(smooth music) - Hi I'm Traci Neuman.

- Hey and I'm Brian Ewig.

- What are you doing?

- Traci, I thought we were doing my lumberjack quartet bit?

- No, no.

We have all these great stories like the Milwaukee Flyers.

- But I wrote this joke about healthy trees being all bark and no blight.

- No, no.

I think I'm saving you from yourself.

Let's just go right to the video.

- [Announcer] The Milwaukee Flyers.

(audience applauding) (bright upbeat music) - Milwaukee Flyers is a nonprofit organization that we formulated along with my brothers, Allen and Tyrell Grant.

We star%ted in 2005 to give kids something positive, productive to do.

The reason being we know firsthand because we were troubled youth growing up in the inner city of Milwaukee.

(bright upbeat music continues) The Milwaukee Flyers, you have two missions.

One of course, as you can see acrobatic (indistinct) team.

(crowd cheering) Now, we got the kids' attention.

Now it's our job to mentor them and try to guide them in a direction that the reason why we started this program.

(bright upbeat music continues) - With this organization, it's power tumbling.

Power gymnastics.

So we do multiple floored gymnastics tricks.

We do a trampoline tricks that you might've never seen before.

(bright upbeat music continues) - We do a lot of tricks, dangerous tricks.

They be keeping me out of trouble.

Keep me off the streets, all that.

It's like my second family.

(bright upbeat music continues) - I wanted to get into it because I liked artists, liked flipping.

I've been doing this since I was four.

And so, yeah, it was just another way to put my talents out there instead of keeping them to myself.

It changed my life because sometimes I go through a lot and then when I've start performing it's really like escaping from reality.

You know what I'm saying?

(bright upbeat music continues) This program has been putting me in towards a right direction, because it's like we got love for each other.

Coach Charles he not really only a coach he's also a mentor, a father figure to some.

- At the end of the day it's about love that I provide to them and just keep making them feel wanted and special and just being a part of something positive in the community of Milwaukee.

(bright upbeat music continues) - Sometimes it's scary when we try to do new tricks.

You know what I'm saying?

But most of the time it's like you zoned out.

(indistinct) You know what I'm saying?

You focus.

You're not really thinking of nothing.

- Yeah, it's been a good experience for me and it really helped me shape my life.

I came a long way.

I could have been anywhere else, but God chose this path for me.

And to have these men around me, they really tutored me and mentor me in the right direction of becoming the man that I am today.

- As you can see, Curtis Chalmers he was part of our team when we started in the 2005.

The kid has did a tremendous transformation from in and out of bad choices and decisions makers to eventually going to college and making a life for himself.

- Whatever you put your mind to, you can do it.

You can exceed that if you want to, as long as you got the thought of being better and bettering yourself, you can do it.

(bright upbeat music continues) - They're fearless.

They're daredevils.

They just have no fear.

If you see them flying real high, it's like, how did you get so high?

How do you even do that?

They're just fearless kids.

They're just so determined and to put that spark in others' lives.

The people that watch us perform.

(bright upbeat music continues) You can look at the Milwaukee community, a lot of kids have zero activities outside of school.

And so they just to provide something to do for the kid.

Let's provided them with that opportunity to be a part of something other than just idle time in the inner city of Milwaukee.

(bright upbeat music continues) (crowd cheering) - [Announcer] Give it up for the Milwaukee Flyers.

(crowd cheering) (background chatter) - [Woman] Buddy, are you having fun?

Are you having fun, buddy?

(bright upbeat music) - They get called a pug all the time, but (chuckles) they're French Bulldogs.

They're goofy, all of them.

They're all goofy and weird in their own way.

The way they play, they snort, they snore.

Just goofy dogs.

(bright upbeat music continues) We went to a meetup in a Frenchie meetup in Madison and we thought it would be a good idea to start one in the Milwaukee area so we didn't have to drive so far.

And so now we meet up here and there's usually about 30 Frenchies that show up now and every time there's more.

So it's crazy how many Frenchies there are in Milwaukee.

(bright upbeat music continues) - It's good for the dog socialization and they make friends that they see each month.

And then it's fun to meet the Frenchie owners too and chat and talk about funny experiences.

(bright upbeat music continues) (dogs barking) - There's a lot of things just asking if something's different or odd with your dog.

If it's happened with anybody else that has the same breed as you.

With puppies, how people do things different.

Or when do you feed your dog?

What do you feed your dog?

Since they're known to have health issues what are you feeding your dog?

Or if they have the same health issue that kind of... You can kind of diagnose.

Do I need to change their food or stuff like that.

So there's a lot of things like or enrichment.

How you can get dogs to use their brains different ways than playing if they're really needy.

(bright upbeat music continues) Let the dogs have fun.

Let them burn some energy on the weekends.

They'll all sleep on the way home and then my dog's always exhausted after this for two days.

But I think it's fun to meet up with other dog parents just to hang out with.

Something to do on the weekend.

Just people who like the same thing, Frenchies.

(bright upbeat music continues) - What a blacksmith does is heats iron steel up to a temperature that it softens.

Usually about 1600, 1700 degrees.

When the metal is that hot, it becomes pliable.

So you can actually shape it and form it and make things out of it.

Blacksmith was your local mechanic.

He was your fix it shop.

If you had a farm machinery...

Piece of farm machinery break, or your horse needed shoes, you would go to the blacksmith.

And you didn't have local hardware stores like you do now, you'd go to the blacksmith and he would make something for you.

If you needed a latch for your door or a handle for your door, or if you needed something fixed, you went to the blacksmith and he did that for you.

So he was a really critical part of the community and that's why every community had one and they were sought after.

So what I'm doing here is I'm using a forge and a forge is a special fireplace that the blacksmith uses in order to heat his steal.

I build a fire in the forge.

This lever operates a blower, which forces air into the fire to fan the fire and make it hotter 'cause I'm trying to get it up to this high temperature.

And when I'm at that temperature, my steel will be glowing orange like that is.

And at that point, it's flexible enough that I can shape it and bend it to make something out of it.

One of the big transitions for a blacksmith shop, like I said, he was the community mechanic repair shop.

A lot of them transitioned into automobile repair because that was the transition that they had to make back in the '20s and '30s.

(hammer pounding) It really did almost die out in the '70s, but was revived through the interest of a number of people that started getting interested in the craft more on a artistic side.

It's really an artistic form as well.

I mean, you can really be creative with it and do some beautiful work.

Society and not just America but across the world- (smooth guitar music) - Wisconsin really is kind of an air cultural powerhouse in it's diversity.

And everybody focuses a lot on the dairy, which has been really unique, but Wisconsin is a national leader in pea production.

Green peas for canning, snap beans, potatoes, cranberries, ginseng.

(smooth guitar music continues) You see a lot of corn because farmers like to plant corn.

You get to see that big plant grow up and you see the big yields and so on.

But it's an important part of especially livestock industry in the state, whether it's growing corn silage, growing corn for green.

But you also have green farmers that are selling it as an end product for them.

(smooth guitar music continues) It's a full busy from start to finish kinda day.

It's more like a five to nine job (laughs) At some you really have to enjoy the challenges that go with it.

I mean, that's obviously something that's been talked about in recent years with the financial struggles that a lot of farms have been having.

But it's also the...

Some of the day-to-day struggles or something goes wrong and you have to go to plan B or C or D. Some of it is... You have to have to like working with the animals.

You have to like working with the soil, working with equipment.

And every farmer has a different things that they're more comfortable with.

And while some people might think, well, you're in the Winter months, you get chores done in the morning and you get to sit in the house all day.

That's not the case.

We're busy 365 days a year.

During Winter months we might focus more on trying to get equipment ready for the Summer or the Spring.

It's doing maintenance.

It's doing bookwork.

We usually talk about January and February being meeting season.

Whether it's meetings with extension to learn different techniques, technologies, new research that's come out that might be able to help us do a better job on our farm.

(smooth guitar music continues) Every farmer is trying to do different things from a conservation standpoint to better cope with rain events and so on.

You think of the moldboard plows and chisel plows and how we used to work all the soil before we planted things.

And now we're trying to do more no-till and minimum till and strip till that try not to disturb the soil.

Putting on cover crops during the Winter months and having them there for the Spring to help hold that soil in place.

To help not only sequester carbon, but also keep that soil exactly where we want it so it doesn't end up in our rivers, streams and lakes.

Ultimately, it's trying to be a good steward of the land and of the soil for hopefully generations to come.

(smooth guitar music continues) Wisconsin, I think is always gonna be the America's dairy state.

It's too much a large part of our infrastructure, our heritage, our history here in the state of Wisconsin for that to change.

It's just what that industry might look like going ahead that could be really unique or really special going forward.

(smooth guitar music continues) - [Group] Three, two, one.

- [Girl] Wow.

- [Announcer] To see more of our short stories, please visit our website at Milwaukeepbs.org or check out all our other social media platforms.

(door bangs) - Here we go.

So this is the pump room.

We're about 320 feet underground.

This is where 28 and a half miles of deep tunnel come to an end.

Everything gets pumped out here and either sent to Jones island or the Oak Creek Plant, South shore.

28 and a half miles long, about 300 feet underground for the most part and 17 to 32 feet in diameter.

So, it's massive and it holds about 521 million gallons.

And that's the whole point of this tunnel system is to help reduce the risk of sewer overflows and our highest priority during the storm is to keep wastewater out of people's basements.

1994 was the first full year of operation.

Ever since then, we have captured and cleaned 98.4% of every drop of water that's gotten into the regional sewer system.

This is the Harbor siphon.

There are two pipes that come in, one from this direction and one from the North that go under the river and then this siphon system brings it up to the plant to help lift it to a level where all the water could flow by gravity through the rest of the plant (smooth guitar music) So there are four stages.

The first being screening where big towels and other stuff that gets either flushed or gets into a storm drain that gets taken out so it doesn't damage any equipment that we have or infrastructure.

This is the second stage of treatment.

So the solids sink to the bottom, oils and greases float to the top.

We take all the solids and put them in a pipeline that goes down to the Old Creek Plant and that goes into the anaerobic digester.

And that's where it produces the gases to help us produce the energy we need to mostly run that plant.

And then it goes to where the real workhorse is a wastewater treatment are.

It's called secondary treatment where the bugs live and the bugs eat organic material out of the wastewater.

Right here what you're seeing are the filter presses.

We take the bugs out a certain portion each day, but this is how it comes in.

It comes in.

This is a special filter fabric that let's water drain out.

But then the water is also squeezed out at this other end, before it drops down and onto a conveyor belt.

And then they go to the dryer.

They're in the dryer until they hit a certain temperature that helps guarantee there's no pathogens left, potentially.

And from there we bag it.

Sell nine different products.

And then from there it goes to disinfection where we add a chlorine byproduct.

Then we have to add another product to take the chlorine by-product out before we discharge the water to the lake.

(smooth guitar music continues) This system has really paid huge dividends for Lake Michigan, which is our also our drinking water and for public health.

It's been a great, great investment.

There are a lot of cities around the country that would love to have the infrastructure that we have here in the Milwaukee area.

(smooth guitar music continues) (tribal music) - Well, the peace tree planting...

The peace tree that you see over there is a white pine tree.

It always has to be a white pine tree.

That legend is 600 years old.

And it comes from the Iroquois Confederacy in Northeastern part of the country.

And it has to do with a tree where they were doing nothing but having wars and fighting and they were disagreeing on everything.

(tribal music continues) - There was a time in our history of our people, our ancestors, that there was great strife that was taking place amongst all of the peoples throughout North America.

Throughout all of the various places.

And so it was at that time that it was decided that we say that there was a messenger that came amongst our people who was known as the peacemaker.

And at that time, the peacemaker, he gathered nations together.

And so we say that at that time, the peacemaker, he symbolized this particular kind of a tree and he gave it a name.

(speaks in foreign language) Meaning it grows tall into the sky.

It goes skyward because it's such a tall tree.

He also named it (speaks in foreign language) The tree of long leaves.

He also mentioned that.

But we say today (speaks in foreign language) Today is what we refer to as the white pine.

And at that time he said, he understood that he was gonna utilize this tree to be that symbol.

Because if you look at these needles or these leaves on this white pine, there's a cluster of five that are bound together.

And that symbolize the five nations that came together as a Confederacy at that time.

And today we say that this particular tree that we refer to as the tree of long leaves, the white pine, that this tree is a symbol of what we understand to be that brings us together as one.

One mind, one heart, one spirit between one another as human beings here on this earth.

(tribal music) (bright upbeat music) - In Wisconsin we celebrate our seasons as really the foundation for our natural diversity.

And Autumn sets the stage for one of our hallmark phenomenon and that is the Fall colors.

Wisconsin we're positioned at about 42 to 47 degrees North latitude.

And that combined with the inclination of earth axis as we're revolving around the sun, leads to climatic patterns, mostly temperature and precipitation among others that dictate what we have in our Wisconsin forest.

Our Wisconsin forest are typical of a deciduous temperate biome, including a lot of maple trees, Oak trees, Beech, Birch, Aspen.

These deciduous trees are those that lose their leaves annually.

(smooth piano music) As we head towards Winter and earth is leaning away from the sun and Winter's coming, these trees receive signals.

Shorter days are declining photo period, coupled with cooler temperatures, which are really a call for preparedness, that Winter is coming.

And the first things that the trees do is stop a production of chlorophyll, which is that magic pixie dust required for photosynthesis.

When they stop producing chlorophyll, all the greens turn to yellow, orange, brown hues.

And we also see a lot of bright reds, pinks due to chemical changes within the tree and within the leaves that are required to retain nutrients throughout the Winter.

Now, because earth has a pretty consistent physiographic location, we tend to see that same change in the leaves every year.

The only variability would be related to maybe some cooler temperatures from one given year to another.

But that peak Fall color in the Northern half of the state is going to reveal itself around the first or second week of October.

And in the Southern half of the state, it comes shortly thereafter, maybe about the third week of October.

What really leads to the most brilliant Fall colors in our Wisconsin forest are wet Spring, moderate Summers and then cool evening, but not freezing, but cool evening Fall temperatures.

(smooth guitar music) The reason our deciduous trees lose their leaves is really threefold.

Number one, during the growing season, the leaves are harnessing energy and sharing that with the rest of the trunk and the branches.

And during the Winter, they want to shut that valve off and shut that passageway off so that the rest of the tree, the branches, the trunk can conserve that harnessed energy.

So they lose their leaves to shut that off.

And secondly, it's a way for the tree to conserve and preserve moisture within the branches and in the trunk.

And lastly, the tree needs to lose it's leaves because without the leaves on the branches and the trunk, it can withstand the strain of the strong winds associated with Wisconsin storms.

(smooth guitar music continues) While we see these colored and fallen leaves often as a nuisance as they're clogging our rain gutters and our storm sewers.

And cluttering the lawn, being tracked into our house, they're actually a really vital part of our Wisconsin Woodland ecosystem.

They support biodiversity and they provide an intangible resource.

First of all, the leaf litter protects plant roots and conserve soil moisture during the Winter.

And it also suppresses the invasion of non native species and ultimately that leaf litter and the mulch breaks down into plant food for the next year's growing season.

The fallen leaves also provide important Winter habitat for all kinds of Woodland animals, Small mammals to microbes, spiders, amphibians, insects, other pollinators all depend on that leaf litter and the associated stems and pieces of bark as critical nesting material and insulation all Winter long.

(smooth guitar music continues) The intangible value of our Fall colors to Wisconsin residents may not be as easy to determine because we truly can't grasp it or contain it.

But the scenic beauty that they provide is there.

I mean, we know it when we see it.

Wisconsinites and friends from neighboring states take day trips or even weekend getaways from the Southern Kettle Moraine Northward to the Eagle River Minocqua area from Door County, Westward to the Bluffs on the Mississippi river, specifically to take in and enjoy the turning leaves and the Fall colors in our forest.

So because of that, we really need to recognize that our Fall colors are truly an important part of our ecological culture.

And they're an important intangible resource whose value can't be over appreciated.

(smooth guitar music continues) - Oh, the trees look nothing like that anymore.

- I know, isn't it crazy what a month and a half will do?

- Yeah, it sure is.

But there's still plenty to do outside in this weather.

- That's right.

Check out our website each week to learn how people in Wisconsin are enjoying this weather all year long.

- Thanks for watching "My Wisconsin Backyard".

(bright upbeat music)