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

Announcing The Little Spider

Book marketing is not easy for me. It takes time and knowledge I don’t have. But I am announcing The Little Spider with a combination book launch party and signing.

This wasn’t really my idea. The Salem Public Library Head Librarian asked me to set up a table in the library. She’s seen the book file, is a picture book enthusiast and really likes it.

I’ve seen these author tables in the library before. It is a lonely vigil. Unless the author has lots of friends or readers or both, few people notice or stop at the table.

Finding an Audience

Sitting around waiting is not my favorite occupation. It doesn’t send the best message to get deeply involved in reading a book or typing away on a laptop.

Therefore, I need company, potential readers to stop by. And the library has such an audience available through their preschool reading program.

My author table will sit by itself. I will have a book reading. And the potential audience will be my target age group for my book.

On the Table

My author table needs to be large as there will be sixteen books on it. This includes my new novel “Hopes, Dreams and Reality”. Even though I will be announcing The Little Spider, I can possibly interest people in some of my other books.

All but “Goat Games” are in the library. They do get checked out now and then. However, I am still a relatively unknown author.

Looking To the Future

One of the best ways to encourage people to read my books is to get some people to read them and recommend them to others. So many people only try out books with lots of reviews which my books don’t have. I know people do read my books, but they don’t leave reviews.

Announcing The Little Spider in the midst of spider themed Halloween decorations with a book reading may encourage people to look my books over, maybe check a few out.

And, as a bonus, there may be time to read some of the stories and tongue twisters from “For Love of Goats” too.

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GKP Writing News

NaNo Preparation

The stores are full of holiday decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t bother with any of these. Instead I start with NaNo preparation in September.

What Is NaNo?

NaNo is National Novel Writing Month. It started as something of a dare between three men who talked about writing novels, but never did. They challenged each other to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.

The challenge was fun. It was hard. Soon others wanted to give it a try.

Now NaNo is international with hundreds of thousands of people writing furiously for 30 days. The only prizes are some digital badges, a winner’s certificate and a rough draft for a novel. For anyone who loves to write, these are enough.

My NaNo preparation

This year is a bit different for me because of the ArtsRolla writing contest. Usually I spend September making up characters and plots, searching for one I want to pursue.

In October, I start creating lists of possible plot points, outlines of characters and descriptions of settings. I’m not what is called a plotter where every detail is fully developed and stated in the outline. And I’m not usually a pantser who takes an idea and just writes to see where it leads.

I fall on the spectrum between the two. Each novel moves me one way or the other, depending on the complexities of the plot. With “Dora’s Story”, I needed great outline details as there were several goat shows involved over more than one year with the contestants and their goats aging through the years. And Dora had a timeline too.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
When I started writing, I had a long list of cliff hangers. Many of them were never used. A few new ones occurred. The resulting novel is a wild romp of a story.

“Capri Capers” was closer to pantser. All I needed was a list of possible cliff hangers. That is, that’s all I needed for NaNo. Rewriting the novel required making a map and changing the story to fit the map.

For NaNo preparation this year

As I’ve gotten older, my novel ideas have moved from upper middle grade to adult to older adult this year. Lots of things change as you get older. What is it like to be old?

Only an older person can really write about this. A senior citizen was once young and can remember many of the issues a young person faces which may change forms, but not the underlying issues. However, a young person has never been old. There are so many considerations a young person can’t know even with interviews about what an older person feels both physically and mentally.

My first chapter is drafted and will be entered in ArtsRolla. I need a good working title. And then there is the outline of plot points, scenes and characters to write down so I don’t forget them before November when the novel draft will get written.

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Latest From High Reaches

Goat Time

So many things didn’t get done over last winter. All spring and summer I’ve been trying to get caught up. It’s left me too busy for some good goat time.

What is Goat Time?

That depends on whether you are a goat or a person. For a goat this is a day spent out eating, relaxing, cud chewing and horsefly avoidance.

For a person, me especially, it’s time to wander out in the pastures with the goats. They may be interested in plants for eating. I’m interested in plants for pictures.

Many of the goats want to come over for petting. All of the goats expect me to lead them to better grazing, then stand guard while they gorge themselves.

Leading the Herd

Being the leader somehow indicates being the one in front, leading the way. My goats don’t think much of this idea.

I lead the goats out to the bridge, or try to. Some days the herd follows eagerly. Other days I, as the leader, am in the rear urging the herd to get moving.

When we finally get across the bridge, I take off. The herd stands by the bridge. I try a different direction. If this is acceptable, the herd follows.

That is, the herd follows until they catch up to me, pass me, crowd into the trail and stop. They are waiting for me to thread my way back to the front to lead them off again.

My Nubian goat herd relaxing for a few hours
Horseflies love hot sunshine. The unused cow barn is cooler and dark, so the Nubian herd moves in while the horseflies are in full attack mode. Even in cooler weather this is a good place to relax and chew cuds.

Horseflies and Heat

Over the summer, the goats spent much of their time laying around in the old cow barn. Horseflies don’t like shade. If you’ve ever been bitten by one of these bloodthirsty insects, you know why the goats avoid them.

The shade and open barn sides are cooler than being out in the sun. The Ozarks didn’t have lots of really hot days this past summer, but the humidity made the ones we did have, miserable. I hid in the house much of the day.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela enjoyed my goat time
My herd of Nubians is small now, only a dozen. That makes them timid so they love having me out with them. This day I walked up near the road fence where multiflora roses grow big. They were considerably smaller after the goats got done.

Ozark Fall

There is a yellow tint in the green tree leaves. Days are warm, nights are cool. Fall has started in the Ozarks.

My busy schedule hasn’t eased up much. However, I am finding some goat time now before the cold settles in.

The goats enjoy the company. I get the impression they also enjoy being annoying.

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GKP Writing News

Teaching Literacy

Few people remember Dr. Frank C. Laubach today. They do benefit from his legacy of teaching literacy.

Who Was Dr. Laubach?

Born in 1884 in Benton, Pennsylvania, the future Dr. Laubach was like most of the boys growing up in a small rural town. One difference was his love of reading. That carried him through a few years teaching before going on to Princeton. He was spiritual and interested in missionary work.

Dr. Laubach and his wife Effie began their lives as missionaries in 1915 in the Philippines. He planned on working among the Muslims on the southern islands, but there was too much turmoil.

The Philippines

Ferdinand Magellan claimed the islands for Spain in 1521. The Spanish had just driven the Moors out of Spain. When he found Muslims living in the Philippines, he called them “Moros”, and considered them enemies setting the stage for centuries of wars between the Spanish and the Muslims.

The United States took over the Philippines in 1898 as part of the settlement for the Spanish-American War. The Muslims didn’t think this was an improvement.

Teaching Literacy

After years of doing other work in the Phillippines, Dr. Laubach finally started work in Lanao in the south in 1929. He was an outsider and viewed with suspicion by the inhabitants.

In the evening Dr. Laubach would climb a hill to watch the sunset. It was there he realized he was the problem. He felt he was better than they were because he was white. So he began listening to the people.

Maranao was an unwritten language. A few hadjis and panditas, heads of the villages, could read Arabic. No one else was literate. Maranao became the first language Dr. Laubach developed an alphabet for and wrote dictionary and grammar books for.

The motto was “Each one, Teach one” as Dr. Laubach taught one person to read and write their own language and that person was to teach another in his village. This spread as he went on to develop books for other languages.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Using picture books for adults to practice reading has problems as adults want more serious topics. The same is true for many easy reading titles.

Laubach’s Legacy

At his death, Dr. Laubach had developed materials for teaching literacy to adults in 103 languages including English. These were simple enough for ordinary people to learn the material and teach illiterate adults or immigrants to read and write.

Illiteracy is a problem in the United States. Up to one in five people can not read well enough to fill out a job application. The government now offers classes to help these people to learn to read. But these aren’t enough and often aren’t stressed for new immigrants dooming them to day work or other exploitation by unscrupulous employers.

Teaching literacy was a problem in Jane Addams’ day, one she wrote about in “Twenty Years at Hull House” (review on Goodreads). Her solution, Dr. Laubach’s solution and one we should recognize and implement, is to teach and encourage literacy with the opportunity to learn and books people want to read.

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Latest From High Reaches

Meet My Opal Goat

For the last five years I’ve kept my intention to keep no kids, to let my herd gradually dwindle away. Meet my Opal goat and broken intention.

Why Not Keep Kids?

Goats live twelve to fourteen years, usually. Mine are as much pets, family, as livestock and I have no family interested in giving them a home.Over the years I’ve found, even those people with the best intentions, often can’t provide a permanent home for a bunch of spoiled brats.

As I’ve grown older, even become old (much as I hate to admit it), the question of what is to happen to my girls has become important. It was better to stop adding to the herd and plan on outliving them.

Other Considerations

Jennifer, my first goat, was born in June, 1974. Forty-nine years is a long time to be a goat keeper. This is doubly so when they are dairy goats requiring attention twice a day, every day, regardless of weather or health or other activities.

For some years I had someone to milk for me over a weekend or, once, a real vacation. There has been no one now for twelve years.

I do need to take that back a little. I do know someone now who will try to do chores for me now and then. The herd does not agree. They rarely see anyone but me and consider all other people something to flee. It’s hard to milk goats hiding out on the hills.

My Opal goat, Nubian doe
My new Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla’s Opal is sweet and friendly most of the time. Like all goats she can be ornery, curious and get into all kinds of situations around the barn and out on the hills.

Meet my Opal goat

High Reaches Drucilla had a single doe kid this year. The kid adopted me as well as her mother. I was glad when the person who bought the other doe kid didn’t want her.

Guilt set in. I can barely keep up with chores now. How could I propose to care for Opal for another ten plus years?

Writing came to the rescue. I really enjoyed doing “The Little Spider” and wanted another such project. Opal and Agate (from “Capri Capers”) will hopefully become partners in crime, adventure and more in an easy reading series.

And Opal gets to stay.

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Latest From High Reaches

Tall Bull Thistles

Most people mow over thistles, spray them, dig them out, eradicate them. We let several of these tall bull thistles grow each year.

These plants are biennials. In late summer thistle rosettes appear in various places around the yard. We note where they are and pick out a few to avoid with the mower.

Lots of Thistles

There are invasive thistles. Musk thistle is found in this area. Their flowers are a gorgeous color, but the plants are definitely unfriendly. We’ve never had them here.

Tall thistles do grow in the pastures. These native thistles have few spines and are the earliest to bloom.

Bull thistles are the ones that showed up in the yard. They are also native. Unfortunately they do have spines.

There are others, but those are the most common around here.

tall bull thistles attract hummingbirds
The bull thistles are near the line of hummingbird feeders. These birds swoop over to check out the thistle blooms on their way to and from the feeders. The flowers are only popular in the morning with both the hummingbirds and insects, so they must release nectar only then. The seed heads are visited off and on all day.

Why Let Thistles Grow?

If you check the labels on bird seed, many mixtures have thistle seed in them. Birds, especially goldfinches love thistle seed. These golden birds feed their young the seed and line their nests with the downy comas.

The value of tall bull thistles goes beyond this. The flowers attract lots of bees, bumblebees, wasps, butterflies and hummingbirds. Since each flower is actually a cluster of many flowers and each has plenty of nectar, the flowers are very popular.

Amazing Plants

Normally these plants grow about four feet tall with many branches. Not this year. This year our tall bull thistles topped out about eight to ten feet. We had to prop them up against the wind.

These are late bloomers so we watched as the stems got taller and taller. Finally they put out branches with buds on the tips.

Other, smaller plants were already blooming. Goldfinches abandoned the bird feeder to hang on the thistle branches and gorge on thistle seed.

Now the tall bull thistles are in full bloom. The hummingbirds make daily forays. Soon the goldfinches will mob them.

And next year more will grow.

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GKP Writing News

Finishing The Little Spider

Putting ‘The End’ on a book is always exciting and a relief. This is especially true for a book that has taken years. Finishing “The Little Spider” is one of those.

I wrote the text draft years ago. That was the easy part. Picture books require illustrations. That was the hard part.

Getting Picture Book Illustrations

When the text got written, I did no drawing. I wrote. Period.

So I talked to several people who did draw. No one was willing to take this project on. So the text sat on my computer, moved to two new computers, waited.

Then I ended up doing the illustrations for “For Love of Goats”. Finding anyone else was not really an option as I wanted good illustrations for half a dozen different breeds of goats. They may all be goats, but they don’t look alike. It’s like both an Arabian and a Quarter Horse are both horses, but they don’t look exactly alike.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
One advantage of doing my own illustrations is getting the ones I want, the ones I’ve pictured in my mind as fitting the story. This was certainly true in “For Love of Goats”, my book of tongue twisters, alliterative stories, short fiction and memories of goats and goatkeeping. I’m glad I can do the illustrations well enough for publishing, an important consideration.

Gaining Confidence

After finding I could really do the illustrations, I got brave. I tackled the illustrations for “Waiting for Fairies”. The different animals weren’t that hard. People are hard to draw. I’m glad little children are so forgiving about illustrations.

So now I’m finishing “The Little Spider” illustrations. Actually all of them are done now. There are two things left.

One is a border for the last page about spider ballooning, the topic of the story. I could leave the text on its own, but a little border of the little spider running around the text would be fun.

What should I put on the cover? Obviously, the little spider goes on the cover. I haven’t decided what the spider will be doing or how the title and author name will go around it.

The Final Steps

Once I have those two things done, I can start the process of getting the book printed. Although there will be eBook versions, the conversions seem to distort the images. I don’t know how to fix this problem.

One thing is certain. Finishing “The Little Spider” will open up some writing time. Of course that is already filled with three other projects.

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Latest From High Reaches

Resident Fawn

Deer are not uncommon out here in our valley. They can be a nuisance. Still, our resident fawn is welcome.

Why are fawns near houses and barns?

There is a small herd of doe deer frequenting the backyard. They tend to have their fawns and keep these little ones on the hillsides close to the yard.

Coyotes live back up the ravines and will attack fawns. These predators tend to stay away from the areas near our house and barn even though we don’t have a dog and don’t shoot them.

The doe deer seem to think their offspring will stay safer near our yard. That might be the reason one doe had her twins out in the small buck pasture.

Left Behind

Fawns get parked for hours at a time. Their mothers come by to feed them now and then, but stay away otherwise. The small buck pasture has tall grass and weeds making it easy to hide small fawns.

One day the fawns got big enough to stay with the doe. One left with her. The other stayed in the pasture to become our resident fawn.

resident fawn
The resident fawn is a wild white-tailed fawn. It still has spots. All day it stays down in the grass and is invisible. It gets up in the late afternoon and is still up in the early morning. When lots of cars or big trucks go by, the fawn drops down into the grass. Later its ears are visible as it checks if the coast is clear again.

Turning the Fawn Loose

Several times we watched as the doe came back to feed her fawn. Each time it followed along the fence, but wouldn’t try to jump out.

So I locked my herd in the barn lot for the night and left the pasture gate open. The resident fawn seemed to be gone. I even saw it outside the pasture along the creek, at least, I think it was that one.

Watching the Resident Fawn Grow Up

A red pickup stopped, backed up and stopped by the house. “You have a fawn trapped in your pasture!”

Sure, enough, the fawn was out running along the far fence. After reassuring the people we would take care of the matter, they left. And we sat down to watch.

Augustus and the fawn have a relationship going. They aren’t really friends. But the fawn tags along as the two graze in the pasture. Both are happy.

How long will the resident fawn stay? Augustus hopes it will be a long time. We don’t know.

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GKP Writing News

Garden Spider Watching

Two big tubs sit near the back porch. Each contains a tomato plant. Besides picking cherry tomatoes to eat, we get to do some garden spider watching.

These black and yellow zipper spiders are not as common as they were years ago. The changing weather patterns might be the reason with late frosts and droughts. That makes it special to have such a beauty right outside the back door.

Another reason this is special is my work on “The Little Spider” picture book. The spiderling grows up into a big black and yellow beauty.

"The Little Spider" is a picture book by Karen GoatKeeper and will be published in Fall, 2023.
“The Little Spider” is a picture book by Karen GoatKeeper and will be published in Fall, 2023.

Orb Weaving Spiders

Late summer into fall is a good time to spot these architectural masters. They hatch out in the spring, but stay small and inconspicuous until now.

Summer is insect bonanza time and these small spiders start growing into big adults. We’ve seen this garden spider watching as ours doubled in size in a couple of weeks.

Every morning this female spider spins a new web. Knowing the spider is nearly blind, seeing only light and shadow, and spins this large web only by feel makes it even more amazing.

garden spider watching
Spiders are amazing creatures. Watching one spin a web is fascinating. They eat lots of insects and these never get immune as they do to insecticides that poison more than the insects. This zipper garden spider will produce an egg case soon.

Patient Hunters

All day the spider hangs mead downwards on the zipper in the center of her web. The big spiders are all females.

A male came to call last week. He is a quarter of the size of the female. He spun a little web close to hers and carefully courted her until she invited him to call.

The male is gone, escaped safely to court another spider somewhere else. The female is now trying to put on a lot of size and weight. Her web is bigger with more stickly strands.

The nearby rain barrels catch various insects. We turn wasps, bees and the like loose. However, Japanese beetles and grasshoppers get tossed into the spider web.

The spider pounces, backs off a minute or so, moves back in and wraps ther catch up in silk. About five minutes later, she moves in for a meal.

End of Summer

In time the spider will spin an egg cocoon. When frost comes, she will die. That will bring an end to this year’s garden spider watching. Maybe one of her spiderlings will stay so we can do the same next year.    

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Latest From High Reaches

Square Hay Bales

Almost everyone puts up round bales now. That makes finding square hay bales difficult.

Round bales have advantages. Since they are moved by tractor, no hay crew is needed. They shed rain and can be left outside.

These big bales have one major flaw for me. They are too big to move without equipment I don’t have. Square hay bales are manageable for me. And, with a small herd of wasteful goats, they waste less as less is put out at a time.

My Hay

For years I bought my hay. Now I have people come and custom bale my fields. For a bit more they even put it in my barn for me.

Watching someone else put hay in my barn is hard. I picked up, unloaded, and stacked my own hay for decades. Age catches up with everyone and moving hay is one of my casualties.

Even harder is trying to explain how I want the hay bales stacked. My ancient barn is difficult to stack in. The stacks fit best in one way. And that way makes getting them back out easier too.

square hay bales being made
The tractor growls its way across the field as the claws rake in dry windrow grasses. The baler clunks and chugs pressing the grasses into bales, wraps them in twine and drops them onto the field. This is a urprisingly fast operation as dry grass becomes square hay bales.

Will My Goats Eat the Hay?

I can’t answer this question. The herd goes out and eats the grass plus weed assortment out in the fields. That doesn’t mean they will eat the same stuff dried.

Every fall this turns into a debate. I put hay out in the troughs. The goats check it out. They go out and scrounge in the fields.

Winter sets in. The fields are unavailable due to rain or ice or snow. Suddenly the hay tastes good to the goats.

Winter is coming. The first taste of fall with warm days and cool nights has set in giving warning. The goats may not be impressed with stacks of square hay bales in the barn while the fields are still green and lush.

I am.