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.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Writing Endings

Sooner or later a writer comes to the end. Writing endings should be easy.

However, a story needs to have the right finale. That isn’t easy.

Different Genres, Different Endings

In a romance, the couple gets together at the end. In a mystery, the problem gets solved. For a thriller the ending is exciting.

Readers of each genre know what type of ending their story should have. If it doesn’t, the reader is disappointed.

Because a reader expects a certain type of ending, doesn’t mean the reader wants to know what the ending is. A story must be very, very good to make a reader not mind having a predictable ending.

How Does a Writer Know When to Stop?

There are two endings in a novel. One is the end of the action. The other is the end of the story.

For the first, the plot builds up to those last exciting moments. Often a dangerous situation rises to a climax. Will the main character survive?

Once the climax passes, all the pieces of the plot must be tied up. How did the detective arrive at the answer? What happens now?

The happy couple embraces. The detective explains. Someone saves the day. And everyone goes back to their lives. This is The End.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
When I started writing this book, I had an ending in mind. As I wrote it, the ending seemed more and more not the right one. It’s important for a writer to recognize when a story has changed enough to make the best ending different from the one first in mind.

My Novel Is Ending

Writing endings is usually easy for me. I’ve created the story, the plot and know where it leads.

In the first draft the ending rolls onto the page. It doesn’t change much in other drafts because it fits the story.

This novel has problems. The rough draft has an ending. Fine. It sort of fit, but didn’t feel right. It felt contrived.

In this second, maybe third draft I found I had made a major mistake at the beginning of the third part of the story. No problem. I would correct the mistake and blend into the original draft.

There is now a completed new draft. And I am left writing endings for this new draft. And looking for a title.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Lost Chickens

My chickens are a motley crew that spends much of its day out foraging for grass and bugs. So, when I received a report of lost chickens, I took it seriously.

These chickens were over the hill by the creek, a place none of my chickens had ever gone. This was suspicious.

Trying to Count Chickens

My present flock has 31 hens and two roosters. I went out and started counting. I found 29 hens and the roosters, so I had no lost chickens.

That meant there were strange chickens down the road from me. Where did they come from? Did they belong to anyone?

My nearest neighbors in that direction are a mile and a half away. They have no chickens.

Chicken Investigation

I put a scoop of scratch feed in a bucket and started off down the road. It’s a nice walk, even if I didn’t find any chickens.

And, there by the creek, I found these lost chickens. Four roosters. Why would someone dump out four roosters? Potential chicken dinners? Potential money at the small animal sale?

Herding Chickens

There was a time when I pounce on a chicken. I even ran down a fox one day to rescue a hen. I don’t do things like that any more.

Instead, I called these roosters and tossed out a little feed. They were hungry and came right over, not close enough to grab, but I was their new best friend.

We made it over the hill before I ran out of feed. I tried herding them, but they bolted up the hill. I went to get more feed and they went back to the creek.

Lost chickens found
These dumped, lost now found roosters are about a year old judging from their legs. Their spurs are not big. Their legs are neat and clean. They are nice looking roosters. The hens object to having six roosters arguing over them and have taken to hiding during the day or staying near the resident rooster who protects them from the newcomers.

Second Encounter

The next morning, I was headed into town. On a whim, I put a sack of scratch feed in the truck. And met the roosters on their way over the hill in search of their new friend, the one with food.

I parked the truck and started moving the roosters down the hill from handful of feed to handful of feed. We arrived at the barn gate and these roosters were glad to see all those hens.

Unhappy Chickens

My flock was settled. The two roosters had an uneasy truce helped by the fact one was very old, for a chicken.

Now four new young roosters have moved in. The six compete for the hens. They serenade the place all day.

My original rooster feels threatened and gives chase whenever he can. Even the four new ones fight and chase each other. They are no longer lost chickens.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Looking For Her Story

March is Women’s History month. I’ve been looking for her story. It’s often not in the history (His Story) books.

There are two good places to go looking for her story. I’ve been reading books from each.

One place is historical fiction. “Something Worth Doing” by Jane Kirkpatrick is about the struggle for women’s suffrage in Oregon. One woman, Abigail Dunwithy, led the movement for over forty years trying to convince the men running the state that women, the women they depended on to provide homes, raise children, develop homesteads and businesses, deserved the right to vote. Even her own brother fought to keep women from voting.

Women went to jail and insane asylums trying to earn the right to vote. They wanted to be seen as real people with the right to earn a living and keep their wages, the right to own a business, the right to make decisions concerning their futures.

Telling Her Own Stories

Another good place to look is autobiography and biography. “I Am Malala” tells of the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in Pakistan. Her view of the rise of the Taliban and the present fight for the future of Pakistan explains so much of what we read about in the news. Her fight is for all children, regardless of who they are or where they live, to have the right to an education.

An unlikely book is “The Egg and I” by Betty MacDonald. Embedded in this book is the place of women in the 1930s in Washington state. One woman got married, was taken to a ranch and not been allowed to go even to town for twenty-seven years. Even the author was expected to help her husband achieve his dreams regardless of hardship, health or personal dreams.

After the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor emerged from his shadow and became a world figure fighting for women’s and human rights and world peace. “Eleanor: The Years Alone” may be about her, but is a history course about the United Nations and post war U.S. politics as she was involved with both.

Personal Story

Even though these were interesting, they were long past. I’ve seen so many changes in my lifetime. I grew up at a time when women had few choices in life. Wife, mother, nurse, teacher, secretary were the acceptable ones. And those with jobs were expected to quit when they got married.

Women wore skirts. At my high school a teacher could make you kneel on the sidewalk to make sure your skirt was the proper length.

When a girl went to college or university, she was expected to get an mrs degree. All I got was a bachelor of arts and my grandma considered me a failure. No counselor or mentor had time for a girl.

Being Challenged

Today so many careers and opportunities have opened up for girls. But these opportunities are being challenged. Go looking for her story, find out where women’s rights came from and decide whether they are worth fighting for. Otherwise you may lose them.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

New Little Goats

Five months have rolled by since my girls entertained Augustus. Doe goats have little use for buck goats unless they are in season much to his disappointment. Now is the time for new little goats.

Getting Ready for Kids

The does get ready by eating well and getting fat. Their udders swell with colostrum. The kids settle leaving space under backbones and tailbones.

I get ready by having old towels, clean kidding pen, clipped fingernails and plain soap. A bottle with nipple is waiting. Although I don’t normally bottle raise kids, it’s so much easier to milk colostrum into the bottle and feed the kid than to try to get them on a teat.

Then We Wait

Spring, Juliette and Natasha waddled out to pasture and back in. They laid around chewing their cuds. They showed all the signs their kids were due any time.

The new little goats were in no hurry. Days went by. We continued to wait on these already spoiled brats.

first of new little goats
High Reaches Spring had this adorable little Nubian doe kid early in the morning. By the time I was done milking, this little kid was out enjoying the sunshine.

New Little Goats Arrive

Spring’s kid came first. Surprisingly, she had a single doe kid. I’d expected twins. We accept what arrives.

This new mother, although she’s had kids before, is a nervous doe. She was not going to stand still to nurse her kid or let me milk into a bottle. At least she didn’t bite me as one did once. Milk stands insist on obedience.

One is Not Enough

This little doe is up and walking around. She eats well and will have nursing down pat by her second night. Spring has settled down and is enjoying motherhood.

But one kid has no one to play with.

Juliette indicates she is willing to add some new little goats to the play group. Are they? We’re all waiting. And the little doe has a little buck kid as a playmate.

Bittersweet Time

Those new little goats are so cute. They grow up so fast. For years I would look them over deciding which ones to keep.

Now I watch them grow, pet them, play with them. And let them go. Age catches up with everyone including me. No new goats will join my herd. But I will still enjoy those little spoiled brats for a few months.

Categories
GKP Writing News

On Library Shelves

February is Black history month. Since Missouri is joining the rush to ban books by Black authors, I’m trying to read a few before they are yanked from the library shelves.

The local library is one of the main reasons we moved here. It has moved to a new, bigger facility, added DVDs, audio books and eBooks. It is part of a consortium of Missouri libraries so the range of materials available is huge.

Librarians and Books

This is a conservative town. When the librarians add books to the library shelves, they take this into consideration. The idea is to have books people want to check out to read.

Browsing down the aisles I see lots of mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction and romances. Westerns have their own section. The nonfiction area has books on religion, gardening, pets and livestock.

There are others, if you search. “I Am Malala” is there in the biography section along with John Wayne.

Young Adult Section

If the legislature has its way, this is where the purge will focus. “The Hate You Give” and “On the Come Up” are there along with books on suicide prevention, drugs and gender.

Such subjects might disturb some readers. The legislature wants to take them off the library shelves, burn them, make sure even those who want that information can’t see it.

That leaves those wanting information listening to people on the streets who may or may not know anything. It leaves people ignorant.

Perhaps that is the purpose. Controlling what is on library shelves controls what people know so they can be fed anything and have no way to know what is true and what isn’t. We deserve better. We deserve encouraging knowledge about our past and ourselves.

In the meantime, I will go back to my latest book “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey” by two Black sisters, Amber and Lacey Ruffin, about some of the crazy things said to and done to Black people often in ignorance of how a Black person would perceive it.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Reading Gardening Books

The weather is so inviting, warm and moist, perfect for gardening. It’s still February. So I’ve gotten out and am reading gardening books.

Some I own and keep on my book shelves like “Grow Your Own Chinese Vegetables”, “Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening” and The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book. These are now mostly for reference and refreshing the memory.

Others are from the library. Each spring these come off their shelves and get displayed on a table to tempt gardeners like me.

reading gardening books gives container ideas
Peppers tend to cross with each other. The most infamous are hot and sweet peppers so the fruits are cooler or hotter than expected. In my case, I have several varieties I like to grow and save seed from, so I want to grow them separately. Containers let me do this. These are an early Macedonian sweet pepper with great flavor.

Gardening Books Considerations

Gardening in the Ozarks isn’t like gardening anywhere else. Many of the books available come from other places, Vermont, Illinois, Michigan. Others are about fancy gardens I have no time for.

When I read one of these books, I have to evaluate the advice from the perspective of the Ozarks. The effects of climate change are playing havoc with gardening schedules as well.

Why Read Them?

Take the book I’m reading now “The Vegetable Gardener’s Container Bible”. It’s written for northern gardeners with short, cool growing seasons. The Ozarks has a longer, much hotter season.

What I take away from this book are ideas and advice about using containers in the garden. I’ve got several and I’m still learning how to get the most from them. Reading about them lets me find out some answers without making the mistakes.

Container gardening with tomatoes
Containers keep plants separate, allow targeted fertilizing, keep weeds at bay except for grass growing around the container, and let me put plants wherever I want. Keeping tomato vines in check is challenging.

Why Use Containers?

Originally, I used containers for special peppers I wanted to keep away from the bell peppers I grew in the garden. There are four pair set up around the house and yard.

These are cattle lick tubs and will hold one tomato plant of four pepper plants easily.

Now I have three tubs in the garden along with two raised beds which are permanent containers and a long metal trough. Other than growing peppers and spinach in these, I don’t know much.

Last year I had leeks in one. They did well. What about this year? That’s why I’m reading some gardening books. Suggestions so far are for lettuce, carrots, bok choi and bush squash. The first three have possibilities. The last would be a mistake here in my garden.

And so the season begins.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Choosing Tomatoes To Grow

Perhaps it would be easier if I grew the same kinds every year. Instead, I end up choosing tomatoes to grow each winter.

Winter? Yes. That’s when the seed catalogs arrive. Those seeds must arrive at my mailbox before the end of February so I can start my little transplants the beginning of March.

What’s the Difference?

All those pictures look so appealing. How do I choose which ones to grow? The first thing is determinant and indeterminant.

Determinant tomatoes grow to a certain height, put out all their blossoms, develop all their fruit and quit. This is great if you want all your tomatoes at one time for making sauce or salsa. It’s not great if you want fresh tomatoes all summer.

Indeterminant plants send up branches that keep on growing all season. Although these are called vines, they really aren’t as they don’t twine or have tendrils to hold them in place.

These plants blossom continuously over the season. Their fruit ripens a few at a time. I like this best, so I choose indeterminant plants.

first tomato not going to farmers market
This tomato will turn red. Tomatoes are a gardening favorite and choosing the right ones can be challenging. I found this Bonnie’s Best to be a nice tomato, but a bit on the small side.

Aren’t Tomatoes Red?

If you believe that, you’ve only seen them in grocery stores. Catalogs have them in red, pink, yellow, striped, blue, white and green.

My preference is for a red or pink, a yellow or striped and a paste tomato. This last is usually a long fruit with small seed sections inside reducing the amount of moisture and increasing the amount of flesh which is great for cooking.

A piece of tomato trivia: A regular tomato is 95% water, more than a watermelon at 92%.

The full flavor is found in the red and pink varieties. Yellow and striped tend to be less acidic and sweeter.

How Big?

Those huge tomatoes may be good bragging material, but they may not be the best choice. Cherry tomatoes make great snacks needing daily picking.

Bigger tomatoes can vary considerably. I prefer those with a mature weight of about a pound. These make nice slices or are enough for two salads.

Time to Maturity

Even a light frost decimates tomato vines. My season runs from May (to miss last frosts) to the end of September. That’s roughly 120 days.

If, when choosing tomatoes to grow, I pick one taking 95 days from putting in a transplant to first fruit, I’m not going to get many tomatoes. I try to stay around 80 days.

There’s a lot to consider when choosing tomatoes to grow. Those delicious fruit are worth all the trouble.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Chemistry Equipment

I taught chemistry at small, rural schools. They didn’t have a lot of money for chemistry equipment. Still, I had the basic stuff.

It’s possible to buy beakers, flasks, balances and more online. Unless a student is really serious about a chemistry career or one involving a lot of chemistry, such an investment seems unnecessary to me.

Why Am I thinking About Chemistry Equipment?

I’m busy making up more puzzles for “The Chemistry Project” and wanted more word search types. That takes a list of words. So, I looked up things commonly found in a well-equipped chem lab.

Many of the names like Erlenmeyer flask, Florence flask and graduated cylinder are long. That makes such a puzzle challenging to create.

For those unfamiliar with these terms: Beakers are the cylindrical glass containers. Erlenmeyer flasks are the conical containers. Florence flasks have thin necks and a round bottom with a flat place so they sit on the lab bench. A graduated cylinder is a tall tube calibrated in milliliters (cubic centimeters) for measuring out liquids.

glass jars are homemade chemistry equipment
Glass peanut butter jars make good home substitutions for beakers. They, measuring cups and other containers doubling as chemistry equipment do need to be glass. Glass tends to not react, melt, dissolve, contaminate and is easy to look through. Spoons should be stainless steel.

Home Equivalents

Since I don’t have the professional equipment, I went looking for substitutes. Empty glass peanut butter jars work as beakers. Eyedroppers work as dropper pipets.

The scales I use were purchased. They aren’t as nice as the three-beam balances, but they do work for the Investigations I do.

Water can be massed to be more accurate for volumes. If I come up with a tall, thin jar, I can even mark it out as a graduated cylinder.

What About Chemicals?

It was so nice to walk into my supply closet and pick out various chemicals. There were various metallic nitrates for flame tests. Different acids for experiments.

Now I rely on the local markets and stores. It’s amazing how much you can do using sugar, salt, rubbing alcohol and Epsom salts.

Perhaps a good part of this making do for chemistry equipment, is having to examine each Investigation for its true purpose. And that is the point of chemistry: to understand how and why substances behave as they do.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Encouraging Literacy

There’s a push in St. Louis encouraging literacy among students usually shoved aside. St. Louis schools have long been having problems trying to meet state standards and innovative approaches help.

Many of these students live in poverty. There are few, if any, books in their homes. Parents who read set an example for their children.

Why Promote Literacy?

Reading is basic. If a student can’t read, that student fails in every subject as all of them require reading.

In my area the schools rely on something called AR. This has a reading list and students are required to read books from it, take a comprehension test and go on to the next. It sounds good. It isn’t.

Teaching Reading

When I was in high school, my mother became involved with Laubach Literacy teaching illiterate adults to read and write. One out of five adults in the U.S. was statistically reading below a fourth grade level, unable to fill out an employment application.

One young man, just turned 16, was a student. My mother found he could read. He hated to. The only books he read were technical ones, difficult to understand. The key was finding books on topics he enjoyed. Reading was not drudgery, but fun.

Books come on all subjects, on all levels, in so many sizes. Somewhere there is a book to interest almost any student.

Love of Reading

Forcing students to read doesn’t encourage reading. It discourages it. That is what caught my eye about the St. Louis approach. It uses videos and comic books to interest students. It makes reading fun.

The material doesn’t shy away from vocabulary. It introduces new words, big words. My Laubach background says to repeat a new word five times and this program seems to do that.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
A third piece of literacy is speaking. Just because you can talk, doesn’t mean you know how to speak clearly as when leaving phone messages or doing presentations. One way to promote good diction is saying tongue twisters. “For Love of Goats” is full of tongue twisters and alliterations, perfect for helping with pronunciation and growing vocabulary.

Reading and Writing

Reading is the beginning. It’s a great way to get information, explore the imagination. Writing lets students tell others about this and exercise their own imaginations.

So many students hate to write. School lessons are often tedious and, like with reading, forced assignments on given topics.

This is where an approach like NaNo’s Young Writer’s Program comes into play. You can check it out at www.nanowrimo.org.

We hear so much about making our country great again. The first step to acomplishing that is by encouraging literacy.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Garden Planning Exercise

Spring fever hit early this year as weather vacillates between winter and spring. One way I cope is doing a garden planning exercise.

Such an activity seems essential. It often ends up being busy work.

Beginning

My garden is a mishmash of beds, raised beds, permanent plantings, unwanted plantings, outside influences and an eternal weed invasion. It helps to walk around to refresh my memory about the number and placements of the beds. I get to make a side list of things to do and prioritize them at the same time.

The walk around lets me remember how and what was planted last year, how it did and plan changes. Much of my planting is locked in now due to a couple of large black walnut trees.

schematic for garden planning exercise
A garden schematic doesn’t have to be to scale. All it needs to be is complete for all the planting areas. I have several permanent plantings: the flower section, garlic, walking onions, hollyhocks, Jerusalem artichokes and garlic chives. The bamboo thinks it’s permanent. The others are planting areas. The big question is how much I can squash into each area trying to remember the plants can get big.

Paperwork

Doing a schematic of my garden has turned out to be important. Somehow I keep miscounting the number of garden beds when it isn’t written down. Planting a nonexistent bed or ending up with an empty one makes a mess of any plans.

There are five beds down one side of the garden. These get leaves, walnuts etc. on them so no tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, sunflowers or other sensitive plants can grow there. I can grow beans, squash and okra.

Three beds are in the back along with narrow beds along the shade house. This year tomatoes will be in the beds. Lima beans, butternut squash and sugar pie pumpkins will grow over the shade house providing shade for snow peas, Napa cabbage, Chinese celery, bok choi, beets, greens and leeks. In the fall rutabaga and winter radishes will move in.

The raised beds are listed for greens and carrots. One side garden will smother under monster squash, favorite of the goats. The other, away from the black walnut tree, will have sunflowers, tomatoes and peppers.

Undecided Places

Three beds are not assigned yet. I have another monster squash, watermelon, extra peppers, bush limas and mung beans going somewhere. Perhaps I will have winter melon too.

So much for my garden planning exercise. Now reality can take over.