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

Laundromat 101 Hints

Although “At the Laundromat” is a picture book, many adults would benefit reading it too. This slender volume is a short course in Laundromat 101 or laundromat basics.

Laundromat 101 reminder to check pockets
It’s amazing what people leave in their pockets when they toss the clothes into the washing machine. Many times these are left behind in the laundromat machines.

Hint 1: Empty Your Pockets

One of the first things I do when I clean the machines in the laundromat is to check inside them. Since all of the washing machines are front loaders, this means turning the drums so anything left behind falls down making them easy to find.

This doesn’t always work as carpenters of DIY builders sometimes leave nails and screws in their pockets. These get caught in the holes in the drum and must be pulled out.

More commonly pocket contents such as keys, rings, earrings, money, lighters fall down. Then there are the socks. The machines really do eat your missing socks, but only because you didn’t look for them.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
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Writing Character Motivations

When I look at these various lost items, I reflect about what their loss can mean. Most items are things the owner would find annoying, but not a problem. What about house keys? Car keys? Engagement rings? The week’s budget money?

Would the character panic? How did the character drive home without their car keys? Maybe the character never locks the front door so losing the front door key isn’t important? Perhaps the character makes enough money so losing shat to others is a lot of money isn’t to them.

It’s so easy writing to write as though every character reacts the way we do. For a good writer, that is not true. Every character has their own motivation, their own reaction to events in the novel.

This is one of the big challenges in writing. The author must set aside their own reactions and become, in a small measure, the character so their reactions and actions ring true. They are not clones, but independent characters.

Laundromat 101 Hints

First, check your pockets before tossing those clothes into the washer. Second, turn the drum after you take the clothes out. That last goes for the dryer too. You never know what might show up.

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Latest From High Reaches

Black Spots on Nubian Kid

I’ve seen a lot of spots on Nubian kids over the years. This is the first time I’ve seen black spots on Nubian kid. They are striking against a soft brown.

White and Brown Spots

Usually, kids have white spots like one or both of their parents. Sometimes they have hazy edges. This is usually when the background color is a bit frosty.

The deep black with white spots coloring is the one people love. For a time goat owners would breed just to get this combination. The problem was that the color didn’t necessarily keep good milk production and conformation with it.

Brown spots on kids are sometimes called liver spots. Generally, these start turning white in a few months. Sometimes the main spot will be white with a brown edge.

American Nubian buck kid
At a week old this Nubian buck kid is practicing looking impressive. He is also starting to chew on everything, not for teething, but to get bacteria in his rumen and start his cud. Yes, he will be for sale in a few months.

Black Spots Are New

Nubian doe High Reaches Spring is a red brown with brown ears. Her color goes back to some red bucks like Goat Town USA Gaius. She has no spots nor any spots in her background.

Nubian buck High Reaches Silk’s Augustus is gray with frosted or white ears and nose. He has lots of white spots. Red is in his background. He is the only buck in my herd.

Both of these buck kids are definitely Augustus’ kids. He passed on his frosted ears and nose to them.

One is red brown with black dorsal stripe. He is big and bold. His stance is often that of a proud buck.

Then there is the other one. Black spots on Nubian kid surprise. These spots are jet black. His coat is brown so the spots really show up.

Will These Black Spots Turn White?

Liver spots turn white. Augustus has white spots. Spotted Nubian goats usually have white spots.

Over the next few months, I will watch and see if these spots change color. They probably will. However, it would be nice for them to stay like they are now.

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GKP Writing News

Laundromat Repairs

Many people come into the laundromat because their home washer or dryer broke down. But the washers in the laundromat break down too needing laundromat repairs.

Simple Repairs

The easiest laundromat repairs aren’t really break downs. Sometimes people put in quarters too fast and they get stuck. Once these are taken out, the washer is fine.

Screws and nails caught in the drum or inside of the washer are another problem. Once these are pulled out, the washers are fine.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
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Drain Problems

When a washer won’t drain, clothes are wet, really wet, drippy wet. Most of the time the problem is an underwire bra wire caught across the drain and covered with lint. This requires opening up the drain and removing the wire.

One washer stopped draining. It wasn’t a wire. A repairman had to come. He found someone had washed a rubber backed rug in the machine. The rug must have been old so the rubber came apart into little balls.

The balls formed a big, solid clog in the drain. It required breaking the clog up and removing it piece by piece.

Old dog beds with broken seams will do much the same thing as the stuffing comes out in the wash. One time it stopped the biggest washer completely as the space between the washer drum and the drain drum filled completely up. It took a long time to pull all of the stuffing out.

Washers need laundromat repairs
Lots of people use the washers at the laundromat. As the machines get older, parts wear out and need repair. This is from “At the Laundromat”.

Wearing Out

Even the expensive laundromat washers wear out. The repairman checked out a washer that wouldn’t work and found it needed new parts.

When the washer drums spin, they move. Just like in a car, these drums have shock absorbers. There are four attached to the washer drum and two had worn out.

The washer must be taken out, opened up and the absorbers replaced. Then the washer is put back into place. Once the drain is reattached, the washer is ready for the next customer.

Laundromat repairs are needed often to keep all of the washers and dryers working properly. Usually the repairs are simple. The more complex ones are interesting to watch as the machine is opened up showing how the machine works.

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Latest From High Reaches

Thoughts About Gardening

The wish books have arrived filled with gorgeous pictures of produce. Even a bit of snow can’t stop the thoughts about gardening.

Looking Back

Considering the heat, sun and drought this last summer, my garden did very well. My freezers are full. The fall garden is producing. It was a successful gardening year.

There were problems. The heat and sun kept me inside too much so the weeds got out of control.

These also made the tubs too hot for the plants growing in them. The dirt was bath water warm! Shade is an important item to plan for next year.

Rabbit Food?
My Savoy cabbages looked great until the rabbits found them. However my Nubian buck Augustus didn’t mind rabbit nibbled cabbage snacks. My garden fence needs improvements.

Looking Forward

I grew a number of new plants last summer. Some were a success. Others were not.

Chinese eggplant is a better tub plant than traditional eggplant. Carrots need more water and more shade.

Sunflowers will not be in the garden again. Better planning for succession planting will be in the garden.

My seed list is growing as I add more plants. Most are old friends like Napa cabbage, bok choi, Zephyr squash, butternut squash, long beans, tomatoes, sweet peppers, Chinese celery, potatoes, beets. Newer ones include more kinds of snow peas, leeks and Savoy cabbage.

Planning ahead for Chinese cabbage
Napa cabbage and bok choi grow well in the tubs as long as I cover to deter cabbage worms and add shade to keep the tubs from getting too hot.

Thoughts about Gardening

It occurred to me that I write about my garden a lot over the course of the year. I spend a lot of time in it doing and trying different aspects of gardening.

Although I am a serious amateur gardener and read gardening books about other gardeners, I never considered writing about gardening. My garden is not neat, rarely orderly and my methods adapt each year.

Last year I kept a monthly planner about my garden. It told me a lot about how successful my garden turned out to be. Other people find my methods interesting.

Perhaps I will write down my thoughts about gardening in more detail this year. Maybe they will become a book after that. After the six I’m presently working on get finished.

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GKP Writing News

Laundromats

Laundromats are familiar places to me and have been much of my life. I’m surprised, although I shouldn’t be, at how many people come into the laundromat for the first time in their lives.

Remembering

My family went camping a lot. We had a big, canvas tent and went to lots of places in California.

We would pick up food at the grocery store. Then we ate lunch in a laundromat while our clothes washed and dried. If it was raining, we would linger for a time.

Time Savers

Laundromats are great time savers. All the clothes get washed at once, dried and folded, ready to put away.

One place had laundry service. The woman was an expert at getting clothes clean, much better than I will ever be. We were working full time and having her do our laundry was so convenient.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
Perhaps you suddenly need to use a laundromat. This little picture book will give you some hints as well as glimpses of behind the scenes.

Practical

With only two of us, the laundry doesn’t pile up that much in a week. When I had a washer, it took longer to put all the items left on top of it all week away than it took to wash the clothes. Laundromats are easier.

There are several sizes of washers for regular clothes or for big items like comforters. The same is true for dryers.

I estimate it would take me over two years to spend as much at the laundromat as to buy a washer. And the laundromat owner fixes any problems, not an expensive repairman.

Work

When the local laundromat opened, I became a regular. I would take a book and relax while the machines cleaned my clothes.

Then I was offered a chance to clean the laundromat when I was there. This paid for my wash.

Cleaning usually isn’t hard. Check inside all the machines, Clean off the lint traps of the dryers. Wash spilled soap off the washers. Sweep the floor. Take out the trash.

The owners are great people. My picture book “At the Laundromat” was written especially for them.

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Latest From High Reaches

Visiting Yellow Shafted Flicker

The workshop roof does keep the rain out, but has open eaves letting others in. This time it was a visiting yellow shafted flicker.

Finding the Visiting Yellow Shafted Flicker

With the arrival of almost nightly frosts, old blankets and towels are in daily evidence in my garden. Each morning these need to be removed for the day.

Orange Cat likes exploring my garden as so many interesting animals live there, interesting to him anyway. He caught a pack or wood rat as I was weeding. It was too big and escaped to continue raiding my garden.

This time Orange leaped up at the workshop window along one edge of the garden. The flicker was hanging on the inside of the window.

yellow shafted flicker
Although a kind of woodpecker, the yellow shafted woodpecker mostly eats ants. The stiff tail, strong feet and chisel beak show it is a woodpecker.

What Are Flickers?

Only the yellow shafted flicker occurs in my part of the Ozarks. It’s a brown backed woodpecker with a white rump patch and yellow under its wings.

These birds are welcome around my garden although they don’t often come. Their favorite food is ants. I don’t mind ants, but they tend to overpopulate the garden.

Ants like a wide variety of produce and dig holes in things like tomatoes. Their colonies appear under every rock, piece of cardboard, bucket and in the raised beds.

Usually visiting yellow shafted flickers are off along the creek banks raiding the ant colonies there. They take off as soon as I come into sight. This means safety for them and disappointment for me as they are beautiful birds I would like to see close up.

flicker looking to escape
The black face stripe and large red stripe on the head mark this as a male yellow shafted flicker. He is upside down at the peak of the rook on the rafters.

My Chance

Although the flicker in the workshop was not trapped, it had forgotten how it got in. It was a bold bird, staying hanging on the window as I went inside with my camera.

The doors at each end of the workshop make inviting exits for most birds visiting in the workshop, usually sparrow and wrens, occasionally hummingbirds.

The flicker ignored the open doors choosing to fly up to the rafters. There it flew to the end of the room and went out the way it came in: under the roof peak.

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GKP Writing News

Picture Book Writing

Picture book writing has been on my mind for several reasons. One is the suggestion I teach a homeschool class on writing picture books. These lesson plans seem easy to modify into teaching units for my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Another is the Opal and Agate picture book series I now have three rough texts for.

Picture Book Creation Steps

Picture book writing seems so easy, so straight forward. Step one is the idea. Step two is a rough draft laid out to cover all the necessary pages. Creating the illustrations is Step three. Step four is editing and matching the text to the illustrations. Finally, Step five is to assemble and publish the picture book.

It’s not easy to create a picture book. Ideas are easy, true. But taking an idea into a rough draft is not.

picture book writing needs a character like Opal
Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla was so proud of her little doe kid Opal. The two remain devoted to each other. Opal is the only kid I have kept for many years and one reason was for her to star in the picture book series.

Opal and Agate

The idea of this series came when Opal was only a day or two old. After all, kids are kids. And I had lots of tales about goat kids. Plus goat kids are cute.

Right off I had a book planned with the beginnings of a rough draft. Except it was not the first book in the series. Where should the series start?

Since Opal and Agate are Nubian dairy goats, perhaps I should first do a book about Nubians. Most people won’t know what they are. To many people goats are the caricatures of hairy, horned, bearded cantankerous creatures.

Now, this picture isn’t totally false. I’ve seen old brush goats that would fit this. But Nubian dairy goats definitely don’t fit this picture.

I worked on this idea. After two or three attempts, I gave up. It was a good idea, but wouldn’t fit into the series.

Now I have two books, one for Agate and one for Opal. These are when they are born. Agate was a bottle baby. Opal was raised by her mother.

Agate is a character in writing picture books
My real Nubian doe Agate is older than Opal. For some reason she ended up being a bottle baby and my special pet.

Teaching Picture Book Creation

The steps are right. They work. However, they are not simple or easy. Somehow this needs to be part of teaching picture book writing too.

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Latest From High Reaches

Digging Jerusalem Artichokes

When I mention digging Jerusalem artichokes to people, most of them think about the globe artichokes sold in the markets. This is not what I am talking about at all.

Globe Artichoke or Jerusalem Artichoke?

The globe artichoke is the flower of a thistle. These are enormous flowers, but just like the ones on roadside thistles before they open. If you slice through one of these, it will look like the market variety in miniature.

The Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower. Wild varieties bloom in August and do have small tubers. My garden variety grows much taller, has large tubers and blooms in late August.

Artichokes and Potatoes

Another comment from people is how a Jerusalem artichoke is like a potato. Other than both being tubers, this is far from the truth.

Potatoes can be grown, dug, dried and stored in the pantry in a box. Yes, Jerusalem artichokes can be grown and dug like potatoes. If you try to dry them and store the min the pantry, they will wither away into husks.

digging Jerusalem artichokes
When the Jerusalem artichokes first get turned up, they are covered with dirt. This clump doesn’t have a lot of them in it. Most of the chokes broke off and had to be dug out. I never find them all.

Digging Jerusalem Artichokes

Since Jerusalem artichokes do not store well, they get dug as they will be used. I dig my first ones after the stalks have frozen and turned brown and brittle. These are chopped off about six inches over the ground and the stalks carted away. The stubs mark where to dig for tubers.

The best tool I’ve found is a potato fork. Pick one plant to dig. Have a bucket of water handy.

Use the fork to lift out the plant. The tubers are connected to the roots and buried in the ground. I use the fork to lift the tubers buried as much as a foot deep up.

I knock a lot of the dirt off. The bucket of water is for swishing off much of the dirt still on the tubers. Not all of the dirt will come off.

cleaning Jerusalem artichokes
Digging Jerusalem artichokes is time consuming. It doesn’t take long to gather up a pile. More time is spent checking for those still buried in the dirt. Rather than taking a lot of dirt into the house, I wash them off in the garden. This is the pile of washed chokes from this batch. Once inside the house, they are cleaned using scrubs and an old toothbrush. They are then ready to become mashed, stir fry like water chestnuts, pieces in stews, broken up in salads and more.

Yield

A single established plant yielded two plastic grocery sacks of tubers. This doesn’t count the discards chewed on by millipedes and sowbugs or too small to bother with.

No matter how carefully you are digging Jerusalem artichokes, you never get all of them. The plant will sprout up again in the spring to yield next winter’s crop.

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GKP Writing News

Publishing Your Picture Book

You have worked hard writing and illustrating your picture book. There are a few things left to do before publishing your picture book.

First is a decision as to whether what you have is really a picture book or should be an illustrated short story or easy reader. There is an excellent article about this in the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest.

Proofread Your Book

This is not a hasty scan. Yes, you know what each and every page should be. That’s the problem. You see what you expect to see, not what’s there.

Go over every word on every page. Go over every illustration. It’s a good idea to have someone else look over these too. Beta readers aren’t just for novels.

Make sure the illustrations are on the correct page. Right side pages have odd numbers. Left side pages have even numbers.

This is why I urged you to save every illustration and the covers in the original layers as well as the final illustration. If you want to make changes, you can do so on the layered image and not have to start over again.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book is different because it is a paperback instead of hardcover. It was also published through Kindle. It is adequate.

Back Up Your Book

Although you should do this regularly, it’s easy to let things slide. And I have a special key devoted to my books.

Each book has a folder with the original final draft, the formatted drafts for the different places I publish it, all illustrations in both layered and final forms. For my science activity books this includes all of the puzzles with answers, the stories with illustrations and trivia lists.

This picture book was published by IngramSpark. It is hardcover. I think the color richness is superior to that of Kindle.

Publishing Your Picture Book

Decide if you want a hardcover or paper cover or both. It’s a good idea to purchase your own ISBN numbers from Bowkers at myidentifiers.com. That way you can move to a different publisher, if you decide to, without major changes to your book.

Don’t skimp on the paper weight. Use the heavier paper so images don’t bleed through and the pages are easier to handle for young people.

There are many publishers out there. Check them out. I’ve used both Kindle and IngramSpark. I prefer IngramSpark for the color quality, but must maintain a seller account on Amazon for them. Kindle makes it easier to list on Amazon.

Once this book is published, start another one.

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Fixing Fence

Fixing fence is nothing new in any rural area. Fencing goes down for lots of reasons including being cut, posts rotting, trees falling on it and flooding.

Anyone who owns livestock knows fences must be checked frequently. It’s far easier fixing fence before livestock wanders through the hole and off sometimes for miles or causes an accident on a road.

fixing fence
First leaves and branches piled onto the fence. The posts began to lean. Then gravel from the road washed onto the leaves. The posts fell flat taking the fence with them. Fixing the fence requires removal of the gravel, the leaves and branches, then using the tractor to pull the posts back into position. A sledge hammer knocks the posts down into the ground a couple of inches so they stay standing mostly up.

Water Versus Fence

Barbed wire doesn’t catch as much debris as field fence with its six inches squares or six inches by twelve inch holes. I have field fence because goats do not consider barbed wire a fence.

Water alone flows easily through field fence. If that water is pushing branches or piles of leaves, these catch forming a dam. Water is powerful when it’s on the move. The wire/leaf dams get pushed over.

One of my fences is along the road. The water moves road gravel on top of the leaves.

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
It’s much more fun when flood disasters remain on the page, not out in the field. Unfortunately nature makes sure floods are part of reality off the page too.

“Hopes, Dreams and Reality”

Mindy has a much bigger storm to contend with than the one we just had go through. She has long stretches of fence along the gravel road. Her feeder steers need to be in those pastures.

As I wrote about how Mindy is fixing fence, I remembered the steps I use to repair mine. It had been some time since I had actually done it so I hoped I got it right.

I did. I know this because I am going through those steps now. And those sore muscles and sore back are real.

Facing Reality

The major storms are getting more common. They are doing more damage. Fixing fence will get to be a common chore.

However, I am lucky. I don’t have much fence down from this last storm. A friend told me about a man with four miles of fence down.

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