GoatKeepers Press

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.

The American Dairy Goat Association registers goats by herds as well as individuals. Each herd has a herd name that precedes the individual goat name. My herd name is High Reaches and has been for over forty years.

Spring is a special time for my herd as kids are being born. So far there are seven kids.

These two livewires belong to Nubian doe High Reaches Juliette. They often stay in the barn lot for the day as there are so many other kids to play with. These two are the ring leaders for all kinds of activities like climbing on sleeping does.

High Reaches Juliette was first with twin bucks. She is polled and so is one of her kids.

High Reaches Spring was next with triplets. One is a spotted buck. Two are does, one spotted and the other not. Goats have two teats, so one is left out and gets a supplemental bottle.

High Reaches Spring loves her triplets, but escapes to the pasture with the herd during the day as they are getting so lively and demanding.

High Reaches Agate and High Reaches Valerie surprised me one morning with their kids. Agate has a pretty spotted doe. Valerie has a spotted buck.

The pasture grasses are just starting to grow. The kids are getting lively, racing around playing. Soon they will want to go out and the short grass makes it easy for them to keep up with their mothers.

High Reaches Agate is proud of her little spotted Nubian doe kid. She is growing fast and out playing at a few days old.

Later on, the grasses go to seed with stalks as tall as the goats. Then it gets hard for even the adults to find their way around. All day they call to each other to keep together. It sounds like people in the grocery store.

My herd gets smaller every year now as I can no longer do all the work involved. And, a question every pet (I know goats are livestock, not pets, but the line gets blurred in a small herd.) owner must face is what happens to that animal if the owner is no longer around.

Nubian doe High Reaches Valerie spends lots of time searching for her buck kid. He likes to find a quiet corner and sleep. His mother will eventually find him. Or he will get hungry and go looking for her.

I decided to stop adding to my herd. Therefore, all my kids are for sale at three months old.

In a way, this spoils having those fun kids as I know I will be saying good-bye soon. And, in a few years, the High Reaches herd will disappear which makes me sad and wondering what I will do without my goats to start and end each of my days.

Writing about a flood:

What would you do if you were stranded by a flood for two or three weeks? Your phone, your electricity and water are off. Your road is blocked by fallen trees. Your world is only a hilltop surrounded by flood waters.

Could you survive?

This is the basic plot of the novel I am writing on right now.

Of course, there are other factors involved. Her husband is a problem even though he is off driving a truck. She must face her own insecurities.

As a homesteader, she has livestock and flood damage to keep her busy.

Would you dare to step into this raging current? In my novel Mindy must do so in spite of the dangers of being swept away and drowned.

The novel is a partially done draft right now. I don’t know how the story ends yet. I don’t have a title yet.

What I do have is another rewrite and edit as I delve deeper into the story and Mindy’s emotions. If I can’t feel the emotions, I can’t make them real on the page. And that makes writing the draft hard as I must sink into the story while I am writing and dig my way out to go on with my day.

Reading:

Those who have visited my site before know I do a fair amount of reading every year. I post reviews and ratings on Goodreads under Karen GoatKeeper, averaging over 70 books a year.

At present I am reading the last Mrs. Pollifax novel, “Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled”. This is a thriller series starring, obviously, Mrs. Emily Pollifax.

Mrs. P was in her sixties and bored with nothing but club meetings and raising prize winning geraniums. Her teenage dream was to be a spy, so she went to Washington, D.C., and applied for a spying job at the CIA.

Through accidental mistaken identity, Mrs. P got her chance and the series was born. It’s lots of fun reading, especially for older women.

My other book is “A Drake At the Door” which is interesting, but disappointing as it is more about raising cut flowers than about the animals mentioned on the cover. The drake doesn’t appear until the last fifty pages.