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.
It was September and I wanted a story line to write in November when the idea came. The plot would revolve around a dairy goat moving between several different owners. Then I began creating the Dora’s Story characters.
After writing a number of straight plotline novels, this was very different. There was the novel plotline. Yet each of the six parts had a plotline for itself and as part of the novel one. It involved several goat shows and each of these changed as the participants got older. It took over a year to get all of it right.
Who Are They?
From the time my first goat, Jennifer, was born, I’ve met many people with goats. Others I’ve heard of. These were the beginnings of my Dora’s Story characters.
The goat would come from a small time breeder. Her first owner would be Emily. Why would this young girl get a goat? Why would she give up her goat?
This brought in her mother and sister. For the girls, the goats were 4-H projects and pets. The mother wanted the prestige of purebred goats and Dora was a grade goat.
Once sold, Dora went through several owners. Each was a composite of people. One was a bad owner. Another was ill. Finally Dora ends up with a young boy.
Going In Circles
Emily was devastated when Dora was sold. Her dream was to find Dora again. In the original draft, she does.
As years pass, people change. Emily grew up. So did Dora.
Emily wanted to get Dora back as though this would make everything like it was. Long ago I learned you can’t go back except in memories. Such an ending would not be at all realistic.
Yet, Emily did need to find Dora again. But she needed to find her beloved goat in a new time, under the new conditions.
Dora’s Story Characters
Each step of the way, Dora is a possible way to the future for each owner. Some take advantage of this. Some don’t.
We are often blind to or afraid of opportunities that come our way. They pass us by. When it is too late, we realize we went past them, now regretting it.
Entering writing contests is not my favorite thing to do. That doesn’t keep me from looking at them.
There are lots of these contests. Many have nice prizes. I know writers who do enter them and get to put “Award Winning” on their book.
Reasons For Contests
There seems to be lots of different reasons for writing contests. Publishers use them as a way to find books they might like to publish. These usually want a complete manuscript.
Writer sites are expensive to operate. They can hold contests as a way to raise funds.
Writer’s Digest magazine holds numerous contests. They seem to both promote writers and raise interest in subscribing to the magazine. Attending their writers’ conference is one of the big prizes.
Tempting Prizes
My writing budget always seems to be slim. That makes cash prizes very tempting.
Attending a conference isn’t possible for me. I self publish and, although being traditionally published is tempting, don’t really expect to go that route.
Choosing Contests
Entering writing contests can be a way for me to support a writing group. That is the main reason I do enter a contest.
My only two at this time are NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) and Arts Rolla. The first is mostly a way to write my way through a draft and isn’t a formal contest. There are supporting sponsors who offer prizes for those who meet their goals.
The latter is a local fine arts group. When I was part of a local writer’s group, now disbanded, I met many of the people involved with the group. It is an important local group.
Now I’m considering another contest. It’s put on as a money raiser for an online group. I’m new to the group and want to become more a part of it.
Facing Reality
Entering writing contests is not something I do expecting to win. When Arts Rolla awarded the first chapter of The Carduan Chronicles second place, I was shocked.
This new contest is for the first page of an unpublished novel. I have three to choose from. I would like to help support this group Great Gutsy Novelists. Are any of them good enough?
Dairy goats giving milk must be milked out regularly or they will stop giving milk. As the refrigerator fills with milk, the question is what to do with this milk. Making vinegar set ricotta cheese is one possibility.
This cheese is considered to be a good beginner’s cheese. It takes few ingredients, is forgiving of sloppy temperatures and can be used in lots of ways.
Cheese Making Equipment
Any cheese makes whey which quickly becomes acidic. A stainless steel stock pot is important. I use a two gallon pot. When I made more kinds of cheese in larger quantities, I had a six gallon pot.
If the pot has bolt heads inside the pot, the milk level should always be below them as they are not stainless steel. The pot must have a lid.
A cheese thermometer is a must. Although making vinegar set ricotta cheese has a wide temperature range, most cheeses have a specific setting temperature. Cheese temperatures range from 70 to 200 degrees.
For making vinegar set ricotta cheese my utensils include a stainless steel whisk, a measuring cup, plastic or glass, and a stainless steel colander. The white vinegar comes from the market.
Making Vinegar Set Ricotta Cheese
Whisking the vinegar into the hot milk causes the curds to coagulate and separate from the whey. This can take a minute. Just keep stirring. It makes the mixture look lumpy. If the curds are very fine, it will look grainy.
This is a forgiving cheese as I’ve said. The milk can come straight in from the milk room and be strained into the pot. It can be cold milk from the refrigerator.
Fill your pot and slowly heat it. It’s a good idea to keep the lid on so the milk doesn’t skin as it gets hot.
Every so often use the whisk to stir the milk so it heats more evenly. Check the temperature each time. You want the milk to reach 175 to 185 degrees.
Once the milk is hot, whisk in the vinegar. I find a half cup per gallon works for me. This, too, is lenient. You can add a bit more to set the milk harder.
You should see the milk turn grainy as the vinegar and milk mix. The grains can vary in size from tiny to quarter inch or larger. They stick to the whisk so you can see them. You should see the milk separate into curds and whey.
When I made lemon cheesecake from the cheese, I set the milk with lemon juice. It takes more than the vinegar and has a lower yield.
Turn off the heat. Put the lid on the pot. Let the pot sit and cool down.
Unlike many cheeses, the amount of milk used for vinegar set ricotta cheese is highly variable. As I wanted new pictures for this post, I made a big saucepan of cheese to add to the cheese I made a couple of days ago to make enchiladas. Just adjust the amount of vinegar added. This is a very bland cheese so added spices and herbs really dress it up to suit whatever recipe you are making. For the enchiladas I added chopped garlic chives. Chopped onion and peppers work well too. I prefer using the vinegar set ricotta cheese to cream cheese in most recipes as I can add flavors to it easily. It can be used like cottage cheese. This is a very versatile cheese.
Rescuing Your Cheese
The curds settle into a soft mass. Use the colander to separate the curds and whey. You can keep the whey to use for pasta or even feed your goats. You can water the grass.
If the curds are very fine, line the colander with nylon netting. I prefer this to cheesecloth as the weave is fixed and it is very easy to wash. The small curds drain very slowly and the resulting cheese will spoil faster.
Larger curds can be rolled around in the colander to drain out as much of the whey as you can.
Either way, refrigerate the curds. Then start planning those lasagnas, quiches, cheesecakes and more to use up your goat cheese.
There are more cheese recipes in “Goat Games”. Pumpkin cheesecake is one of the recipes in “The Pumpkin Project”.
Three kids are sold and gone. The two wethers and two bucks are left and still gorging on milk. But there is enough leftover now and it’s time for cheese again.
As with so many things, I no longer do a lot of cheese or kinds of cheese. Every Monday I do a small batch of a mozzarella type. Occasionally I do the vinegar set ricotta
Milk Is the Beginning
Most cheese directions begin in the kitchen. I prefer to start in the milk room as cheese actually begins with milk.
Ozark summers bring warm mornings. These in turn sour milk. This does not make good cheese or table milk for that matter.
Some years back I tried to come up with a way for cool my milk before it even made it into the kitchen. This matters as warm milk takes a long time to cool down in the refrigerator and makes it work harder, not a good thing with older refrigerators in a hot kitchen.
My solution was to freeze a juice bottle of water. This is placed in the milk tote when I go out. The warm milk cools a lot as the ice melts inside the bottle.
When you try this, remember water expands about ten percent when it freezes, so leave room in the bottle. Use a thicker plastic juice bottle, 20 ounce. Tighten the lid securely.
It’s easy to think cheese recipes only matter in the kitchen. Cheese actually begins in the barn. My hard working (Ha!) Nubian does come in at milking time to gobble up their grain and other treats. Pieces of apple, corn husks, lettuce leaves and other things are appreciated. Pumpkin and squash pieces are big favorites. In return I get milk from which I can make cheese.
Pasteurizing
I made this mistake once. My cheese never set. If you do pasteurize, you will need starters for the milk to replace what the heat killed.
My cheese is made from raw milk. Yes, raw milk can carry diseases. However, I know my goats and don’t use milk from goats feeling ill.
Another check is how long the milk stays good in the refrigerator. Mine stays good for over a week. I keep my equipment clean, my glass bottles clean and put the milk up as soon as I get in from the milk room.
Now It’s Time for Cheese Again
Next week I’ll post about making fresh milk ricotta. I don’t make big batches any more so I’ll start with three quarts of fresh milk, just in from the milk room.
As I finished milking the other evening, I noticed a cottontail rabbit eating grass. That was a bit unusual, but I have no barn cat right now.
This rabbit didn’t concern me until it calmly hopped over to my garden fence. My garden is fenced with two by four welded wire. The rabbit slipped through and into the garden.
My garden does not need a hungry rabbit. I charged in. The rabbit left.
People tell me the cottontail rabbit invasion is widespread in this part of the Ozarks. There are numerous rabbits near my garden and in the back yard. This may bring the gray foxes back.
Raising Rabbits
Never confuse a cottontail rabbit with a domestic rabbit. All the domestic rabbit breeds trace back to European rabbits. None trace back to the native rabbits.
Years ago I had a commercial rabbitry. Even more years before that my family raised rabbits. They make good pets and good dinner.
My commercial rabbitry had around a hundred does divided into eight sections. Each week one section got bred, another section got nesting boxes and another had their little ones weaned.
Does did move between sections from time to time for various reasons so they were mixed up. My father came up with a great system to keep track of them.
I bought clothes pins. They were painted red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, black and white. One side was all colored, the other half. They were clipped to the feeders.
When I walked down the aisles, the clothes pins told me which section the doe was in. If she was bred, the half side was out. If she had babies, the full side showed.
My Savoy cabbages look great. If the cottontail rabbits make it into the garden, they may disappear.
Cottontail Rabbit
Chicken wire got stretched across over the garden fence. That seemed to work as nothing seemed to get eaten.
The number of rabbits eating the grass kept increasing. Four were there one morning. I got nervous.
Then the few beets still in the garden got eaten. Was it the rabbits? If it was, the rabbits had gone around the garden to the far side. Then again, I’d seen a chipmunk zip out the fence there and they eat gardens too.
Chicken wire is going up around the garden fence and on the gates. The rabbits and chipmunks can eat outside the garden.
Autumn Cornwell really struck a chord in “Carpe Diem” with me. I use lists a lot. Her main character, Vassar Spore, creates her life in lists of things she wants to accomplish.
My lists have a different purpose. They are lists of things to accomplish, but are tasks needing to be done rather than life goals.
In the Book “Carpe Diem”
Vassar is 16 and in stiff competition to be valedictorian for her high school class. She plans to take AP courses over the summer in pursuit of a 5.3 GPA on a 4 point scale.
Her life goals include being valedictorian, attending Vassar College, marrying a blond surgeon and writing a Pulitzer Prize book. She is a super achiever.
My Lists
To Do lists are so boring. Mine include chores, watering garden, cleaning out the barn, making cheese, cleaning house. Mundane goals for a quiet life.
My life goals are equally modest now. I want to finish a couple of books I’m working on. And I want to finally get my website organized and attracting visitors who will buy my books.
Life Intervenes
Vassar’s goals are upended with a phone call by Grandma Gerd. Suddenly her AP courses are gone as she will be in Southeast Asia for the summer.
Instead of Latin, Vassar will be writing a novel for AP credit. From the pieces put into the book, she will be rewriting and editing for years.
In addition, Vassar is trying to find out why her parents let Grandma Gerd blackmail them into sending her off for the summer. Even though she is constantly getting into trouble, usually her own fault, she does find the answer.
My Nubian goats have discovered the old cow barn. Now that the horseflies are out, the herd goes out the pasture gate and straight to the cow barn to wait out the day. I see them sneak out from time to time to graze.
For me, I write in the morning just after milking. I’m awake and thinking about the plot. The other things happen in the afternoon.
Except the temperatures are now too hot to work outside by noon. So I am doing the work in the mornings and trying to write in the afternoons when I am tired, hot and wishing I could do nothing.
“Carpe Diem”
Seize the Day. Vassar is so busy making her lists, she forgets what is happening each day. How many of us do this?
It’s hard to stop trying to live in the past or the future, yet we can do neither. We can only live today. Planning is great. However, don’t let it rob you of your life.
Writing book reviews is becoming big business. There are numerous websites and people who do reviews professionally.
As an author, I see lots of advice for authors. One mainstay is finding people to review your book so you can use the reviews, if they are favorable, in your book promotions.
Review Guidelines
Supposedly the author is not to pay for book reviews. This might be considered as a way to buy good reviews, deserved or not.
Amazon wants a reviewer to first purchase the book from them in order to leave a review. Since the company makes money from selling books, not reviews, this is understandable. It also makes it hard for anyone else to leave a review.
Capri Capers is being offered as a free eBook this month at Smashwords with code H2X8G. This is my gift to you. Is it worth a review from you?
Review Considerations
I write book reviews. However, there are genres I am not qualified for writing book reviews as I rarely to never read those genres.
People who read only one genre might be considered good book reviewers for that genre. It also makes it harder for a new author as their book will be compared to all the other books in that genre.
Giving copies of a book to a reviewer can taint the view of a resulting review. As I don’t buy books, but borrow them from the library or pull them off my own shelves, I am limited in which books I can review. My personal stash is old, some going back fifty years and difficult to obtain any more.
Doing Ratings
Goodreads, where I post my reviews, has a five star system for rating a book. It usually suffices.
The biggest drawback in this system for me is that five stars says a book is amazing. Even three stars which should be a so so rating says I liked the book. That leaves me writing book reviews with ratings of mostly four stars.
Another drawback is that it asks for a single rating. A book can be very well written and still be one you did not enjoy, maybe even loathed. My work around is to give a second rating in the comment section.
Review Tyranny
Another big drawback to the rating/review requirement for books is how people are coerced into thinking a book with a lower rating or few reviews isn’t worth their reading time. Any book, no matter how good, has readers who don’t like the book and can lower the rating for the book.
Then there are those who read a book and leave no reviews. The author and the book are at their mercy in today’s marketplace. And the reader let them down.
Walking along the road the last few days, a sweet fragrance drifts by or hangs in the air. There are several sources including persimmon trees and prairie roses, but the scent of sweet elderberry is the strongest.
Elderberry plants could almost be classed as shrubs, at least the older ones. They are perennials. Unless the road crew comes by, the stems overwinter and sprout new leaves in the spring along with new canes that shoot up around them.
Hard to Miss
Even out of range of the sweet elderberry perfume, an elderberry in bloom is difficult to miss. The canes are up to six feet tall with huge umbels of waxy white flowers. Large compound leaves hanging on long petioles jut off from the canes.
The plants seem to prefer open areas near wet areas. Roadsides and edges of pastures are prime places to look for them.
This elderberry grows behind the mailbox. It makes trips to get the mail a sweet experience while the flowers are open. Later the berries will grow and ripen, perfect for a few snacks, although the ripe berries don’t seem to have much flavor.
The New Miracle Plant
People seem to like think eating one special thing will cure all that ails them. Sweet elderberry is a recent target.
The berries are small, barely a quarter inch across and haven’t much flavor in my opinion. But these same berries are now being farmed, gathered from wild plants, juiced and sold for high prices as miracle plants.
Perhaps ingesting this juice will help some people. The true benefactors of this new interest are the pollinators, provided the fields aren’t sprayed.
Eating a sensible diet and getting plenty of exercise is a better way to better health. Of course, that means giving up most caffeine, alcohol, sugar and white flour which is difficult. A side benefit is losing weight and feeling better.
Place to Start
In Missouri there are plenty of Conservation Areas with walking trails. Park the wheels, put on a hat and go walking. Right now, you can follow the sweet elderberry scent along some of those trails.
We were watching some old Rin Tin Tin movie serials and I wondered if I could write a serial about a goat. Every episode ends with a cliff hanger, so a wild Capri Capers took shape.
Movie Serials
When movies started and were only shown in theaters, the theaters wanted a way to keep people coming back every week. The movie serial was born.
These serials lasted for weeks with a melodrama plot. Each episode was full of action and ended with something dangerous happening leaving the hero or heroine in mortal danger.
The following week the dangerous happening was shown again with changes. Those changes let the hero or heroine survive to continue the plot only to again get into a dangerous situation.
Begun as a lark and an experiment, Capri Capers was such fun it became a book.
Melodramas
These are simple plays. They normally have three main characters: a hero, a heroine or damsel in distress and a villain. The villain had some dastard scheme to capture the heroine and was foiled by the hero.
My father and his friends made up these plays up every week while he was in high school. They put on the plays for the students during lunch every Friday. My father always played the villain.
Proper protocol had the audience greet the hero with cheers and the villain with hisses and boos. At graduation all the students booed my father in honor of his years playing the villain.
Wild Capri Capers
The original draft of Capri Capers was in true movie serial format. Every chapter ended with a cliff hanger. The next chapter looked at the cliff hanger and solved it before launching the plot into the next cliff hanger.
Every name was chosen like a melodrama name. Dan Janus is after the two faced Roman god. Leroy Rogue and Roscoe Rascal are the villains. Harriet Zeigenhirt’s last name is German for goat.
The final draft changed the cliff hanger repeats into a more familiar novel plot line. However, the cliff hangers are still ending the chapters of a wild Capri Capers tale.
Oh, yes, there is a goat, several goats in the story. Capri is a goat and plays a big part in the story.
In 1849 a professor at Mishigan State University got curious. Farmers kept asking him how long weed seeds remained viable in the soil. Little did he suspect his long acquaintance with forever mullein.
In my own garden weeds are a constant battle. I can pull every one in a given area, come back in a couple of weeks to find weeds covering the same area.
Mullein is a biennial. The first year a rosette of hairy gray-green leaves tries to hide down in the grass. The second year the leaves get huge as the spire rises up, sometimes branching to make a candelabra up to six feet tall. The flower spike opens flowers more-or-less in circular arrays moving from the base to the top.
Weed Seed Bank
Whenever a weed succeeds in producing and dropping seeds, they join others hiding in the soil. These wait, sometimes for years, for conditions to be right. Then they germinate.
Desert wildflowers are a good example of this. For years an area of desert may go without rain. No wildflowers grow.
Right after a rain, the desert blooms as seeds hiding in the soil germinate. People come for miles to see the array of flowers covering what is usually bare dirt.
Longevity Experiment
This professor devised an experiment to find out how long weed seeds would survive in the soil. He put damp soil in over twenty glass bottles. Seeds from twenty-three different common weeds were collected and fifty of each were added to this soil. Then he buried them in a container outside.
For several years the professor took out one bottle and germinated the weed seeds. Another professor took over the experiment leaving years between when a bottle would be dug up.
Fewer and fewer kinds of weed seeds germinated. After 142 years, a bottle was dug up. The seeds were coddled in an attempt to germinate them. Only one kind still does, the forever mullein.
Called a weed, the forever mullein has lovely yellow flowers overnight into the morning. They are primarily moth pollinated to produce those long lived seeds.
Weed Free Hopes
Most of the common weed seeds only survived a few years. If I can keep any new weed seeds from being added to my soil for five years, most of my weeding problems would be over.
