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

Social Media

“Hopes, Dreams and Reality” will be available to readers by next week. That leaves me looking at more ways to let people know about my new book. The suggestion so many have is to be on social media.

Irritatingly, people and businesses assume everyone is on these various platforms. The only two I am on are Pinterest and Goodreads. There are no plans to be on any of the others.

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
As I launch this new novel, my dream is for people to notice and read it. But people won’t notice it unless I can let them know it exists.

Why Not be on Social Media?

Time is a big reason I am not on these platforms. Since I am not online at home, my internet time is very limited, usually about five hours a week. This does not go very far.

Perhaps I could be online at home, but the service stinks. There is good service up on top of the hill because a teacher lives there and it was put in for virtual teaching. Those lines do not come down to me and won’t any time soon.

That leaves me with slow, unrealiable service be it through the phone company or satellite. It’s much cheaper and better to use the internet at the library, so that is what I do.

Nor can I use a cell phone to access the internet. Well, I suppose I could, if I wanted to go hiking across the creek, down two pastures and up on a hill to find service.

Privacy

Another big reason for me to not be on social media is privacy. The companies behind these platforms only want to sell me things I have no use for or sell my information to others who want to sell me things I do not want. It’s bad enough using Yahoo.

Yes, I do know privacy is a thing of the past. However, I enjoy the illusion.

Even more chilling for me is the amount of misinformation found on these platforms. I am not interested in sifting through the lies, the political rhetoric, the deceptions, the frauds and more.

When you do seek information, how do you know it’s for real? I’m reminded of a cartoon from some magazine of a dog at a computer saying “Online, no one knows you’re a dog.”

Where does this leave me?

It leaves me a website few people visit. It leaves me a network of people I know through Goodreads and NaNo (National Novel Writing Month).

My first promotion of Hopes, Dreams and Reality” will be free downloads through Smashwords for two weeks. If you are reading this and wish to take advantage of this offer, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a positive review of the book on its Smashwords or Amazon book page.

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Latest From High Reaches

Necessary Rain

City people might look at rain as a nuisance. Country people don’t usually. This necessary rain waters gardens, grows pastures and woods and brings up mushrooms.

The lack of and the abundance of rain are the mainstays of rural conversation. Here in my part of the Ozarks both conditions have been topics this summer.

cover for "My Ozark Home" by Karen GoatKeeper
Floods and rain are some of the images and haiku topics found in this retrospective of our first 25 years living in the Ozarks.

Local Focus

News is reporting on both ends of the rain spectrum lately. New England is flooding. The Southwest is dry and being cooked.

These reports are disturbing. Even the reports of similar problems in Europe and Asia are concerning.

However, my focus is here. I rarely go even thirty miles from home. This is my world. I do sympathize as such weather, to a degree, has come here. But the reports are for far away places I will never visit. I live here.

More than necessary rain
This is from a flood in 2015 here in the Ozarks. It took off most of the planks from our bridge. They got caught down the creek where we found them and hauled them back. The creek was a foot over the bridge, but dropped rapidly after the rain slowed and stopped.

Heat and Drought

Last summer saw temperatures over a hundred here along with dry weather. Hay fields burned up, including mine. Hay prices soared, if I could find any.

My goats survived on mulch status hay and cold pastures over the winter. The garden lasted into early winter under plastic with well water and mulch.

cover for "Exploring the Ozark Hills" by Karen GoatKeeper
Storms are part of life in the Ozarks and are the subject of some essays and photographs in “Exploring the Ozark Hills”.

Cool and Rainy

This summer has stayed cool, rarely seeing even ninety degrees. A couple of days flirted with the hundred degree mark during a dry spell.

Now clouds cover the sky for days. They don’t drop a lot of rain, but enough for make the pastures lush.

Hay is still a problem and the prices are still high. First it got too dry and burned the fields. Now the necessary rain falls and it’s too cool and wet to make hay.

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
In this new novel the main character Mindy must survive a major flood and put her life together afterwards.

How Does This Matter?

In my world, this matters a lot. This is where I live, where my goats live, where my garden is.

For the people living in other places, enduring weather so much worse than I am seeing, it doesn’t matter. What matters is their local weather because that is where they live.

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Latest From High Reaches

Summer Squash Time

Gardening is rewarding, sometimes too rewarding. Summer squash is one of the prolific rewards.

There are many varieties to choose from. My preference is Zephyr.

Planning for Summer Squash

One garden bed is designated for planting these big, demanding plants. I dig down at least a spade’s length and dump in a pile of manure. The soil is put back on top to form the hill. Three fit in one bed.

Mulch hay is packed around the hills six inches or more deep. This will keep moisture in the soil and keep it cooler as the Ozark summer sun is hot. It does provide a place for squash bugs to hide.

Zephyr summer squash
Zephyr summer squash has distinctive coloring. The squash seems to stay tender to a bigger size than many summer squash types.

Planting

Summer squash is very frost sensitive. It is also fast growing. I stick three seeds in each hill.

The advice is to pull two of the three sprouts. I ignore this. I know squash bugs and borers will move in and can decimate a plant overnight. Leaving all three in each hill is insurance some will survive.

Growing

The fun part of growing my plants is watching them get started. They put out their first leaves. Their little roots are reaching down through the hill.

Those roots find the compost. Overnight the plants double in size and keep growing. The leaves are bigger than dinner plates. Flowers open.

squash bug eggs
A main enemy of summer squash is the squash bug. This is a cluster of squash bug eggs. The eggs are often on the under side of leaves, but can be on stems or on top of leaves. They should be destroyed.

Bug Wars

My big plants make the bug wars easier. I can get down on the ground and look up to see under most of the leaves. Squash bug eggs are collected and dumped into the tadpole rain barrels to drown. Bugs are squashed.

A watering can is another weapon. These bugs panic when they get wet. I water the much and stems so I can dispose of the fleeing bugs. I know I will eventually lose, but this delays the inevitable.

squash bugs
The newly hatched nymphs are green and barely an eighth of an inch long. They soon turn gray and grow quickly to this one close to adult size. The adult has the triangle on the back and overlapping wings of a true bug. The predatory wheel bugs look similar, but are good to have around. Squash bugs can destroy a squash plant overnight.

Harvesting

Summer squash must be checked and cut every day. Everyone’s plants produce about the same time. There is a glut of summer squash.

There are lots of recipes using squash available. I don’t do much cooking in the summertime and rarely do any desserts.

What do I do with this bounty? I sell some. We eat some. The goats eat some. I cook up some and puree it, freeze the puree and have great soup stock for next winter.

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GKP Writing News

Designing Picture Books

Designing picture books is challenging. I’m wrestling with this now as I do sketches for “The Little Spider”.

If you think all you need are a bunch of related illustrations and some simple text, you are not writing and have never written such a book.

The Framework

There are two themes to a picture book. One is the text story. The other is the picture story. They are separate, yet they merge the two into a whole.

Although these books are no longer limited to 32 pages, they do usually have a page total divisible by four. This has to do with how the books are printed.

The Text

The amount of text depends on the age range of the intended reader or listener. Very young children have books with very little text with a limited vocabulary. Very good examples were written by Dr. Seuss.

As the age of the reader increases, the amount of text increases. The books become more like illustrated stories.

“The Little Spider” is for the younger set so the text is limited and repetitive. The illustrations help by showing what the text is talking about.

photographs for designing picture books
One of the little spider’s adventures is meeting up with a bee in a flower. I took the camera out as the little spider was climbing a chicory stem and met a green native bee in a flower. The bees are camera shy, but I persevered. This picture became a model for some picture book sketches.

The Illustrations

Often the person doing the illustrations is not the person doing the text. Instead, that person is known for their art be it watercolor, pen and ink, decoupage, pencil or many other possibilities.

I and many other authors do both the text and illustrations. This gives the author more control over how the two work together in the book.

“The Little Spider”

This book is a simple story of a small spider that balloons to a new location. To do this, the little spider must find a high place and spin a line of silk for the wind to carry it off.

In designing picture books like this one, I first write out a series of text lines. The repetitive line is “The day is warm. I feel the wind. I must hurry.” This is found on the left page as the little spider ends each attempt and goes on to the next. The next action begins on the right page.

So far, my little spider has had seven attempts covering 14 pages. That leaves me devising seven more adventures.

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Latest From High Reaches

Finding Culver’s Root

Finding Culver’s Root was a challenge. This wasn’t because the plant was hidden away somewhere or growing in some special place.

The plant was growing right there along the road. It was even in the same general location where I had seen it several years ago.

Memory versus Reality

I remembered Culver’s Root as being tall and robust. The flower column was several inches tall lined with white flowers. It caught the eye.

The guide book “Missouri Wildflowers” reports the plant can be six feet tall. Maybe my memory wasn’t really at fault.

This year the Culver’s Root plants are much smaller and thinner. Perhaps the recent dry weather and late spring frosts affected them.

Waiting

Finding Culver’s Root was only the first step. The whorled leaves and flower stalk marked these few plants as the ones I sought.

However, the flowers were still buds. That means checking the plants every couple of days until the flowers open.

Culver's Root flowers
Sometimes the flower spike on Culver’s Root stands straight up. The plants I found had interesting curves in theirs.

Photographer’s Problem

The Culver’s Root plants were beside the road. They were also near the top of a hill and over the edge. This is a steep hill dropping down into the creek bed.

Although I know the drop is only 30 feet or so, it looks much farther to me. I don’t want to slip on the gravel and go over. Heights bother me.

The Solution

The flowers started opening. As is true of many such flower stalks, the lower flowers open first. As these fade, the ones above them open until the top flowers open.

I sat down on the edge of the road. The plants were just within reach. I pulled a couple over, steadied them and took some pictures.

Now that finding Culver’s Root is off my list, I think I’ll tackle the native cactus. A friend spotted a plant so the waiting for it to bloom begins.

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GKP Writing News

The Little Spider

In late spring long lines of spider silk waft across the yard. These are single strands, not webs. “The Little Spider” was written as I found out more about these gossamer strands.

Lots of spiders call my place home. They come in many sizes and colors. They are welcome as they help decimate the fly and mosquito populations. The orb web weavers are the main ones to make gossamer silk in the spring.

Spring Spiders

Wolf and jumping spiders survive the winter hidden in building crevices or leaf litter in the woods. They come out on warm winter days and in the spring. By summer these have laid eggs that hatch over the summer into fall. These rarely make gossamer silk.

The Little Spider was once an egg in a case
In late summer the large garden spiders – all females – mate and create egg cases like these. The spiders will die with frost. The egg cases will survive the winter protecting the eggs inside. These will become baby spiders once spring warms the area.

Orb weaving spiders die in the fall. They leave behind silken egg containers filled with eggs that hatch in the spring (Remember “Charlotte’s Web”?). These spiderlings scatter and build tiny webs in the grass. I see them decorated with dew shining in the morning sun.

These spiderlings are nearly blind as were their parents. However they do want to move away into their own territories so they can get more food.

Spiders On the Move

Tiny spiderlings may run fast, but it takes a long time for them to go any distance simply because they are so small. “The Little Spider” is about such a little spiderling that wants to move and has a way to go a great distance.

When the temperature is warm and the air has a slight updraft, spiderlings find a high place to stand. They spin a strand of gossamer silk. The air catches the silk and pulls it upward.

When the silk is long enough, the pull is great enough for the spiderling to be pulled aloft. This is called ballooning.

How Far?

Although most spiderlings don’t drift very far, others do. They have been found thousands of feet in the air on airplanes or miles out to sea on ships. Some cross the English Channel.

gossamer spider silk on pasture
Gossamer silk spreads across the pasture after spiders go ballooning and return to earth. A few build webs soon after landing.

After landing, the spiderlings cut loose their silk strand. These gossamer strands are left spread across pastures, buildings or blowing in the wind.

This journey is the story in my proposed picture book “The Little Spider”. Being a picture book, illustrations are important and take a long time to do. They begin with the sketches I am doing now just as a tiny spider’s journey begins with finding that high spot.

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GKP Writing News

Changing Novels Into Books

When I wrote my first novel, “Broken Promises”, I had the idea that completing the novel was all there was to it. How wrong I was. Changing novels into books takes lots more work and thought. Open any novel and you can see all the extra things added.

Front Matter

All the pages before the first line of the novel are referred to as front matter. This can include the title page, copyright page, dedication and table of contents. These are not always the same for a printed book and a digital one.

My title pages always have a reference to the place the book is published. I have my print copy, GoatKeepers Press; the Kindle copy, Kindle Edition; and the Smashwords copy, Smashwords Edition.

The Table of Contents lists the same chapters. It doesn’t have to be in the printed book, but must be in the digital ones.

Each chapter has a title. The print book has page numbers. The digital copies have hyperlinks from the Table to the chapters and back again.

The Novel

Well, this is what I wrote, isn’t it? Changing novels into books means making changes here too.

Look at a published novel. All the text has even edges on left and right. There are page numbers. Each chapter usually begins on a new page.

And the last page of each chapter is not only a line or two long. If this is the case, I go back in the chapter and either add text or condense so the last page has several lines or becomes part of the previous page.

Digital copies have no page numbers. Usually, they have few page designations as the text flows freely on the ereader. The text is not justified with those even edges, but left justified.

part of changing novels into books is writing the back cover
Potential readers often look first at the title, then the cover and last the back cover for a summary of the book. Each indicates something about the book letting the reader know if it is a book that sounds interesting to them. The novel is important, both the story and the editing. but the title and cover are just as important as the novel will never be read if the others don’t interest the reader enough to open the cover. This one needs work.

Back Matter

Lots of stuff can be at the end of a novel. Some series have the first chapter of the next book. Acknowledgements by the author to people who helped with the novel, comments about the novel and lists of other books by the author are common.

Print books list the author’s website or other social media platform. Digital copies may even include links to these places.

Changing novels into books takes time and thought. But a book is not complete without all of these additions.

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Latest From High Reaches

Thirsty Plants

Summer has arrived in the Ozarks. Along with summer have come tiny rains and hot temperatures. That adds up to thirsty plants.

Wild plants along the roads stand with drooping, wilting leaves. There isn’t much help for them. That is the terrible thing about even a small drought: watching day by day as everything dries up and turns brown.

In the Garden

Some gardeners let their gardens dry up. Their plants must survive just like the wild ones as the gardeners pray for rain that may, if the garden is under the right cloud, fall in time.

I prefer to water and mulch. My garden represents a lot of planning and work. The plants are finally starting to produce vegetables for the table.

Getting Water

The only water sources near my garden are a dug well with a hand pump, the rain barrels and the creek. There is no faucet and hose. Instead, there are two watering cans.

Thirsty plants need plenty of water. Each of 60 tomato plants requires a full can. The pepper plants are smaller and take a little less. The squash plants need full cans and more. It adds up to about 80 cans of water and hours of time.

A better solution is pumping water up from the creek. This is an adventure.

eggplant experiment
Eggplant is a plant I rarely grow as my garden seems to be flea beetle central. These two plants have been under mosquito netting until they began blooming. Maybe they are big and healthy enough to survive now.

Creek Water and Fire Hose

A few years ago, the old water hose wore out. The replacement hose is a discharge hose, better described as a small fire hose. It is designed to move as much water as possible in the least amount of time.

There is no way to water my thirsty plants this way without getting wet, very wet. That is not a problem in the hot weather

The biggest problem is reducing the water flow enough to not uproot the plants while trying to water them. Mulch helps.

butternut squash vines are thirsty plants
My garden never has enough room in it. This year the butternut squash are growing up over the shade house. It does save space and shades the interior, but the vines can’t put down extra roots. If any of the squash get too big, they need supporting. And the vines try their best to escape and spread all over. There are three plants on each side. All take a gallon of water a day once they are twice this size. At least the squash bug eggs are easy to spot on the leaves and vines up on the cattle panel.

Waiting For Rain

Twice a week now I argue with the hose. My thirsty plants look good. I’m picking squash and watching tomatoes hoping they will turn red sometime soon.

My garden survives because I can water it. My pastures were ready to cut for hay. The balers haven’t gotten here. In another week, there will be no hay, only straw.

The clouds drift by. Maybe my pastures will be under the right cloud soon.

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Latest From High Reaches

Raising African Violets

Houseplants, especially finicky ones like African violets are not a good match for me. They tend to die quickly of either neglect or overwatering.

The other problem for my houseplants is my ancient house with its dark rooms and damp drafts. It gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

Accumulation of Houseplants

Even though houseplants did so poorly for me, I kept trying. For a time, this was due to teaching as I wanted ferns for my classes. Two survived for years in my classroom. The native Christmas fern was returned to the hills when I left teaching. The other still tries to survive here.

A philodendron vine managed to survive a spring frost. I had just put the plants out for the summer and I covered the garden and forgot them.

My other houseplant is impressive. It is a Norfolk Island Pine now close to seven feet tall. Its pot is on wheels, but I can no longer manage to put it out for the summer.

African violets in bloom
African violets seem to have disappeared as being old fashioned. Perhaps they seem too tame as they are just piles of deep green, velvety leaves. Then the plants put up mounds of flowers over a couple of weeks. The orginal color is blue, but many others are available, if you look for them. They are easy to start using leaves.

Enter the African Violets

For a couple of years, I wrote columns for a local ad paper. I was just learning to write professionally. For subject matter, I interviewed local people and wrote about their hobbies and businesses.

One woman raised African violets. Her house was full of them, blue and pink. They were lovely.

These plants are easy to start from leaves. This woman would start several and sell them at her church bazaar.

When I left, two little plants went with me. I was positive they were doomed.

Surprise

At home I set these doomed plants on a shelf in a north facing window. They loved it. They grew big and bloomed. I started some new ones.

Now my north window sports lovely blue and pink flowers. They have moved into the kitchen west facing window as well and are putting on quite a show this summer.

African violets aren’t seen so much now. Succulents are the big houseplant item now. Perhaps the finicky reputation violets have is part of the reason. It’s a shame as, if you look for them, African violets come in many colors and do very well, if you have a window sill they like.

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Latest From High Reaches

A Country Year

Leonard Hall was a farmer. I am a homesteader. Yet his book “A Country Year” reminded me so many times why I chose and stayed in this life.

The difference between a farmer and a homesteader rests mostly on two things. One is the size of the operation. The other is profit. A farmer wants profit from his endeavors. A homesteader appreciates return on time and money, but it isn’t the main motivation.

Organizing Time

A year has twelve months. “A Country Year” goes month by month, but starts in March as that is when spring begins to creep into the Ozarks. The chores, tasks and more discussed are done from a time now passed and still present in some ways. Mostly the machinery and attitudes have changed.

The book is set in the late 1950s. So many things were different then. I was surprised the Ozarks had a five year drought as those I’m familiar with lasted only for the summer or, at most, a year.

Hall raised beef cattle, Hereford. Black Angus are all the rage now. His advice is good: putting out good pasture, good hay, not overgrazing and keeping track of the cattle apply for any livestock operation.

Oops.

A Country Year mentions planting multiflora roses
Multiflora roses are lovely in bloom. The flowers are white or pinkish white and have little scent. They normally have many thorns and the plants get large with canes growing ten feet up into trees or meshing with other rose plants. These flowers produce small hips and lots of them so the plants spread readily both by seed and from canes touching the ground and rooting.

Back then multiflora roses, the ‘living fence’ were being promoted. Sericea lespedeza was the pasture legume to grow. Both are considered alien invasives now. However, their widespread presence makes them permanent residents.

Multiflora roses spread quickly. They produce many small hips (seed pods) not as well liked as those of the native roses. These rose canes can grow up into trees and kill saplings.

Sericea lespedeza isn’t well liked by cattle. It seeds prolifically and can take over large areas. Roadsides, hillsides, good soil, poor soil make no difference to it. Goats and sheep relish it both fresh and as hay.

Why Homestead?

Along side the tales of history, people, hunting, fall butchering and monthly tasks, is a running commentary on the native plants and animals. Hall believed in conservation and practiced it. Over the years on his farm Possum Trot, the land healed from years of misuse. It became productive and brought back the native plants and animals as well as providing him a living.

Hall hints at then states in “A Country Year” why he loves living rural. For the author as for me, the biggest reason for living this life with all its work, problems, joys and disappointments is just that. There is time to look out at the hills or down a pasture and admire the beauty, the quiet (lack of city noise) and think my own thoughts.