter how long they appear to be on the kid, they get progressively shorter relative to their face. By the time a buck is full grown, those ears that wrapped around his nose as a kid barely reach the end of his nose.

Nubian buck Kingpin was not impressed by my camera. He thought I should get down in the dirt for a photo showing his Roman nose. Dirt is par for the course for barn clothes.

What About That Nose?

Nubians are supposed to have something called a Roman nose. This means it is concave or bows up from eyes to nose.

The amount of this curve varies, but is not supposed to be flat. My goats have a moderate curve now.

Years ago, I had a goat named Connie with the really high Roman nose. She was lucky as it didn’t make her top jaw shorter than her lower one. It sometimes does. The moderate curve is much better.

Nubian buck Kingpin has long legs, much longer than those of a Boer. Dairy breeds, both goats and cows, are bred for longer legs to make milking easier.

What Color do You Prefer?

Nubians come in a wide range of colors both plain and spotted. The different colors come in and out of favor.

For years, the color was black. As long as a goat was black, she was kept. Those goat lines lost size and milk production. But people bought them because they were black. Spots are the special color now.

Dairy goats are kept for milk production. Color doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick out a goat with a color you like. But the production history is first, breed characteristics are second and color is third.

Kingpin’s Breed Characteristics

The boxes all got checked off. He has the right ears, the right nose, typical color with spots. His mother is a good milker.

Now Kingpin is official with a registration number. And next week he will have the DNA profile to add to it. On Monday, he goes to a new home. I will miss him.

Tags raising goat kids, raising goats, registering goats

GKP Writing News

Cost of Free

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 7, 2026

There was an interesting article on Substack the other day. One of the lures for writers to set up accounts is offering paid levels and so make some money for their work. This lure is losing ground to all of the free material available on the site.

I’ll admit I’m guilty too. I use a lot of free services for various things, mostly for my website. But there is a cost of free we love to ignore.

Some Free Services

Email is a big one. Mailing a letter at the Post Office is expensive and can take days to get to its recipient. Email is instant, or at least close to it depending on when the recipient finds it in their inbox.

The cost is having ads. Since they remain popular, people must click on them. Due to tracking, the ads are tailored to you.

Credit cards are another big one. As long as you pay the balance every month, there is no charge for using the card. Instead, there is a charge to merchants each time you use it.

My website hosting service offers some free services such as security, access to WordPress and more. I do pay for these when I pay for the service.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper — This eBook is offered for free. It is the first in the Hazel Whitmore trilogy and, I hope, will encourage a reader to purchase the other two.

Free eBooks

Smashwords now Draft2Digital is just wrapping up their annual summer sale. They encourage writers to offer their ebooks at big discounts, even free for this event.

Lots of people download these free books. I’ve spoken to some and they may have hundreds of free books on their devices waiting to be read.

Cost of Free

These things aren’t really free. The companies offering them have bills to pay and need income to pay them.

Setting up buttons to sell my books through PayPal or Amazon is free. They take a commission on every sale.

Amazon adds other fees as well. I found they can take as much as a quarter of any sale in fees after taking out printing costs.

My Cost of Free

My writing costs me time and effort. Some books take years to complete going through many rewrites and editing.

Picture book illustrations take time for the watercolor. Then comes the scanning, cropping, adding text and more to create the book. Each page can take several hours.

My books need to pay their way. I have no illusions I will make lots of money with them. They do need to pay for the website, printing and other costs associated with them. My time is basically free.

I have taken part in the summer sale. People look for reviews about books and I can’t afford to pay for them. So I’ve offered free books in the hopes of getting some reviews.

That is another cost of free. People take the free books and can’t be bothered to leave a review, if they ever even read the book. Free books have no value.

Tags book marketing

GKP Writing News

Reflecting on History in Books

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 31, 2026

Years ago, I came across a set of little books by Rudyard Kipling at a used book sale and brought them home to set on a shelf as dust catchers. Recently I took one off the shelf to read: “American Notes”. In this year celebrating the U.S. reflecting on history seems appropriate.

In case the name Rudyard Kipling doesn’t ring a bell, he is probably best known for his “Jungle Books” made into movies. The one that comes to mind is the Disney animated version with many catchy songs.

Teaching History in School

History was my least favorite subject in school mostly due to the texts. They were either childish to the point of silliness or dry listings of dates and events, especially wars.

The schools I attended were considered among the best in the nation at that time. Yet, after twelve years, I only got to the end of WWI once. Every American history class started with the pilgrims and plodded through until the school year ran out.

Making History Interesting

Historical fiction and biographies make history interesting. Both do come with caveats as Americans have a long history of whitewashing their past. After all, they want to look good, even when history says they haven’t always been that way.

“American Notes” is of interest because of this. Rudyard Kipling took a trip across the U.S. in 1869 and wrote a series of letters about where he went, what he saw and who he talked to. Although he was well known in England, he wasn’t here. He was just an Englishman.

The More Things Change

Many of the observations in the letters apply today. Americans have many of the same attitudes now as then. They were then and now convinced they were the greatest, in fact, every town was better than any other. Yellowstone had troops stationed there to keep visitors from hacking the place to bits for keepsakes and to stop poachers.

The country had high tariffs companies took advantage of. They were selling American made inferior goods at inflated prices.

Wealthy people lived well. Poor people were housed in high rises.

Reflecting on History

Everyone wants to look good. We hate to admit our mistakes. Our history texts are edited to reflect this.

People learn more from their mistakes than their successes. Successes make us feel good and complacent. Mistakes tell us where we went wrong so we can avoid repeating them.

Even more, we need to know our past so we can make a better future.

A Few Recommended Books:

Adult: “First Ladies”; “American Notes”; “Women of the Yukon”; “The Only Woman in the Room”, “Girl of the Gulches”, “Before We Were Yours”

Youth: “The Hate You Give”, “Gold Rush Girl”, “They Called Us Enemy” (graphic novel by George Takei)

Picture Books: “Lift Your Lamp a Little Higher”, “Warm As Wool”, “The Floating House”, Smoky Night”, “My Lost Freedom”

Tags learning history, reading, reading novels

GKP Writing News

Book Price Includes Cost, Shipping, Postage, Taxes

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 25, 2026

When I sell a book through Amazon, it never occurs to me what the book price includes. Someone else takes care of all these things.

As I arrange things through PayPal to sell some of my books, there are so many things I need to consider. It is so much easier to sell books directly.

“My Ozark Home” took time sorting through years of photographs and writing the haikus. One thing rarely included in my book price is something for my time spent creating the book.

Setting a Book Price

“The Pumpkin Project” was almost sold out. Originally I printed it myself on my laser printer, but can’t during the summer due to heat. So, I had a local printer print some. The printer is no longer there.

I turned to IngramSpark. My picture books were printed through them. Why not this one? The cost per book was comparable to the printed one. The price they want to set on it is definitely not comparable to what I was charging.

Kindle too wants a much higher price on a book than the printing cost. Why? To cover extra fees, give discounts to booksellers etc.

A page from “The Little Spider” looks simple. It took two hours to create. The book price doesn’t include my time.

Getting Books From Here to There

Mailing a book is not free. Packaging is not free.

Now, I can create my own box from old ones. Newspaper can serve to protect the book inside the box. It is a nuisance to do this and never looks as neat as buying a padded envelope.

As I recently found out, mailing a book overseas or to another country is prohibitively expensive. Such sales must be strictly digital.

Converting costs from one currency to another is one more item on the list to deal with for sales outside of the U.S. Keeping up with the current rates of exchange is not a task I want to do. I hope PayPal does this.

“For Love of Goats” celebrates several of my favorite things: goats, word sounds and writing. It was privately printed. Now I need to find a new printer with a new set of fees.

Those Pesky Taxes

I do understand why the state wants to collect sales taxes. Although I hear many people complain about taxes, they do support schools and other services we need.

I hope PayPal will worry about the taxes to charge.

“The Pumpkin Project” took years to write. It is massive, over 200 pages and in color. I’ve charged $35.00 for it, privately printed. Trying to use an online printer, the new price would be $70.00, something no one would pay.

What a Book Price Includes

There is a choice here. I either sell books strictly by direct means: book signings, Farmers Market etc. All of these take time and travel plus having an inventory of books. And I must pay postage etc. to get my inventory.

Or I set up to sell online. Selling online means charging postage, taxes, fees etc. And, like it or not, these end up added to the price of the book.

Tags book marketing, sending books

Latest From High Reaches

Mushrooms Are for Dinner

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 24, 2026

This has been a dry year so not many mushrooms have come up. A few years ago there was lots of rain and lots of mushrooms. That doesn’t mean mushrooms are for dinner.

Take note of the envelope around the base of the stalk and the tissue ring around the stalk. The top tissue may still be covering the gills. This is an amanita mushroom and Very Poisonous! You can touch it, but Do Not Eat It!

Edible or Poison?

That is the question when it comes to mushrooms. Many look a lot alike and a mistake can be fatal or make you regret dinner with an upset stomach.

As Mike Snyder pointed out: Only eat mushrooms you are positive about. Any new one needs checking in guidebooks, asking someone who knows about them, definitely not an ID app. These are notoriously inaccurate.

Just as with wildflowers, the guidebooks only have some of the mushrooms in them. They tend to favor the really good ones and the really bad ones.

I settle this question by sticking to a few I am positive of: morels, puffballs and chantarelles. Summer is the season for chantarelles.

Although some kinds of red morels are considered toxic, the ones found in the Ozarks are not and reputed to be good.

Enlarging my Known Varieties

My public library offered an evening talk with Mike Snyder of Wildwise Botanicals. He has lots of experience hunting mushrooms, a new book coming out: “Foraging Mushrooms of the Ozarks” and a well illustrated talk. I went.

One of the good things about this talk was it concerned itself with local mushrooms. When I lived in the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan), I ate mushrooms that grew there. Not here. Now I want to eat more of the mushrooms found here.

I usually find these growing on dead black walnut branches right after a rain. They are very moist, so do not sauté them. They do well in soups or dried first and then used in stir fries.

Facts About Mushrooms

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. They serve only to produce and disperse spores to spread that kind of mushroom to new places.

The main part of a fungus is composed of slender threads called hyphae. If you allow a slice of homemade bread or roll (store bought ones are full of chemicals to slow this down), you can see these hyphae when you slice through the fungus. If you wait, there will even be minute mushrooms.

Most of the maybe 15,000 kinds of mushrooms are edible. At least, they won’t make you sick or kill you. That doesn’t guarantee good flavor.

The main toxic mushroom in the Ozarks is the Death Angel, an amanita type. It is pure white and a classic shape. There is an egg-shaped part surrounding the base and, later, a ring of tissue below the cap.

However, another mushroom that often forms fairy rings in lawns is called The Vomiter. This is the biggest culprit in mushroom poisonings as small children and pets can easily take a bite. It’s called the green-spored parasol mushroom.

There are several different coral mushrooms in different colors. Some are edible and considered good. Check your field guide.

Mushrooms Are for Dinner

This book, officially out September 15, 2026, looks to be a good source for identifying local mushrooms. Even better, it includes recipes for those I bring back to the house.

A few of the mushrooms are mentioned in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

Tags "Foraging Mushrooms of the Ozarks", Hiking, mushroom hunting

GKP Writing News

Losing Found Plants

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 17, 2026

Going hiking to take pictures of plants doesn’t seem like writing – unless the goal, farfetched as it might seem, is to complete a county flora. Several things slow down my acquisition of photographs. The most annoying is losing found plants.

Three wild petunias grow in Dent County. The hairy one is common and blooms later than the other two. This is the stalked wild petunia and likes cool, moist areas like ravines. I found several plants in bloom. Now I need seed pod pictures. Where did I find them?

My Planned Plant Entries

One of my difficulties with plant identification books, guidebook or serious botany book, is how hard it is to identify a plant. The guidebooks have pictures only of the flower. There is a description a non botanist can puzzle through.

Serious botany books, modern ones anyway, have drawings of some plant aspects. These are done from herbarium sheets where the plants have been pressed flat and dried. Living plants can look very different.

My goal is to have a main flower picture, a secondary one of the plant, small pictures of the back of the flower (often needed for identification), the leaf, the stem and the fruit (seedpod, fruit, seed).

A number of orchids grow in Dent County. I came across several of these Spring Lady’s Tresses growing over a foot tall in an old pasture at Brown Conservation Area. I thought I remembered where they were, but found only lespedeza when I went back for seed pictures.

The Challenge of Dent County

Thumbing through the “Flora of Missouri” by George Yatskievych, I used the range maps – notoriously inaccurate – to make a list of possible plants living in Dent County. There were about 2000 of them counting grasses, trees, shrubs, vines and wild flowers.

My main focus for now are the wild flowers including flowering trees and shrubs. Grasses are interesting and very difficult to identify although I do include a few like cattails.

Usually considered a weed, this wild lettuce likes it hot and sunny. A patch came up at a friend’s house and I got all my pictures except the flowers. This was a lucky picture as these flowers open early and close long before noon. Only this sprig was still open.

Going Looking For Plants

Mostly I go searching around my home area. It is convenient and has a wide variety of habitats. There are usually very few people except for those going to the river on hot days.

This year I have branched out to some Conservation Areas. ShawneeMac has been a good place for several years. Gelhild and Graham Brown is new this year. Both have plants not growing around my home area.

This patch of Culver’s Root was a lucky find. It is growing along a road. I’m hoping, when I go back for seed pictures, the patch has not been mowed down and I remember where it is.

Losing Found Plants

I found two new plants this year and took most of the pictures on the list. The missing picture was of the seedpods.

Both plants were in accessible places with surroundings I thought were identifiable. Perhaps I should have marked the plants with ribbon, but these aren’t at home.

When I went back a couple of weeks later, I could not find these plants. Other plants had grown up around them. So I now have two more plant entries waiting for that last picture.

Next year I will mark those plants.

Tags botany project, Hiking, Ozark wildflowers, taking plant pictures

Latest From High Reaches

Watching Tadpoles Grow Up

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 17, 2026

One of the fun things to do in my garden is watching tadpoles grow up. Four rain barrels attract grey tree frogs to come courting.

This is one of those activities parents and science teachers love to set up for children. All it takes is a bowl, algae source, water and tadpoles aka as polliwogs.

Late afternoon finds this gray tree frog sitting on the edge of a rain barrel waiting for his part in the evening chorus.

Getting Started

Occasionally I spot one of the frogs sitting on the edge of a barrel. Usually I only hear them when I am out doing evening chores.

Sneaking up on these male frogs is difficult. No matter how quiet I try to be slipping up to the garden gate and in, they go silent and sink down into the water or into nearby plants.

Since there are rain barrels around the house, the tree frogs are there too. These are often not as wary. They sit on the edge of the barrel, throats extended and calling.

All of those tan squiggles are tadpoles growing in their eggs. The eggs were laid a couple of nights ago. The tadpoles will break out of their eggs in a couple more days.

Morning Evidence

Masses of eggs on the water surface give evidence of the night’s activities. These globs of clear jelly float making it easy to see the tiny tadpoles inside.

Each tadpole has a tiny sac of yolk. They begin as a tiny black line that wiggles. Each day the line gets longer and fatter.

After a few days, the egg mass sinks down into the barrel.

Tadpoles grow fast in the rain barrels. After a couple of weeks, these are getting ready to start growing legs.

Watching Tadpoles Grow Up

Half inch long tadpoles line the rim of the barrel. They swim across the water. A slap on the surface causes them to sink down into the depths.

Each day the tadpoles get bigger. Tree frog tadpoles get about two inches long. Their bodies are black and fat.

Back legs appear and get longer. They just hang, not moving. The tadpole seems to not even notice them.

In the rain barrels, I rarely see the front legs appear. Instead I see tadpoles becoming frogs. They are no longer bulbous, but long and narrow, little frogs with tails.

The next morning, if I get there early enough, I find these tiny frogs climbing out of the barrel. Tree frogs have sticky toes, so the plastic barrel sides present no problems.

Tree frog tadpoles are a good choice to watch as they grow up. They are little frogs in a matter of weeks. Bull frog tadpoles may take a year or two. This tiny frog will leave the rain barrel tonight or tomorrow night.

Where Do They Go?

Baby frogs have a tough life. They must hide from a slew of enemies. My garden has plenty of hiding places.

Sometimes I startle one and see it leap away to find a new hiding spot. The garden provides plenty of insects to feed these little carnivores.

Unfortunately, their diet doesn’t include squash bugs.

There is another kind of tadpole – very different from these. They are baby salamanders. Read about them in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

Tags gardening, gray tree frogs, rain barrels, science project