July Bird of the Month—from THE SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE OF BIRDS IN THE UPPER MIDWEST

REGULUS: The Latin word for "a little king, prince" alludes to the small size, colorful "crown," and commanding behavior of birds in this genus. Warbler Family.

calendula: a coined Latin word for "glowing" (from calēre = to glow with heat) that describes the red patch on the crown of the male.

Common name: Ruby-crowned Kinglet for the infrequently seen red crown of the male

Other names: ruby crown, ruby-crowned wren, ruby-crowned warbler

satrapa: The Latin word (Greek satrapēs) for "a viceroy, provincial governor," who might be inclined to wear a crown.

Common name: Golden-crowned Kinglet for the orange patch on the crown of the male, yellow on the female

Other names: gold-crest, flame-crest, fiery-crowned wren

From the Scientific Nomenclature of Birds in the Upper Midwest, by James Sandrock and Jean C. Prior

July Gardening Tip—from GARDENING IN IOWA AND SURROUNDING AREAS

"To make sure your tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, and squash get enough water, sink into the ground a few inches from the plant a large tin can with the top removed and holes punched into the bottom. When watering, water the soil around the plant and also fill the can."—Leone Sauer, Quasqueton Garden Club

Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas, by Veronica Lorson Fowler with the Federated Garden Clubs of Iowa

Excerpt from DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP, by Joshua Doležal

Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging, by Joshua Doležal, is a coming-of-age memoir about moving from the mountains of northwestern Montana to the Midwest.


Lonna motioned for us to sit. Jones and Tozzi took the open chairs as Jacobson and I leaned against the doorjamb.

"How'd you like to go to northern Alberta?" she grinned. "I just got the call, and we're trying to put together a crew. Libby will send a squad, we'll get one each from Eureka, Rexford, and the Cabinet district, and I thought we could send you four. Jones, you'll be our squad boss. They'll be sending Claude Shanley from the Cabinet to run the crew."

Jones sniffed. "What the hell do they want us in Alberta for?"

"Big muskeg fires, they say. It's a ground moss, grows up to five feet deep. Anytime those swampy areas dry out a little bit, like down in the Everglades, you get some bad fires. Once the heat starts skunking around in that moss, it's almost impossible to stop. Anyway, you guys interested?"

"Hell, yes," Tozzi said. We all agreed. Nobody ever turned down an off-forest assignment. With twenty-one straight days on the clock, twelve to fourteen hours a day, the overtime was reason enough. We were all cash-craving college kids except for Jacobson, one of the Troy boys still determined to make a life for himself in our hometown. Jones and Tozzi stood to go, but Lonna waved them back.

"There's something I want you all to know, just to be on the safe side. Claude is a nice guy, but he's not all there. Just two years ago he was crew boss with a hotshot outfit, and one of his guys died on the fire line--tree-felling accident or something. Whatever it was, it got Claude demoted. If it was me, I'd never send him out again, but it's not my call." Lonna leaned forward in her chair. "You guys don't hesitate to call home if you think things aren't safe up there, OK? No heroics. I need you to pay attention and speak up if your gut tells you to. All right?"

She looked at Jones to be sure. He nodded and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

Robert's Favorite Homemade Ice Cream Recipe

This recipe comes from Up a Country Lane Cookbook, by Evelyn Birkby--just in time for the hottest days of summer!

2 1/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 cups milk, scalded
6 eggs, beaten
1 quart half-and-half or whipping cream
1 to 2 tablespoons vanilla flavoring

Combine sugar, flour, and salt in a saucepan. Add scalded milk and cook over medium heat, stirring, until thick. Stir a little of this custard mixture into the beaten eggs, then return all to the hot mixture and cook another minute. Remove from heat and cool. Combine half-and-half or whipping cream and flavoring and stir into cooked mixture. Pour into a 1-gallon freezer can. Put ice and rock salt around the freezer can. Turn the crank until the mixture is frozen, replenishing the ice and salt as needed. This can also be made with an electric ice cream freezer. Makes 32 half-cup servings, but no one wants to stop there, so plan on serving about 16.

Excerpt: THE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE READER, edited by John T. Price

To celebrate the flowers of July, an excerpt from The Tallgrass Prairie Reader, edited by John T. Price.

The sun is high and hot. A single yellow jewelweed blossom, large and pale yellow, not orange like the jewelweeds in the pasture and the draws, dangles above the stream. A hummingbird zooms and sizzles through the flowers. The propeller wash of his wings shakes the whole plant from stem to stern. Mulleins along the stream have reached their peak. Spires plastered with pale-yellow blossoms, pale-green and hairy leaves flopped out. Gold coral fungus grows out of old stumps. One could go about gathering an enormous yellow bouquet out of the heart of July. Fill the arms with orange lilies, the ubiquitous gold; sweep up the sunflowers, the gold honeysuckle, the great stalky suns of compass plants and prairie dock; find clumps of black-eyed Susans rimmed with gold, and wild coreopsis, ragwort and squaw weed through the high, dry woods, yellow hearts of daises and bedstraw in the fields.

Gold bugs, yellow butterflies, orange lilies. What to do with this great fragrant glow? Well, hold on to it. You’ll want it in the days to come.

--Josephine W. Johnson, The Inland Island (1969)

International Year of Family Farming

The Food and Agriculture Organization has declared 2014 the Year of Family Farming with the aim of highlighting the important role family and small farms play in feeding the world. To do our part, throughout 2014 we are featuring some of our favorite images and words from Iowa books on family farms. Here’s the latest!

“Married in 1941, Mabel Schweers and her husband, Art, farmed 400 acres in Adams County, Iowa. They promised each of their eleven children one year of paid tuition at the college of their choosing and expected their farm income would fulfill this promise. Schweers described their diversified farm as productive and stable. She earned cash income through the sale of eggs, provided much of the family’s food through gardening and canning, and sewed most of the family’s clothing…. She believed men and women worked equally hard, saying, ‘On the farm, the women  had just as big a part to play as the men. My daughters milked just like my sons did. They loaded bales. They could do anything. They could drive the tractor. They could do anything.’”

excerpt from On Behalf of the Family Farm: Iowa Farm Women's Activism since 1945, by Jenny Barker Devine

photographs from A Bountiful Harvest: The Midwestern Farm Photographs of Pete Wettach, 1925-1965, by Leslie A. Loveless

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP excerpt

Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging by Joshua Doležal is a coming-of-age memoir about moving from the mountains of northwestern Montana to the Midwest. (Publication date: March 1, 2014)

Prelude

If there were a road back to the Montana of my childhood, it would be heavy with rain. The pavement would wind out of Missoula past the old highway cafes, westward through Arlee and Plains, beyond Thompson Falls, Trout Creek, Noxon, then a sharp turn north into the Bull River Valley, where the river is sometimes a marsh. It would be early spring, when the streams churn with the earth, when rejoicing and weeping are one torrent spilling over the banks and there is no telling the shallows from the deeps.

I imagine the road climbing out of the valley to skirt Bull Lake, where a butte rises several hundred feet about the far shore, its image snaking over the water. The surface of the lake ripples in the rain. Dark fir trees flank the highway, light moss in their boughs, dead grass lying matted against the sides of the ditch. A deer bolts from the brush, turns tail, and bounds away.

Then it comes, the long descent into Troy—the huge gravel pit above Lake Creek and the cottonwood trees rising over the town. The chain-link fence around the road graders. The trailer court. The motel and the grocery store. The wide curve along the softball fields, the high school track, and the chipped yellow goalposts. The old wooden grandstand and the railroad tracks and a train rattling through. The caboose. The thump of the tracks, then Riverside Avenue down to the one-land bridge with its wooden planks. The iron trestle crowned by an osprey's nest. The Kootenai River below. A log passing beneath the planks on the steely water.

Across the bridge a few miles out of town, the road climbs above an old farm along the river. The forest grows thick once more, the slope launching straight out of the valley. Gravel roads veer off into the streets, the main road climbing, long sightlines opening over the valley. A logged timber plot appears, then an overgrown apple orchard, and, at last, the driveway angling up a steep grade to the unfinished house with its cedar shingles and tar-papered walls and the large windows overlooking the way back to my home. No matter how many years have passed, whenever I remember those windows streaked with a gunmetal sky, a cold front of lament sweeps over me, and even the clearest day grows dark.

Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging, by Joshua Doležal