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

Writing Fear Procrastination

Many writers have this little voice inside that says their writing stinks. I have that plus a legacy of being told I couldn’t write anything worthwhile. These blossom into a writing fear procrastination that kills books.

At present there are four writing projects begging to be worked on. Two are nearly ready for a final rewrite as soon as I finish up another twenty to thirty pages of draft. One is a new attempt to finish up an old idea for a science activity book. The last is my Dent County Flora, a project I have little hope of ever completing.

I do love to go hiking and taking pictures. The Flora project encourages me to do both. It’s easy to immerse myself in this project, especially in the spring and summer when so many plants are blooming. This year alone has added at least a dozen new plants and completed the picture series for even more.

passion flower lure away from writing fear procrastination
Passion flowers are one of many Ozark wildflowers luring me away to go hiking and taking pictures instead of working on my novels. It’s so easy to justify writing fear procrastination.

Except there are 2,000 plants to find in Dent County. Many grow in places some distance away from home where I have difficulty getting due to time constraints.

This should be a fun hobby, not my main writing project.

All summer I have done little except the website posts and the Flora pages. My two novels have been ignored. Even worse, I see my writing fear procrastination in full force when I even think about them.

There is a cure, sort of. Nothing really makes those little voices go away. However, they can be shoved into a corner and ignored.

The cure? Sit down at the computer. Open the novel file. Find where I left off on the draft. And write 500 words every day. In two weeks the draft will be done.

Except today I have to finish the two posts for the website for tomorrow. This means downloading pictures. So much for another hour.

And writing fear procrastination wins for another morning.

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Latest From High Reaches

Monster Squash Attack

Winter squash does put out long vines. But my Yuxi Jiang Bing Gua squash and Tahitian Melons are monster squash.

I’ve grown them for several years so I know they tend to get big. This year I planned for that. At least, I thought I did.

Yuxi Monster Squash
Those leaves really are huge, nearly 18 inches across. This Yuxi winter squash can be eaten young like summer squash or allowed to shell and kept as winter squash. These have a scallopped edge with a shape much like patty pans.

The Yuxi went into a plot about twenty feet square. It has deer fence eight feet tall on two sides, chick fence six feet tall on another and the four foot tall garden fence behind it. I expected to keep the vines growing around the area.

This monster squash had other plans. It stayed small for a week or so gathering root power. Then the vines shot off in all directions. I tried to curve them around. They sent out branches. They climbed the fences. They invaded the garden.

How fast does this monster squash grow? I’m not sure, but a foot a night might be a low estimate.

Tahitian Melon Monster Squash
Although called Tahitian Melon, this is a winter squash allowed to shell with huge keeping times, a year and more. They are large with a long curved neck. The vines are huge and refuse any efforts to contain them. The male flowers with their single fused stamen are large. The female flowers with their four sided pistil are the size of dinner plates. The baby melons grow fast.

The Tahitian melons, actually a winter squash, had no intention of letting the Yuxi have all the fun. These had a thirty foot run to the far fence. This had deer fence along the side and at one end. The other two sides are against the garden.

Ten tomato plants are unfortunate enough to be against the garden fence side. Picking is done by leaning over the garden fence. The melon vines are climbing over them and up the side deer fence.

Tahitian monster squash has huge leaves, bigger than the Yuxi which is no slouch. These are bigger than dinner plates. It too grows at least a foot a night. That is every vine tip doing this.

The Yuxi finally opened a few male flowers. It is behind the Tahitian melons. And those have the biggest flowers I’ve ever seen on a squash plant. The melons are over two feet with a strong hook.

Will these monster squash ripen any fruit before frost? My goats hope so. They love these almost as much as they love pumpkins now buried under the Yuxi.

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Latest From High Reaches

Stopping Future Weeds

Gardens attract seeds of all kinds. The objective is to grow the ones the gardener plants, not the ones that blow in from wherever. Part of my fall garden work is aimed at stopping future weeds.

Those weeds aren’t growing yet. I’m hard at work removing the rest of this year’s weeds. Why don’t I forget about these hypothetical weeds and concentrate on today’s growth?

Because I’m tired of doing so much weeding.

Last year I had very few weeds in my garden. I had taken the time to prevent those seeds from germinating and growing.

Over last fall and winter life threw me a few curve balls. Stopping future weeds was shunted aside. And I am paying the price this year.

Not next year. At least, I hope not. And that takes preparation this year.

One Idea

My method of stopping future weeds is not new. Ruth Stout had a similar method in her book “The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book” back in 1971. It was called mulch.

I like using mulch. It helps with retaining water during dry spells. Mulch keeps the ground cooler during hot spells. And it discourages weeds.

Note the word discourages. My weeds are discouraged, not prevented by mulch alone. Morning glories for one will grow through six inches of straw. I need more than mulch.

cardboard working to stop future weeds
Tomatoes are crowding this garden pathway now covered with doubled cardboard. The plants in bloom at the end are garlic chives, good eating and great for attracting pollinators.

Enter the Cardboard

I wanted a way to keep those seedlings from getting up through the mulch. Gardening catalogues sell plastic to put down. This blocks planting the seeds I want and puts plastic in my garden.

Now, I’m not fully organic. I use wormer and medicines for my goats. However, my garden is as close to organic as I can manage. Plastic is not organic.

The idea is good. Cardboard is a more natural alternative. My feed store is a good source of cardboard. Furniture stores and neighbors who order lots of stuff online are other sources.

Cardboard Results

If I put down cardboard over my pathways in the fall, I’m definitely stopping future weeds from germinating this fall into winter. However, the cardboard must be weighted down to prevent removal by wind. And it must be replaced in the spring.

On garden beds mulch over the cardboard keeps it in place. It breaks down over the winter for easy spring planting.

And cardboard is a success in my garden.

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GKP Writing News

Choosing Fonts

Being a former science teacher, I still browse through several science magazines like Science News, Discover and Smithsonian. These normally ignore writing, except for a little article this month on choosing fonts to keep the readers’ interests.

What does font have to do with helping a reader remember a piece of reading?

Who Wanted to Know?

A psychology study compared how fonts affected a reader’s learning and memory when reading an article. I know. A psychology study. Highly subjective. Be skeptical.

However other experiments confirm this study’s conclusions.

Comparing Fonts

Anyone with a computer knows there are certain favorite fonts, default fonts. Times New Roman and Arial are very popular because they are easy to read.

These flunk the retention test.

Instead, fonts such as Bodoni, Comic Sans and Monotype Corsiva increase retention. They are harder to read and force a reader to pay attention to what they are reading. That gets the mind to focus on the article more.

choosing fonts has a new twist
Do you recognize these fonts? Each line is a different font. In line order: Ties New Roman, Georgia, Arial, Bodini, Lucinda Cartography, Old English, Comic Sans and Montype Corsiva.

Unfortunately, my favorite font, Georgia, is not the ideal font to use. It’s similar to Times New Roman only slimmer, cleaner looking to me. I happen to like serifs on the letters.

Perhaps I should change to Monotype Corsiva. It too has the serifs. And there is that hint of italic slant. Even better, people pay attention more when reading it.

Dressing Up Fonts

The study did check into Bold and Italics. Both did increase retention when used sparingly. It seems using these to emphasize something makes the mind pay more attention to the words leading to better retention.

Choosing Fonts for Me

In spite of this study, I will stay with my favorite font. When originally choosing fonts to use both on my website and in my writing, I looked at all of the ones available on my computer at that time. Georgia is still my favorite. Although I used Lucinda Calligraphy on the pages of my Dent County Flora project.

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GKP Writing News

Finding Book Readers

All of my books are special to me. That doesn’t mean everyone else will find them special. Finding book readers interested in each book is part of marketing books.

Saying a book appeals to everyone is dreaming. No book appeals to everyone. How do you find those people a book does appeal to?

Determining Book Audiences

Finding book readers for my books will take some thought. Let’s focus on these four: “Waiting For Fairies”, “Capri Capers”, “For Love of Goats” and “Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States”.

The first step toward finding book readers is taking a good look at the book. What kind of book is it? Who might want to read it?

Looking at “Waiting For Fairies”, I see it is a picture book to be read to a young child. It has a number of Ozark night creatures in it. And it has a bit of whimsy with fairies in some illustrations.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Fairies capture people’s imaginations. They do lure this young child out one night to watch for fairies at a ring of mushrooms called a fairy ring.

This book might appeal to parents of a preschool child, if the family is interested in nature along with fairy stories.

Both “Capri Capers” and “For Love of Goats” have goats in them. Both are humorous. The first is an over-the-top melodrama complete with dastardly villain, heroine and hero with lots of action. The second is fun short selections about goats, many filled with tongue twisters and alliteration.

These might appeal to people raising or wanting to raise goats. The first might also appeal to a reader who likes a fast-paced, humorous story. The second might appeal to people who like words and the sounds of words.

Nonfiction Poses Challenges

“Asclepias” is far different. It is a serious botanical work on milkweeds covering how milkweed flowers work, growing milkweeds along with the history and detailed descriptions of each species of milkweed found in the United States. It is highly illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

cover of "Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States" Volume 2 by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
These are large, full-sized books with a total page count near 900 necessitating breaking the work into three volumes.

Dr. Rintz wrote these volumes so the serious amateur not necessarily familiar with botanical terms could understand what he was describing. The readers for this book might be these serious amateurs along with professional botanists interested in milkweeds.

The next step after finding book readers in theory is finding them for real. For me that presents big challenges.

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Latest From High Reaches

Fall Gardening

Hot, dry days are a memory now. Summer crops are bountiful. Still, it’s time for fall gardening to begin.

Timing is everything when planning for fall crops. Killing frost (dreadful thought) is not that far away. These plants need to be nearing maturity before it arrives.

Ozark weather has become increasingly erratic over the past five years or so. The average frost date may be the beginning of October, but cold snaps start in September.

Fall Crops

Good fall crops for me include spinach, winter radishes, lettuces, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, turnips, beets, rutabaga (I like these, but rarely grow them successfully.) and cabbage. There are other good crops available like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, Swiss chard and kale. The first three take up lots of space for low return. The last two are not on my menu.

Some of these crops need little protection before the temperatures get down around twenty. Some of the others need protection by the mid-twenties. Grouping them accordingly makes things much easier.

cabbage transplants are part of fall gardening
Cabbage and other cole varieties are good fall gardening prospects as they laugh at light frosts. Cold weather does slow them down, so planting them at least a month before frost date is a good idea. Mulch helps cool the soil in warm weather and keeps it warmer in cool weather promoting plant growth. Fall weather starts in August in the Ozarks.

Winter Protection

My main raised bed is set up for a plastic tent. In low temperatures, old blankets are added protection. I plant spinach, winter radishes, mizuna and bok choi in it. These crops will provide fresh food into January or even into next spring.

After killing frost, I pull off the tomato vines and cover the shade house with plastic. This turns it into an unheated greenhouse. Since it gets full sun, I often have to open the door to keep it from overheating during the day.

Larger drops like cabbage, beets, Chinese celery and Chinese cabbage grow inside. The Chinese celery is frost sensitive, but I grow it inside a wire ring and cover it with old towels on frosty nights.

My new raised bed is an unknown quantity this winter, it’s first winter to be planted. I will try various lettuces and a few cabbages in it. It too is set up to be covered with plastic.

Turnips and rutabaga are planted in an open bed. These too can be covered with plastic and old blankets on really cold nights.

Winter Supplies

By now it should be obvious my fall gardening plans include a supply of old blankets, old towels and so-called clear plastic from the hardware/lumber yard. A water supply completes my supplies.

Fall gardening lets me enjoy fresh, home grown produce well into December and beyond. All it takes is planning, work and care.

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Latest From High Reaches

Mushroom Time

With the recent rain, all the plants are starting to come alive again. That includes others that depend on the plants. It’s mushroom time.

Mushrooms do taste good. They add something special to lots of dishes like quiche and spaghetti. Going out and picking some of those appearing in the woods now might be a deadly mistake.

I do have several mushroom guide books. That does not make me an expert. Gilled mushrooms especially are difficult for an amateur to identify positively.

mushroom time for tiny mushrooms
These little red orange mushrooms like it a little moist as they edge a hole where a large tree fell over and mingle with the moss.

That doesn’t mean I can’t go out and admire the various mushrooms in the woods. They come in so many shapes, colors and sizes.

These things don’t just appear. Underground is a wide network of filaments, the real organism. Some of these attach to tree roots, not as parasites, but as collaborators. The filaments gather water and minerals for the tree. The tree shares sugars with the filaments.

I came across two special ones. One was a little colony of orange red mushrooms only a couple of inches tall.

The other was a dead tree trunk decorated with white shelf mushrooms. Usually, I find these when they are a day or two old and dull. These were fresh with a delicate pinkish cast when light lit them from behind.

shelf mushrooms on tree snag
Shelf mushrooms grow on dead or dying trees. They come in a variety of colors. Some are edible. Some aren’t. All are interesting to see when they first appear. they turn dull and woody quickly.

The chanterelles I was watching for were no where to be seen. Well, there were a couple barely the size of a quarter. These orange vase shaped mushrooms are easy to identify and very edible.

These and others are written about in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

That is the best part of mushroom time: eating wild mushrooms. They are so much better than the button types sold in the market.

I only searched one hill. I have a few more to check out. Perhaps I will get lucky and find a patch of chanterelles.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll have a successful mushroom time and not find another nest of seed ticks.

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GKP Writing News

Marketing My Books

As a self-published author, part of my writing task is marketing my books. That is a challenge for any author trying to get their book noticed among the thousands of books published every year.

Those who claim to know how to do this tout social media, getting book reviews, paid advertising and taking part in various book promotions. All of these take time and a different mind set than writing.

Marketing my books takes me not only wanting, but actively doing promotions about my books. This is very hard for me.

marketing my books includes "Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States" by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
Milkweeds are popular now because of the monarch butterflies. Some are. Most are not as they are small and little known. They can be hard to find. Dr. Rintz found them all and included them in this three-volume set.

When I was young, girls had very few options in life. All of them were subservient to men. Promoting any of your own endeavors was frowned upon, even actively despised and discouraged.

Times have changed, supposedly. My mind set has not. I can easily promote someone else’s book, but not mine. I do try by putting on an act and talking about my books, but inside I cringe at such unseemly behavior.

People are starting to think about buying things for gifts. Marketing my books as gifts is so tempting. Which of my books will I focus on? There isn’t time to promote my fourteen and Dr. Rintz’ five.

Perhaps I can focus on three of mine and one of Dr. Rintz’. “Asclepias: A Study of the Living Plants of the United States” is an easy choice. Even though the botanical world has either not noticed or ignored this work, it is an important one.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
I dare you. I double dare you to read these tongue twisters and alliterative stories aloud.

Which of mine will I choose? Picture books are popular. That would be “Waiting For Fairies”.

Among all my books, I do have two favorites. “Capri Capers” was such fun to write and is a romp of a book, a crazy blending of 1930s movie serial and melodrama. Thinking up all of those cliff hangers and goat antics was challenging and sometimes made me laugh.

The sounds of words, the cadence of spoken words as in Poe’s poem “The Bells” or Noyes’ “The Highwayman” delight me. Tongue twisters and alliteration abound in “For Love of Goats”.

Marketing my books is difficult both in time and determination, but I will try.

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GKP Writing News

Novel Boring Times

It’s happening in my Mindy novel: novel boring times. The run up to the storm and the storm had happenings every day. Now comes the clean up.

Mindy is all alone. The road is washed out. The phone and electricity are out. Water is in short supply. The fences are down and need to be repaired.

So Mindy’s days become much alike: checking for the road crew repairing the road and repairing fences. After one description, this is boring.

I suppose I could toss in a few snakes, broken posts, snapping chain. It’s still the same old stuff over and over. Clear the debris off the fence, back the tractor to the post, attach the chain, ease the tractor forward to pull the post back up, tap the post with the sledge hammer to secure it, release the chain and move on to the next post.

Novel boring times. They bore the writer. They bore the reader.

Novel boring times can use friendly faces like Nubian goats
Mindy is isolated from the human world, but not her place. She has her cat, her chickens and her goats to keep her company. Sometimes telling your animals about a problem helps you make sense of it.

This is an important time. Mindy has lots of decisions to think about and make. Thinking is really hard when a person is bone tired.

There is the livestock. Most of the routines were written about already. Little is changing other than not doing chores in the rain.

Up until now the novel has gone one day at a time. In these novel boring times, do I continue to do a day-by-day account, only hitting a few highlights? Or do I lump several days together?

And right after these pages comes lots of happenings. Writing advice sometimes says to write these events first and fill in the other later. It’s tempting.

My problem is me. If I write the end of the book, it will be that much harder to come back and fill in these novel boring times. I will be impatient and skimp.

Boring as these days are, they are important. Skimping will break the flow of the novel. Off to do the drudgery writing telling myself the novel will be worth it.

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Latest From High Reaches

Balancing Wants and Needs

As I grow older, I do seem to sneak more wants into my life. Balancing wants and needs is not just denying purchases, it’s an ever-changing way of looking at your life.

Going to bed hungry makes going to sleep difficult. Eating an evening snack like a handful of potato chips helps. When I’m running too late or too tired to cook, having frozen dinners works.

Could I do without these? Yes. But denying all wants isn’t good. A small piece of any budget should be what was called mad money, money to be spent on whims. Note the word small.

Driving

Gas prices are coming down a little. That will ease my budget a little. There are other ways to help too.

Separating wants from needs includes separating necessary and unnecessary trips to town. My drive to town is nearly half an hour. When added to time to dress for town and change back to farm clothes plus time to get whatever, that’s an afternoon. What else could that time have been spent on?

Homestead ‘To Do’ lists are endless. Repairs, chores, gardening and more never get done completely.

Trips to town are done with lists of things to get done. It makes for hectic trips, but only one day covers a lot of territory. I make three trips to town every week, but one is on the wants list much of the time.

Oops. Wants? The idea is to reduce the wants, isn’t it? But it goes back to balancing wants and needs. Working seven days a week wears a person down. I now take one day to sell at Farmers Market, if the garden is producing and the woodchucks are not around (four this year, so far), followed by an afternoon hiking away from thoughts of chores and work needing done.

taking personal time helps in balancing wants and needs
Homesteading is work. Chores, repairs and more constantly vie for attention. It’s easy to fall into a routine of working all day, every day until you hate to get up in the morning. Maybe that moves taking some personal time away from the wants to the needs column. My get away is hiking at ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area ond afternoon a week. I do plead guilty to taking plant pictures, but that is as much fun as work. The work part comes later downloading, sorting and using the pictures.

And it’s important to have a little slack in your life and budget.

Budget

Everything seems to be rooted in money. Making it. Spending it.

For the homesteader with limited funds, separating wants and needs on a budget is very important. And having that budget is essential.

Over my life I’ve had jobs paying daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. It is so tempting to skip making and keeping to a budget, just pay as you go. Until the bills mount up to more than your income.

A budget doesn’t lock you up financially. It frees you up, out from the pressure of owing, paying late fees, the spiral of debt that’s so hard to climb out of.

Making a budget isn’t hard. Start with two lists. One is headed income. The other is headed expenses.

If income exceeds expenses, you are in good shape. It expenses exceed income, you are in trouble. Either the income must increase or the expenses must shrink.

And that’s where we started: balancing wants and needs.

This is the third in this series of posts on homestead finances. The first was Telling Wants From Needs. The second was on Separating Wants and Needs.