Interview with Evelyn Birkby: Part 1

For your new book, Always Put in a Recipe and Other Tips for Living from Iowa’s Best-Known Homemaker, you had to winnow through thousands of your “Up a Country Lane” columns. How in the world did you make a final selection?

It all started when my publisher, Tim Craig, asked me to find some of my favorite columns to put in the Valley News Today newspaper in 1999 for the 50-year anniversary of writing my column. By the time I had chosen a few to reprint, the idea came to me that I just might have a book.

So I started with those columns, and then I continued to sift through the back columns. It turned out to be a much larger task than I had expected. Let’s see, 62 years (which is what I finally researched) at 52 weeks a year is 3,224 columns! I had the advantage of the fine Iowa Women’s Archives resources, for they have gathered my columns all these years and digitized them in a form for researching.

But it was harder than I expected to choose. I found waaaay too many I liked—it took some doing to winnow them down. Then I decided I couldn’t just plop them into a book. I had to edit them, correct errors (yep), and make them better in some cases.

Even when I thought I had the book finished I discovered, with suggestions from the UI Press, that I had too many columns. Their eagle eyes thinned the manuscript down and tightened it up and made it better. I plan to look at the ones that got left out and see if they just might, someday, make another book.


Evelyn Birkby is the author of Always Put in a Recipe and Other Tips for Living from Iowa's Best-Known Homemaker, as well as Up a Country Lane Cookbook and Neighboring on the Air.

Making college campus green: Portland State University

At PSU, student-led green innovations are cause for annual celebration. Every year, the Solutions Generator, a student and faculty committee, chooses a handful of environmental proposals submitted by their peers and colleagues, as well as local community members. This year, 13 proposals were selected. They include:

•   An organic waste recycling system enabled by Black Fly larvae

•   A greywater collection system using mushrooms that filter waste and plants that enable water to easily evaporate

•   A community fruit orchard, allowing students to grow several different species and study tree fungal growth

•   An artistic exhibition space that exclusively utilizes recycled and/or reused materials

This post was created by Madison Jones

Finding Projectile Points

Finding Projectile Points

Collecting artifacts is an enjoyable hobby; follow these common-sense guidelines provided by the Office of the State Archeologist at the University of Iowa. Always get landowner permission before collecting. It is illegal to collect on public lands without a permit. Surface collect; do not try to excavate a site. Identify, catalog, and label your find and record site locations with the OSA. The OSA can help you document, process, manage, and care for your collection. Do not collect human remains. All prehistoric and modern cemeteries and burial sites in Iowa are protected by state and federal law. Report any human remains or burial sites you encounter to the OSA. Avoid buying and selling artifacts. This activity encourages looting and the loss of our nonrenewable cultural heritage. Many items on the market today are recently made copies.

Keep your collection intact; do not let it get dispersed. Be proactive with your collection. Read about Iowa archaeology, allow professionals to study your collection, give programs to school groups, participate in public field schools, and join the Iowa Archeology Society.

Visit the Office of the State Archeologist at the University of Iowa

Visit the Iowa Archeology Society

A Guide to Projectile Points of Iowa, Part 1: Paleoindian, Late Paleoindian, Early Archaic, and Middle Archaic Points by Joseph Tiffany, photographs by Christian A. Driver

Plant of the Week

Culver's root

Veronicastrum virginicum (L.) Farw.

other common names: blackroot, Bowman's root, Culver's physic, high veronica, tall speedwall

Veronicastrum: named in honor of St. Veronica

Virginicum: meaning "of Virginia"

Snapdragon family: Scrophilariaceae

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

Butterfly of the Week

Fiery Skipper

Hylephila phyleus (Drury 1773)

Status: Frequent nonoverwintering resident.

Flight: First strays from the south in June. The offspring of these migrants constitute the bulk of the Iowa flight, which occurs from early August through late October.

Distinguishing features: Adults are tan-orange. Males have a prominent stigma with a gray shadow toward the rear. Dark fingerlike projections form a ragged border above. Females are larger and darker, with a nearly solid border above; the lower hind wing has a dark stipe in the area of the anal veins, with small dark patches throughout. Wingspan: 2.7 - 2.9 cm. (males) to 3.3 cm. (females).

Distribution and habitat: Map 155 .Observed across the entire state, but most encounters have taken place in the western half. Adults are encountered in a wide variety of native and created habitats and often frequent flower gardens. 

Natural history: The Fiery Skipper is not tolerant of Iowa winters, and populations are probably killed off each year. Caterpillars feed on weedy grasses such as crabgrass and Bermuda grass.

Questions: Do larval or adult Fiery Skippers ever overwinter in Iowa? Is this species more frequent in western Iowa, or is this simply an artifact of the activities of butterfly observers? What environmental factors might account for the higher frequency of the migratory animal in the west? 

The Butterflies of Iowa, by Dennis W. Schlicht, John C. Downey, and Jeffrey C. Nekola

Plant of the Week

Blazing star
Liatris pycnostachya Michx.
other common names: button snakeroot, gayfeather, prairie blazing star
Liatris: meaning unknown; its origin lost in the mists of antiquity
Pycnostachya: from the Greek pyhnos, meaning “dense” or “thick”
Daisy family: Asteraceae (Compositae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

Making campus green: University of Massachusetts Amherst

In January 2012, a group of Amherst students, faculty and alumni began work on a campus permaculture garden. Though the garden only measures a quarter-acre, the space will be filled with planted fruits and vegetables, which will annually yield an estimated 1,000 pounds of food to be used in a nearby dining hall. Flowers and perennials will be grown in the garden as well. Amherst volunteers moved roughly 250,000 pounds of compost and soil from the space, which allowed it to be sheet-mulched. The permaculture garden, which should be operational this summer, was the brainchild of Ryan Harb, who earned a master’s degree in green building from Amherst and was recently appointed as the school’s first Director of Sustainability.

Check out the UMass Permaculture Documentary Series:

This post was created by Madison Jones