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

Science Basics

One of my professors told his students that, if someone read all the scientific journals in only one field of science twenty-four hours a day, they could not keep up with all of the changes and discoveries in that single field. My Chemistry Project activity book tries to stick to science basics and ignore these rapid changes.

A reminder of this professor was in “Science News” this week. It seems the 27th Annual Conference on Weights and Measures have added four new metric measures: the ronna, quetta, ronno and quetto. These extend the prefixes for both larger and smaller measures needed for some of today’s discoveries.

Why does a change in metrics matter to my Chemistry Project? Although these units won’t, science, including chemistry, uses the metric system.

Why Have a Metric System?

There was a time a few hundred years ago when every town and village had their own system of measurement. When these became part of countries, a countrywide system was used.

Science is international. Scientists in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa need to use the same system to make exchanging ideas easier. That system is the metric system.

Every major country in the world except the U.S. uses the metric system. Unknown to most U.S. citizens, we do use it every day as our money is a metric system. Any business doing business overseas uses the it.

Metric Is Part of Science Basics

The first part of my Chemistry Project is on the metric system. The only requirements for using the metric system are knowing the prefixes and being able to count to ten.

One of the puzzles in this part is a word skeleton for the various metric prefixes. Perhaps I should add the new ones.

However, I won’t. Devising a new puzzle takes time. And very few of these prefixes will be used in the Chemistry Project. I will stick to the science basics and leave those students interested to look up these new ones on their own.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
This science activity book has many investigations and activites about water. These use the metric system for most measurements.
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Bad Weather News

Floods, tornadoes and such are definitely bad weather news. The pictures and stories about these are terrible.

In my corner of the Ozarks, these events are not happening. There is another, more silent disaster threatening.

Now, I am not a winter enthusiast. Snow is nice out the window from a warm room. Cold is to be avoided whenever possible.

That means our recent warm temperatures have felt nice. Walking and working outside without heavy coats on is great. Even in winter gardens need things done.

However, I would forgo this pleasure to stop the approaching ecological disaster.

Necessary Cold

Plants around here expect cold weather to last until March. They sit tight waiting for warm weather to announce the spring growing season. Warm weather like the last few weeks.

Greeting the New Year were wayside speedwell flowers spread across part of the yard. These bloom during any warm spell all winter.

Speedwell flowers not bad weather news
These Wayside Speedwell, Veronica polita, flowers may be small, but their summer sky look cheered up New Year’s Day this year. An international traveler, these are tough plants blooming when winter offers even a week of warm weather.

The daffodils and iris have started to grow over a month early. Both can take a lot of cold, but not common February temperatures.

Slippery elm trees are almost in bloom as are several maples, a month early. Flowers don’t survive really cold temperatures.

Many of the usual spring plants around the yard such as plantains, shepherd’s purse and white avens are looking like spring is coming soon. That does not bode well for the many spring ephemerals such as bloodroot and trillium.

Many plants are annuals. If they sprout now and get killed by cold before seeding, many will not come up again.

Trees with frozen flowers produce no fruit. Two of the last three years have seen few pawpaws for this reason.

Floods and tornadoes affect people as well as plants so these get bad weather news coverage. But the silent disaster of warm winter temperatures for weeks is bad too.

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Planning My Garden

Planning my garden is actually a waste of time. Every year I go over what worked and what didn’t last year and vow to change things this year.

Hah.

Every year I look over the crops I grew, which I liked, which were a nightmare. And I vow to make changes.

Hah.

Garden Changes

There isn’t a lot I can do to change my garden. The size and shape are finite. The black walnuts won’t vanish. Weeds will do their best to take the place over.

Planning my garden comes down to arranging which crops will go where. Even that is restricted by the black walnuts as these kill tomatoes and peppers.

Climate change has altered weather patterns. March is often too cold to plant even peas and potatoes now. Drought and flood alternate.

This sounds so discouraging. But, being a gardener, I persevere. And planning my garden is the first step.

planning my garden includes Zephyr summer squash
Zephyr summer squash is a favorite and will grow in my garden again this year. Last year the leaves werre huge and four feet high hiding the numerous squash near the ground, a few of which got too large. The goats didn’t mind as they love summer squash too.

What To Grow?

The monster squash was a problem last year. I don’t eat much of it. The goats adore it, getting it parceled out over the winter. So the monster vines will be back.

I’m trying a second kind of long bean this year and will need to add a trellis. The posts are there. I’m checking around for some wire.

Snow peas are a favorite. The last couple of years they don’t come up because of the cold. When they do, summer heat cooks them. This year I’ll try a short variety in my plastic-covered shade house.

The regulars will be back: red, yellow and paste tomatoes; sweet peppers; Zephyr squash; butternut squash; okra. Spring will be mizuna, napa cabbage, bok choi, cylindra beets, cabbage, turnips and lettuce. Maybe some carrots in the new raised bed.

It’s fun planning my garden. Now I need to finish mulching, weeding and setting up trellises so the garden can grow.

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GKP Writing News

Winter Snow

Some winter snow is trying to fall. I watch it out the barn door, the house windows. Big clumps of flakes fall down to melt on the ground as it’s too warm to snow.

Snow was something special when I was growing up in southern California as it was so rare or meant a trip up into the mountains. And I was young.

That white stuff loses its appeal when chores take me out tromping through it. The goats and chickens are disgusted. Extra chores of hauling water and putting out hay need doing several times a day.

I am lucky. Winter snow is in the forecast a week in advance. There’s time to prepare.

winter snow on persimmon tree
Last winter in the Ozarks this wet snowfall sat on branches, fences, buildings and ground for a few days. This is an old male native persimmon tree, one of three growing in the barn lot.

Winter Snow of 1888

New England wasn’t so lucky in 1888. This wasn’t the biggest nor the worst snowstorm. It is the best documented as I learned in “Blizzard” by Jim Murphy.

Electricity was found in the cities in 1888. Every company had its own lines so every street downtown stretched under a forest of live wires.

If you were rich, you had a nice house with coal heat. If you were poor, you might have a tenement room shared with several families or you might crawl into a coal storage room under the street.

March, 1888, saw a winter storm come across the northern states heading east and picking up moisture over Lake Michigan. A southern storm with hurricane force winds was racing up the coast picking up ocean moisture. They met up over New England on a Sunday when the Signal Corps, an army attempt to predict storms, was closed for the Sabbath. Their last prediction sent out Saturday night was for warm winter weather.

By the end of the storm hundreds of animals and people were dead. Also dead were the old attitudes about government’s role in weather forecasting and snow removal and emergency aid.

This is listed as a juvenile book, but is well worth some time to read. It is filled with personal accounts and pictures from that time. At a little over 100 pages, it is easy and short reading.

And it makes me realize how lucky I am to watch only a few flakes fall for winter snow.

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Using Plant Identification Keys

Several of my plant guidebooks include plant keys. The directions for using plant identification keys are simple.

How to Use a Key

Each numbered entry has two choices. You pick the one that describes your plant. It directs you to the next numbered choice. One choice at a time you progress through the key until you arrive at a name for your plant.

I had my students devise keys in my classes. Each group was given a set of cards with imaginary creatures on them. They made up a series of choices and passed it to another group who was to use this key to identify the creatures.

It sounds so simple. Why is it so difficult?

using plant identification keys to confirm this is a black walnut bud
I thought getting a bud from a tree I knew would help me learn about the winter plant key. This is from a black walnut and has a very distinctive look. One part of the key asked me to split the twig lengthwise to see the pith. This is the soft center of a twig. In the case of the black walnut, the pith has a line of chambers. Other twigs have a solid pith. In cross section the pith can be round or have shapes. The practice did help a little.

Do you speak botanese?

The trick to using plant identification keys is understanding what the choices are. This understanding depends on knowing what the terms mean.

I have a new guidebook: “A Key to Missouri Trees in Winter” that uses terminal buds. I’ve looked at small plants for years, ignoring the trees. They are far over my head and I don’t climb trees.

That must change if I want to complete the Dent County Flora. This winter I am trying to identify some of the many trees growing around the place.

This book uses terms like opposite and alternate which I know. I think I know lenticels. Then there are leaf scars, pith, rounded or pointed and bud scales.

The terms aren’t too hard. It’s identifying them on the buds.

oak buds
Oak trees don’t drop their leaves so I could look at the dried leaves on this tree and see the silvery bark in long strips. The leaves put this tree in the white oak group. There are several species in the group. The winter key was the place to try. Except I ended up at Carolina Buckthorn, not oaks. I backtracked from oak and might know where I made a mistake, not that I won’t make the same mistake in the future. On the oak key, the bud keyed out to white oak. I’m waiting for spring leaves to confirm this.

How am I doing?

So far the oak bud – I know it’s an oak – keyed out to Carolina Buckthorn. The black walnut bud did key out correctly. I cheated on the Osage Orange and Sassafras.

Simple as they are, using plant identification keys is not simple. There are several more trees I do know like redbud and dogwood I can practice on.

Then again, spring isn’t that far away. Leaves will appear.

cover for "Exploring the Ozark Hills" by Karen GoatKeeper
Many of the nature essays in this book are about plants found in the Ozarks.
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GKP Writing News

Book Challenge

A book challenge isn’t really necessary to encourage me to read lots of books over the year. I love to read.

I love to write and don’t really need to have a writing challenge to keep me writing. Yet I love participating in NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) and Camp NaNo over the year.

Setting goals might not be necessary, but they do keep nudging me to make sure I set time aside for meeting those goals. They are like deadlines.

My reading goal on Goodreads is 70 books again this year. The number is doable and challenging.

Books are not the only thing I read over the year. Science and writing magazines take up time. The Sunday newspaper is enjoyed weekly.

That is why a book challenge matters. It’s too easy to read materials other than books.

Why does reading books matter?

As an author, I read not only for pleasure, but to see what works and what doesn’t in a book. Do I find the book enjoyable? Why?

What parts of the book bore me? Do the descriptions work well? How do they enhance the story?

These answers and more help me improve my own writing. There is no way I can ever copy some other author’s style or story because my background is much different. The answers tell me how I can focus my plot, bring a setting to life, increase the suspense or tension.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Do you like tongue twisters? The sound of words? I do. I’ve read books of these over the years and found the challenge of creating one stimulating.

What will I read this year?

I don’t really know. There are shelves and piles of books at home. And there is the library.

In fact, the library can be too tempting. I had to wait for someone at the library for ten minutes or so. First I browsed the table of large print books. Next I noticed the picture books on the bookcases. There is a table of juvenile books.

Yes, I brought home a book from each place even though I am half way through two books at home.

The juvenile book is “Virtual Currency” by Martha London. It was interesting. I like starting to learn about a complicated subject with a juvenile book as adult books often make the number one teaching mistake of assuming the reader knows vocabulary or other things the neophyte doesn’t.

So I have completed my first book of the 2023 book challenge. Only 69 to go.

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GKP Writing News

New Ventures

As of now I have published 14 books which sit on various platforms ignored by almost everyone. I’m not wanting to be a mega author, just one people like to read. It’s time for some new ventures in search of these people.

Time and knowledge are my two big stumbling blocks. The third is a dislike of the main social media platforms. How can I work around these?

Website Considerations

First comes my website. It’s still a work in progress as I am not that knowledgeable about building a website. I can set up pages, put up posts and monitor comments, if any appear.

Much of the background analytics and set up are beyond me. It takes weeks for me to puzzle them out. One of my new ventures will be finding someone to help with these.

Second come my various author pages too often ignored for months. Every platform my books are found on has an author page. This puts one on Kindle/Amazon; Smashwords; Ingram Sparks; and National Novel Writing Month. That leaves me updating each once a month.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Water is fascinating, so much more than the water cycle. This science activity book explores this, yet is ignored. Would it be more used as digital science units?

Writing Plans

Third relates to my writing more directly. I love creating my science activity books. As a former science teacher, I target the entire book toward teaching the subject thoroughly. And they are ignored.

Another of my new ventures will be to break these science books up into units and offer them as science units on a teacher/homeschooling site. “The City Water Project” will debut in April or May. This includes “The Chemistry Project” now being worked on scheduled for July.

There are two novels I would love to complete and publish this year. I suppose these can be considered new ventures as well.

My target for the first is publishing in March this year. I’m trying to convince myself I can do this. It does still need a title.

“The Carduan Chronicles: Arrival” has a target of this fall, preferably October. That will leave me open to more new ventures in November for NaNo.

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New Year Planning

Beginning a new year in January is an arbitrary thing. Still, coming in the middle of winter makes new year planning easier as fewer distractions are happening.

Resolutions are self-defeating for me. I miss a few days and give up on what may be a very good idea. I prefer setting goals with a looser timetable.

Garden Planning

My new year planning begins with the garden. Usually the garden is mulched and waiting by the end of December. I’m looking forward to next spring.

Garden planning has changed a lot in the last few years. I love growing potatoes, but can’t now. The springs are too cold and summer comes too suddenly leaving my potato plants frozen, then cooked.

Still, seeds will be ordered in January. Seedlings will get started in March. I do need more room for the winter squash and don’t know where to find it yet.

Livestock Planning

February is time to order baby chicks. Last year I raised Columbian Wyandottes. Which breed will I order this year? Chick catalogs are fun to browse through.

New year planning for goat kids is in October
Nubian does are getting fat. There are five bred for March kids and all look like they will have twins. Their new year planning now is centered on eating enough food to keep both them and their kids healthy and warm. My planning is in having the barn ready and kid friendly by the beginning of March.

Goat kids will arrive in March. Even though I don’t keep any new kids now, they are still special. In a few years there will be no kids to enjoy, so I will make the most of these before they are sold.

One aspect of my new year planning stays much like last year. I will go hiking and taking plant pictures. This has been a good year. I’ve added over 30 new plants to the Dent County Flora.

As usual, there are many I found, but didn’t get back for those last pictures. And the stash of unidentified plants remains long.

In many ways, the new year will look a lot like the old year. In one respect it will be very different. A health scare has made my new year planning special as I want to make the most of it.

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GKP Writing News

Backing Up Files

My friend, Dr. Richard Rintz, was hard at work on his book on Asclepias (milkweeds) when his screen went blank. The file vanished and was never found. He discovered then the wisdom of backing up files.

Many programs periodically save documents automatically. It’s so easy to forget to save your work as you go. It’s so easy to lose your work.

Having a Plan

I generally have a flash key open as I work. Every so often my work gets saved to the flash key giving me a copy on my hard drive and on the flash key.

At least, that is the plan. In practice one copy or the other is the one most up to date and the copy is not done often enough. It’s so easy to let backing up files slide.

One of my biggest liabilities is the accumulation of plant pictures taken over the year. This year’s file is over 18 GB. None of it was backed up until this month.

backing up files of common hops
I’d seen this Common Hops vine before, even had a few pictures of it. This year I came across this year’s vine as it started to bloom. The hardest part is finding the plant again to get pictures of the fruit or seed pods. I had to search a couple hundred feet of creek bank, but I found the vine and finished up the pictures this year.

Image File Woes

Picture taking of plants is done for the year. I have one tree bud picture to go and will get it this week. Now is the time I take for backing up files of these pictures because the files are complete for the year.

I tried backing up during the season one year. Disaster. I added to some files, not others and couldn’t remember which. It took hours to find which files needed to be redone and which didn’t.

backing up files of ground ivy flowers
This little plant makes a great ground cover. It blooms for months and self seeds. I’d seen the plant in town and down by the river. My files had lots of pictures of the flowers. Somehow, I never found the seed pods as the plants disappeared under larger plants. This year I completed my round of pictures and backing up files of them was very important.

So now I am taking a break from the novel and going over the plant pictures. It is slow as I must go over each plant, check which ones are in the Dent County Flora books, add the new ones, then back up the file.

Some new ones were added to the Flora books during the summer. There were so many plants, so many pictures and doing entries for iNaturalist (citizen science site). Some plants were unknown and later identified.

By the end of the year all of my files will be backed up. Then I can breathe a sigh of relief as backing up files means I shouldn’t lose them, only forget which flash key they are on.

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Raising Bottle Baby Kids

When I started raising goats almost fifty years ago, the few books around recommended raising bottle baby kids. Now I let my does keep their kids and everyone is much happier.

There are times when raising bottle baby kids is unavoidable. The third of triplets, small kids, rejected kids, sick mothers are all reasons. And the bottles and nipples appear on the sink.

Supplies I Use

After trying several methods, I settled on one easy for me. I usually use lamb nipples, although the ones for a lamb bar are easier to put on a bottle, but harder for me to get locally.

Soda bottles work well. I prefer the 20 ounce size. If one gets too dirty or doesn’t work well, it’s easily replaced. Different brands have different shapes, so I can use one bottle every time for one kid marking it for the amount of milk.

There is a supply of frozen colostrum in my freezer replaced every kidding season.

raising bottle kids creates pet goats
I should know better. This Nubian doe kid was rejected by her mother who preferred buck kids. At that time I could take time to walk out with the herd in the morning. My little doe was delighted. When I couldn’t go, she would stay behind calling me. High Reaches Agate still stands by me as the herd goes out to be scratched (her favorite spot is over the shoulders) and still asks me to go out with her.

Raising Bottle Baby Kids

I’ve used replacer, but prefer fresh goat milk. Newborns get colostrum for twelve hours.

Newborn kids don’t drink much at a time. I feed them often that first day or two, whenever the kid is hungry. Temperature is important for them, about 100 degrees.

Once a kid drinks six ounces at a time, it’s ready for a four times a day schedule. There was a time when I did this every six hours. Now I leave an eight hour gap at night so I can get some sleep.

Bigger kids eat more, up to eight ounces a time. Using fresh milk lets me feed as much as a kid wants each time.

Once the kid starts eating at around ten days old, the bottles of eight to ten ounces can show up three times a day. The kids are sleeping through the night so I generally do bottles at milking times and noon.

At about six weeks old a kid is ready for twice a day, twelve ounces a time. And so am I.

raising bottle kids at work
Pest was a small Nubian buck kid and couldn’t nurse his mother. So he moved into the house and a bottle. The problem was that I worked cleaning at a local laundromat. The solution was to take this kid that had trouble standing up with me. He had a wonderful time captivating all the laundromat patrons and walking around on the tough carpet. Pest is now a two hundred pound spoiled brat of a wether blissfully unaware he was supposed to be goatburger several years ago.

The Problem with Raising Bottle Baby Kids

Dam raised kids are friendly when handled a lot. Bottle babies are pets.

And I must sell all my kids now, even the bottle babies.