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- This week on "Wisconsin Life":
Meet an unconventional farmer,
a dancer helping kids get off on the right foot,
an artist who creates portraits for pet lovers,
and a teenager who's anything but typical.
It's all ahead on "Wisconsin Life!"
? ?
- Funding for "Wisconsin Life" is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hello and welcome to "Wisconsin Life."
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald.
Today we're celebrating blooms in Wisconsin
here at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison.
Located just off Lake Monona on the east side of the city,
this location has 16 acres of garden space to enjoy.
Free and open to the public,
visitors are welcome to roam the paths outside
or for a small admission fee,
they can check out the indoor tropical conservatory.
I'll begin to explore the gardens
while our team takes us to Viola
to catch up with a farmer using unconventional methods
to ensure a successful harvest
for years to come.
? ?
- Within ten days, we'll be picking every single day
for about six weeks.
- As a farmer, Mark Shepard appears hard to pin down.
- We have four different spots
where springs have started again.
- He's obviously not growing acres of corn and soybeans,
and while he grows asparagus, he only has a few rows.
- We started out 20 years ago
with what's called "alley cropping"
where you grow a row of trees between your fields.
- He grows hazelnuts and chestnuts,
so you could call him a nut farmer,
but that's only part of the story.
[nuts clinking together]
He's also growing apples, pears, berries, mushrooms
and a dozen other crops.
[high-pitched whistle]
- Hi, piggers.
Come on guys!
I'm passionate about the woods and trees
and plants and animals and all that.
How you doing, piggers?
- Mark Shepard sees himself
as a farmer for a new era of restoration agriculture.
- Why should we work and spend money and inputs and resources
trying to keep something alive that wants to die?
And why are we trying to kill the stuff that wants to live?
Why don't we figure out how to farm the stuff
that wants to live
and keep improving that system as it goes along?
Wow, that's good.
- New Forest Farm near Viola
is living proof of Mark's hypothesis
that you don't need big tractors and chemicals
to grow enough food to feed the world.
- How do we get those same staple foods for the human race,
while not destroying ecosystems
but actually restoring ecosystems?
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- Mark and his wife came here in 1995 from Alaska.
- It was a farmed-out rocky, barren landscape.
-Mark's idea was to find species that flourished without help
yet still produced a harvest.
He planted apple trees, chestnut trees, and hazelnuts,
then he left them alone.
- My maintenance technique--
I call it STUN, sheer total utter neglect.
- He selected for the heartiest and most abundant trees
and he planted organic produce in between.
- When we got started here, most grocery stores
didn't even have an organic section for produce.
- What's remarkable is that
Mark can grow anything of quality on this land at all.
The slopes were highly eroded
and the clay soils that remained couldn't hold much water.
Mark adopted a simple philosophy on water.
- If the rain falls on this farm, it belongs on this farm.
- Every alley has a ditch or swale next to the trees
to hold water.
[raindrops hitting water]
Overflow rain goes to what's called a "pocket pond."
- Actually, the key to the whole entire farm, believe it or not.
- If the pond fills up,
water flows out to the ridges through another swale.
- Just two weeks ago we got a 3 1/2-inch rainfall.
The neighbor's 60 acres of rain
just came roaring down our valley,
and in about an hour and a half it was gone.
- Mark's rain never left his farm.
- This system is designed to capture the big thunderstorms.
- All the trees and water have an extra benefit.
Native birds, frogs, and insects have returned,
and provide pest control and a little beauty.
- That's sometimes my best paycheck.
I really, really like the natural world.
And to hear all these birds singing in the morning.
To hear the frogs singing in the ponds.
- Acre for acre,
Mark's version of multi-crop or polyculture farming
doesn't produce as many calories as a cornfield.
But he says the equation is skewed.
- What are the true costs of running a system like that?
You look at the corn across the street
without the big tractors,
the big equipment, the fossil fuels used to run it,
the chemicals for herbicides and fertilizers and all that,
the system doesn't work.
- Mark has one tractor
and can run his farm without it, if needed.
A windmill provides the power for his processing shed.
[wind turbine blades hum]
- We don't have to use fossil fuels if we don't want to.
- Mark doesn't say other farmers need to eliminate corn,
but adding trees can reduce erosion,
provide habitat and add a crop.
- So you still get your corn and your beans
and then you'll get extra
because we're going up into the third dimension
with our perennial plants.
- It works even better for pasture fed cattle.
- With slightly shaded pastures,
the grass actually grows faster, grows longer,
and the cattle actually graze longer
because they're more comfortable.
- Now Mark is exporting his idea across the world.
- We can restore natural ecosystems all across the planet
while paying our bills as profitable ventures.
So I think what's surprised me
is how popular it has become.
- Mark says farmers are naturally resistant to change,
but he thinks his farm proves the system can work.
- Look at the economic development we can do
simultaneous with environmental benefits.
Come on people, let's wake up!
Look at the opportunity in front of us.
It's really quite simple.
And we'll put another pond down there
and then we'll send it back in through our hazelnuts.
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- I've been weaving in and out of the pathways
here at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens
enjoying both the sights and smells.
Sustainable, chemical-free practices
are used in all of the gardens here.
One of the more unique spaces here
is the rose garden on the north side of the property
which offers some of the best views of the park.
If you look closely at the space,
you can see the number five
repeated throughout the design of the garden,
which is the number of petals around each layer of the rose.
It obviously takes a lot of planning, coordination and skill
to maintain a garden as beautiful as this.
Speaking of coordination,
in our next story our team heads to Milwaukee
to meet a dancer using the arts
to raise the bar and help children in her community.
[soft piano music]
- In a community center gym,
members of the Milwaukee Ballet take the stage.
- This is a workshop we call "A Day in the Life."
Trying to get the Milwaukee Ballet out to the community
in the summer to see what we do all year-round.
- They call it "Taking Ballet to the Street."
And the Holton Youth and Family Center
in Milwaukee's north side is fertile ground for the effort.
The center houses the offices
of the Above the Clouds arts program.
- Okay. Bye-bye.
- ...and its co-founder Linda Wade.
- Arts gives you an outlet.
It lets you dream.
It lets you escape for a moment.
You can get lost in that medium of dance.
- First, second, third,
and fifth.
- The children love the welcome and attention they get
when they come to Above the Clouds.
[soft piano music]
- A lot of our children are inner-city Milwaukee children
that couldn't afford to take our classes.
A lot of single families,
a lot of grandparents raising their children.
We have a lot of single dads coming
and bringing their daughter.
- One, two, three. One, two...
I think everybody has it this time.
- Children start at a young age at Above the Clouds,
but Linda came to dance much later in life.
As a child, she suffered from a heart condition.
- I've always wanted to dance and do ballet,
but as a child and always being sick,
I never had the strength,
plus my parents couldn't afford it.
- Years later at church, Linda encountered a dance performance
that profoundly inspired her.
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- And I told the Lord, I said, "You know, I sure would like to do that."
And so a lady that I knew at the church said,
"Why don't you just go to take a ballet class?"
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- Linda took many dance classes
and eventually the leader of a gospel dance company
asked her to join.
- She said, "Linda, do you want to go to prison with me?"
You know, that's a strange question when somebody asks you,
"Do you want to go to prison?"
But I always knew on the inside that there was something else
that I wanted to experience.
And so I told her, "Yes."
- The visits to women's prisons in Texas
were the missionary work of Discipleship Unlimited.
- They always love it when dancers come
and to feel their energy
because they're called the women in white
because they're always wearing white.
So we purposely wear colorful dance outfits.
The music is always uplifting.
- Linda was uplifted by the experience
and connections she made with women in prison.
- I would always ask the ladies,
"What happened to get you to this point?"
Not about their crime, but about their life.
And it always would turn out to be
something that would happen in their childhood.
- Flying home, Linda would think about what she could do
to help keep young people from making those same mistakes.
She envisioned a dance program that would inspire young people
as she had been inspired.
- And we were over the clouds
and that's where I got the name Above the Clouds.
Nothing can limit you. Nothing can stop you.
If you can dream it, you can do it.
- And we thank you for joining us in class today.
- What I love about Above the Clouds
is that they're engaging kids in their community
who might not have the opportunity to do ballet.
They're also really instilling
this sense of self-confidence and pride in everything they do.
- Can you all give me a bow curtsy and say "Amen?"
- Group: Amen.
- Seeing the students blossom
from being a child that is withdrawn
to running into the building to get to their class--
I love that part.
- How was class?
- Good. - It was good?
- Can I have a hug, Deanna? - Okay.
- We don't preach at them,
but let them know we're there for them.
- As you stroll through the garden space,
one of the showstoppers is the Thai Pavilion.
The shrine is dedicated to peace and international understanding.
And how the pavilion came to find its home in Wisconsin
is a great story.
In 2001, this beautiful structure
was given as a gift to UW-Madison
by the King of Thailand,
in conjunction with the Thai Chapter
of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
Olbrich was asked to house the pavilion,
which is one of only four that exist outside of Thailand.
The plane carrying the artisans from Thailand
was one of last planes
allowed to land in Chicago on September 11, 2001,
the same day as the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Once in Wisconsin, they began assembling the structure
and piece it together without nails or screws.
When it came time to put on the roof,
members from the community wrote messages of hope and positivity
on the back of each of the roof tiles
before they were secured into place.
It's a stunning structure with a rich history.
We're off to Platteville where an artist is turning her love
for four-legged creatures into a professional career.
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[birds twittering]
- I was really lucky
to live out in the country.
I spent my days as a child with a sketchbook,
running loose on my parents' farm,
with a beautiful dog and beautiful horses,
drawing, sketching.
I kind of had my own little world.
I'm a pastel and oil portrait artist.
I specialize in sporting dog art and equine art.
To be a good artist,
especially to know how to paint animals well,
you have had to experience that
on a very, very personal level.
You gonna throw? - Sit.
- Not only the love that you share for those animals,
but the physical presence of those personalities,
and that fur.
[horse whinnies]
And the smoothness or the sweatiness of a horse
when it's been worked hard,
and you've both worked hard,
and you've shared that experience together.
That all comes back to you
when you sit in front of an easel,
at least it comes back to me.
I am working on a dog named Zoe.
And Zoe was a rescue pet.
It's always interesting when you have a mixed breed
come in, because you really take a look at how they're built
because they're not necessarily the same way.
This dog really resembles an American Staffordshire Terrier.
You want to tell their story through their portrait.
And I think that fine artists,
we can choose every little thing.
You know, you may give me eight snapshots,
and I may like a little piece here, and a little piece here,
and a little piece here.
So I'm going to try to put those together in my head,
and create overall a work of art
that's going to move you to a new emotional state
when you look at it.
I'm called by clients who have lost an animal.
They feel that their dog is maybe very ill
and they want to know right now,
"What do I need to be prepared
so that I can memorialize this relationship?"
The process for me, I would describe as a team effort.
I want to develop a relationship with that person,
because that person is my window on understanding
who I'm going to do a portrait of.
I have to see that animal
through the eyes of the person who most loves them.
This is kind of look that we would get
when we're in love with somebody.
I want to make sure that the owners to know
she's in love, she's in love with them.
I can take those words and that love that you're feeling,
and I can turn it into an image
that's coming from inside you to me.
And then I'm like a mirror, and I'm reflecting it back.
Zoe, you can tell, is just filled with warmth.
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When you listen to music,
you want to feel that
all the way through you.
And a painting does the same thing for me.
You get to open it up. - Okay.
- And finally see the final product.
Everything plays into, basically,
making that final note that we want to feel it.
- Oh, my God!
The leaves and the background are awesome.
And her face!
- I don't think you got to see that before.
- And her face, you've just captured it.
It's just absolutely gorgeous.
- And I like to know that I've touched another person,
and I like to know that they've touched me.
- Oh, I'm so happy!
? ?
- In order to dig into how such a beautiful garden space
is maintained, I'm here with
the Director of Horticulture of the Olbrich Gardens,
Jeff Epping.
How are you doing today, Jeff? - I'm doing great.
Thanks for coming out. - Thanks for having us. - You bet.
- So we noticed a lot of gravel on the pathways in the gardens.
Can you tell us about that?
- So we're looking at a, what we call, gravel garden.
And it has about five inches of gravel
over the top of existing soil
creating a unique sort of growing system.
And the whole beauty of it
is that it's incredibly low in maintenance.
It supports all the different insects and pollinators
and all those things like you see.
I mean you'd be hard-pressed to see a blossom on there
without a bee buzzing on it, which is so cool.
But all these plants are extremely well-adapted
to dry, droughty conditions
which allows them to grow beautifully in the gravel.
- Wow. So is that low maintenance set up
pretty consistent throughout the garden?
- Well, you know, the gravel garden is unique in that way.
I mean we have lots of different perennials beds
throughout Olbrich.
Some are more traditional
with mulching them every spring and all that.
So every garden comes with little different set
of maintenance standards if you will.
Overall, we try to create gardens that are,
what we like to say, sustainable.
Not only for the environment, not using a lot of water
or other environmental inputs, chemicals,
that sort of thing to keep them happy.
But also easy for the gardener.
So that you are not tied to always working in the garden.
You can actually sit and enjoy it.
- I have one more super-important question.
- Uh-oh.
- What's the secret to repelling mosquitoes?
- Staying indoors? [laughing]
You stay cooler as well.
Uh, yeah. Lots of DEET unfortunately.
- I think I can handle that.
The staying indoors part. [laughs]
- Right. Gotcha.
- Thank you so much, Jeff.
- You're welcome. Thank you.
- For our last story this week,
we meet a Verona teen whose hard work and dedication
opened the door for the opportunity of a lifetime.
[chatting]
- In some ways Zaria Roller is a typical Wisconsin teenager.
- They literally have--
Oops, I wasn't supposed to say that. [laughter]
- She likes to hang out with friends
and she's really into nail art.
- It's just like a thing I've seen a lot on social media.
- If I'm really stressed out with school work,
a lot of times I'll just paint my nails.
- But that's about where the "typical teenager" title ends.
- She was wide-eyed and ready to go.
The day she was born, you could tell.
- She's had it since she was little.
When she was four years old,
she got involved in community theater.
- And she's kept at it.
When the Verona Area Community Theater
performed "High School Musical Junior"
Zaria captured the lead role
at age 12.
- I'm Gabriella in the show.
Pretty crazy right?
Meeting up again like this.
And we've been practicing for about a month or so now.
[singing] ? I never opened my heart
? To all the possibilities
- I think the first time I saw her as a lead in a play,
it was kind of neat to be in the seats
and have everybody around you saying,
[gasps] you know, and this collective, "Wow."
And it's like, "Yeah, that's my kid."
- ? The start of something new.
- Zaria is a straight-A student
attending high school at Verona's Exploration Academy.
As a freshman,
she's two full years ahead of other kids her age.
- You go to kindergarten and they ask you,
"Do you know your ABCs?"
and she says, "I can say backwards."
And they say, "Really? All right!"
And she did.
And she said her ABCs backwards. [laughing]
- I think I put a lot of pressure on myself
to like always maintain those perfect grades
and like always stay ahead of the game.
- I think she wanted to succeed.
It was a natural thing for her.
- Music also seems to come naturally.
[dramatic piano music]
- And six years of piano lessons have resulted in this:
Now she's parlaying the piano and theater into something more.
[clapping hands and snapping fingers]
- We do jazz a cappella songs
and we perform at concerts and jazz festivals.
- choir: Whoo-ooo-ooo-ooo! Whoo-ooo-ooo-ooo!
- Zaria, come on down.
- Zaria's voice stands out in a crowd.
- [singing] ? I'm walking on sunshine
? Whoa
? And don't it feel good
? Hey
- I like the pop songs we get to do because
that's something we usually don't get to do in choir.
But, yeah, it's pretty fun.
- Again. Ready. Go.
- [group singing] ? Day of my life.
- "Best Day of My Life" we are preparing to perform.
- ? I hear it calling ? Outside my window.
- In early 2016, Zaria was pushed to new heights.
It required everything she'd learned from performing.
- They were looking for a kid, a young kid,
to recite the speech.
[applause] - It wasn't just any speech.
- I never said a speech like that.
- It was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
"I Have a Dream" speech.
- Standing in the State Capitol Rotunda,
Zaria delivered a moving rendition.
- "It's a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up
to live out the true meaning of its creed."
- She memorized it from start to finish.
- "That all men are created equal."
I was really nervous.
I don't know if you could tell on camera,
but it was really scary.
"Former slaves and the sons of former slave owners."
- I was just amazed.
And she doesn't look like she's nervous.
Of course, she told me later, her knees were shaking.
- "That one day, even the state of Mississippi..."
- I was not at the Capitol on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
I was in Quito, Ecuador, working,
and I watched it live on my computer.
- "I have a dream that my..."
- I was blown away actually.
- "In a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin."
- Zaria had harnessed Dr. King's emotion.
- "Free at last.
"Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we are free at last."
[applause]
I remember one lady came up to me after I said it
and she's like, "You brought me to tears.
"You made me really think back to that.
I felt like I was back when he said that speech."
- Since she was young, Zaria has been in the spotlight.
Giving her parents one proud moment after another.
- I think this thing at the Capitol
was one of those moments.
She knows that she's succeeding and doing well at things,
but she is very humble about it.
We certainly give her praise and encourage her.
We've never made it seem like a big deal to do big things.
- I can't even imagine where he's gonna go with this.
- Seeing her hanging out with friends,
Zaria looks just like a typical teenager.
And that's the way she likes it.
- [singing] ? Once we see there's a chance that we have
? And we take it
- With so much to see here,
I could spend days exploring the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.
If you'd like more information on the gardens,
or our stories,
visit WisconsinLife.org.
And as always, we'd love to hear from you.
What's your "Wisconsin Life?"
Tell us by sending an email to WisconsinLife@wpt.org.
Looks like my ride is here.
I hope you've enjoyed touring the Olbrich Gardens with me.
I'm off to check out a little more,
by hopping their tram
which offers another view of the grounds.
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald,
and this is our "Wisconsin Life."
Bye for now.
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Let's hit the road, Bob!
[recorded tour plays]
- In 1920, at Mr. Olbrich's invitation,
prairie school designer and landscape architect
O.C. Simmons created a plan for the development
of the park and flower gardens.
In 1921,
Mr. Olbrich organized the Madison Parks Foundation
to raise money for park development
and the purchase of additional land.
When Mr. Olbrich died unexpectedly in 1929
at the age of 48,
the city council responded by naming the new park
"Olbrich Park" in his honor.
- Funding for "Wisconsin Life" is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.