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Joyce Hornstein stands in front of a prairie planting near her home in Huxley. Hornstein is the 2017 recipient of the Olav Smedal Conservation Award. Photo by Todd Burras<\/p>\n
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By Todd Burras<\/p>\n
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My path with Joyce Hornstein first crossed on a sunny spring day some 15 years ago at Richard W. Pohl Memorial Preserve, or more commonly known as Ames High Prairie. A few years earlier I had rebooted the weekly outdoors page for the Tribune, continuing a tradition that had been established and sustained for nearly four decades by Olav Smedal, and there on a verdant plant-covered slope I stood hoping to learn a few things about prairies and, more specifically, prairie plants.<\/p>\n
A few years earlier, I had rebooted the weekly out- doors page for the Tribune, continuing a tradition that had been established and sustained for nearly four decades by Olav Smedal, and there on a verdant plant-covered slope I stood hoping to learn a few things about prairies and, more specifically, prairie plants.<\/p>\n
I had recently completed a master conservationist class with Story County Conservation where one evening we\u2019d spent an hour or so with Tom Rosburg, a Drake University professor or ecology and botany, who had class participants down on all fours counting the number of different plant species we could identify based solely on the visual differences of the plants we could see.<\/p>\n
It was one of those notable moments in my informal education in science that blew my mind. I had absolutely no idea what prairie was or how diverse, complex and important it was in recounting the history of a state in which I had lived my entire life.<\/p>\n
It was ironic, if not a bit sobering, that I had grown upon a farm in a state that once was almost entirely Tall Grass Prairie yet I knew nothing about prairies and virtually nothing about any of the state\u2019s other natural resources. State history wasn\u2019t a focus of my formal or informal educational upbringing. Iowa, I grew up believing, was home to soybeans and corn. And, at that time, a few cattle and hogs. Prairies were something only a few young girls read about in Laura Ingalls Wilder novels.<\/p>\n
It turns out Joyce Hornstein didn\u2019t read \u201cLittle House on the Prairie\u201d novels as a youngster. Rather, she lived a modern-day version of the story. While we both grew up on farms in rural Iowa, our upbringings, in many ways, couldn\u2019t have been much different.<\/p>\n
Growing up on a crop and livestock farm along the wooded North Fork of the Maquoketa River in Dubuque County, Joyce and her sisters heard lots of stories from their parents and grandparents about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.<\/p>\n
This was a generation after the arrival in the state of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the integration of various conservation practices that included building contours on hilly ground, such as the land her parents and while taking botany and land management classes that Joyce\u2019s \u201cmind was opened to prairie before trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
A deeper connection and devotion to prairies began to take root and blossom during Joyce\u2019s career at ISU that included working in agronomy and entomology \u2014 19 years of which were for the Extension Service.<\/p>\n
During that time, she took a master conservationist class in Polk County and was a founding member of the Iowa Prairie Network. Eventually, she served on the Story County Conservation Board from 2005 through 2014, including chair in both 2008 and 2014, and has volunteered countless hours for both Polk and Story counties, mainly with seed harvest and trail work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love prairies,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved plants, and with plants the animals come with it. What could be better?\u201d<\/p>\n
Thinking back to that first encounter with Joyce at Pohl Preserve and sub- sequent meetings in the weeks and months that followed, it would be hard to argue with her assertion.<\/p>\n
After all, it was with Joyce\u2019s patience and guidance that I was first introduced to plants with imaginative names like blue wild indigo, hoary puccoon, pale spiked lobella, Virginia spiderwort, daisy fleebane, butterfly milkweed and porcupine needle grass, a sample barb of which is still pressed in a field guide I carried during those outings and as sharp as the day it was picked.<\/p>\n
In a bit of irony or serendipity, the home Joyce and her husband, Scott, live in outside of Huxley is situated on an oak and hickory savannah, similar to the land she grew up on in northeastern Iowa where she learned the ethics about life and conservation that she lives and imparts to others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what\u2019s important is we really have to be stewards of the land, air, water and one another,\u201d she says. \u201cI wish more people understood that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Todd Burras can be reached at ou****************@gm***.c<\/span>om<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Name: Joyce Hornstein<\/p>\n Lives: lived in and near Huxley since 1977<\/p>\n Grew up: \u00a0along the North Fork of the Maquoketa River in Dubuque County.<\/p>\n Education: \u00a0Iowa State University Bachelor of Science degree in botany; ISU Master of Science degree in agronomy<\/p>\n Family:\u00a0husband, Scott, and two cats<\/p>\n Worked: retired from ISU; worked in agronomy and entomology, including 19 years for ISU Extension<\/p>\n Volunteers: various conservation groups including Story and Polk County Conservation and the Iowa Prairie Network; Ballard Community Performing Arts Association Board<\/p>\n Hobbies: \u00a0hiking, bird watching, playing in local community band, reading<\/p>\n Favorite native plant species: \u00a0wow, there are so many \u2014 prairie clovers, blue flag iris, cardinal flower, oak trees<\/p>\n Favorite public green spaces in Iowa: Hayden Prairie State Preserve, Effigy Mounds National Monument, White Pine Hollow Wildlife Management Area in Dubuque County, Rochester Cemetery in Cedar County<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Olav Smedal Conservation Award<\/p>\n The Olav Smedal Conservation Award is given annually in honor of the late Tribune outdoors editor by the Ames Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America and Story County Conservation. The award goes to an individual or individuals who, by their actions or communications, has or have done the most to accurately present to the public of central Iowa excellence in the conservation of natural resources and outdoor pursuits while representing the highest standards of ethics and sportsmanship.<\/p>\n