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.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Editing This Picture Book

Finishing a picture book isn’t so different from finishing a novel. Of course, “Ducks Love Hats” has no text, but each and every illustration must be checked and rechecked. If I’m lucky, I will catch any mistakes while editing this picture book.

How the Illustrations Were Done

The Creating Picture Book course started with five young people. Family problems took three of them away just as we were starting to draw the parts of the illustrations.

What I was left with were the four ducks in a variety of poses and eight hats. I had already volunteered to do the backgrounds. What I lacked, and two of those who had to leave were good at, were the people. People are a big challenge for me.

All of the ducks and hats were scanned into my computer. All of the background pages were scanned in.

Next, I did people outlines. There were two family groups of parents and two children. They did various things so I needed lots of different poses for each one. One saving part was being able to reuse some of the poses as the families came at different times in the story. Once the outlines were scanned in, I painted the people.

Using layers each person, duck and hat were put into the illustrations. I like using layers for this as I can resize and move them as needed.

"Ducks Love Hats" page
A happy duck family swims away with their hats in “Ducks Love Hats” by Karen GoatKeeper and others.

Assembling the Picture Book

The layered illustrations are merged, saved and inserted into the book. The book itself is a Word document with 0.1” margins.

Then editing this picture book began. Hats were missing. Ducks were missing. People weren’t in the right places.

This is why I save the layered illustration as well as the merged one. I can open the layered one, make the needed changes, merge and insert the corrected illustration.

Final Touches

Title page and cover are the last things I do. However, editing this picture book will go on as several people look over the pages of the book itself without the title page and cover. I’m hoping they don’t find any more mistakes.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Pullet Eggs

Hens do occasionally lay small eggs. These might be only white or have a bit of yolk in them. Pullet eggs are different.

Raising Chickens

In April, I rode to Cackle Hatchery and brought home a box of fluffy chicks. They were a variety of colors as there were several varieties of chickens.

Fluffy chicks don’t stay fluffy very long. Feathers sprout pushing the fluff off which is a good reason to not raise chicks in the house. The dust and fluff go all over.

Once the chicks feather out, they start looking like little pullets or cockerels. The big tip off are the combs as pullets tend to stay small and cockerels tend to get big. A little later cockerels get long feathers beside their tails and longer feather in their tails.

Then There Are Hens and Roosters

My Easter Egger cockerels began crowing in only two months. This was disappointing as I had ordered all pullets and ended up with three roosters and eight pullets.

By three months these noisy ones considered themselves big, bad roosters. The pullets were not impressed and fled squawking setting off chicken races.

Finally, my first pullet eggs are arriving. The pullets at almost five months are now becoming hens. Roosters are still not very appreciated, but are tolerated.

Dominique pullet
This is the Dominique pullet now laying pullet eggs for me.

Pullet Eggs

These are small. It takes nearly three to equal a large egg. The pullets are still small too.

As the new hens finish growing up, their eggs will increase in size. Then I will gather up medium to large eggs.

Right now I am more concerned with moving my new hens to the big hen house. This is one way to get lots of exercise as I can only carry three at a time making nine trips. In a week or so they will move into the hen house on their own.

The next goal is convincing them to lay in the hen house nests. Perhaps the older hens will start using these nests again too. After all, the black snakes are going to bed for the winter. But that’s another story.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Glade Exploring

Glades are special places often with plants found no where else. There is a small one near my home, so I went glade exploring.

What Is a Glade?

The ones I have visited have lots of rocks, thin soil and lots of dryness and heat. They are sloped. Chiggers love them as numerous lizards often live there, the preferred host for the minute biters. Before going glad exploring, be sure to spray to discourage these little attackers.

My small one is up on the side of a hill. It would seem unusual in that it is not far from the bottom of a small ravine. Yet it is definitely very dry much of the time with no trees other than some invading red cedars – the enemy of a glade.

Missouri Coneflower found when glade exploring
There are so many yellow aster type flowers. Although Missouri Coneflower reminds you of Purple Coneflower, it is in a different group, Rudebekia. They are still lovely to see especially when there are several dozen blooming.

What Did I Find?

No real rain has fallen in several weeks so all the plants were wilted to dried up, even the grass. Still, a few plants were still surviving. I was mostly interested in a yellow coneflower and the blazing star blooming among the rocks.

What I hope to find is an Adder’s Tongue, a type of fern. This grows in glades, but, being a fern, likes moisture. When the weather is dry, it withers away.

This fern puts up a single leaf, not a frond. It is usually seen in spring and fall when rain is supposed to fall.

Blazing Star Liatris
Three of these small Liatris flowers grow in my area. This one is officially called Blazing Star, although the others are often called that too. What sets this flower apart is the calyx below the tube flowers with the fat and pointed scales plus lots of hairs on the edges. To me this flower is purple, but it is often listed under pink in the wildflower books.

Another Fern

I have found another wet weather fern. It’s called a Resurrection Fern and grows on a large rock outcrop. Whenever it rains during warm weather, this fern unrolls its fronds.

This gives me hope the Adder’s tongue will reappear in this small glade once fall rains decide to come and visit.

Will it rain soon? Actually almost an inch fell the other day and the temperatures dropped into the eighties.

The rain is still on a cloud to cloud basis. This is when a thunderstorm cloud floats by and drops rain in one small area, but leaves nearby areas dry.

That small rain means I will go glade exploring to see if the small area has perked up as much as my pasture.

Find out more about many Ozark plants in Exploring the Ozark Hills.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Doing Cold Canning

Late summer has arrived in the Ozarks along with sacks of tomatoes and peppers. That leaves me doing cold canning.

Then the library obtained a book called “Cold Canning” by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough which I checked out as soon as it was put out on the shelf. It isn’t exactly what I wanted, but I’m glad to read it for new ideas.

What Is Cold Canning?

Regular canning is hot work. It requires a big canner which is a pressure cooker, special jars with lids and rings and lots of time and hot work.

The result is a pantry filled with jars of various vegetables, sauces and more. My problem is how long those jars sit on the shelves as two old people don’t eat that much.

So, I gave up my canner and changed to freezing my vegetables. In other words, I’m doing cold canning.

Speckled Roman tomatoes for cold canning
There are lots of paste tomato varieties. Some are determinate like Roma which ripens all its tomatoes at the same time. Speckled Roman is indeterminate so it produces tomatoes the whole season. It is prolific and has a good taste.

Doing Tomatoes a New Way

My favorite tomatoes for freezing are Speckled Romans. These red and yellow striped paste tomatoes are indeterminate so the crop comes in a bag or two at a time.

Forget peeling the tomatoes. There’s nutrition in those peels most people throw away. Instead, I dice the tomatoes into a big stainless steel pot and cook them down into a thick soup.

This is strained using a colander. The juice is frozen in quart freezer bags. Then the pulp is pureed and frozen in quart freezer bags. Only two or three cups go into a bag, enough for a meal.

Those Pretty Jars

In “Cold Canning” sauces, condiments, jams and more are frozen in glass jars. The pictures look so pretty. I suppose I could use jars.

However, using bags lets me freeze them flat. This makes lining them up in the freezer easy and saves a lot of space.

The recipes are the attraction in “Cold Canning”. This year I want to try making some salsa and doing cold canning is my preferred method.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Growing Potatoes

Potatoes are cheap in the market. So, growing potatoes seems silly unless it is some unusual variety.

This isn’t silly to me. I like growing Yukon gold potatoes. Every year I put in a row, less than a dozen seed potatoes, just to have the pleasure of doing it.

Weather Problems

Potatoes like cool weather, but not frost. They like moist dirt, but not wet. It’s getting hard to have these conditions every spring.

This year started out too cold and the seed potatoes hunkered down to wait. Later the temperatures were cool enough. However, it was very wet, making a couple seed potatoes rot.

Last year frost kept nipping off the potato vines. Other years it stays too cold or too wet or too dry or too hot. I almost gave up growing potatoes and have given up growing more than a few.

Hilling vs. Mulch

Weeds love it when I try to hill potatoes. The last time I tried hilling, the giant ragweed got so big I had to use a saw to cut it down. Needless to add, the potatoes didn’t do well.

Now I use mulch. A standard flake gives the right distance between plants. Two flakes wide is a good width for my single row. Otherwise, a flake is a good distance between rows.

Not all purchased potato varieties do well growing under mulch. Purchased Yukon Gold do well. A way to get around this is to keep your own seed potatoes, choosing those from the plants that grow the best.

growing potatoes is fun
Yukon Gold potatoes do well growing under mulch. Ozark spring weather can make growing potatoes difficult, so I grow only a few.

Harvesting

Just because the potatoes were grown under mulch, doesn’t mean I can just rake the mulch off and pick up the potatoes. All the mulch does is keep the weeds from taking over and replacing hilling.

When I harvest the potatoes, I push the mulch away from the base of the now brown plant and pull. Then I know where to start exploring in the dirt for the potatoes. They can be anywhere in a foot across circle and up to six inches down.

For me, seeing the row of bushy potato vines and later bringing up those lovely potatoes is all the reason I need to grow a few every year.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

New Barn Kid

All I needed was three more days to clean out that last corner of the barn. My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela presented me with a new barn kid before I got done.

Of course, the corner still piled high with old manure was the place of choice. My only consolation was the thick, dry layer over the top of it.

Cleaning the Barn In the Heat

Heat stroke is not something I enjoy at all. July was hot and humid. By noon the sun was too intense to be working outside.

My morning routine was to milk fast and a bit early. Put up the milk. Run the goats out to pasture. Move in with the tractor and start forking out manure. Two loads took me to noon.

It still seems unreal how much bedding and manure ten goats can put down in a winter. This last winter was wet, so I couldn’t keep taking the surface layers out each week.

Nubian buck kid
Pictures in the barn are so dark. This Nubian buck kid got plopped down outside in the sunshine. He was napping. Once he wakes up all the way, it will be hard to get a picture of him standing still.

New Barn Kid

Pamela’s little buck kid wasn’t concerned. He moved right into his corner. His mother was at his beck and call.

Within a day this kid was up exploring the barn. Tractors did not phase him. Being moved out of the way was only an annoyance easily overcome by begging for attention.

Loss of manure pile was annoying. His corner kept shrinking until it was gone. Even that was fine as soon as fresh straw arrived to soften the cement.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela's new buck kid
This two-day-old Nubian buck kid is already to run around out in the sunshine. He hasn’t met the horseflies yet.

By three days old this new barn kid has taken over the barn. He defies any of the goats to get in his way or push him around. After all, he has his mother to back him up and she is a big doe.

The world is a bigger place for this little boy now. His mother takes him out into the barn lot every evening as she is hungry and the new hay hasn’t been cut and baled yet. That’s fine with him too.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Please Wait, Pamela

Normally I am impatient for one of my goats to have her kids. Not this time. My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela is due anytime. Please wait, Pamela!

Cold, Wet Winter

I know I should keep taking the dirty, loose bedding out of the barn all winter. That way it doesn’t mat up into an icky mess many inches deep by spring.

It was too cold. It was too wet. I was busy. So many excuses.

Wet Spring

The barn needs to be cleaned out by the end of June when fly season goes into high gear. It kept raining on days I was home or the mud was too deep. The bridge washed out and need patching. So many excuses.

Please wait High Reaches Pamela
Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela looks very close to kidding. The barn is almost cleaned out. It’s a race.

And July Arrived

Pamela will have Terrill Creek Huckleberry’s first kids here at High Reaches. Her due date is about August 1.

The barn had over a foot of wet, matted mess on the floor. This is definitely not good for kids, the herd either.

So the race is on. It is hot, too hot for me to clean barn by noon. I can get two loads out before then, loads dug out with a pitchfork and piled on the tractor platform. This clears about two feet of barn floor.

It will take another three days to finish cleaning out the barn. The goats are complaining as they have no bedding, only cement to lie on.

Tough. New bedding must be taken out before I start to clean. The cement – a big headache for barn floor – must dry out.

Please wait, Pamela

Only one corner is still piled high. I hope three days will get the last of it out. Manure is deceiving. Taking a load out should make the pile look smaller. It doesn’t.

But I do want that barn floor covered with fresh bedding before those new kids arrive. Hang on, Pamela. I’m working on it.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Changing World of Writing

How the world of writing has changed! Writers today are very blessed with the technology available to them.

In the Past

I’ve just finished reading “Humboldt’s Cosmos” about Alexander Humboldt, a leading scientist around 1800 (review on Goodreads). All he had for taking notes was paper and pencil or, maybe a goose quill or fountain pen.

Over the five years Humboldt was exploring in South America, Mexico and Cuba, he wrote thousands of pages of observations and measurements. He was one of the last generalists, doing work that laid the foundations for vulcanology, meteorology, archeology, ecology and more. Plus he discovered and catalogued thousands of new plants. Animals were in his field of study as well.

His notes were precious as there was only one copy. Preparing them for publication was done in pencil or fountain pen giving only one copy.

All those famous writers of the past faced the same conditions. No wonder the typewriter was a big hit.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book would never get done on a typewriter. Using a computer I could add the illustrations correctly sized and do some fancy fonts for the cover.

Typewriters

The old typewriters were no fun to type on. It took lots of practice and strong fingers. An advantage was being able to make a carbon copy.

Don’t think there was this special paper. There was carbon paper. It had powdered carbon on one side. A sheet was placed between two pieces of plain paper and fed into the typewriter. When a typewriter key hit the top paper, it pressed a carbon letter onto that second sheet.

Correcting mistakes was very difficult. Accuracy was highly valued in a typist.

Typewriters improved. Paper improved. Electric models appeared. The scripts could be changed. But the writing was still one row of words, the same size, the same intensity – forget bold.

Today’s World of Writing

Typewriters gave way to word processers. Then came the personal computers. This opened up so many options for the writer.

Make a mistake? Back up and retype, no correction fluid or eraser required. Want to move a sentence or paragraph? Highlight it, click on it and drag it to a new location. Prefer a different font? Pick one. Bold it. Italicize it.

Illustrations? Import a picture already cropped, resized and enhanced right into the text. Add a caption, if you want.

I love the new world of writing, most of the time. When the electricity goes out, when the computer crashes, then typewriters have an appeal.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Intricate Flowers

In science texts flowers are drawn as lilies. These are simple flowers, easy to diagram. In reality many plants have intricate flowers.

Milkweeds are one of these flowers. European botanists started studying these in the 1500s. Yet the flower wasn’t completely diagramed out and understood until the 1960s.

Passion Flowers

Most passion flowers are tropical. Missouri hosts two of them. One is the large one commonly called Maypop. This four inch across flower is purple and white, hard to miss on its vine draping across bushes.

The second is the yellow passion flower. You have to take your time and look for this one as it is only a half inch across and a pale yellow green. This is a delicate vine that twines around other plants or fence wire in shady, moist areas.

Intricate flowers green passion flowers
These interesting green passion flowers are easy to spot once you recognize the leaves. The vines average four feet long. Later small, round berries hang down and turn purple when they ripen.

Intricate Flowers

A lily has a single set of petals called a corona. Passion flowers are different. They have an outer corolla made up of wavy filaments. Then is an inner short corolla sticking straight up. The little green passion flower has a third corolla of rolled petals.

In the center of the flower rises a single stalk. At the top three stamens branch off to hang down. The club ends open up to expose yellow pollen. Three pistils branch off opening sticky ends to gather pollen.

Maypops or Purple Passion flowers
Maypops or Purple Passion flowers can be grown in the garden. The fruit is edible. It is similar to a pomegranate in that the edible part is the flesh around the seeds inside the fruit.

Finding Intricate Flowers

Many of the wildflowers blooming over the spring and summer look like simple ones. Looks can be Deceiving.

Those dandelions, asters, daisies and sunflowers among others are really groups of flowers. Ray flowers form the petals. Disk flowers open to give off pollen and/or collect pollen to make seeds.

Aristolochia flowers have intricate shapes. Insect eating flowers form complex traps.

Dismissing flowers as simple bits of color is a mistake. Stop and take a closer look at them and discover some of the intricate flowers or even admire the simple ones which are more complex than the text diagrams make them seem.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Class Picture Book

Presenting the Creating Picture Book class was challenging, but I’m glad it’s over. Except it isn’t really over yet. The class picture book isn’t done yet.

Getting Started

The class was supposed to last five weeks. However, no one came the first week. There were many reasons. Still, I was left loafing in the room enjoying the air conditioning, reading and working on the first Agate and Opal picture book.

Five people came the second week. There were seven, if you counted the two mothers. Three were young. Two were high school age and serious. We spent the time looking at picture books, discussing the range of illustrations and text.

Then the class decided on a topic for their book. We started a rough draft of pages.

Frustration

Any novel or picture book needs a plan. It’s possible to do a rough draft without one, but actually putting the work together requires some sense of what is happening. For a picture book, this is a story board.

That third week was supposed to complete the story board, but it didn’t happen. Without a plan, the class couldn’t do any prep work over the next week.

I spent the week trying to organize the ideas the class had into a storyboard. Luckily I knew two of the participants and saw them later on. We went over the plan I came up with, made a few changes.

Class Picture Book: Do Ducks Steal Hats?
The Creating Picture Book class picture book started as a cute idea and is turning into a cute book.

Disaster

Family emergencies happen. Still, this one took three people out of the class. The two remaining still wanted to do the class picture book, so everyone pitched in to draw the ducks, hats and people for the story.

The problem was time. Because there were so few of us, the class picture book was going to be mostly done on the computer. It takes a very, very long time to create 32 pages.

Our class picture book “Do Ducks Steal Hats?” (tentative title) will get done. It will take longer than the one week I had before the last class.