(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to our new season of In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
This week, Wisconsin sheltered from the storm.
Meet a family that survived Hurricane Katrina,
but now searches long distance for missing loved ones.
Discover how Wisconsin coffee lovers directly impact
the lives of those who grow these treasured beings
and experience the state's driftless area
through the eyes and words of an author, hunter,
and fisherman.
We'll have all that plus a trip north
for a look at the early fall colors in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a lion's energy, offering energy-saving
ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center,
providing cancer research, education, and treatment.
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, comprehensive as designated by
the National Cancer Institute, information
available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, communities first.
(upbeat music)
The flags are flying at half-staff in Wisconsin
to honor victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But the state's commitment goes beyond symbolic.
Wisconsin residents have given millions of dollars
to aid in the relief efforts down south.
Here in Wisconsin, two planes carrying about 200 evacuees
landed in Milwaukee a week ago.
They join a smaller number of displaced people
who also made their way here.
While evacuees are receiving government
and charitable services, sometimes it takes the work
and heart of a single person to help put the pieces
back together.
Federica Fryberg has won such story.
Storm-weary evacuees, some of the last out of New Orleans,
landing in Milwaukee after coming through hell
and literal high water.
The Wisconsin Air National Guard met
the FEMA chartered airplane, each soldier assigned
to escort passengers in need of care and attention.
Among those, Sharianda Brue and her one-year-old baby.
- It was touched by her story when she got off the airplane.
- It was heard from the know that I didn't know where he was
and where his condition was.
- For nearly two weeks, this mom didn't know the whereabouts
of her kindergartener.
He'd been visiting his aunt when the hurricane hit.
Not until they were on the ground in Milwaukee
and using a borrowed cell phone because theirs was ruined
in water, did parents Sharianda and Quentin
make contact with the boy at a shelter in Houston?
- I don't know what FEMA's doing to try to make
those kinds of reconciliation, but I know this.
I've had more offers for people to want to do anything.
And if we know where that boy is,
I'll tell you there are people in Wisconsin
that will drive their cars down to Houston
and get him and bring him back.
The Wisconsin air guard pilot who escorted the boy's parents
off the airplane in Milwaukee did one better.
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Pelagran, who's also a commercial
pilot, quickly arranged for the little
boy, his two aunts, and a baby cousin to
fly out of Houston.
Within two days, the family was together,
staying at the Red Cross shelter in Milwaukee.
- And he said he was gonna find him first.
- And what happened?
- He did.
- These people actually care more
than my mom can comprehend that they do.
- The little boy, five-year-old Brian,
runs and plays in safety now.
But the day after Katrina hit, his 19-year-old aunt
had to take his survival into her own hands.
Little Brian was at her house when the storm came.
She also had her own toddler and her 14-year-old
sister in her care.
The young survivors trudged through rapidly rising water
to the superdome.
- First thing came to my mind when I hit the water.
Soon as I stepped in the water, I said,
"We gonna die."
- Shereka Brew says if getting there was bad,
the superdome was worse.
For days, she says she didn't sleep
so she could keep a watchful eye on the children.
But she wasn't sleeping, she says, for another reason.
She had lost touch with her own seven-month-old baby
in the hurricane.
The baby evacuated somewhere with his father.
- I miss him.
I thought I'd like a thank-you love him.
- And still, there was another void for this family.
They were also separated from their matriarch.
The children's grandmother was evacuated
to a shelter in Northeastern Louisiana
without much hope of getting out.
- Okay, okay, that's what we're working on now.
We're just trying to find out where you're at, exactly.
Lieutenant Colonel Pelagrin didn't stop
with retrieving the five-year-old.
In short order, he was on the horn with the boys grandma,
working to get her out of Monroe, Louisiana,
and into Milwaukee.
- I never thought that I would be personally involved,
one-on-one with a family, and it actually,
it feels very good, and I'm glad that we took the time
to get involved, and I'd like, like I said,
to complete this one and make sure that
you get her mom up here, and then I know there's
a seven-month-old out there that we're still trying
to track down something.
- You're not going to stop, are you?
- No, not till they're together.
- Oh, I don't know, man.
Right now we're-- - Less than 48 hours after
tracking down the grandma, the man on a personal rescue
mission delivered again.
Pelagrin made some complicated arrangements
to fly her into Milwaukee.
After being separated by the winds and water of Katrina,
one man made it his job one to put this family back together,
a family that a week ago he didn't know existed.
Just one last personal mission between Lieutenant Colonel
Pelagrin and this New Orleans family remains.
He's now out to reunite this young mother with her baby.
- Lieutenant Colonel Pelagrin also flew
to resupply missions into New Orleans over
the Labor Day weekend.
As for the family he worked to reunite,
they planned to make Milwaukee home.
You can find links to more information
about Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by logging
onto our website at www.org/in-lasconcin.
(gentle music)
- Those who are new to Wisconsin soon learn what many of us
already know.
Wisconsin is rich with a diversity of places to live.
One longtime resident, author John Motovilov,
makes his home in the driftless area.
That's the southwestern part of our state
where rolling hills and valleys were not flattened by glaciers.
Motovilov is also an avid hunter and fisherman.
His writing celebrates how those pastimes connect him
with the land.
(birds chirping)
- There's quite literally no separation between woods
and water that have really never been to another place like it.
- Come on girl.
I haven't found anything that compares to it in beauty
or diversity.
I've been sort of as an early, craggy sort of feel
with lots of little valleys and lots of secret
hidden little places.
It's stunning.
- Some call it the driftless area.
That large chunk of southwestern Wisconsin
plays woods and water where the Kikapoo River snakes through.
- Okay, what is it?
Come on, come on.
Come on, come on, Tashin.
A place of rolling hills.
- Maybe onto a bird, I don't know if she can get it.
- In deep valleys, the part of the state
that escaped those steam rolling glaciers
thousands of years ago.
Hunter, Angler, and writer John Motovilov.
- The driftless area is no continuous,
unbroken expanse of either water or woods
or sky or even farms.
Everything is sort of on a small somewhat broken up scale.
Patchwork of hills and farms, creeks and rivers.
And there's always this feeling that there's kind of cover.
There's some place to, you know, take refuge
that sense of secrecy and then tied to that
sense of discovering all these secret
things, you know, whether they're trout
streams or little cabins.
It's full of secrets, I think.
Full of secrets waiting to be discovered.
- Wonderful call again.
There was a bar doll calling.
(baby crying)
- It's a very rich kind of area, a very rich and fish and
game and flora and fauna.
- It was the wildlife, the hunting, the fishing
that called to him, that helped shape his connection
to this place.
- And in a wet year, this would likely have
water standing in it.
So there'd be, you know, the possibility of ducks jumping up
all around us.
- I think it's my place, you know, I really do.
You know, I like to go up north and I sort of like that,
that piney, birch landscape, but it doesn't weigh on me
in the way that this landscape weighs on me.
This sort of very, very unique mix of woods and waters.
- The way a landscape touches you,
hunting and fishing are applications.
Motovilov makes his living as a writer.
So when this wordsmith, who penned the nearly 500-page tom,
the five-fisher's guide to Wisconsin,
found himself pulled in by the driftless area.
He and his wife bought a cabin here.
And from the time spent soaking up this landscape,
emerged a collection of essays, driftless stories,
all about hunting, fishing, and their cabin,
and places nearby.
- The place is Gaze Mills.
It's apples won first prize in the 1905 State Fair.
And by 1911, the State Horticultural Society
was urging large-scale production.
90 years later, one can see they were right.
Fist-sized apples hang from the trees in September,
and now this hill country produced apples
of national repute.
Like a model village visible from the scenic overlook,
Gaze Mills spreads out below.
River, Main Street, Steeples, Butcher,
Barber, Tavern, Gas Station, a town plainly made.
- A town plainly made.
Not far from the Motovilov cabin, also plainly made.
No one is gonna call this a second home.
I'd like to think that it's a step above a shack,
kind of inching toward cabin.
We don't have any electricity at all, or water for that matter.
It's kind of beautiful and in a rough kind of way,
I guess, a diamond in the rough.
- Do I go?
- Really rough.
- We are gonna fix this sighting.
(drumming)
And it looks like heck, but basically what
we're trying to do is keep animals from getting
underneath the porch.
We had a squirrel and a mink that ended a game
of chase in the cabin, and we came back to
find the results of it.
And it was, I'll tell you, it was one of the
most disgusting things I've ever smelled.
A proper door needs to be built here, but in lieu of that,
if I don't get to it this winter, this, I guess we'll do.
- But in other ways, it's perfect.
- Does it doesn't get any better than this?
A beer would improve things, but ham sandwich,
a kick of poo valley, a fall day, and my dog.
Pretty good.
(upbeat music)
- Mostly it's a place where things move slowly,
a down treeline needs cutting, the porch needs a board,
as the rest of the world moves at a pace,
bent on implosion.
It's a refuge, quiet hole in the woods, but also a getaway.
- What do you smell out there?
Are birdies out there?
- A writer's retreat and a hunter's refuge.
- The view makes up for the lack of fine cuisine.
But that said, there have been some gourmet meals
eaten on this porch, like wood duck cooked in
sour crouton, venison grilled over maple sticks,
and trout that have been caught only just a few hours before.
Writing ideas, percolate, on the back porch.
- Let's go hunting, Tasha.
- Hunting opportunities, back in, from the backyard.
- When paddling a skiff or walking in the woods,
I find myself asking, where is the spirit of the animal gone?
Stone age man inscribed caves with fears and hopes
and dreams of the hunt, bringing this reverence
to the duck marsh and deer woods makes
the hunt a richer thing.
- Over here, girl, Tasha.
I remember kneeling in a cornfield and crossing myself
after taking my first wood duck.
The earth was black and warm.
This lovely bird lay beside me.
Everything seemed fertile, generous and good.
By asking blessing, you recognize that the animal
didn't die in vain, that it lives on in you.
- What is it, girl?
- Geez, I mean, that's like a point.
- There's just an ancient partnership.
- Man and then dog and then the beasts below them, you know?
And it just sort of, the dog is kind of your conduit
into that world.
- Somehow this element, you know, brings up all like
old spirits in this place.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, I'm off to the sluice.
(upbeat music)
- The way the spirit of a landscape enters us.
- Never thought swamp would smell so good.
- The ways we form a connection to a place, to the land.
- I'll always come out here as long as I live.
- Here's that girl.
- Silly dog, you got a cat tail on your nose.
- It's part of me, just the way the a burrow looks
or the way a sunset is out here or the way a trout stream looks.
Those are the kinds of things that I'll think about
and my deathbed.
I'll realize in some way I'm taking them with me.
They're really the most profound things.
And you can own land, but you can't own those sensations,
you know, they own you.
In the end, we are all on the same arc, body and spirit.
Man and nature dissolve, as Spinoza said,
into infinite substance, rivers or veins,
land is the body, and in the gathering dark of harvest,
the fate of man and that of wildfowl, if you're the same,
haunting the ends of the earth forever and flight.
(upbeat music)
John Motovilov has authored several books,
including his latest, called Wisconsin Wild Foods,
100 recipes for badger state bounties.
From creamed coot to stir-fried venison,
you'll find it all in this cookbook.
Motovilov is currently at work on a novel called Bohemia.
(upbeat music)
Our next story introduces us to some entrepreneurs
with a product that some of us just can't start the day
without coffee.
In fact, the US consumes 31% of the world's coffee.
Even though they have a devoted customer base,
the owners of just coffee make it their business
to also take care of the coffee producers.
(upbeat music)
? I love coffee, I love tea ?
? I love the job, but I've been in love with me ?
? I've been deep ?
Fresh hot coffee.
Many people are passionate about this bitter brew.
So passionate, they sit through a lecture
to learn more about these magical beans
and the people who grow them.
This is one of the farmers at Moot Veets Cooperative
in Chiapas, his name is Roman.
Please note, please note, Roberto and his
green bay packers hat.
(audience laughing)
Matt Early is on a first name basis with these farmers.
He's a partner in a small coffee roasting company
in Madison called Just Coffee.
(upbeat music)
Once a year, they visit the farmers
who grow their coffee in Mexico and Guatemala.
They've witnessed firsthand how hard it is
to grow this crop.
Coffee is such a labor-intensive crop.
It's a labor-abacacoffee because there's no possible way
to pick all the cherries at once.
So basically, you're going back over and over again
and over the same trees and picking the ripe fruits.
This one right here is almost ready to go.
You see how red that is?
But it's really the only one in this cluster,
really, on the whole tree that is ripe for picking.
So inevitably, the farmers will have to go over
the same parts of the grove and individually
pick those cherries.
Big it up before five o'clock in the morning
and are headed out to the fields and they don't leave
until after the sun is down.
Early tells the audience what life is like
for the coffee farmers, both in the fields and at home.
Most of the communities, to varying degrees,
are suffering from pretty intense poverty.
Early cares about the people in these communities.
In fact, that's why he got involved
in the coffee business.
In the late 1990s, he and a friend, Mike Moon,
traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, to work
with the indigenous people in this region, the Mayan Indians.
The people in Chiapas are involved in an
incredible struggle that's been going on
since before 1994.
And we are working in communities of the
San Patista movement in Chiapas, which is a
movement of opposition to the Mexican government.
It's a movement of indigenous people seeking indigenous rights
and trying to preserve their traditional ways and culture.
On their first trip to Chiapas five years ago,
they met a local man trying to help the farmers
by organizing a cooperative.
And he was able to take us to different communities
and show us some of the problems going on
and talk to us about what they felt like would be a viable path
to bringing more funds into the community
in order to buy the things that they can't grow.
At that time, the most viable path out of poverty was coffee.
The biggest obstacle was finding companies
to buy and roast their coffee in America.
So early in Moon went to work.
They formed just coffee, a company that
imports coffee beans.
They roast the beans in small batches
at very high temperatures.
It's kind of a light roast.
Roast the net to 450 degrees.
Then they bag it up by hand.
The coffee arrives at the grocery store
in the company's old-fashioned delivery vehicle.
The coffee itself is different from most other store brands.
It's grown and sold as a part of what's called
the fair trade system.
Fair trade guarantees farmers long-term contracts
and a minimum price per pound.
Without the fair trade system, farmers are usually paid
30 to 60 cents per pound.
With fair trade, farmers are paid $1.26 per pound
for non-organic and $1.41 per pound for organic coffee.
Today, most fair trade coffee is organically grown.
The fair trade system pays the farmers more
by cutting out the middlemen.
It's a great way to help folks stand their land.
And to be involved in democratic processes
within their communities.
Early in his partners learned recently
that the fair trade prices no longer cover
the cost of production for the farmers,
so they're working to change that for the future.
I think it's important to note that in fair trade,
we're not talking about handouts and charity
and dropping money and advisors on people,
but we're talking about paying people
what they deserve for the hard, hard, hard work
that they're doing.
Early is passionate about the people who grow his coffee.
That's why he and his partners visit different
farm communities in Mexico and Guatemala every year
to meet each of the farmers and build personal relationships.
That's what it's all about for us
is the relationship with the people that we work with.
Their most recent visit was not your typical business junket.
They traveled to a remote farm community
in the back of a pickup truck.
Mike Miller is another partner in the Just Coffee Company.
This is a picture from the road.
This was quite a drive to get out here.
I mean, this is a very, very isolated community.
We drove for probably an hour and a half
on barely what we considered a road at all.
I mean, it was windy through these beautiful mountains.
Scary and treacherous in the back of the pickup truck.
What they saw on this visit was not a surprise.
It simply reinforced their determination
to help the farmers.
This is the level of poverty that they're dealing with
in this community.
And it varies from community to community.
Sometimes they have nicely planned cut wood on the houses.
Sometimes they're made out of cylinder block.
These folks, I mean dirt floor, one room, sticks.
And I was surprised that they even had the metal roof.
But it's completely open and it's just devastating.
And also for me personally, it just like,
it helps me come back here and work.
Yes. Meeting these people.
I have this job here.
It provides for my family here.
And you know, it's these people's hard work.
It allows that to happen.
Without them, I don't have a job here.
And so I just feel like I have to stay connected to them.
And you're meeting them face to face, talking to them,
becoming a part of their community.
You know, that allows me to bring that back here with me.
For the partners at Just Coffee, it's not business as usual.
It's business with a social conscience.
Business that's aiming for a fair trade.
So the coffee is sort of only a vehicle
to deepen these relationships.
And we all feel like the people down there
and all of us at Just Coffee, we feel like this
is the kind of enterprise that it's going to take
to change the world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
According to Smithsonian Magazine, fair
trade coffee sales make up only 1/2 of 1% of
the US's $18.5 billion retail coffee market.
Here in Wisconsin, there are several options
for buying coffee produced under the fair trade system.
You can go to our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin
to find a list of businesses.
You can also simply ask your favorite coffee
shop, if or to what extent it participates
in the fair trade system.
That's our program for this week.
We leave you with a trip to Little Star
Lake in Vylous County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
See you next week.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ Music ]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliant Energy who bring safe, reliable, and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life
in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer
Center, providing cancer research, education,
and treatment.
The UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, Comprehensive,
has designated by the National Cancer Institute,
information available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing the people of
Wisconsin with the knowledge and skills they'll need for
the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
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