Want to know more about the flooding in Iowa?

A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008 by Cornelia F. Mutel is a great place to start.

From an earlier interview with Ms. Mutel

In the course of working on this book, you did an enormous amount of research into the causes of floods. What surprised you most?
The disjunct between what we know and what we do. A Watershed Year clearly indicates that we understand our weather and flooding with increasing sophistication, and we know what to do to prevent flood damage: change land use and floodplain policies, increase perennial plant cover on uplands, increase water infiltration, decrease impermeable surfaces in cities, etc. We need to look at long-term changes over the entire floodplain and plan for major as well as minor flood events. Yet policies and actions are too often based on short-term interests and ignore the greater long-term good for the greater number of people. This needs to change.

How toxic were the floodwaters? Can we safely farm and garden and picnic in areas that were flooded?
We have an entire chapter discussing the many pollutants picked up by floodwaters—ranging from farm chemicals (e.g., pesticides, fertilizers, animal waste and all its bacteria and hormones) to complex urban chemicals, including industrial and residential chemical contaminants and the overflow from wastewater treatment plants. Tests of 2008 floodwaters indicated that the total amount of these contaminants was very large. The effect of this “chemical cocktail” of contaminants was worrisome for both humans and wildlife who came in contact with floodwaters. However, these contaminants would have been diluted by the tremendous volume of floodwater. Ongoing tests do not indicate any harmful accumulation of toxics in Cedar Rapids soil. Thus people can consider it safe to garden, farm, and picnic in previously flooded areas.

Were there any positive results from the flooding?
John Pearson’s chapter on nature’s response points out that floods have always been part of our landscape and that flooding is positive for floodplain ecosystems. Native floodplain species are adapted to the disruption caused by floods, and some even require periodic flooding for successful reproduction. Floods are considered destructive because we put ourselves and our structures in the wrong places at the wrong times.

On another level, data on climate indicate that midwestern weather is intensifying and becoming more extreme. The result is likely to be more extreme floods. The 2008 floods can serve as our wake-up call, prompting us to take steps that will reduce future flood damage. If we act appropriately, we could have a far better response to the future flooding that is sure to come—and that would indeed be a positive result.

Tell us more about the Iowa Flood Center.

This is an exciting new center at the University of Iowa. The IFC is the nation’s first academic research and training center devoted solely to flood research. It is a unique resource for Iowans and already has a number of products available on its website. For example, anyone can access current stream-level data from the IFC’s statewide network of 50 stream sensors. The web-based “Iowa Flood Information System” allows Iowans to view maps of watersheds upstream from their communities and overlay other data on these maps, such as current precipitation, river stage data, and water travel times throughout the watershed. This is an example of a powerful new tool that will help Iowans better understand flood risk and prepare for imminent floods. I’d encourage readers to look up their community and bookmark the website (www.iowafloodcenter.org).

A Watershed Year will appeal to a wide range of general readers. What can the average citizen of Iowa and the Corn Belt do to help prevent floods?
Each of us can take steps in our own manner. Some people may work to reduce runoff, for example, by increasing soil health and water infiltration on our own property or by installing a rain garden or native plantings. Some may put pressure on public officials to revise flood policies or to prevent new construction in floodplains. Some may work to restore wetlands and uplands so they absorb and hold water more effectively. While only a few of us can address future flooding through our professions, all of us can continue to raise awareness of the potential damage of future floods.  I do believe that if each one of us took a few small steps to address future flooding, the results would be tremendous.

City planners, engineers, and policy makers will be particularly interested in this book. What’s the main message that A Watershed Year conveys to these specialists?
Don’t try to return to business as usual. By doing so, we return to an unacceptable vulnerability to future extreme floods, which are not only likely to continue but also (according to climate change predictions) likely to increase. Treat the 1993 and 2008 flooding as wake-up calls. Section 4 of A Watershed Year gives many recommendations for preventing or reducing the magnitude of future flood damage. The time to act on these recommendations is now.

—Cornelia F. Mutel, editor, A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008

Interview with Brandi Janssen

University of Iowa Press acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks is helping the press build a new list of publications on a topic everyone’s interested in these days: food. Recently, she asked Brandi Janssen, an anthropology PhD student at the University of Iowa who’s writing her dissertation on local food production, some questions about the rapidly growing “Farm to School” or F2S movement.

Catherine: What is “Farm to School” and what are the reasons for it?

Brandi: Broadly, Farm to School includes programs that link locally produced foods to K-12 schools. These efforts include, but are certainly not limited to, adding locally produced foods to school lunches and classroom snacks, providing nutrition and agricultural education, and developing school gardens. Farm to School programs generally aim to improve the quality of food served in schools and increase student knowledge of agriculture and food production, both in the classroom and through hands-on gardening activities and farm field trips. In addition, Farm to School programs develop and expand markets available to local farmers by increasing institutional purchasing of local food.

Catherine: When did these efforts start, and how widespread are they?

Brandi: It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact start date, as Farm to School efforts have been developing independently across the United States over the past ten to fifteen years. In 2004, however, the National Farm to School Program was officially authorized in the Farm Bill. [This is the omnibus act on agriculture and food policy that Congress enacts every five years.] While no funds for Farm to School were appropriated in that bill, the federal recognition was significant. In 2010 the Farm Bill included over $5 million in funding for Farm to School projects. Currently [in 2013], the National Farm to School Network reports that there are over 2,500 individual Farm to School programs serving over 10,000 schools, spread throughout all 50 states.

Put frogs, toads and turtles in your pockets

With most schools just ending for the summer break, perhaps some of you will get help from children or grandchildren in your garden or your yard. It is great to nourish this interest and now many schools have their own gardens. Our Iowa City Public Library has a garden on the walking mall and, of course, even the White House is raising its own vegetables and flowers.

The University of Iowa Press has just published two laminated foldout guides that I think will pique children’s interest and adults, too. It’s all about frogs, toads and turtles in our Midwest.

“Frogs and Toads in your pocket” and “Turtles in your pocket” have just been published by the University of Iowa Press. Terry VanDeWalle is the author of both guides and Suzanne L. Collins has photographed the subjects in their natural habitats.

The guide for frogs and toads has at least 16 colorful pictures of frogs and about eight toads, plus a plethora of information about each one. Yet the guide folds up and is easily held while you search for these remarkable amphibians.

Toads are my favorites, and I look for them just outside our garage in a damp area and among the mums we have planted there. Of course I jump when they jump, but I really do admire them. They take care of all the pesky bugs each night while I am sleeping.

The American toad probably is the one I have seen most. They are gray, brown or reddish brown and warty, the guide says with dark spots on the back and a mottled chest and belly. They like prairies, forest, marshes, ponds, ditches and urban areas to live and breed.

Poisonous substances that spray from the warts on their back are their weapons to defend themselves from small animals. They also can inflate their bodies with air making it hard for another animal to swallow them.

The Great Plains Toad is gray, brown or greenish also with warty skin but with very distinctive large spots outlined in white and cream, the author says, and also has an unspotted belly. The large spots hold the warts that are their defensive mechanisms.

Frogs are so like toads that we get them mixed up. This wonderful guide will show and tell you all the differences.

An interesting statement on the back of the guide says, “Frogs and toads have become canaries in the coal mine when it come to conservation, as the discovery of malformed frogs has brought increased attention to global habitat loss.” The loss of agricultural ground had greatly affected their decline.

As to the turtles in your pocket, this guide gives descriptions of the many Midwest species. It’s colorful, filled with information regarding turtle habitat, what they eat, how they behave and where they keep their young. Did you know that during dry periods, like last summer, they survive by burying themselves in the sand?

Even if you have been hanging out by the water or fishing for years I think you will learn something new about turtles and be able to identify them if they cross your path or fall off a log in the water.

Both these guides, as well as one about snakes, can be purchased at www.uiowapress.org, and each is $9.95. Send for these, put on your old clothes and muck around in the water and dirt for some different summer fun.

Judy Terry is a freelance garden writer. Questions or comments should be sent to her at Iowa City Press-Citizen, P.O. Box 2480, Iowa City, IA 52244-2480; faxed to 834-1083; or emailed to life@press-citizen.com.

Great review of THE FARM AT HOLSTEIN DIP by Carroll Engelhardt

http://thegardenwindow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-farm-at-holstein-dip.html

The Farm At Holstein Dip

The Farm At Holstein Dip

An Iowa Boyhood

By Carroll Engelhardt

Published by Bur Oak Books/ University of Iowa Press

Carroll Engelhardt, a Professor of  History at Concordia  College, Minnesota, grew up on a farm in the 1940s and 50s without the benefit of  the modern conveniences enjoyed by many other farming communities during the same timescale; his farmhouse home had no indoor plumbing, electricity or functioning heating, yet his childhood was filled with hard work and many happy memories indeed.

 Descended from Norwegian and German immigrants who settled in the beautiful and fertile Clayton County, a strong Protestant morality and work ethic dominated both the area and his own family.

Professor Engelhardt covers five main topic areas: Home, Farm, Town, Church and School, recounting his recollections and experiences relating to each. I had to smile at the description of his exceptionally thrifty, almost parsimonious father at home:
"Father feared additional fees for drilling a new well and excavating through limestone to install the septic system. This seemed so daunting that he refused to act. Living in the house for nearly four decades without running water, a water heater, and a modern bathroom inconvenienced Mother more than it did him."

The incredible details about farm life in Chapter Two will stay in my mind for a very long time; vicious bulls escaping, animals being slaughtered on the farm and daily seeing procreation gave him respect for all forms of life. Saturday nights saw them trooping to the local town of Elkader, whose delights constitute Chapter Three and lead naturally into school and church attendance and their impact on his life, covered in Chapters Four and Five.

This is an absolutely enchanting book, perfect for anyone who enjoys history, sociology, memoirs and/or rural life, and the stunning photos - especially of his grandparents and parents - give an evocative glimpse into a long-gone era.

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Anyone who has looked across a ghostly valley at midnight, when moonlight makes a formless silver unity out of the drifting fog, knows how impossible it often is in nature to distinguish mass from hallucination. Anyone who has stood upon a lofty summit and gazed over an inchoate tangle of deep canyons and cragged mountains, of sunlit lakelets and black expanses of forest, has become aware of a certain giddy sensation that there are no distances, no measures, simply unrelated matter rising and falling without any analogy to the banal geometry of breadth, thickness, and height.

Robert Marshall, The People’s Forests

Interview with Leigh Adcock, Part 2

In developing the press’s new list in food studies, acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks is talking to people who are active in the field. Recently, she spoke with Leigh Adcock, the executive director of the Women, Food, and Agriculture Network, about her organization and its aims.

Catherine: On your website, you list one of your goals as insisting on “social and ecological justice.” What do you mean by “ecological justice,” and how is it related to social justice?

Leigh: “Ecological justice” refers to treating species besides Homo sapiens as having a claim in justice to a share of the Earth's resources. “Social justice” in the healthy food and farming movement refers to making sure all people have access to safe and healthy foods grown as close to their home as possible.

Catherine: Another of your goals is to engage people in “experiential learning.” Can you give an example of what you mean by this? What kinds of opportunities for this kind of learning are available now?

Leigh: “Experiential learning” is a concept that recognizes that people learn best by doing. WFAN offers opportunities for aspiring women farmers to pair up with women farmer mentors for eight to ten weeks of on-farm work during the growing season (our Harvesting Our Potential program), and for beginning women farmers (farming ten years or less) to be matched with farmer mentors for off-farm support over the course of a farming year. We also offer occasional “heritage skills” field days to share information on food preservation, weaving, etc. Our women landowner programming (Women Caring for the Land) involves a high degree of hands-on learning as well, including demonstration activities using familiar objects to teach basic conservation concepts and field tours to explore various conservation practices on the ground.

Catherine: Where can people learn more about the key issues that WFAN works on?

Leigh: Our website is the best source: www.wfan.org. We also maintain a sister site dedicated to women landowner issues at www.womencaringfortheland.org. We are members of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, so those interested in policy and advocacy should visit them at www.sustainableagriculture.net. I also recommend Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, by Temra Costa, as a great collection of profiles of the women engaged in changing the face of agriculture and food in America today.

Appreciating Nebraska's wildflowers in the city and the country

May 26, 2013 1:55 am  •  By KATHRYN CATES MOORE / Lincoln Journal Star

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Wildflowers bloom on a Nebraska prairie.

(3) More Photos

Wildflower guide is great resource

The wildflower enthusiast can’t go wrong by carrying a copy of “Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains,” by Jon Farrar, p… Read more

Wildflower week events

The National Garden Bureau has declared 2013 the year of the wildflower in order to honor these perennial plants, which used to spring up acro… Read more

It doesn’t matter whether you grow wildflowers in the city, as John Dietrich does, or on acres of restored prairie, as Peggy Fletcher does. Both gardeners describe their dedication to maintaining the natural beauties as a “passion.” It is a passion that takes some time to develop and has long-reaching roots -- just like a good stand of wildflowers.

Fletcher started painstakingly restoring 20 acres of the family's land from scratch, three acres each year. It was a labor of love, she said, and something she and her husband, Larry, knew they wanted to do when they purchased the land at 105th and A streets. Working from the ground up, they began creating a wildlife refuge, complete with prairie grass, wildflowers, birds, insects and animals.

Fletcher knew what a hayfield was as a child and loved the wildflowers that bloomed there; she even minored in botany in college. But it wasn’t until later in life, while working at a nature center, that she finally used a name -- prairie -- to describe the landscape she had known and loved all of her life. “It made me sad that we didn’t really recognize the ecological beauty of it,” she said.

Fletcher collected by hand seed from virgin prairie, as she and her husband converted their three acres a year. “We started from scratch,” she said.

With permission and on private property, they would collect three varieties of flowers at a time, taking “at the most” one-quarter of the seed from plants. Each person helping wore a cut-out gallon milk carton around their waist and was careful not to mix grasses and flowers. Staying true to the “range” to keep the right ecological flora, they collected within a 50- to 100-mile range of their home.

“There are all kinds of books on this now, but we only had one, Jon Farrar’s first edition “Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains.”

Only 10,000 copies of that were printed in 1990 for the Game and Parks Commission, where Farrar was a senior editor. They sold out in a year and a half, said Farrar, now retired.

Twenty years later, the second and updated printing of that book was published by the University of Iowa Press with great reviews from plant enthusiasts.

At one time, the Fletcher prairie had 80-plus varieties of wildflowers, but that number has gone down as nature takes its course on the land. Although they planted only six kinds of grasses, they often crowd out the flowers.

Walking the prairie -- where the deer make a path -- continues to be one of Fletcher’s favorite things, as is photographing the wildlife and flowers. Fletcher has passed her love of the prairie onto the next generations by teaching classes there. And the Fletchers donated a conservation easement of their prairie to Wachiska Audubon Society; it was dedicated in 2008.

John Dietrich knew the practical restrictions he was facing -- his wildflowers would be growing in his urban backyard -- then went about sowing his favorites and waited to see what would come of it.

Like Fletcher, he got interested in the prairie concept decades ago and looked to a book for guidance. “I got a packet of seeds from the Wisconsin Horticulture Society and got started,” he said. Over the years he has collected seeds -- with permission -- and ordered others.

When he moved to his current home in 1999, he had “lots of lawn,” he said. Slowly, he began turning the turf in the backyard and was able to transplant some of the wildflowers he brought with him.

Most notable in his urban collection are 60 varieties of false indigo or Baptisia australis, ranging in colors from light gray to blue to blue gray. These wildflowers have long, deep roots and normally don’t like to be moved, but Dietrich has figured out when and how to move them successfully.

He also has several penstemons, gayfeathers and columbines. Coneflowers happily reseed in his yard.

Dietrich said he is “not a landscaper” and doesn’t spend a lot of time designing his backyard. Instead, he plants more “haphazardly,” looking for sunny spots for his wildflowers and puts sedges in his shady areas.

“In my neighborhood, the front yard has to be more formal,” he said. “But the backyard is another story.”