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.

GKP Writing News

Reflecting on History in Books

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 31, 2026
No Comments on Reflecting on History in Books

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
No Comments on Book Price Includes Cost, Shipping, Postage, Taxes

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Latest From High Reaches

Succession Planting in My Garden

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 10, 2026

I read gardening articles and books. I talk to other gardeners. Many of them mention succession planting.

Every year I read about how long onions take to mature. Every year I plant the onions in a place where I think they will be ready to dig before the next crop grows over the top of them. So far it has not worked out.

What Is Succession Planting?

There are three distinct seasons in the garden: spring, summer and fall. Different vegetables grow in each season. Each of these matures in, supposedly, a certain time.

The idea is to plant one crop, harvest it and plant another to succeed it. This sounds like a great idea. What could go wrong?

The Colorado sweet onions are planted in the fall and mature late the next spring, like garlic. The garlic matured and got dug. The onions were still growing. I put in the sugar pie pumpkin seeds thinking the onions would mature about the time these started growing.

Planting Onions

This past fall I bought sets for Colorado sweet onions. They are planted in the fall and mature in late spring. These sets went into the bed the sugar pie pumpkins would go in about that time.

The onions did all right. The crazy ups and downs in winter temperatures killed off a few.

Spring arrived and the onions took off. Onions from sets do put up flower stalks. I fed these to the goats so the plants would form bulbs.

Late spring arrived. The sugar pie pumpkin seeds went in. The onions continued growing. They are now buried under the vines and finally ready to dig.

By the time the onions were ready to dig, the pumpkin vines were growing over them. It made finding all of the onions challenging as I was trying to not crush the vines.

Fall Crops

I like spinach. It grows best here in the Ozarks as a fall into winter crop. The time to plant it is mid to late August.

Most fall crops need to be planted about this time. Except the summer garden is growing and producing and will do so for another month or so until killing frost arrives.

Sugar pie pumpkins aren’t supposed to have huge vines. My vines didn’t read those comments. They have filled the space allotted and are busy expanding up the fence to the tomatoes, across the pathway, wherever they can sneak off to when I’m not looking.

Succession Planting in My Garden

The only such planting done in my garden are in beds where I grow spring crops, then put in the fall crops. Any bed used for summer crops is not used for spring or fall crops.

This does leave parts of my garden empty for weeks. I use this fallow time to add compost and set the area up.

Now, if only I would learn about planting onions. Last year they got buried by tomatoes.

Tags garden planning, Ozark gardening, pumpkins, succession gardening

Latest From High Reaches

How Long Do Goats Live?

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 2, 2026

I hear this question from many people. How long do goats live? It must matter to them, although I wonder why.

In my opinion, there are very rarely some goats that live too long in my herd. Most do not live long enough. Sometimes this opinion depends on what is happening that day.

Even at a year old, Nubian doe Drucilla shows the old fashioned Nubian body type.

Drucilla

My Nubian doe High Reaches Silk’s Drucilla looks so old now. This is not surprising since she is old. It happens that way.

When people get old, they start looking old. Of course, some people do their medical best to pretend they aren’t getting older. Goats can’t do that.

Once upon a time, Drucilla was a cute kid. I had to really go back in the archives to find her baby pictures.

By two years old, Nubian doe Drucilla has filled out. She is nearing her 130 pound final weight. Her belly hangs low because she is expecting her first kid.

Taking Pictures

Since I first got a digital camera, I’ve tried to take pictures of all my goats several times a year. They are not impressed by my desire to get a picture. There are many times I see the perfect pose, raise the camera and see a goat butt.

Since the pictures are all stored on flash keys, I don’t look at them often. Partly, I suppose, is that looking through them reminds me I am getting old too. And I miss many of the goats in the pictures.

Dairy goats are in their prime years from five to eight. Although Drucilla is now ten, she still has that strong, healthy look. Even with her heavy build, her shoulders are strong.

Seeing Changes

Looking at pictures of the same goats over many years, I can see how they change. Bucks and does age differently.

A buck takes almost three years to get to his full height. Another year goes by before he is finished filling out. He lives life in the fast lane after that.

A doe finishes growing in about two years. She fills out the next year. Although many goat owners breed their does before their first birthday, I prefer not to.

Whether or not early breeding affects their growth depends on the doe. My experience is that most does bred early are much slower finishing their growth and don’t seem to quite get as big as they might have otherwise.

In the past four years, Nubian doe Drucilla as gradually lost weight. Her frame is still strong, but she no longer looks filled out. Notice how her tail is now hanging downwards showing her social status has declined.

How Long Do Goats Live?

Goats get sick. They have accidents. Dogs may attack them. So many things can cut their lives short.

Drucilla is lucky? She has survived to old age. Her teeth are going bad. She has occasional seizures. Her legs are stiff. The herd has moved her down into last place in the pecking order.

She is fourteen.

To answer the question: Bucks usually live ten to twelve years. Does live twelve to fifteen years. If they are lucky?

Tags growing old, raising goats

GKP Writing News

How Many Books on Your List?

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 2, 2026

Every year Goodreads asks you to sign up for their reading challenge. How many books do you plan to read this year?

Many books on my bookshelves are in the category of research. These two are for my plant identification. Other shelves have books about livestock and gardening.

My Challenge

For the past few years I have signed up for 70 books. This is not because I can’t read more. I can. It’s not because I don’t have a lot more books waiting for me to read them. I certainly do.

The 70 books is doable. Although the challenge is adjustable, I prefer not to. So the number is set at a comfortable height, a little bit challenging, but doable. I hate to arrive at December with a dozen more books to read.

Most of the books sitting on my bookshelves are those waiting to be read. These are some under biography. Others are novels. These are books I want to read and give to others to read instead of leaving them on my shelves for years.

Another Challenge

The reading challenge is easy compared to a greater challenge at home. That one has six big bookcases – four feet wide, six feet high – filled with books waiting for me to pick them up.

For years I loved going to book sales and bookstores to look at and buy books. Half of them got read. All of them sat on the shelves waiting. Then stacks were on the floor next to the bookcases or on top.

I stopped buying books. Now I am trying to read my way through all of these books. How many books can I read in a year? Not enough.

My goal is to include at least 40 off my shelves every year. As I finish them, they go somewhere else. Some to people who are interested in them. Some to book sales.

How Many Books Do You Have?

A book only means something if someone reads it. Sitting on a shelf for years only gathers dust. Books are meant to be read.

I know I will have to read a lot faster, if I am to get through all the books on my shelves. And my tastes have changed so some of the books are no longer ones I care to read.

The Value of Books

As I read “Thunderbolt House” by Howard Pease, the library is important to the main character. He isn’t reading the books, only checking to see what their monetary value is. His great uncle started this library only as a way to make money. Jud originally succumbed to the lure of the money. He has changed.

Books are to be read. Their true value is inside the covers in the words the author wrote.

My books have spent too long sitting on shelves and I am trying to move them off. What are you doing with your stash of books?

Tags book hoarding, reading, worth of books

Latest From High Reaches

Cold Water Stream Project

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date June 26, 2026

When a University of Missouri team stopped by asking to do research on our creek, I had to rethink it. Not the project which was given permission. The creek, now called a cold water stream.

One team member has a long pole that puts out an electric charge to stun the fish in the creek. Other members net the stunned fish and put them in the buckets carried by others.

Just a Creek

Having a creek always running through the property was a plus when we moved here. The source wasn’t an issue. Our little valley is lined with springs. It turns out they are cold water springs.

Fish live in water of certain temperatures. The Missouri University team needed to find out what kinds of fish lived in the stretch of a cold water stream and note how many of each kind to help build a profile of such a stream.

Missouri knows about cold water rivers because trout and bass like cold water. Cold water streams are too small for these fish, so they’ve been ignored. The University project is trying to set up criteria for such streams.

A clear viewing box helps when looking at fish. The top one is a mottled sculpin and can get several inches long. It is a fearsome predator. The bottom fish is a small green sunfish. These are a popular fishing catch, if it lives in deep water and gets much larger.

How Cold Is Cold?

Our stream, one of several in the project, is being monitored for temperature all summer. Luckily for the team, technology lets them put a sensor in the water and it does all the work so no one has to do a daily reading.

Temperature matters as it affects the plants and animals that live in or by the creek. Because our creek has a cold water spring just half a mile up the road and a couple of small ones on the property, the water stays fairly cold. However, the temperature range will help define such a stream.

Fish need fresh water to get oxygen from. The captured fish are poured into live wells, bucket-sized mesh buckets as the project team gets ready to count them.

Who Lives Here?

It’s tempting to only look at the animals, but the plants are important too. Plants like water cress only grow in cold water. Cold water keeps the shores colder too and affects what grows there.

The team checked out all the plants along one section of the creek. Some will be part of the definition of a cold water stream. I’ll look over the list to see which ones I’ve missed.

Small fish live in the creek. I’d looked at some of them when I had an aquarium in my classroom. Evidently, I missed a lot of them.

The team collected fifteen kinds of fish. Some of these are really beautiful. If future creek floods dig some deeper pools, the bluegill might get big enough to tempt a fishing expedition.

Cold water stream fish can be very colorful, especially during mating seasons. The top fish is a stoneroller. The bottom one is an orange throat darter.

Smaller Residents

Fish like to eat. They also get eaten. Invertebrates live in the creek too. The crayfish insisted on getting in on the fish count, even ate a couple of the captured fish. Free food is free food in their world.

However, the team will be back in a couple of months to track down these invertebrates. I’ve seen caddisfly larva, hellgrammites, water pennies, snails, mayfly larva. It will be interesting to see how many I missed.

All of this makes my summer interesting. More importantly, my cold water stream will help set a standard for such places in Missouri.

Tags fish identification, Ozark streams, university project

GKP Writing News

Taking Goat Kid Pictures

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date June 26, 2026

Plant pictures are fairly easy to take. Unless the wind is blowing, the plants stay put. Taking goat kid pictures is totally different.

Getting good action pictures of goat kids takes a lot of luck and good light. This day was overcast and cool. The kids were full of energy. I had a good place to sit. This Nubian buck kid was caught in mid leap.

Why Am I Taking Goat Kid Pictures?

As I plan out my Opal and Agate goat kid picture book series, the illustrations are crucial. Perhaps I could do some cute kid or some caricature kid, but I love my goats and want to show them as they are.

David Plank, a local bird artist, can take a sketch pad out and quickly outline out a bird. Other artists do this too. I can’t. So I take pictures.

Four Nubian goat kids were racing around. Sometimes I had to zoom in, sometimes zoom out to catch them. The challenge was focusing the camera and waiting for the kid to do some stunt while trying to not notice another kid you wish you were focused on. This Nubian doe is leaping.

Young Goat Kids

For the first few days, goat kids spend a lot of time sleeping. They curl up and look so sweet.

The big challenge for a picture of these sleeping kids is low light. I do not use a flash as this would frighten the kids and the other goats.

So I set the ISO at 400, brace the camera and take the pictures. I take lots of pictures as any little movement will ruin them.

Nubian goats are known for their long ears. When the kids leap as they run, their ears flap.

Getting Good Action Pictures

Goat kids a couple of weeks old are fast – very, very fast. A video would be nice, but I need still pictures to use as models.

An opportunity presented itself. The weather was cool. The sky was overcast. And the herd went out to graze. I kept the kids in as they are shorter than the grass. Hunting for lost kids is not fun.

These kids know me. I sat down out in the barn lot and they came out to play. My biggest problem now was focusing the camera on the right kid at the right time.

Now and again the Nubian goat kids race into the barn looking for the herd. The adults have gone out to pasture for the day. Tall grass, nearly as tall as an adult, gets kids lost quickly and makes finding them very difficult. After a time, the kids stay in the barn to sleep.

Time Is Short

Goat kids grow up fast. These four will be sold when they are three months old.

My herd is dwindling. The does are getting too old to have kids. I am too old to keep young ones to follow them.

By this time next year, there will be no more kids. So I am taking goat kid pictures now, both to remember them and to have models for my picture book illustrations.

Tags goat kids playing, picture book models, raising goat kids, raising goats