- Welcome to "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew.
This week... we take you to Sauk County,
where nearly 70 years of Wisconsin military history
are being ripped apart.
- This cell was actually operating.
It was loaded and it blew.
- Plus a crop that can earn you $12,000 an acre.
- For me, being this size plantation, it's perfect.
- We'll show you how some farmers are returning
to this cash crop of yesteryear.
- And why would these Roxbury residents
burn a piano with a turkey on top?
(piano notes played)
We'll explain next on "In Wisconsin."
- 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, we're on for you.
And Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists
of Milwaukee, Oshkosh and Minneapolis,
a veterinary team working with pet owners
and family veterinarians, providing care for oral disease
and dental problems of small companion animals.
- We begin this week with the end of an era.
Piece by piece one of the U.S. war machines
built to stop the Nazis is being dismantled.
Here in Wisconsin, the Badger Army Ammunition Plant
is one of the last to go.
Opening in 1942, it's a massive military installation
built on prairie between Sauk City and the Baraboo hills.
Reporter Art Hackett first started reporting
on demolition plans in 1998 and returned this past summer
for a look at the evolution
of the Badger Ammo plant in Sauk County.
- The Army decided it no longer needed
the Badger Ammunition Plant a dozen years ago.
This is what it looked like in 1998.
The landscape is dotted with nearly 1500 structures.
This is the same perspective today.
Only a few of the larger
and more heavily contaminated buildings remain.
Soon, they too will be gone.
- I think initially it's very sad for myself
and some of my coworkers that have been here a long time.
- Frank Anstett began work with the plant
mobilized during the Vietnam War.
- This was 24/7. You come over the hill at night,
it was lit up in areas where we were manufacturing rocket
and single base and ballpark propellents.
And we would pack out to be shipped to loading facilities.
There was two rail lines serving us at the time.
We had two switch engines running 24/7.
- Anstett's final duty is
supervising the demolition of Badger.
- I grew up in this area, so I remember seeing
the powder plant being built,
seeing the earth-moving equipment out here
and to a 4-year-old kid that was interesting.
- Verlyn Mueller is with the Badger History Group,
made up, for the most part, with former employees.
They want the history to survive
even though the buildings will not.
- You can't tell the story of this powder plant
without telling the story of the acquisition of the land.
Without acquiring the land, there was no powder plant.
This was the Thoelke Immanuel Evangelical Church.
This is the Steadmans', a story to go with the Steadman farm.
Mr. Steadman did not want to leave,
so he had to be carried out of the house by his son.
And when you acquire the land, you're disrupting families,
you're disrupting people.
And when you get right down to it,
this is a story of human beings.
It's not a story of a place.
It's not a story of machines or buildings.
It's a story of the human beings who lived here
and had to leave to make room for the powder plant.
And then, it's the story of the people who worked in those buildings
to produce a product for wartime use.
At the peak, there were 13,000 people working out here.
Considering the populations
of Baraboo and Sauk Prairie at the time,
no way were there 13,000 people
in this area looking for work.
Badger produced most of the propellant for three wars,
World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
And Vietnam, we produced almost all of the ball powder,
because Badger was the only government-owned
ball powder facility in the country.
- In spite of the name, the Badger Ammo Plant
didn't make ammunition.
It made propellant.
- Ball powder looks like black grains of sand.
It was a propellant that got the projectile
from the gun to the target.
These instruments panels, the instruments in these panels, I worked on.
Every day you come in, there's some things you don't know where you're going to go.
You get called out to a problem somewhere,
so I might be called out to nitroglycerin
to replace a temperature gauge,
or out in ball powder to work on an instrument
on a ball powder still.
Most of the time in a hazardous area.
- Frank Anstett took us to one of the ball powder production buildings.
- I believe probably one of the primary reasons
they reopened Badger was to provide propellant
for small arms for Vietnam.
- The highly explosive powder was hardened
in these distillation tanks.
- This still was actually operating. It was loaded and it blew.
- At the time of the explosion
Anstett was at work in another part of the plant.
- I remember feeling the ground shake,
hearing the explosion and everybody looking at each other
and everybody running out to look and see.
And when we looked over here you could see debris up in the air.
(sirens blaring)
The fire trucks, 'cause we had a full-time fire force at the time.
And everybody headed that direction.
(sirens blaring)
No one was hurt real bad,
but there were guys right in this next still, working.
- In spite of the plant's size and importance,
Badger had an up and down existence.
- After World War II it was almost disposed of.
Then up again for Korea.
And then down in the standby situation
and then up again for Vietnam.
Then after Vietnam ended in '75, standby again.
- Even though the plant was on standby,
the Army continued to invest money at Badger.
Over the decades, Anstett says he helped move equipment
from other newer powder plants which were being shut down.
Anstett helped install it at Badger,
where it was an improvement
over the World War II vintage gear.
But he never got a chance to see it make powder.
- I think it was a difficult thing for us to accept,
because we spent most of all of our working career here
maintaining it.
It's done now.
Our mission now is to remove the plant
and that's what we're doing.
- One by one, the buildings are disappearing.
The landscape is taking on the look of a city,
leveled during one of the many wars
Badger helped fight.
In the place where the buildings once stood,
it's already returning to the prairie it was
before Badger was built.
It's a new place, a place
with a very long and unique history.
- Demolition is expected to take another two years.
When the plant is gone,
prairie plants will take its place.
Next week, "In Wisconsin" reporter Art Hackett
gives you a closer look at what it takes to dismantle
an ammunitions plant packed with explosives.
- When they laid the place away,
the standard was to clean it up
to the point where there were no visible contaminants.
Well that just made life harder,
because it made it harder to find the explosives.
I guarantee you they're out there. We're finding them every day.
- The demolition of Badger Ammo next Thursday at 7:30
right here on Wisconsin Public Television's "In Wisconsin."
Before World War I when the wave of German immigrants arrived in the 1800s,
they brought with them a crop that would help Wisconsin
emerge as a beer brewing capital.
Today there's a resurgence of microbreweries
and a key ingredient for some brewers
is the flower of the locally grown hops plant.
"In Wisconsin" reporter Liz Koerner shows you how hops
is making a comeback near Mazomanie.
*
- You can choose between Kiss the Lips or a Bitter Woman.
How about Hopalicious or the mysterious Three Feet Deep?
There are many more intriguing titles here,
so many that beer coolers are bursting at the seams.
Many of the offerings are created by craft brewers.
In fact, there are now more than 300 craft brewers
in the Midwest alone.
Based on this bounty, one man set out to take advantage
of the local brewing binge to benefit local farmers.
- Farmers in our area could really use
a high-value crop that could be grown
on small parcels of land.
- James Altwies is a horticulturist.
He's convinced that the flower of the hops plant
will fit the bill.
- This variety is called Cascade.
And what we're looking for, this is a female flower. Okay?
And do you see the yellow
around the very tops of the petals here?
Now we're going to open it up.
All that yellow is what we're looking for. That is not pollen.
That's called lupulin.
That's where all the oils
and the bittering power is for beer. This is the magic.
That's what we want right there.
- Hops is a crop that has a history here.
- 20% of the hops produced
came from Wisconsin in the 1860s.
- Back then, hops were in demand
by the state's German brewers,
but insects and disease forced growers further west.
Today hops varieties are more disease resistant,
so Altwies created a business with friends and family
called Gorst Valley Hops, offering information to growers,
like Thad and Christine Molling,
who are partners in the business.
- When he brought up the subject of hops, I thought, that's great.
I have a hop plant growing on my deck. That's easy.
(laughter)
Well, growing one hop plant is pretty easy.
Growing a whole acre of hop plants,
that's a little bit different.
- Hops require a lot of labor,
starting with hand planting
about 1,000 hops rhizomes per acre.
- And, this is what, pretty much, all rhizomes look like
when you get them.
After the bed preparation is done,
the planting part is pretty easy.
As long as you have good knees.
- We'll do a lot more automated irritation.
- Gorst Valley Hops teaches its growers
how to succeed with this unfamiliar plant.
They also buy materials in bulk
and pass on the discount,
a good thing since start-up costs for things
like trellises and an irrigation system
add up to around $10,000 an acre.
Other benefits kick in after harvest.
- We do all the processing.
We do all the palletizing, all the chemical analysis.
The USDA needs these things graded
for physical qualities.
We have to report those data.
Then we also get them to the brewer.
We make the sale.
- Matt Link from Black Earth planted an acre of hops
a couple years ago.
He says he relies on the support services
offered Gorst Valley Hops.
- For me being this size plantation, it's perfect.
- The biggest challenge for growers
crops up at harvest time.
The plants must be cut and moved to an area
where the flowers can be picked off.
- These are about 15 feet off the ground.
When they're mature,
I'm guessing it'll be about 30 pounds per plant.
- It takes about a half hour to hand-pick each plant
and the harvest must be done in a hurry.
- Each variety has about five days' worth of peak ripeness.
Not only is there a lot of work to do,
it has to be done quickly.
- So far hops growers have been relying on friends
and family to pick off the hops flowers
because paying for pickers is cost prohibitive.
But Tim Rehbein, the ag extension agent in Vernon County
says growers can't rely on free labor forever.
- Less talking, more working. We're done.
- But, we have to go get more vines.
- And it's fun the first year.
It may not be fun the second year.
And the third year they don't show up.
- So a mechanical harvester is a must.
- Finding some method to assist in that cold pulling
is going to be very beneficial.
- There's one more hurdle that Gorst Valley must overcome.
The price of hops changes every year
based on availability.
In 2010 their hops cost about four times more
than hops from the Pacific Northwest,
in part because Wisconsin growers don't benefit
from the economy of scale.
It promises to be a hard sell to some,
but one brewer is a return customer.
Russ Klisch, the owner of Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee,
created a beer called Local Acre
using hops from Gorst Valley and a Wisconsin-grown grain.
- It's been great. Sold out the first year.
It's a nice, crisp lager. It's rather bold.
We sell it in a 22-ounce bottle.
When you sell something in 22s, people expect a little extra,
so we put extra hops and malt into that body
and into that beer for everybody.
- Klisch says there's a market for local products,
but quality has to come with it.
- Winemakers will talk about something called terroir,
where you have this certain flavor that comes into a grape.
If you can grow the same grape in France, California, Chile,
all the same plants can have a different flavor to it.
So, I do believe there is a flavor component
that you get with a Wisconsin hop that's very good.
- At the end of the third hops season, Altwies says
they still a lot to learn and obstacles to overcome,
but he remains optimistic.
- Overall, I'd say that there's no doubt
that we can commercially grow hops in Wisconsin. (chuckles)
(polka music)
- Aaah!
- Gorst Valley is currently the only
hops processing plant in Wisconsin.
Its growers will have 50 acres of hops in production next year,
including one in Escanaba, Michigan.
When the plants are fully mature in three to four years,
a grower can expect to net $7,000 to $12,000 an acre.
As a comparison, another labor intensive crop,
grapes, can earn growers $4,000 an acre.
Brewing beer is only one of the great Wisconsin traditions.
There's the smelt run in Sheboygan, Door County fish boil,
and of course the summer solstice
piano burning at the Roxbury Tavern.
Never heard of it?
"In Wisconsin" reporter Jo Garrett shows you
how this tradition got started in Roxbury.
And don't forget the turkey.
- We have it on the Sunday closest to the solstice.
We have a party out in the back where we have music
and have beer and sandwiches.
Then we celebrate the solstice by burning a piano.
- Tom Grasser, owner and operator of the Roxbury Tavern.
- We had a piano here a few years ago.
It was going to cost a lot of money to
have it hauled away.
One of my employees, Rhonda Meyers, said,
"Why don't we just burn it, have a piano burning
and have a party and make up a story about it."
We said that it was a Cajun tradition,
when the Cajuns lived in eastern Canada.
And when they were in Canada, when a piano couldn't be repaired anymore,
they buried it in the family funeral plot.
But when they moved to Louisiana that couldn't be done anymore,
because you don't bury anything in Louisiana,
you burn it, so they burned the pianos.
- In truth, there is a tradition of piano burning.
It comes from RAF pilots,
England's Royal Air Force in World War II.
There are many stories.
One version has it that the pilots were deemed
to be home once they crossed the so-called piano keys
at the end of the runway.
(airplane engines raring)
For those airmen who didn't return,
a glass of beer and mementoes
were placed on the top of the piano and burned.
Some wakes got out of hand
and the entire piano went up in flames.
So they say.
*
- West Side Andy Mel Ford band
start things off for young and old.
*
- We've had this party for, I don't know,
five or six or seven years,
and no one's called the police, yet.
And I figure maybe we're not doing a good enough job.
(chuckles)
*
- You can see the remains of past piano burnings
in the vegetable garden that serves the restaurant portion
of the Roxbury Tavern.
So far, the solstice party had been problem-free
when it comes to the local authorities.
To ensure that happy state, Grasser has added a layer
to the Roxbury piano burning
that shows the kind of ingenuity
that has made Wisconsin such a great party state.
- This is a raw turkey, so this is a legal cooking fire.
- So we cook a turkey inside the piano and then
we eat it afterwards just to make it a cooking fire
and I figure I won't be able to get in much trouble that way.
- Soup tomorrow.
- But on the way to soup, first the flambe.
- Okay.
- The fire marshal preps the piano.
Maestro Larry Collins begins a medley of torch songs.
(piano keys played)
- It's in our nature to come up with
excuses to have a party.
(piano keys played)
And they get together as a community,
this community out there.
(piano keys played)
- This burning is a benefit.
- Today the money's going to the Northwest Dane Senior Center.
Those are the people that will be bringing my Meals on Wheels in a few years.
- Burn that thing!
- These are people who either work
with the Northwest Dane Senior Center
or they're our customers or they live in the area
or they heard about it and it's community back there.
- Yes, a musical bonfire can build community,
but must it be a piano that burns?
- People volunteer them.
I could have had a dozen pianos out there.
People want to get rid of them.
Nobody wants them. They're hard to haul.
- But why a piano? Why not bagpipes or an accordion?
- Yeah. Actually, that's not a bad idea. (laughs)
I know one of my friends and customers is a musician
and plays the banjo, and of course, banjo gets as many
jokes thrown at them as accordions do.
Like, for example, what is perfect pitch?
Well, that's when you throw a banjo in a dumpster
and it lands right in the middle without hitting the sides.
(chuckles)
You can say the same thing about an accordion.
but you know, playing bagpipes while the piano burned
would be a good idea, because it's a funeral.
It's sort of a dignified end to a life.
- It's a celebration, of life and community,
a chance to mark the turning of the seasons.
Solstice, and the glory that is summer. Together.
(applause)
- Can't wait for the piano burning
at next year's summer solstice?
Well, there's another event on the Roxbury Tavern's calendar.
To celebrate the Spring Equinox,
it's "Socks on the Rocks," as patrons toss their socks
on a fire to say farewell to winter and welcome to spring.
A new international exhibit remembering Milwaukee-born
and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna
Mildred Harnack-Fish is on display.
She's the only American woman executed
on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
The exhibit "With a Chosen Few, in memoriam, Mildred Harnack-Fish"
chronicles her life, love of translating
and resistance work in Nazi Germany
up until the day of her execution.
German artist and professor Franz Rudolf Knubel
shared his insights during a recent visit to Madison.
- She was a very genuine Wisconsin woman.
Everybody who met her
was very imposed by her and attracted.
What people said in the Third Reich,
she was an important person in Berlin,
because she was married to Dr. Arvid Harnack.
He worked in the Ministry of Economy,
and he was a diplomat and was in charge
with Soviet and U.S. American diplomats.
She at the one hand was helping him
and that this help was very intense,
because he was the head of this resistance group,
the so-called Red Orchestra.
The name of the title is "zur kleinsten Schar"
" with a chosen few, in memoriam, Mildred Harnack-Fish."
Her last poem she translated was (German language title).
I think "Legacy" is the translation,
was the 16th of February, 1943,
and this was the day of her execution.
And she translated this poem and it is very moving.
This is the place that the executions took place.
It was just a very remote place in the prison of Plötzensee.
And to give testimony of this place,
I think it's something very evident,
that you put a piece of paper on it
and try to reproduce the traces with graphite.
The prisoners were hanged or were guillotined.
She must have stepped to this place
or from this side to this place,
because this was the guillotine,
and this was the sink where her blood
was going in when she was beheaded.
It was walking through hell.
If people realized what happened here
and what is represented here,
people begin to be silent
because to know that at this place
3,000 people were executed, it's not a normal situation.
It is "und ich habe Deutschland so geliebt."
That means "I loved Germany so much."
And it said that these were her last words in her life.
And this is very moving
because she was condemned to death by this state.
I thought Mildred Harnack-Fish's destiny
could represent all the people who were killed
under the dictatorship of the Nazis.
(solemn piano music)
- A powerful story.
Some of that video was taken by Dustin Harnack,
an architecture student in Berlin,
and a great-great nephew of Arvid Harnack.
This exhibit which first appeared in Berlin
at the German Resistance Memorial Center
is making its U.S. premiere at Hillel
on the UW-Madison campus until December 3.
Wisconsin Public Television is also
in the process of producing a documentary
about Mildred Harnack's life in Milwaukee,
Madison and in Berlin.
To keep tabs on the documentary
and other projects we're working on,
check out our blog, the Producer's Journal.
You can find the Producer's Journal
at wpt.org and click on "In Wisconsin"
for a look at upcoming reports, the people we've met,
and the places we've been.
Finally this week, we take you to Harrington Beach State Park.
It has a mile of Lake Michigan shore,
where you can enjoy the refreshing lake breeze
while taking in Wisconsin's Lake Michigan coastal landscape.
Have a great week in Wisconsin.
*
- 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, we're on for you.
And Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists
of Milwaukee, Oshkosh and Minneapolis,
a veterinary team working with pet owners
and family veterinarians, providing care for oral disease
and dental problems of small companion animals.