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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GKP Writing News

Ocean Exploration Book Reviews

Somehow I ended up this year circumnavigating the world with Captain James Cook and Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. These two men makes today’s ocean exploration so easy.

Modern Ocean Mapping

Scientists today have satellites, sonar, air craft, radio communication, reinforced steel ships with engines. Ocean charts give accurate information about continents, islands, currents, undersea mounts and more.

These don’t change that time spent out on the ocean is time away from friends and family. A ship is its own world and those on it are stuck in each other’s company for the time of the voyage.

Ocean Voyages for Wilkes and Cook

“Stowaway” by Karen Hesse is set during Captain Cook’s first voyage around the world in 1769. “The Forgotten Voyage of Charles Wilkes” by  begins in 1838.

These voyages were made in wooden sailing ships. Their movements depended on the wind or, in emergency, on small boats pulling them as men rowed. Storms blew them off course, shredded sails and sometimes onto reefs or rocks.

Without radios, each ship had to depend on their crew and captain. If the ship was sunk, the crew went down with it. Their families waited, not knowing, for years until the ship was given up as lost.

Provisions were what a ship could carry. When possible, the crew fished. Whenever land was seen, the ship could try to refill empty water casks and gather fresh food.

Medicine was iffy. Scurvy was dreaded and showed up frequently. Recognition of using citrus juice was still experimental.

Exploration and Politics

Captain Cook was important to Britain. His voyages of ocean exploration were supported and valued. Scientific knowledge was important in Europe.

President John Quincy Adams wanted to send out a fleet of ships for ocean exploration to make the new United States important in the scientific community. Congress ignored him and those who followed him.

When Congress finally approved funding for a voyage, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was put in charge with a promise of having a promotion to Captain. It didn’t happen. His ships were old and inadequate for the task.

The Naval Ship Yard pretended to repair the ships. Their work was shoddy, holes in masts were stuffed with rope and painted over, rotting wood and equipment were not replaced.

In spite of inadequate winter clothing (the manufacturer cheated on the material) and barely seaworthy ships, Wilkes showed Antarctica to be a continent, mapped islands and harbors, spread American diplomacy around the southern part of the world. His reward when he returned was a court martial. His work was ignored and Europe was allowed to insult it.

Book Ratings

Both of these books were easy to read. “Stowaway” was written in a journal entry format that took a bit to get used to. In the Goodreads system, both received four stars and full reviews.

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GKP Writing News

Annual Writing Plans

I should know better than to compile a list of annual writing plans. The list is always too long, too ambitious and begging for trouble.

Over the years I keep making out my plans. And just as surely life gets in the way. At the end of the year I look over my annual writing plans to see if any of them have actually gotten done.

This year I have completed some of my plans. One novel (“Hopes, Dreams and Reality”) and a picture book (“The Little Spider”) did get done. And there was a bonus picture book (“At the Laundromat”).

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
My covers are a usually a blend of digital and watercolor. For the Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover, I painted the figure then scanned it into the computer. Then I added the background color and printing. Sometimes I do these with watercolor, but opted for the digital with this cover. And, yes, I corrected a few problems with the watercolor.

What about next year?

Novels

With a draft nearing completion for Life’s Rules, I must have it on my list. It still needs a lot of research leading to a rewrite.

Then there is “The Carduan Chronicles: Arrival” to complete. This does have drafts to finish merging. Before that the timeline must be rewritten. I find the size of this is daunting (terrifying?).

Picture Books

Each picture book takes a long time. The text takes thought as it is so short. Each image must not only illustrate the text, but expand on it.

Once the drawings and text are done, I can sit down and enjoy doing the watercolor. These often have lots of little mistakes in them as I am not an artist, strictly an amateur trying my best. So each watercolor must then be scanned into the computer and turned into a final image.

There are several ideas I’m working out. One is a little girl wandering off onto the hills while her family searches for her. This sounds scary, but won’t be. It will be more of a nature adventure story.

Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure is a goat series. I have lots of ideas for these two kids. These will not be humanized goat kids, but goat kids. And, as a long time goat owner, I know how much adventure and trouble goat kids can get into.

My Opal goat, Nubian doe
My new Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla’s Opal looks innocent. All she wants is to be petted and fed. That is, until she finds some adventure to try out.

Nonfiction

I will work on the Dent County Flora. It won’t get done as there are so many plants to find and get pictures of. My goal is to complete another two hundred plants this year.

There are other essay ideas, but these are more writing exercises taking hazy shape in the imagination for now

doing digital and print versions requires a title page
Part 1: Metrics is available for “The Chemistry Project”. Part 2a: Matter awaits the final story. It takes time to get help from other people.

The Chemistry Project has several units close to done. Unfortunately, the pages needed depend on other people for information and pictures. Coordinating schedules can be daunting.

Annual Writing Plans

As you can see, I’ve far too many goals for the year. How many will I accomplish? I don’t know. But the fun is in trying to get as many as possible done.

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Goats Are Expensive Pets

My Nubian dairy goats are supposed to produce milk. Instead my goats are expensive pets.

This isn’t entirely their fault. If a goat doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t produce milk. And I didn’t get some of them bred on time.

My herd has started and ended my days for fifty years as of next June. These last thirteen goats are the last of my herd. As they age, many retire and my goats become expensive pets still ordering my days, but producing nothing more than work.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela proves goats are expensive pets
My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela did milk through last winter. As soon as she was bred, she went dry. She still expects her hay and grain on time. The only comfort is that she will produce kids to help defray some of the expenses once the kids are three months old and sold. And, maybe, she will milk all of next winter.

Schedule Adjustments

One of the advantages of Nubian dairy goats is their flexibility. When I worked swing shift, they happily showed up for meals at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. When I was teaching, they adjusted to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

With many of the does dry, their schedule is moving to 9 a.m. and a half hour before dark. I’m older and don’t really want to stand out in the cold and dark feeding goats. Besides, they are older too and go to bed when it gets dark.

Times Have Changed

When I first had goats, few veterinarians had any experience with them. I ended up learning to do most easy veterinary work myself. Things like deworming, pulling kids, giving shots when needed and knowing when they were needed.

Feed didn’t cost that much. A hundred pounds of oats was seven dollars. Honest!

Now a veterinarian has to check over and prescribe antibiotics. None of the local ones come out to the place so the goat, all hundred plus p[ounds of goat, must be lifted up waist high into my truck and taken to town. Physically that does not happen for me any more.

Feed has moved to fifteen dollars for fifty pounds. This doesn’t count the extras like sunflower seeds. Since I go through a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds a week, my goats are expensive pets.

Nubian doe High Reaches Opal
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal is learning all the routines including the joys of being an expensive pet.

Future Plans

My goats will stay. One by one they will retire and die. I will not replace them and so will no longer milk in a few years. However, the work will continue as long as they do. My goats are expensive pets for possibly another ten years.

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Frustrating Chickens

There is a fair sized flock of chickens in my hen house. They are there to eat pests and lay eggs. This year they are frustrating chickens.

Eggs almost ceased to appear last summer. From what I’ve read and heard, this was a common problem for many. There are probably lots of reasons.

Too Many Roosters

Someone dumped off some roosters down the road last summer. They moved into my flock and proceeded to beat up both my two resident roosters and my hens.

Frustrating chickens, all talk and no eggs
Purrsey rooster was dumped off and joined the flock. He is a proud bird and thinks he should rule the roost. Unfortunately the hens don’t appreciate all the uproar between the roosters. I’m hoping this will settle down more next year as the roosters get older. His name is because he sounds like a cat’s purr when he calls hens over.

All but one left. The damage was already done. My hens were traumatized which is not good for egg production.

Black Snakes

There are several big, and I do mean big, black snakes that live under my barn floor all summer. Eggs are a favorite delicacy.

However, the snakes also eat some of the thousands of mice, any rats that attempt to move in and discourage the copperheads. So I put up with losing a few eggs.

The problem last summer was a younger black snake, a mere five footer (The big ones are seven feet and six feet.). This one was determined to get to those eggs, even sliding under the hens in the nests to wait for the egg to arrive.

The hens were not happy. They moved out to the hay trough, the tall grass, anyplace but the nests.

Heat

Like much of the country, the Ozarks had a heat wave go by. The chickens hid in the barn, under the trees, next to the barn, anyplace there was shade. They still panted as chickens can’t sweat. One older hen went hoarse.

Egg production ceased.

Older Hens

My flock is mixed ages. I tend to add six to eight pullets each year. The others stay until they die of old age.

Older hens lay larger eggs, but fewer of them. They tend to stop laying after molting in the fall and not start again until the end of January.

Mr. Smarty, another rooster for my frustrating chickens
Mr. Smarty is a very proud rooster. He thinks he should be in charge and is most upset that I am. He is a Columbian Wyandotte.

Light Problems

For years I’ve used lights to lengthen the days for my hens to encourage them to lay longer in the fall. The new LED lights don’t seem to have the right colors of light, so this doesn’t seem to work very well any more.

All of this adds up to frustrating chickens and a shortage of eggs in my kitchen.

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GKP Writing News

End of Year Book Race

Each January I set a reading goal on Goodreads. For several years that goal has been seventy books. There is always temptation to increase it, but the December end of year book race squelches it.

The goal was seventy books again this year. I have been running a book or two ahead of the number Goodreads thinks will meet that goal all year. However, I still have three books to do and two weeks left in the year.

Is This Doable?

Of course the goal is doable. I set the goal to be obtainable. It’s a good feeling to actually accomplish one goal for the year.

At present I’m reading two books, “Sixteen Tons” and “The Cat Who Said Cheese”. Both have fewer than a hundred pages left to read in them.

Two more books are waiting. “The Christmas Pony” seems made to order for a horse crazy person like me. And a new book at the library is “Octopus, Seahorse Jellyfish”, appealing as I grew up near the ocean and studied it in University.

Desperate Measures

Life happens. Last year turned into an end of year book race that seemed unwinnable.

Then I turn to picture books. Now, I do read these all year, but rarely list them on Goodreads.

Picture books are very short and that messes up my average page count on Goodreads. And I rarely check these books out. Instead I stand in the children’s section to read one or two before heading off to do errands. There are several on my book shelf at home for when I want to relax or destress.

My reading goal for the year has been 70 books. This year also saw three books published. What about next year?

Next Year?

Even though this December doesn’t seem to be turning into a frantic end of year book race, I will leave my goal at seventy books next January. It’s a comfortable goal and it’s nice to have something a little challenging, but not out of reach.

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Social Media Headache

My internet time is very limited and I’m not interested in joining the social media sites except for Pinterest. Unfortunately I now have a social media headache.

Life’s Rules Plotline

Stephanie Taylor, the main character, is estranged from her children. She would like to reconnect, but doesn’t know how.

Somehow I ended up with her finding their Facebook pages to find out more about her children’s lives and her grandchildren, the ones she’s only seen at Christmas for years. This is plausible as far as I know. I’ve heard many people say they keep up with their families through Facebook.

However, I am not on Facebook and do not wish to join. This is the basis of my social media headache.

Research

I vaguely remember I could visit Facebook pages, just look at them, by typing in the address or doing a search for the person. This works for the library Facebook page. It worked for a cousin with a business.

The big difficulty is the time it takes to blunder along trying to do this. The next step seems to be to ask someone with a Facebook page more about it.

That leaves me back with my social media headache. Whom do I know who would be willing to do this?

In the Meantime

After November, I tend to goof off for a week or two. I opened up my ebook revision for the Pumpkin Project.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was one of my first books. I now have trouble finding where all the pictures, puzzles and other images are. Record keeping is very important in writing not only for writing a novel, but for writing a series or for doing later rewrites.

This takes me to a different set of headaches. The print file is huge, over 96 MB. It needs to come down to under 25 MB.

So far my line of attack is to resize all photographs, some of which are very difficult to find after many years. I’m also removing page breaks, page numbers, tabs, section breaks and extra spaces.

It is working a little. I’m down 10 MB. There are still 140 pages to go to keep me occupied while I solve my social media headache so I can complete Life’s Rules.

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Goats Love Pumpkins

Pumpkins are great food for people and goats. They are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Luckily goats love pumpkins.

Previous Years

I don’t remember when I found out goats love pumpkins. It started me asking people around town for their pumpkins left sitting out after Halloween and Thanksgiving.

These were cut up and fed to the goats. The pieces were about two inches square and a quarter inch thick. It was like feeding coins into a slot machine as the pieces disappeared so fast.

Any pumpkins too soft to cut into pieces were broken up out in the pasture. The goats ate the parts they wanted. Some of the seeds came up the next spring and even made a few pumpkins.

old garden resists new garden beginning
My sugar pie pumpkins seem to have the shortest keeping time in the pantry. These are the first ones to feed the goats. There are enough to keep them almost to the end of the month.

This Year

Another goat owner is now collecting many of the pumpkins around town for her goats. I’m glad as I cringe a bit inside watching leftovers slowly rot away wishing I could take them home.

This isn’t because I don’t want to. My goats love pumpkins and are busy eating them every morning and night. They eat close to a pumpkin a day.

It’s because I raised both my goats’ favorite squash and pumpkins last summer. My pantry has so many piled in it, I have trouble reaching the shelves for stored food. The goats will be eating these easily to March.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although “The Pumpkin Project” is primarily a science activity book, it has lots of information about pumpkins in it. The last section has recipes for soups, breads, cheesecake, pie and more.

Eating Pumpkin

My goats don’t get all of the pumpkins and squash. Some of the pumpkins turn into puree which becomes cookies usually.

The goat special squash is a cushaw cross we don’t care for. So the goats do get all of these.

There is the yuxi squash. We generally eat one or two of these. They are big and, as older people, we don’t eat a lot.

Besides, we love butternut squash. These vines were very busy last summer and we will be eating these for months.

My goats love pumpkins and goat squash and butternut squash. I enjoy sharing them with my goats.

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Averted Tragedy

Last night one of my new hens, one of my winter layers didn’t come in. All night I thought she was picked off by a fox or a hawk. This morning she was the lucky one that averted tragedy.

Accidents Happen

Rural living is an invitation to accidents. Machines don’t work as expected. Wire snaps. Wood or metal beams fall.

Livestock has its share of accidents too. Some end tragically. Some are averted tragedy.

Trapped Goats

As told in “For Love of Goats”, we had a young doe slip down into the crotch of a tree. My companion found her and lifted her out. Otherwise she was trapped, unable to get her hooves on anything to let her push out of the tree.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Part of “For Love of Goats” is a series of memoirs taken from my many years raising dairy goats. Kids are often in trouble. They can get trapped, lost, hurt. The best account is averting tragedy for the kid in trouble.

There was another such incident. This time a doe was stepping over a fallen tree. It had two trunks. The ground was a hillside covered with gravel.

The doe slid down the tree trunk into the crotch and got stuck. When she didn’t come in that evening, I went looking. It took two of us to slide her up out of that trap.

The next morning that upper trunk became firewood.

Trapped Chicken

I have extra water buckets placed upside down along the fence into the goat barn lot. The buckets I’m using sit on top of these, easy to grab to fill at the hand pump.

This morning the bucket had fallen onto the ground. When I picked it up, my lost hen was under it. She was eager to get back in the chicken yard where she promptly grabbed the vole the flock was arguing over.

Avoiding Tragedy

No matter how careful I try to be, accidents happen. Some do end in tragedy. Most do not. There is reason for this.

When my flock goes back in their yard at night, I count them. Three of this kind, three of those, seven of the other, until all are accounted for.

The same is true for the goats. I make sure everyone goes out and everyone comes in.

The chickens are locked up at night. The goats are in their barn.

I much prefer taking precautions to having another averted tragedy tale to tell.

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Finishing NaNo

Life’s Rules is not done. Yes, finishing NaNo did happen, but not with a completed draft. Difficulties arose.

The Idea

Before November, I made out a bullet list of the major scenes I expected to occur in my nove Life’s Rules. And the first fifteen thousand words went according to plan.

Then the novel took a sharp turn. The bullet list became obsolete. Even though the novel still moved in the same general direction, the route had changed.

Hated Timelines

This novel draft was supposed to move from beginning to end with little deviation. Finishing NaNo with a rough draft seemed a sure thing.

Instead I ended up with a different novel, one requiring a timeline. And I didn’t have one. I blundered on for thousands of words until the novel began to look like a disaster happening in slow motion.

Solution

There were three possibilities. One was to abandon the whole thing, write something else. That wasn’t what I wanted to do.

A second was to continue with the disaster I was working on. The ending draft might be over the fifty thousand words, but it would be a mess requiring months of work and rewrite to straighten out.

This alternative was not attractive. I don’t mind doing rewrites. I do mind doing unnecessary rewrites. And this would be one.

That left the third alternative. I started back at the beginning and did a rewrite of the twenty-three thousand words I’d completed.

This time I put in the timeline. It meant adding some new material and deleting other scenes. Some got altered to fit into the timeline.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was my first attempt to complete NaNo. I had an idea. I had a bullet list. And it all went wrong. Unlike this month, I kept slogging on and ended up with 50,000 words I totally discarded. It wasn’t until several years later I revisited this novel idea and wrote “Broken Promises”.

The Result

I ended up finishing NaNo with half a draft. It isn’t completely right. It needs another thirty or forty thousand more words to finish the draft. This can be done in December.

Perhaps I did break an unwritten rule of NaNo of not editing. However, I ended up with half a draft of workable prose.

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Wildlife Defenses

Winter ends most gardening. A few cold weather crops remain in protected areas. Most of the garden is cleared and ready for erecting wildlife defenses.

One thing a rural gardener learns early on is that wildlife is persistent. And numerous. And inventive.

Groundhogs

Four or five groundhogs invaded my garden last season. These herbivores are voracious. Although they have preferences, any vegetables will appear on their menu at some time except mints. But I don’t want to only raise basil, mint, monarda and catmint.

These persistent creatures can climb, but prefer to dig under fences. My wildlife defenses will include old roofing tin dug down along the fence lines.

wildlife defenses are challenging against groundhogs aka woodchucks
The groundhog aka woodchuck lives in the back yard far from my garden. It’s an interesting creature to watch. Any living near my garden require defensive measures to prevent digging under the fence or climbing over it. The only really effective control is live trapping and shooting.

Deer

Every year I seem to have a deer leaping over the fence. The Jerusalem artichokes and greens disappear. Any tomato showing color disappears.

Last year I put up another layer of fencing so increase the height of my garden fence to six feet. This worked except for the gates.

Putting wire across over the gates worked. It also made garden access difficult.

My wildlife defenses include taking all gates up to four feet tall, putting in tall gateposts and stringing wire across starting six inches over my head. Anyone else can duck.

Squirrels, Chipmunks and Pack Rats

These invaders eat greens and tomatoes and peppers. What they don’t eat, they carry off. Either way, the plants and their fruits disappear.

I don’t mind sharing with any of the animals, but they don’t share. They take every last one.

My wildlife defenses include cold frames over the raised beds to protect the greens. These will have hardware screening for the warm seasons and plastic over the late fall and winter. I’m hoping the screening will discourage small herbivores like cabbage moth caterpillars and grasshoppers as well as the furry ones.

Tomatoes and peppers will need wire cages. This will make harvesting difficult unless I can think of a way to make gate access to each one. That will be left for in the spring.

wildlife defenses sometimes are needed against livestock
Chicken invasions of the garden are a disaster. Even in their yard, they dig holes. Their droppings burn vegetation due to high nitrogen content. A good fence of 2 x 4 welded wire has worked around my garden as long as I remember to keep the gates closed. They look at the garden longingly hoping I will slip up and are delighted when I do.

Weeds

The best weed defense I’ve found is covering every bed with cardboard and mulch. This stops most of the unwanted weeds from getting started over the winter which dead nettle, chickweed and wooly mint do.

Winter will be a busy season this year as I put up my wildlife defenses and smother weeds. The payoff will come next year, I hope. However, the invaders will come up with other plans to thwart.