- The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
[upbeat music]
- Angela: Coming up on Wisconsin Life:
We meet the founder of a black bear education center,
an Eau Claire luthier fine-tuning her creative side,
an artist using words as her medium,
and the owners of a vintage woolen mill.
It's all next on Wisconsin Life.
[fast-paced music]
- Announcer: Wisconsin Life is funded in part by:
Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
American Transmission Company,
the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hello.
This is Wisconsin Life, and I'm Angela Fitzgerald.
I've got my walking boots on today,
as we tour the Shalom Wildlife Zoo.
This private zoo is in West Bend.
It has over 100 acres to discover.
Guests will see a wide variety of wildlife,
including buffalo,
bears,
and a camel.
The zoo's focus is to preserve the animals' natural ecosystem,
while providing an educational experience. Hey, Sonic.
And there are plenty of opportunities for that,
with over 400 animals on site.
One of the species here is the albino deer.
As you can see, they're pretty friendly.
We'll check out more of the critters here later.
But first, we meet an animal lover in Wausau
who's built a sanctuary for a
sometimes misunderstood animal,
black bears.
[gentle music]
Tens of thousands of black bears roam Wisconsin,
and yet, to see one up close is rare.
- Jeff: I was like, "Wow!"
It actually ran by me 20 yards away,
and I was so excited, I jumped from my tree stand
to the next tree, and I shimmied down, and I ran after it.
And most people, I guess, do the exact opposite, ya know.
- Angela: From that chance encounter,
Jeff Traska went from chasing bears to chasing a dream.
- I had to make a decision.
If I was going to be hunting and harvest one of these animals,
or if I was going to learn more.
And I decided I'm gonna put my bow down,
and I'm just gonna do my own research.
- Angela: More than 35 years later, the research continues,
just steps from Jeff's front door.
- Jeff: None of this was ever planned.
- Angela: "This" is the Wisconsin Black Bear Education Center,
a not-for-profit private sanctuary.
- Jeff: They have approximately seven acres they can roam.
There's ponds, there's meadows, there's trees.
- Angela: With a kind heart for bears,
Jeff converted his land into one of the largest,
most natural bear facilities in the United States.
- We want to replicate as much of nature as possible.
Look over here. See this kinda hole?
I want people to come and see the animal
in the most natural atmosphere that they can.
- Woman: But you never actually go in the--
- Jeff: Yeah, I go in there every day with them.
- Woman: Oh, you do? - Jeff: Yeah, yeah.
I've been bitten, scratched by all these guys.
When I analyzed the situation, it's always been what I did.
- Angela: Each of his four bears comes with a personality and a past.
- Vince was rescued from a breeding facility.
From day one, he was always kinda shy,
from when he was five pounds, and I bottle-fed him.
Sunny and Moon, because they were brother and sister,
created a kinda different atmosphere
because they both had one another to look upon.
And Sky, our latest bear, he came to us
when he was only a year-and-a-half.
You know this is Sky, because he's up in the tree.
His mother was killed somehow, and we got him
from a rehabbing place up in Rhinelander.
- Angela: Part of Jeff's mission is taking the fear
out of a bear encounter.
- People have the impression that bears are walking around
through the woods with blood dripping out of their mouth,
waiting for the next hiker to come along.
When somebody comes here, hopefully,
they get to encounter a bear, but it's in a good situation.
He was swimming in the pond just before you guys got here.
And when they come across the bear, it's not so much,
"Oh my God, there's a bear!
"Let's run out of here!"
A black bear is nothing more
than a couple-hundred-pound gray squirrel.
That's really all it is.
It's just looking to find food to survive
and make it through the winter; that's all it's doing.
...Bed and breakfast, and all that kind of stuff.
- Angela: Through the years, Jeff has learned
to communicate with his guests and his bears.
[high-pitched grunting]
- Woman: Wow.
- When they hear the vocalization of the bears,
and when I can replicate those sounds,
the mother will go [woofing], or even call the bears,
that's a big thing for the people.
Instantly, the cubs will go up the trees.
People think when they hear a bear go,
[rapid grunting]
they're going, "Oh my God, I'm gonna die right now."
But, all the bear is basically saying
is that there's a danger in the area,
and they're uncomfortable with the atmosphere.
[bear roaring]
- Angela: Tempers can flare this time of year
when food is most important, especially when packing
on the pounds to survive a long winter.
[bears woofing]
- Jeff: If it's real, they'll stand their grounds,
and normally, they kinda face off.
[scratching]
- Angela: Jeff has had his own close encounters
with hungry bears.
[playful music]
[high-pitched grunting]
- The bears come up to me; it ain't no big deal.
They see me taking nuts out of a pail, especially Vince.
I didn't see him over there, and I was throwing some stuff,
and he grabbed the bucket with my leg...
and he had his head in the bucket, and I'm going,
"Vince, come on, now." [rapid grunting]
And the harder I tried to pull,
it just got tighter, tighter and tighter.
I'm like, "Well, okay, finish them."
Their sense of smell is 2,000 times better than ours,
seven to eight times greater than a bloodhound,
and they could smell a dead carcass up to 20 miles away.
It's satisfying for me to have the people ask questions.
Those are called smelling receptors.
That's what makes me tick.
- Angela: Despite all he's doing for his bears
and for the public, Jeff's not done, yet.
- I made this commitment to take care of these animals
for the rest of their life.
We have 40 acres, about six or eight miles from here.
I'd like to create a rehab facility
to where I can take care of injured and orphaned bears
and then be able to release them into the wild.
I've learned a lot so far,
but just think how smart I'll be when I'm 100, 'ya know.
[laughing]
[wistful music]
[upbeat music]
- Angela: Next up, we share the story of
an Eau Claire violinist who uses her talents
to fine-tune her creative side.
[violin playing]
Music...
It's considered the universal language.
- Rose: If you can communicate something without saying
anything at all, it's just a magical world, I guess.
- Angela: A world Rose Vincent's been in tune with
for most of her life.
- I was 12 years old,
and my parents said,
"Well, you get to choose your instrument,"
and I thought violin sounded pretty cool,
but after a couple days I told my mom, I said,
"This is what I want to do for a living."
[fast-paced violin playing] She laughed.
- Angela: It was the start of a lifelong dialogue for Rose.
- Rose: I wanted to be a performer,
and I wanted to learn to improvise.
- Angela: Even if the conversation is always changing.
[scratching on wood]
[gentle lute music]
- I got started in violin restoration when my violin
in college started to have some structural problems,
and a very kind person offered to teach me how to fix it.
[tapping]
- Angela: Rose is a luthier,
[tapping]
someone who restores and rebuilds string instruments.
- Rose: They have to function,
not just paint a pretty picture,
so they have to be able to express when they're done.
That is the goal.
[gentle lute music]
[scraping]
- Angela: She works alongside her husband John
at their shop in downtown Eau Claire.
Together, they've restored hundreds of violins,
some centuries old.
- One of the oldest we've got rolling right now is 1711,
Georg Aman from Augsburg.
That's a really neat instrument, and it's really messed up.
[laughing]
[dabbing]
- Angela: For Rose, it's like lending an ear
to an old friend.
- It never gets old when you hear them for the first time.
I can be the first one to hear it
in maybe a hundred years, and that's pretty cool.
[bluegrass guitar music]
- Angela: But what happens when what you're hearing
suddenly changes tone?
? Stay away from me ?
? You're causing me trouble ?
? It's been that way ?
? Since from the start ?
Bluegrass is like playing Bach at 200 miles-an-hour
and composing it on the spot.
[bluegrass fiddle playing]
- Angela: Rose was recruited from the chamber orchestra
by a local bluegrass band.
- Bluegrass was an absolutely new experience.
I had never done anything like that before.
It scared the heck out of me. [laughing]
It's extremely complex.
It's extremely difficult.
It was, in a way, more difficult than playing classical music
because it was set out there to react that quickly
and interact with the harmonies that other people are creating.
It's just a real complex dance,
which is really, really neat.
[bluegrass music]
- Angela: When she's not mending violins,
Rose travels the country, now playing bluegrass.
- Well, I found out I loved being on the road.
Absolutely loved it.
We've met so many people along the way.
And also, it made me a better violinist in general,
because there's such an emphasis on rhythm and collaboration
that it just rounded everything out.
[classical violin music]
- Angela: Even when the tempo keeps changing for Rose...
[scratching on wood]
[gentle lute playing]
...the language stays the same.
- I think the best thing you can feel is that
you've completely emptied everything out of yourself
to give to the people listening.
[bluegrass music playing]
[audience clapping in rhythm]
Sometimes it just knocks you over.
Like, wow! [laughing] This is really awesome.
[audience cheering]
[audience applauding]
[cymbal shimmering]
- The zoo is located in West Bend,
and the story of how this beautiful attraction came to be
all begins with a couple's love for the great outdoors.
[acoustic guitar music]
The Shalom Wildlife Zoo
has more than 100 acres to explore.
I met with co-owner David Fechter to learn more about
how this expansive zoo got its start.
- My wife, Lana, and I both grew up on Shalom Drive.
What is today Shalom Wildlife Zoo
was actually part of a huge estate.
I was the caretaker, and my wife was the housekeeper.
Later on in life, we fell in love,
and the property was sold and was gonna be subdivided.
And so, we decided let's buy the land and preserve it.
And so that's kinda how it started.
- Angela: That is amazing.
So it's just grown from there. - That's correct.
- So, are you all both involved in the day-to-day
operations of the zoo?
- Yes, we work about 20 hours a day.
[both laughing] Seven days a week.
So it is definitely a commitment
to something that we find is enjoyable.
[kids chatting]
- Angela: An experience that's enjoyable for guests too,
as they engage with local,
exotic and endangered animals.
- We have over 70 species.
We have probably over 500 animals
and animals from all over the world.
But it mainly started with deer, bison, elk, native species,
and this year we have tigers.
Hi, hi, hi.
Well, we have the lemurs; they are another endangered species.
We have some red-footed tortoises from Brazil
that are endangered species.
So it's just to try to educate the people on the importance.
They see how beautiful they are.
And we see a big tiger, we go, "Wow,"
but there's a little turtle that we should go,
"Wow," too, 'cause it's also endangered.
- It's important work that couldn't be done
without community support.
So tell me, how does the community support what you do?
I understand there's a food donation process they can--
- Right, yeah, we're really taken care of well by our community.
Every day at our zoo entrance, people donate food.
People just love coming to Shalom,
and they just help keep it going.
- Angela: From big cats to small creatures,
there are opportunities to interact with the critters here.
There are hedgehogs.
Hey!
I'm guessing these animals can be petted.
- Zookeeper: Yeah. [Angela laughing]
Large tortoises.
- So this is Littles. - So, I mean--
- You can touch her back. - Can it feel when you do this?
- Yes, so the shell is actually a part of their body. - Okay.
And I can't forget the hissing cockroaches.
Do they fly? - They do not fly.
They do not have any wings of any kind. - That's comforting.
For David, the Shalom Wildlife Zoo is a special place,
one that's been a lifetime in the making.
- The most amazing thing to me is all the people that come,
that I see families coming out here, and it's almost,
sometimes I gotta pinch myself that it's hard to believe
that what started out as just preservation of the land
turned into this huge community endeavor.
[gentle music]
- I don't have food for you. You're sweet.
[playful music]
The zoo is a wonderful place to learn about animals,
up close and personal.
[upbeat music]
Now, let's travel to Milwaukee,
where an artist is
turning text into intricate art.
[gentle music]
- Words are powerful tools,
and we are witnessing that.
You can elevate someone with your words.
You can crush someone with your words.
Words have this great power. They are great tools.
My name is Nina Ghanbarzadeh.
I'm a full-time visual artist.
I am from Tehran, Iran. Tehran is the capital of Iran.
That is where I was born and raised,
and I moved to the United States in 2001.
I use specific words and phrases,
and I write them repetitively on paper.
So that is how I make compositions.
So I would say that these words and sentences act as colors
or elements of design in my art.
So instead of color, I use words.
[bright, exciting music]
So, I would like my viewer to look at the whole composition,
as in one unified piece, and enjoy the composition.
But as the viewer gets closer to the composition,
to the words, the words starts to reveal themselves.
Then they find that, "Oh, so there is something written in this work."
I usually write in my mother tongue, Farsi,
and I don't write the translations.
The reason is because I borrow from Persian poetry,
and when you translate poetry,
the sensibility of language is being lost.
And I have to do a lot of thinking and brainstorming
on how to write.
How should I write specific words so they can make movement
and pattern on the paper?
I used to paint.
My paintings, they're all representational,
and they all had elements from my culture.
But when I started to write,
it made me feel good inside.
Just being able to recite these phrases,
it made me feel close to my birthplace,
to my friends and family, in my head.
So, it really helped me to settle down in this country.
I want to show the beauty of Persian culture
through the words that I pick.
That is what, actually, I want my viewer to feel,
is calmness, the quietness, because we have so much going on
in our world, and I want my viewer to,
when they stand in front of my drawings, I want them
to be able to take a deep breath and say,
"There's something that calms me,
"and there is some peace in these pieces."
[upbeat music]
- Angela: From words to wool.
We share the talents of a Valders couple
with a vintage woolen mill and sheep,
lots and lots of sheep.
[sheep bleating]
- Carol: We started out with one sheep.
And one sheep leads to another sheep,
which leads to another, and here we are at multiple sheep.
- Angela: Nestled in a valley by Valders
is the Hidden Valley Woolen Mill.
- I grew up in this house and I was gone for about 20 years.
The place had sat abandoned for two or three years.
My uncle bought the farm, and he said he'd sell it to me.
Threw me a price, and I told him I'd bring him a check tomorrow,
and I bought it for no other reason than the fact that it was so cheap,
and I knew I could make it livable.
Told her I'd bought the home place,
and she was pretty excited about it at the time. [Carol laughing]
So, we had the house and two acres,
[sheep bleating] and we started from that.
Now we own 16 acres and run about 75, and right now,
we're up to about 550 head of sheep with the lambs.
- Carol: I read an article about the Coopworth sheep.
They were developed in New Zealand.
They had just been imported into the United States,
and there still aren't many of them here.
And they were long-wooled sheep that were supposed to be
wonderful for hand spinning.
So, of course, I had to get one.
- Paul: These girls have been just fantastic.
We learn more and more about them every day.
- Angela: With so many sheep, there's a lot of wool.
- There was a little woolen mill about 10 miles from here,
and they were ready to retire.
I was there one day, and the discussion came around
to getting rid of the mill.
"Do you know anybody that wants to buy it?"
And I said, "Well, I do."
So I came home and told Paul that I bought a woolen mill,
[laughing] and so we had to build a building,
and it came at the right time.
There used to be a variety of mills throughout the state.
Most of them have since gone out of business.
- It's like years ago every medium-sized town had a brewery,
and the microbreweries are coming back now,
and hopefully, this type of industry will come back again.
- Angela: The woolen mill is an eight-ton,
1923 carding machine, which Paul is an expert at operating.
- I'm feeding the machine,
and I have to control the rate of feed
so that we have a consistent roving at the end,
the size of what a hand spinner would want.
The wool will get on the main drum, and then,
as it goes around what we call the roll "workers,"
which are these right here, you can see the fiber
being pulled and combed right there.
And then the small rollers are called strippers.
They take the fiber off of the workers
and put it back on the main drum.
And as it works its way over, there's eight rollers
that work it, and then on the other end,
it will come off on what's called a doffer.
It will be combed off the doffer into the transfer unit
to make the actual roving.
As you can see, she rolls it into a half-pound ball,
and she's really accurate. [chuckles]
It's amazing.
- Angela: Dying wool is an art,
which Carol has embraced from the start,
being inspired by what she sees around her.
- I create colorways.
When we started out, we would go to festivals and come home,
and people would call and say, "Ya know, I bought this stuff,
"and it's got some blue in it and some green in it,
"and I want more."
Well, that's nice. [both laughing]
I can't picture, quite. "What do you want?"
So we started giving everything a name,
and that has made a big difference, because then,
ya know, it creates a connection between the people
that are purchasing it
and what the inspiration was.
- Angela: A connection that is celebrated
at farmers markets and wool festivals.
- We're really getting into a computerized world,
with the Amazon attitude of buying and shipping,
but fiber is a little bit different in the fact that
people really want to feel it.
And so, that's why I think the shows
will always go... to some extent.
My goal this year, of those 300 lambs that are down
in the barn right now, is that not one single lamb
goes into the system. [lamb bleating]
Everyone will go with what they call the underground market,
which is direct market to cuts, individual lambs...
[lamb bleating] or of that sort.
I was almost successful last year in marketing 100%,
but that's my goal.
- And direct marketing is farmers markets,
and Paul does the Downtown Appleton Farmer's Market
while I'm doing the Downtown Green Bay Farmer's Market.
So it's like nonstop marketing.
I go to approximately 10 fiber festivals
throughout the Midwest.
I always laugh and say, "Have sheep, will travel."
[Carol laughing]
- Our life has been a multitude of adventures,
[both laughing]
some good, some bad, some indifferent,
but it has definitely not been dull.
- And we have our sheep to thank for that. [laughing]
[sheep bleating]
- I'm gonna take one more trip around the zoo.
If you want to learn more about the Shalom Wildlife Zoo
or any of the stories featured, visit WisconsinLife.org.
And if you have a story or a favorite place to share,
email us at Stories@WisconsinLife.org.
Until next time, I'm Angela Fitzgerald,
and this is our Wisconsin Life.
Bye!
[upbeat music]
Whee!
[cameraman laughing]
- Cameraman: Oh, man.
- Announcer: Wisconsin Life is funded in part by:
Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
American Transmission Company,
the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.