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

Write What They Know

I’m a city girl moved to the country. Anne of Green Gables is a favorite series. Perhaps that is one reason this type of plot interested me. After all, writers are encouraged to write what they know.

That’s a good idea as far as it goes. Few of us have led such adventurous lives to really live up to this. In fact, although I grew up outside Los Angeles, “Broken Promises” is set in New York City, a place I have visited twice.

Gaining Experiences

My depictions of New York City are limited in the novel because I did want to follow the write what they know admonition. My last visit to the Big Apple was a two week stay. During that time I explored Central Park, a way to stay sane surrounded by so many buildings and people. Times Square, Broadway, Coney Island, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History got stuffed into that two weeks.

At the time, my novel was not even an idea. Writing was not on my agenda. I was on vacation, the first one I’d had in many years. Although I was not aware of it, I was storing up all those memories so I could draw on them years later.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
One advantage of being older is having a big storehouse of memories to draw on when I am writing. An important attitude is seeing every task, person, place and happening, no matter how mundane or boring, as a learning experience.

Mining Memories

Many writers keep journals. I don’t. I have pictures and each picture tells me a story of a place, a time, a reaction.

Every place I go, every job I hold, every person I meet is a chance to learn something new. As I write, my memory reminds me of similar places and people from my past.

Different experiences bring back emotions as well as situations. Hazel loses her father in the novel. My family lost my nephew. My father had died leaving behind a letter, a letter from the dead.

It’s possible to look places up, even take virtual tours now. People write about lots of things on the internet, even as I am doing now. But these are second hand.

Write What They Know.

To truly write about something, it helps to have actually seen and felt it in reality. At least experience something similar. That’s when words stop being just words and create a fictional reality.

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Latest From High Reaches

Spring Gardening

It’s amazing how uplifting sun and temperatures above freezing can be after days of near and below zero. The goats and chickens tumble out their doors to bask in the sun. Thoughts turn to kids and spring gardening.

Waiting on Kids

My Nubian doe High Reaches Juliette was due about New Year’s. The days passed and she stayed fat and showing signs, but no kids.

When she looked like any time, the temperatures plunged. Anxiety began as wet kids stand no chance in zero degrees even with an experienced mother goat.

The cold seemed to stop all kid preparation. As this cold moves on, the wait begins anew.

Reading Gardening Books

There’s not much to do outside with cold temperatures and a dusting of snow. Reading about gardening, seed sorting and starting along with spring gardening plans pass the days.

Much of the country is having much worse weather than the Ozarks. That’s one of the reasons we moved here thirty years ago. Waist deep snow along with temperatures ten and twenty below for six months didn’t fit our preferred life style.

My current gardening book “The Country Journal Book of Vegetable Gardening” written by Nancy Bubel is set in Pennsylvania. Some of the crops, all of the timing and some of the problems don’t apply here in the Ozarks. So, why is the book helpful?

Zephyr summer squash
This is definitely on my garden list for this year. Zephyr summer squash is easy to grow, delicious to eat and somewhat tolerant of squash bugs.

Universal Gardening Ideas

Some things fit gardening no matter where the garden is. The author prefers setting out rows. I have marked out beds. But planting seeds is the same.

Pennsylvania gardens are set out later than mine. But spring gardening planning entails the same details for succession planting, mulching, cultivating, seed starting and more.

Much of this and other gardening books won’t apply to the Ozarks. Enough of it does to make reading them worthwhile.

Besides, its relaxing to read about spring gardening while waiting for the season to begin. Now is when the planned garden is beautiful and productive. Before reality sets in.

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Winter Snow

This winter’s weather has been weird. That includes the first winter snow storm.

Past Snows

I’ve lived up in snow country, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, where snow lies waist deep for months. It’s beautiful and cold. Even the moisture in the air turns to tiny ice crystals sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight.

These were dry snows that fell when the temperatures were far below freezing. Many would pour from hand to ground like sugar pours from the bag.

Ozark Snows

Ozark winters rarely get that intense cold. Winter snow often falls when the temperature is thrity degrees. It’s a wet, cement snow great for snowballs and snowmen and deadly to shovel.

These snows rarely lasted more than a day or two before the temperatures rose, the sun came out and everything melted. Children may regret this. I don’t as doing chores in the snow is drudgery.

Ozark creek in winter snow
Over an inch of moisture fell, but only a half inch of very wet snow sat on the land until the sun touched it. Soon only patches sitting in the shade were left. The melt raised the Ozark creek a bit.

This Winter

It was raining as the thermometer stood at thirty-six degrees. This is too warm for snow or freezing rain.

Then the drops turned white. Clumps of snow flakes fell only to melt as soon as they hit the ground. This winter snow was falling when it was too warm to snow.

The snow was persistent and left a half inch of slush on the ground. Luckily the clouds were too thick and held the temperature above freezing all night. I’m not good at ice skating and too old to bounce well when I fall down.

crows in winter snow
Over the winter groups of crows march around the pastures. They are wary birds, taking off at any disturbance. They call back and forth. They didn’t seem very happy with the white stuff.

What Happened?

The cold air bringing the snow didn’t shove the warm air on the ground away. That left the clouds cold enough to snow which they did.

The layer of warm air along the ground wasn’t thick enough to melt the snow before it got to the ground. That meant our first winter snow fell when the temperature was too warm.

Winter isn’t done with us. The next cold front is much bigger, colder and meaner than the last one. We may get a real snow in the next few days.

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GKP Writing News

Writing That First Novel

Before I found National Novel Writing Month (NaN0), my books were more exercises in writing about goats and nature. Writing that first novel was not even an idea. Fiction was something I read, not wrote.

However, I’d finished “Goat Games” and “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and wanted a new writing project. I liked writing and wanted to do more of it.

False Starts

The NaNo challenge was to write 50,000 words in 3o days. That’s almost 2,000 words a day, a mind boggling number to me then. But I like challenges.

The problem was not having an idea for writing that first novel. Somehow I came up with one.

Disaster Looming

That plot idea was not workable. It was a disaster waiting for me to fall into it. I did just that.

There was no novel draft that November. However, I was hooked. That novel was left moldering on my computer as I came up with a new idea.

It was trite. City girl moves to the country. Done and done well so many times, the idea was a waste of time.

Marine Private First Class Brandon Smith

Everything changed with a phone call from my mother. My nephew, my brother’s only child, had been killed in Iraq.

Brandon was 19. He joined the Marines because he was looking for a way to get his life on track. His love was working on engines and he was supposed to do that. Except he was sent to Iraq.

Grief has so many forms. It’s different for every person. Perhaps that is why it shows up in so many novels.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
Hazel Whitmore is 12 when her world starts falling apart with the death of her father. Grief comes in many forms. Learning to live with it comes in many forms as well.

“Broken Promises”

My brother didn’t really accept Brandon’s death for a year. For my mother, it was devastating. He was the only grandchild she really had time with and he was killed on her eightieth birthday.

City girl moves to the country. Now Hazel had a reason to move. She had a conflict to resolve.

And I found writing that first novel that some novels write themselves even as they tear you apart inside.

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Latest From High Reaches

Buttercup Parade

One task for mid winter is to sort through and back up the plant pictures taken over the year. There weren’t a lot of them last year for many reasons. Still, I’ve come across a buttercup parade.

What is a buttercup parade? After all, a buttercup is a buttercup. Except there are several of them that grow around the place.

Early buttercups lead the buttercup parade
I found a number of these small buttercups growing along my Ozark road. These plants are hairy, leaves, stems and under the sepals. The petals are long and separate.

Wildflower Series

There are a number of wildflower parades around the area. One is the purple ironweed. For people driving by, these are only tall plants topped with purple flower heads.

When I go walking out to the fields where the ironweeds bloom, there is a succession of different ones. Usually the Arkansas blooms first followed by the Purple. Then the tall ironweed takes over arging with the Western. Last is the Missouri. All this runs from July to September.

Another series is the various white snakeroot, wild quiine, common boneset and false boneset. Summer is taken up by the yellow sunflowers. And the blue and purple asters run their series in the late summer into fall.

Dent County Flora

These series don’t matter to most people. Those few who drive by looking at the wildflowers see only the colors.

The series do make a difference to me as I keep nibbling away at the list of plants growing in Dent County. I must first notice the plants are different. Then I take a series of pictures on each plant and flower, marking them so I can come back to get pictures of the seeds or fruits.

Hardest of all is poring over the plant identification books trying to identify each of the plants. This brings me back to the buttercup parade.

buttercup parade in the garden
Bulbous buttercups showed up in my garden one year. They are pretty, bloom a long time and so they stayed. As with other garden wildflowers, they seed prolifically. I now pick out one or two to grow into their lovely mounds and pull the rest.

Which Is Which?

As far as I know now, there are four buttercups growing around me. They are the Early, Harvey’s, Hispid and Bulbous. I have pictures of all four. Now I get to double check the identifications in “Flora of Missouri” and www.missouriplants.com and put them into the Dent County Reds (Yellows and Orange) book.

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Looking At Lichens

Wildflower season will begin in a couple of months. I have a new camera to practice with to get ready. So I am out looking at lichens.

What Is a Lichen?

These are a textbook example of symbiosis, mutualism, a partnership between two organisms. Both of the participants benefit.

In the case of lichens, a fungus and an alga are the participants. The fungus provides the structure and nutrients. The alga provides food as it can do photosynthesis. A fungus can’t.

Orange lichen on a honey locust trunk
Most lichens in my area of the Ozarks are gray green in color. But they come in many colors. Orange is bright. It seems to only grow on tree trunks.

Where Are Lichens?

Around my home, lichens are lots of places. They grow on the trees. Some ground and rock areas are covered. Even my clothesline and truck have lichens growing on them.

These plantlike growths come in a variety of shapes and colors. Some look like flat leaves and are called folious. Others are spiky. The many branches of some make it look lacy.

Most lichens I see are a grayish green. There are places where they appear black. The ones on a black walnut near my barn are orange.

Up on a hill I found the soldier lichen. All lichens make a kind of pod that opens to release spores into the air to form new lichens elsewhere. Soldier lichens have bright red pods and got their name as the color was like that of British soldiers.

Wooly lichens spotted while looking for lichens
Lichens are not parasitic. They hold onto a surface and grow there. These wooly ones seem to prefer warmer weather when they can spread all over branches. Only a few were braving winter cold.

Why Bother With Lichens?

If you’ve ever admired Spanish moss, you’ve admired a lichen. Such lichens grow where the air is moist like in the South.

Up on the tundra, reindeer and caribou graze on lichens as grass has trouble growing in such a cold place. Cold, even freezing, doesn’t seem to bother lichens much as long as they have water, nutrients and sunlight.

Looking at lichens often means seeing folious lichen
Folious lichen looks a bit like smashed gray green leaves on rocks and tree trunks. These are often in a circular pattern. They put up cups that produce the spores to drift away on the wind to begin new colonies.

Lichens aren’t Wildflowers

My Dent County Flora is about plants. Lichens aren’t plants. But they are interesting.

And looking at lichens, taking some pictures of them, let’s me get in some good camera practice. Plus they are interesting. Any excuse is a good one to go out walking in the woods.

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GKP Writing News

Ocean Exploration Book Reviews

Somehow I ended up this year circumnavigating the world with Captain James Cook and Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. These two men makes today’s ocean exploration so easy.

Modern Ocean Mapping

Scientists today have satellites, sonar, air craft, radio communication, reinforced steel ships with engines. Ocean charts give accurate information about continents, islands, currents, undersea mounts and more.

These don’t change that time spent out on the ocean is time away from friends and family. A ship is its own world and those on it are stuck in each other’s company for the time of the voyage.

Ocean Voyages for Wilkes and Cook

“Stowaway” by Karen Hesse is set during Captain Cook’s first voyage around the world in 1769. “The Forgotten Voyage of Charles Wilkes” by  begins in 1838.

These voyages were made in wooden sailing ships. Their movements depended on the wind or, in emergency, on small boats pulling them as men rowed. Storms blew them off course, shredded sails and sometimes onto reefs or rocks.

Without radios, each ship had to depend on their crew and captain. If the ship was sunk, the crew went down with it. Their families waited, not knowing, for years until the ship was given up as lost.

Provisions were what a ship could carry. When possible, the crew fished. Whenever land was seen, the ship could try to refill empty water casks and gather fresh food.

Medicine was iffy. Scurvy was dreaded and showed up frequently. Recognition of using citrus juice was still experimental.

Exploration and Politics

Captain Cook was important to Britain. His voyages of ocean exploration were supported and valued. Scientific knowledge was important in Europe.

President John Quincy Adams wanted to send out a fleet of ships for ocean exploration to make the new United States important in the scientific community. Congress ignored him and those who followed him.

When Congress finally approved funding for a voyage, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was put in charge with a promise of having a promotion to Captain. It didn’t happen. His ships were old and inadequate for the task.

The Naval Ship Yard pretended to repair the ships. Their work was shoddy, holes in masts were stuffed with rope and painted over, rotting wood and equipment were not replaced.

In spite of inadequate winter clothing (the manufacturer cheated on the material) and barely seaworthy ships, Wilkes showed Antarctica to be a continent, mapped islands and harbors, spread American diplomacy around the southern part of the world. His reward when he returned was a court martial. His work was ignored and Europe was allowed to insult it.

Book Ratings

Both of these books were easy to read. “Stowaway” was written in a journal entry format that took a bit to get used to. In the Goodreads system, both received four stars and full reviews.

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GKP Writing News

Annual Writing Plans

I should know better than to compile a list of annual writing plans. The list is always too long, too ambitious and begging for trouble.

Over the years I keep making out my plans. And just as surely life gets in the way. At the end of the year I look over my annual writing plans to see if any of them have actually gotten done.

This year I have completed some of my plans. One novel (“Hopes, Dreams and Reality”) and a picture book (“The Little Spider”) did get done. And there was a bonus picture book (“At the Laundromat”).

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
My covers are a usually a blend of digital and watercolor. For the Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover, I painted the figure then scanned it into the computer. Then I added the background color and printing. Sometimes I do these with watercolor, but opted for the digital with this cover. And, yes, I corrected a few problems with the watercolor.

What about next year?

Novels

With a draft nearing completion for Life’s Rules, I must have it on my list. It still needs a lot of research leading to a rewrite.

Then there is “The Carduan Chronicles: Arrival” to complete. This does have drafts to finish merging. Before that the timeline must be rewritten. I find the size of this is daunting (terrifying?).

Picture Books

Each picture book takes a long time. The text takes thought as it is so short. Each image must not only illustrate the text, but expand on it.

Once the drawings and text are done, I can sit down and enjoy doing the watercolor. These often have lots of little mistakes in them as I am not an artist, strictly an amateur trying my best. So each watercolor must then be scanned into the computer and turned into a final image.

There are several ideas I’m working out. One is a little girl wandering off onto the hills while her family searches for her. This sounds scary, but won’t be. It will be more of a nature adventure story.

Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure is a goat series. I have lots of ideas for these two kids. These will not be humanized goat kids, but goat kids. And, as a long time goat owner, I know how much adventure and trouble goat kids can get into.

My Opal goat, Nubian doe
My new Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla’s Opal looks innocent. All she wants is to be petted and fed. That is, until she finds some adventure to try out.

Nonfiction

I will work on the Dent County Flora. It won’t get done as there are so many plants to find and get pictures of. My goal is to complete another two hundred plants this year.

There are other essay ideas, but these are more writing exercises taking hazy shape in the imagination for now

doing digital and print versions requires a title page
Part 1: Metrics is available for “The Chemistry Project”. Part 2a: Matter awaits the final story. It takes time to get help from other people.

The Chemistry Project has several units close to done. Unfortunately, the pages needed depend on other people for information and pictures. Coordinating schedules can be daunting.

Annual Writing Plans

As you can see, I’ve far too many goals for the year. How many will I accomplish? I don’t know. But the fun is in trying to get as many as possible done.

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Goats Are Expensive Pets

My Nubian dairy goats are supposed to produce milk. Instead my goats are expensive pets.

This isn’t entirely their fault. If a goat doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t produce milk. And I didn’t get some of them bred on time.

My herd has started and ended my days for fifty years as of next June. These last thirteen goats are the last of my herd. As they age, many retire and my goats become expensive pets still ordering my days, but producing nothing more than work.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela proves goats are expensive pets
My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela did milk through last winter. As soon as she was bred, she went dry. She still expects her hay and grain on time. The only comfort is that she will produce kids to help defray some of the expenses once the kids are three months old and sold. And, maybe, she will milk all of next winter.

Schedule Adjustments

One of the advantages of Nubian dairy goats is their flexibility. When I worked swing shift, they happily showed up for meals at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. When I was teaching, they adjusted to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

With many of the does dry, their schedule is moving to 9 a.m. and a half hour before dark. I’m older and don’t really want to stand out in the cold and dark feeding goats. Besides, they are older too and go to bed when it gets dark.

Times Have Changed

When I first had goats, few veterinarians had any experience with them. I ended up learning to do most easy veterinary work myself. Things like deworming, pulling kids, giving shots when needed and knowing when they were needed.

Feed didn’t cost that much. A hundred pounds of oats was seven dollars. Honest!

Now a veterinarian has to check over and prescribe antibiotics. None of the local ones come out to the place so the goat, all hundred plus p[ounds of goat, must be lifted up waist high into my truck and taken to town. Physically that does not happen for me any more.

Feed has moved to fifteen dollars for fifty pounds. This doesn’t count the extras like sunflower seeds. Since I go through a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds a week, my goats are expensive pets.

Nubian doe High Reaches Opal
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal is learning all the routines including the joys of being an expensive pet.

Future Plans

My goats will stay. One by one they will retire and die. I will not replace them and so will no longer milk in a few years. However, the work will continue as long as they do. My goats are expensive pets for possibly another ten years.

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Frustrating Chickens

There is a fair sized flock of chickens in my hen house. They are there to eat pests and lay eggs. This year they are frustrating chickens.

Eggs almost ceased to appear last summer. From what I’ve read and heard, this was a common problem for many. There are probably lots of reasons.

Too Many Roosters

Someone dumped off some roosters down the road last summer. They moved into my flock and proceeded to beat up both my two resident roosters and my hens.

Frustrating chickens, all talk and no eggs
Purrsey rooster was dumped off and joined the flock. He is a proud bird and thinks he should rule the roost. Unfortunately the hens don’t appreciate all the uproar between the roosters. I’m hoping this will settle down more next year as the roosters get older. His name is because he sounds like a cat’s purr when he calls hens over.

All but one left. The damage was already done. My hens were traumatized which is not good for egg production.

Black Snakes

There are several big, and I do mean big, black snakes that live under my barn floor all summer. Eggs are a favorite delicacy.

However, the snakes also eat some of the thousands of mice, any rats that attempt to move in and discourage the copperheads. So I put up with losing a few eggs.

The problem last summer was a younger black snake, a mere five footer (The big ones are seven feet and six feet.). This one was determined to get to those eggs, even sliding under the hens in the nests to wait for the egg to arrive.

The hens were not happy. They moved out to the hay trough, the tall grass, anyplace but the nests.

Heat

Like much of the country, the Ozarks had a heat wave go by. The chickens hid in the barn, under the trees, next to the barn, anyplace there was shade. They still panted as chickens can’t sweat. One older hen went hoarse.

Egg production ceased.

Older Hens

My flock is mixed ages. I tend to add six to eight pullets each year. The others stay until they die of old age.

Older hens lay larger eggs, but fewer of them. They tend to stop laying after molting in the fall and not start again until the end of January.

Mr. Smarty, another rooster for my frustrating chickens
Mr. Smarty is a very proud rooster. He thinks he should be in charge and is most upset that I am. He is a Columbian Wyandotte.

Light Problems

For years I’ve used lights to lengthen the days for my hens to encourage them to lay longer in the fall. The new LED lights don’t seem to have the right colors of light, so this doesn’t seem to work very well any more.

All of this adds up to frustrating chickens and a shortage of eggs in my kitchen.