Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Many of the Loess Hills’ special qualities lie with upland prairies. Clinging to the westernmost line of hills where porous soil, intense sunlight, and strong winds combine to create a desertlike environment, the native grasslands contain an unusual association of drought-resistant animals and plants typical of the Great Plains. Those species form midheight grasslands that are a radical departure from the lusher, denser tall-grass prairies typical of the remainder of either Iowa or Missouri. Today many Loess Hills prairie species are rare or endangered.

Cornelia F. Mutel, Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills

This day in Iowa History

The harmonious trill of American toads rises from ponds throughout Iowa.

From The Iowa Nature Calendar by Jean Prior and James Sandrock, illustrated by Claudia McGehee

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

The prairie had many faces, and men saw them in different ways. But whatever the prairie’s variables, there were some constants. Big, it was, and overwhelming.

John Madson, Out Home

Excerpt from Esther's Town

Often it was the lot of the boys in a family to herd cattle over largely unfenced prairie lands rich in native grasses, succulent and nutritious. The boys took their cattle our to graze in the morning and returned only at dusk. Sometimes boys would merge their herds and then separate the cattle as they returned to their own yards. When he reminisced many years later, father would still mourn the "hundreds" of jackknives he said he lost while herding cattle on low grasslands across the river from the Lee homestead. But more than the exaggerated number of knives he claimed to have misplaced while whittling sticks as his family's cattle grazed, father lamented new-century devastation to the prairie he has tromped. Diesel shovels and bulldozers made huge, ugly spoilbanks of riverside pastures as they quarried rich glacial gravel deposits for use in surfacing roads and manufacturing concrete. The pits not only yielded salable sand and rock but must have provided a rich harvest of father's jackknives as well.


Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Recipe: Easter Ham or Pork chops with Cherries

Easter Ham or Pork Chops with Cherries 

1 3-pound cooked ham or 8 pork chops     1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 can sour cherries, drained                        1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon cornstarch                              2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Blend cornstarch into cherry juice. Combine with remaining ingredients and cook over low heat, stirring, until clear and thick. Pour over cooked ham slices or cooked pork chops. another method of cooking would be to spoon the sauce over ham or unbaked pork chops and bake in a 350-degree over until meat is done.

Up a Country Lane Cookbook by Evelyn Birkby

Recipes: Parker House Rolls & Cherry Puffs

Parker House Rolls, Mrs. Marie Vawter

Rub one-half tablespoon of butter and one-half tablespoon lard into two quarts sifted four. Into a well in the middle pour one pint cold boiled milk and add one-half cup of yeast (or one yeast cake), one-half cup sugar and a little salt. If wanted for tea, rub the flour and butter, boil and cool the milk the night before, add sugar, yeast, and salt and turn all into the flour, but do not stir. Let stand over night and in the morning stir up. Knead and let rise till near tea time. Mold and let rise again and bake quickly. To mold, cut with cake cutter, put a little melted butter on one-half and lap nearly over on the other half, place in pan about three-fourths of an inch apart.


Cherry Puffs, Mrs. Kate Wilson

One egg, well beaten, one-half cup milk, butter size of a walnut, one cup of flour, one teaspoon of baking powder. Drop a tablespoon into a buttered cup and into this put two tablespoons of cherries, canned or fresh, then more batter. Steam thirty minutes. This will make four to five puffs. Serve with sauce or cream and sugar.


P.E.O. Cook Book, by David E. Schoonover

Important Iowans: Henrey Ames Field

Henry Ames Field
(December 6, 1871 - October 17, 1949)

--nurseryman and radio broadcaster-- was as much a man of the soil and of the airwaves as Iowa has ever produced. His seed and nursery company was among the most famous and successful in the nation, and his broadcasts over the radio station he established in Shenandoah, Iowa, made him an institution for famers and gardeners throughout Iowa and the Midwest.

Field was born in Page County, Iowa, the oldest of the eight children. As a lad he went around Shenandoah selling vegetables and seeds harvested from the garden on the Field family farm. In 1889 he graduated from Shenandoah High school and, after attending Normal College in Shenandoah, became a country schoolteacher. He devoted his summers to cultivating a truck farm on property near Shenandoah that he called Sleepy Hallow, and in 1899 he published a four-page catalog to broaden the market for his seeds.

As his agricultural enterprise a seed house in Shenandoah, and in 1907 incorporated the Henry Field Seed Company. He made himself accessible to seedhouse visitors by placing his business desk in the corner of the store and chatting with everyone who came by. The catalogs that helped fuel his success offered folksy information for gardeners and farmers. They evolved into regular issues of a magazine titles Seed Sense, a combination almanac and mail-order seed catalog that the subtitle announced was "For the Man Behind the Hoe."


The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, edited by David Hudson, Marvin Bergman, and Loren Horton