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

Wonderful Words

English is a hard language to learn. At its most basic it is a Germanic language using a Latin rule set. What saves the language is all the wonderful words it embraces.

Those words come from so many places. A large number are based on Latin. Anglo Saxon words take over for many basic names.

Then words come from all over the world, moving into the vocabulary. People make up words that become popular. Words like laser, sonar, snafu form from initials.

Inspiration for wonderful words
Goats can be a nuisance at times. They mean work many times. Their personalities and looks make those things inconsequential.

Writers Mine English Vocabulary

I suppose not all writers go looking for that perfect word, the one that describes a situation more perfectly than the common word. For me that is a waste of the treasure trove of wonderful words at my disposal.

Start with a color word like red. If you read the word red, what do you picture? Every reader can picture a different red which may not matter. If it does, red is not the right word. Perhaps auburn, crimson, brick, fire engine, rusty, blood or others would be better choices, make the reader see what the author sees.

Words Have Sounds

It’s snowing. It better not in August, but perhaps the book is set in December. I know snow comes in many forms and each has its own sound. Icy snow falling at low temperatures has a swishing, sharp sound. Warmer temperatures bring a soft, sibilant sounding snow. Close to freezing temperatures brings a snow that plops.

Alliteration is fun too both for writing, reading and speaking. Goats gallop gaily. Saanens step softly. The eight wait.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Increase your vocabulary and improve your pronunciation with this book. You might even have a few laughs. Get a free eBook copy from Smashwords with coupon code P93KK.

For Love of Goats

I love the sounds of all those wonderful words. I grew up saying tongue twisters. That is the basis of this book about some of the lighter sides of goats.

Each letter of the alphabet has a page of alliteration, tongue twisters or homonyms. Each will enlarge your vocabulary and improve your pronunciation.

The free eBook copy of this book is available through August 31, 2024, from Smashwords with coupon code P93KK. If you enjoy the book, please let others know by leaving a review on the book page or on Amazon or Goodreads.

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Latest From High Reaches

Giant Sunflowers

The roadsides are lined with yellow and orange wild sunflowers of many kinds. This year giant sunflowers are growing in my garden.

Last Year

Seed catalogs have lots of pictures of many varieties of sunflowers. Most are strictly pretty flowers. A few will produce edible seeds.

Some of these are giant sunflowers growing to ten feet or more. A packet of Mongolian Giants was added to the seed order just for fun.

Wind can be a problem for tall plants. After some thought, I placed the sunflowers along a tall deer fence so I could tie them up, if necessary.

The problem was how edible sunflowers are. Deer reached through the fence. Groundhogs crawled through. Only one plant, hidden inside yet another wire ring, survived.

This plant grew tall although a few leaves disappeared. It produced a large flower head. No bird even looked at this treat as every seed was empty.

giant sunflowers
Watching these giant sunflower plants get taller and taller is fun. The flowerheads seem to start small and get bigger. It’s a good thing they are against a fence as the flowers made the plants top heavy. I’ve had a couple tall over and tied the others to increase support for them.

This Year

I had left over seeds. A different fence was selected, an interior one. And the plants grew. And grew.

Giant sunflowers are giants. Some of these must be ten feet tall and tower over me as well as the tomatoes growing on the other side of the fence and the okra trying to grow alongside of them.

Now these giants are blooming. Interestingly, the heads open only about six inches across then steadily get bigger. They start facing out toward the sun and later bend down.

Just For Fun

Although we like eating sunflower seeds, there won’t be enough to last very long. The birds will probably get many of the seeds as the flower heads are too far overhead to bag.

The packets boast how tall the plants get. I remember county fair entries of these as people vied for who could grow the tallest ones.

We won’t enter these in any fairs as our county fairs are now past. However, these giant sunflowers have been fun to grow.

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Latest From High Reaches

My Ozark Creek

After two days dealing with baling and putting hay in the barn, I was tired. The day was warm and overcast so a walk down to visit the goats and explore my Ozark creek seemed a good idea.

This idea had another appeal to it. As I write about the Ship Nineteen Carduans, their creek, which they consider a river, is a place they go to often.

a section of my Ozark creek
This section of my Ozark creek is wider than I can jump, but it’s definitely a creek. But then, I’m five feet tall. If I were four inches tall like the Carduans I’m writing about, this same creek would seem very wide and deep and look much more like a river.

My Ozark Creek

Most of the creek banks are steep drops where high water and flood waters have scoured out the dirt. Roots hang out of these cuts. When enough of a tree’s roots are undercut, the tree begins to lean, then falls.

Once you are down the bank, the creek bottom stretches out. Much of this area is paved with gravel left behind as the water carries the soil away.

Water levels vary according to the rain. As I look over this part of the creek, it is more a series of pools with small streams of running water flowing between them than what might normally be considered a creek.

Some pools are broad and less than a foot deep. Other pools are deep cuts often where trees have been uprooted. Fish and crawdads inhabit the pools.

A wide variety of plants live along the creek. The trees are mostly sycamores with their white trunks studded with brown puzzle pieces and willows, black and Carolina. Underneath the trees is a mix. I notice jewelweed with its orange earring flowers dangling, a pink swamp milkweed, purple self heal and hog peanut vines draped over much of it.

my Ozark creek forms pools
Gravel moved into this area of my Ozark creek during the last flood. The young tree in the bank is undercut and a pool has formed under it. Broad Head Minnows swim back and forth through the pool. It’s deep enough for some of them to reach six inches long.

The Carduans

Food is a constant need for the Carduans of Ship Nineteen. The creek they find is a place to catch fish and crawdads.

There are stones to use for building. Honey locust trees supply thorns. Willows supply slender canes for making chairs.

When I wear boots, the creek is easy to cross. The Carduans, at four inches tall, find the creek is often deeper than they are tall. All of us think it is a great place to spend an afternoon.

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GKP Writing News

Nubian Goats Are Loud

It’s breeding season for my goats and I’m having a hard time remembering why I wrote “For Love of Goats”. Nubian goats are loud and breeding season is an excuse to be extra loud.

Just typing Nubian goats are loud doesn’t begin to say how loud they can be. I found out early.

Nubian buck watching for his does
Nubian buck High Reaches Augustus neglects eating during breeding season. He spends most of his time outside standing on top of the goat gym watching the pastures to see where the does are. This is when a buck smells giving people the impression goats smell bad. Only the bucks during breeding season smell bad.

Jennifer

My parents had moved to northwest Arkansas. I’d stayed behind in California until, coming home from work one night, I had an accident. Suddenly I needed to come home to recover and get back on my feet again.

Being stranded over twelve miles from town with nothing to do was frustrating. My parents had a few goats and goats are cute.

Sandy had a little doe kid. We made friends. Goat kids are demanding. When I walked the quarter mile down to the mailbox, I could hear Jennifer calling me.

Milking Time Lately

If I have this correct, the other morning Pamela, Lydia, Drucilla and Opal were all in season. They announced this loudly, continuously. Augustus put on his best display blathering and stomping.

After milking, when the goats finally went out the gate, Opal proved again that Nubians are loud. She bellowed off and on all day from pastures near and far. Augustus answered every bellow.

Maybe it’s a good thing our nearest neighbors are over a mile away.

Two Nubian goats are loud
Out in the pasture Nubian does Rose and Drucilla are looking over toward where Augustus stands. They should be eating some of the food surrounding them. But, it’s breeding season and they are in season.

Breeding Season

In colder places Nubians are like the Swiss breeds with their breeding season being the same as for deer. In the Ozarks Nubians will breed all year, although the bellowing is reserved for the fall season.

The does cycle for a couple of days about every three weeks. Since I prefer to breed the few I still breed in October, all of my does will continue to prove Nubian goats are loud for several more rounds.

Perhaps I will sit down and read some of the fun sayings and stories in “For Love of Goats” to remind myself why I put up with breeding season every year.

Get a free eBook copy of “For Love of Goats” at Smashwords with coupon code P93KK.

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Wild Edible Search

Reading about edible wild plants is one thing. Doing a wild edible search is quite another, especially during an Ozark summer.

Heat Can Be Deadly

Many parts of the country are seeing triple digit temperatures. The Ozarks hasn’t so far. However, the Ozarks has seen 90 degrees plus complicated with humidities in the 70% and more range. This makes a deadly combination for anyone out in the sun too long.

I have had some milder cases of heat stroke and it is no joke. Going out walking in the summer sun is not on my agenda.

Wild cherry is a tree which would be a problem for my Carduans. However, if you can beat the birds and other creatures to the fruit, it is rather tasty when it is fully ripe. This sets it apart from some of the other wild fruits like wild plums and wild grapes, both very sour. other Ozark wild fruits that taste all right are gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries and elderberries.

Thunderstorms

Another facet of Ozark summer weather are the thunderstorms. Usually I hear thunder off in the distance. That is warning to get ready for the goats to come in and to go inside myself.

However, there were three plants up on the hill I needed pictures of. That particular hike takes about 30 to 40 minutes. The thunder was far away. I set out.

Halfway through the hike, just before I got to the top of the hill, lightning lit up the sky and thunder cracked and rolled over me. The camera went in the plastic bags I carried in case I found chanterelle mushrooms. I backed up against a leafy tree. The rain began.

There are several such storms in The Carduan Chronicles: Ship Nineteen. Up to now my descriptions have been from observations done while sheltering in the house or barn. Standing outside under a tree is very different.

I did go back down the hill to the house. Yes, I was drenched.

wild edible search success with chanterelle mushrooms
Mushrooms appear at various times in the Ozarks. Morels in the spring. Chanterelles in the summer. Puffballs in the fall. And lots of others, safe and unsafe wild edibles. Like with all wild edibles, you have to identify it for sure before taste testing.

My Wild Edible Search

After the storm, I went back up the hill. The wild cherry fruit was ripe. Although obtaining it would be challenging for the Carduans, they are rather tasty. These are quite unlike the wild plums which are very sour.

My wild edible search has also found hog peanut and ground nut. These would be much more accessible for the Carduans. I did find ground plum in the spring, but didn’t taste it. Elderberries will be ripe soon.

This wild edible search is getting to be interesting.

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GKP Writing News

Foraging Wild Edibles

It’s getting hard to keep going on my Ship Nineteen draft as I know it needs major work again. The plus side of continuing is having a better draft of what the Carduans are doing. The negative side is how much is missing, like foraging wild edibles.

What the Carduans Accomplish

There are several major problems these survivors face. One is the need for shelter. For now, since there are so few of them, they can live in the ship and use the ledge they discovered.

Another is defense against the numerous large predators. The Carduans are snack size for coyotes, foxes, bobcats and large snakes. They are edibles for smaller creatures like raccoons, hawks and owls.

These predators are avoided as much as possible. When necessary, the Carduans have discovered a defensive weapon.

Food is another issue. For now they can hunt, fish and forage. Winter will return. They must be ready with stored food.

Red Clover flowers
I know someone who likes red clover flower tea. He gathers the flower heads, dries them and then brews tea. I’ve tasted a few flowers. They have a quick bit of sweet followed by a bit of spice. The Carduans love their morning coffee, but must find a new drink. Will this work?

Foraging Wild Edibles

Over the years I’ve learned about a number of wild plants good to eat. They include lamb’s quarters, dock, plantains, chicory, dandelions and chickweed. Some are more palatable than others.

These can’t be the wild foods the Carduans eat. Why not? Because these are mostly introduced plants that grow near human habitations, not out in the ravines and abandoned pastures.

What does grow out there? I’ve photographed lots of plants growing out in the wilder areas, but don’t know which are edible or what they can be used for.

spicebush flowers
Wild plant foraging begins early in the spring. Spicebush blooms early with spicy flowers. Later the leaves are spicy eating too. The Carduans do discover these flowers and enjoy eating them, the ones they can reach.

Doing Research

Samuel Thayer lives foraging wild edibles and has several books out about foraging. The biggest drawback is his location, far north of the Ozarks. Some of the plants, like wild rice, just won’t be found where the Carduans are.

Even so, “Forager’s Harvest” has many useful items in it. One is preparing wild grains. And some of the plants are found here too.

That leaves two items. One is finding plants accessible to the Carduans who are very small. The other is finding some of these plants and tasting them so I can give descriptions in the novel.

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Oodles of Tomatoes

I will admit I probably over planted tomatoes. Every year I vow to cut back. And every year I end up with oodles of tomatoes.

Reasons to Cut Back

Two people can only eat so many tomatoes. Even the chickens and the wildlife can get overwhelmed by oodles of tomatoes.

Tomatoes take a lot of water. Ozark summers are often dry and I don’t have a convenient hose.

Tomatoes are a popular sales item for both sellers and buyers at the Farmers Market. However, lots go home again.

Speckled Roman paste tomato
Paste tomatoes have less water in them. I like the flavor of the Speckled Roman paste tomatoes. It is an indeterminate tomato, an heirloom, and prolific. The tomatoes are not uniform, but tend to be up to 7 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. This year I’m getting lots of shorter, but stouter ones. I slice them into rounds to cook them up for sauce or placing on cream cheese pizza.

Reasons For Growing So Many Tomatoes

My garden typically has three main types of tomatoes: red, yellow and paste. These are started from seed as I like varieties not commonly available.

There are also some purchased tomatoes as these will bear sooner. And a couple of cherry tomatoes are nice for snacks. One is by the house. The other is in the garden.

Things happen to gardens. Groundhogs. Chipmunks. Wood rats. Birds. Insects. Disease. Having a few more plants than necessary is insurance against total loss.

Gold King of the North Oxheart Tomato
This is an extra tomato for me this year. These tomatoes are huge with the characteristic oxheart shape. The vines are indeterminate and prolific. I find the taste a bit bland. The tomatoes seem to bruise easily.

What To Do With Oodles of Tomatoes

All dinner menus are now planned with tomatoes included. Sliced. Salads. Enchiladas. Spaghetti.

More tomatoes end up as sauce, broth and frozen. A few years back I tried freezing plain nice tomatoes. These are great as thawing them makes the skins slide off. If I’m doing chili, I only want one or two, not a bag of sauce.

When I make tomato sauce, I read the directions to boil skinned tomatoes down for hours until they are a thick sauce. First, I’m lousy at skinning tomatoes. Second, I hate spending that much time boiling off water. (Tomatoes are 95% water, more than watermelon at 92%. See the Pumpkin Project.)

My sauce is plain tomatoes, trimmed and cut into chunks, dropped into a large pot and simmered until soft mush. Then I use a colander to separate the pulp from the liquid tomato broth.

The liquid is frozen as broth. The pulp is pureed in the blender, then frozen. When I thaw these out, I can add the appropriate herbs, spices and salt for the recipe I am making.

Even so, this is a great tomato year. My garden is happily producing oodles of tomatoes. I hope it lasts to frost and beyond stored in the pantry and freezer.

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GKP Writing News

Plotting Goat Shows

People seem to love showing off things and animals. Goats are no exception which means there are goat shows.

These events occur in Dora’s Story. Emily’s mother wants the recognition of winning them. The girls want to take part as members of their 4-H club. There are two big shows close to them and they attend both.

using goat shows for plotting goat shows
This is an old picture from the first Arkansas state goat show in 1981. The class is for Nubian doelings. Note the whites then the official wear for those showing goats.

Why Have Goat Shows?

I only took my goats to the local county shows. I led a couple of 4-H goat Projects and the shows were part of this.

We held the shows for several reasons. One was for the members to show off their goats. More importantly the judges could help them recognize the strong and weak points of their goats.

The public was the other big reason for holding these little shows. Many people know little about goats and many times what they know is wrong.

This isn’t their fault. Goats are fun to make fun of. Brush goats do tend to have long goatees and big horns. Goats do butt each other and other things. Horns are a great way to tear delicious bark off of trees.

Buck goats (male goats in the dairy goat world) do reek during mating season. Does (female goats in the dairy goat world) do not.

If produced properly, goat milk tastes good. It is also better balanced for human consumption than cow’s milk.

Phelps County Fair goat show
Phelps County Fair has a goat show. Back around 2006 most of the goats shown were dairy goats. This is an Oberhasli sometimes called a Swiss Alpine. Note the show clip and how the goat is set up with front feet across from each other, back feet set directly under the tail and the collar used to keep the goat’s head up, but not straining.

Dora’s Story Goat Shows

The shows in this novel are much bigger shows. I have attended several of these bigger shows as a spectator.

These shows have several goat breeds and several classes for each breed. There are showmanship classes for young goat owners.

In plotting these shows for the novel, I had to list all of the classes, all of the goats in each of the classes and the names and ages of the owners of these goats. This took at least a page of notes.

To complicate this, the same shows occur annually. They show up more than once in the novel. That meant aging the owners and their goats, adding some new owners and goats.

Much of this material was not used in the novel. Emily and her sister showed Nubians and grades only. But they did talk to many of the other owners.

Novel background notes are like that. The notes make writing the novel easier and the result better. But that doesn’t mean all of the notes appear in the novel.

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Latest From High Reaches

Making Feta Goat Cheese

Making feta goat cheese hasn’t been on my list of things to do for years. It wasn’t supposed to be on the list now.

There has been a special request. I went hunting for my recipe and dredging my memory for how to make this cheese.

Special Supplies

I’ve made several changes in the regular feta recipes I’ve read. The set curds do need to have the whey pressed out. This can be with a cheese press. I use my hands and a colander.

There is a special feta cheese starter. I’ve never used it. Instead I will use buttermilk from the market. It works well for making feta goat cheese, although it changes the flavor a little.

The other supplies are the same as for other cheeses I make: a whisk, a long spatula, a stirring spoon, a stainless steel pot, stainless steel colander, vegetable rennet. Canning salt is used too, but as a brine. I dump a couple of cups of salt into a gallon jug and fill it with water. This is enough for two or three batches of cheese.

My Recipe

My pot holds about a gallon and a half of milk, so that is how much I use. This can be fresh or from the day before. Either way, the milk is warmed to 86 degrees. The heat is turned off.

Then a quarter cup of buttermilk is whisked into the milk. The lid is put on and the mixture is allowed to sit for an hour.

Rennet is whisked in. The curd is allowed to set up and should take about half an hour.

The curd is cut as for mozzarella: across both ways and diagonal both ways, and allowed to set for five minutes. Now the curd is gently stirred for fifteen minutes. After the first five, time really drags.

This stirring is important as it separates the curds and whey. You will see the curds shrink in size.

Now the colander comes into play to drain the whey from the curds. The curds should be firm enough to roll the colander to drain the whey as much as possible. Press the curds into a cake.

making feta goat cheese takes time
It takes some time to cut the feta into cubes, but the cubes soak up the brine better than a big piece. However, the cubes like being in one lump and will stick together while sitting in the brine. They are broken apart again while running cold water over them to wash off the brine. They will continue to ooze whey and brine even after being washed and drained. Just dump the liquid out of the container you put the cheese into.

Salting the Cheese

Turn the curd mass out onto a plate. The mass is cut into roughly half inch cubes. These are put into a bowl. More whey will come out. Keep dumping it to avoid a flooded counter.

Pour brine over the pile of cubes. Set the plate on top of the bowl. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for several hours.

Supposedly the time spent in the brine doesn’t matter. I prefer to get the cubes out after three to four hours.

Dump the cubes into the colander. Rinse them with cold water. Drain the water and refrigerate the cubes of feta, ready to use.

Making feta goat cheese isn’t hard. It is time consuming. I find it too salty for my taste which is why I don’t usually make it.

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Making Mozzarella Goat Cheese

There are lots of recipes around for making mozzarella goat cheese. The one I’ve come up with works well for me.

One of the important things to remember is to start with milk a day or two old and cold in the refrigerator. This cheese likes to be slightly acid and this seems to do the trick.

It is possible to add a bit of citric acid to get that acidity. I’ve done that. It’s hard to judge how much to add and too much will make the cheese very rubbery.

Supplies Needed

When I get ready for making mozzarella goat cheese, I put my stainless steel pot on the stove and fill it with milk. This cheese works best for at least a gallon of milk. Any more I use a gallon and a half, but have worked with two gallons. More than two gallons becomes a problem for me later on.

Turning the stove on low to warm the milk, I set out a Pyrex bowl with a stainless steel colander sitting in it. Next to that is a Pyrex loaf pan to put the finished cheese in.

There is a stainless steel flat canning ladle, a stainless steel flat spatula, a whisk and a cheese thermometer. I use vegetable rennet to set the curd and canning salt.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper
Surrounded by lots of goat information and puzzles are recipes for making cheese and other things from goat milk as well as how to cook chevon (goat meat).

Making the Cheese

The milk is heated to 86 degrees. Don’t get more than a degree sloppy with this. Turn off the heat. Whisk in enough rennet to set the curd in about 30 minutes. Put the lid on and wait.

Once the curd is set, use the spatula to cut the curd. First make long cuts every quarter to half inch one way. Next make long cuts across the first ones to make columns. Last use the spatula at an angle to cut the columns first one way, then the other.

The idea is to break the curd up into smaller pieces to make it easier to get the whey out.

Let the cut curd sit for 5 minutes. Then sprinkle canning salt over the top of the curds using a tablespoon per half gallon of milk.

Start slowly heating the curd. Gently stir the curd to mix in the salt and shift the curds from the bottom of the pan to the top. Do this slowly so you don’t break the curds into lots of tiny pieces.

making mozzarella goat cheese
Pictures were on the agenda as I set up to make this week’s batch of mozzarella cheese. The pictures didn’t get taken. And the cheese started disappearing. The camera finally arrived before the last bit of cheese got eaten.

Setting the Cheese

Let the curds heat. Mix the curds every 5 minutes or so to spread the heat more evenly. The curds will shrink as they release whey. They will change and toughen.

The original directions said to heat the curds to 120 degrees. I rarely get that hot. I watch the curds until they get a rubbery, melted look to them.

Now lift the curds out of the whey into the colander. The curds from two gallons of milk fill my colander. Leave the whey heating on the stove.

Rinse your hands in cold water even if you are wearing gloves. Turn the curds in the colander to drain more whey out. I empty whey back into the pot as I go.

Lift the mass up and it should stretch down toward the colander draining more whey. Fold it and let it stretch again several times. (If it won’t stretch, put the mass into the hot whey to get hotter so it will stretch.)

Press the cheese into the loaf pan or whatever mold you are using. I let it cool a bit on the counter before covering and refrigerating it.