>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> BRANDON: Coming up, tour the Rotary Jail Museum in Crawfordsville.

>> ASHLEY: Meet some Gibson County residents celebrating their family's agricultural legacy.

>> BRANDON: See what is growing in the Bloomington Community Orchard.

>> ASHLEY: And meet Cathleen Huffman, an artist celebrating some icons of the Hoosier landscape.

That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> ASHLEY: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla.

>> BRANDON: And I'm Brandon Wentz.

And we're coming to you from the Kelley Agricultural Historical Museum.

This property, located in Tipton County, is home to a number of historically significant structures, including a beautiful round barn, restored farmhouse, a oneroom schoolhouse and much more.

And we'll learn all about this beautiful collection in just a little bit.

But first, we're headed from a round barn to a round jail?

>> ASHLEY: That's right!

We're headed to Crawfordsville to check out the Rotary Jail Museum.

Producer John Timm has the story.

♪ >> A rotary jail is a system that was supposed to be safer than traditional jails at the time.

♪ It is a full circle of bars with one entry point on each level, and that made it so that every inmate had to go through that one entry point, and then they were rotated out to a solid wall of bars.

This made this system inescapable.

It also made it much safer for the guards that were working during that day.

♪ The rotary jails were created to solve a problem of jails at the time.

This allowed them to keep the same amount of inmates with a much smaller workforce.

Only three people were working at a rotary jail at any given time, and that was because instead of moving the guards to the inmates, the inmates were moved to the guards on an individual basis.

♪ We are at the Rotary Jail Museum of Crawfordsville, Indiana.

It was the first Rotary Jail Museum ever built.

It was the first of 18.

Only three of those still exist.

The one in Gallatin, Missouri, the one in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and this one right here.

♪ The Montgomery County rotary jail system was built in 1881 and remained operational until 1973.

♪ Our rotary jail is two sets of rotating cell blocks.

Each one has eight pie-shaped wedges, and those are encompassed by a solid wall of bars.

So there's only one entry point on each level.

So the cell had to be lined up to that opening before a prisoner could be let in or out.

♪ The way that the jail works is it is a solid circle of bars and the cells rotate within those bars.

Between each cell is a solid steel plate that was used as a security measure, and as that spins inside of the bars, it made it possible to get fingers and toes caught.

The rotary jail system stopped being used in the late 1930s because of the injuries that were being sustained.

Rotary nature of the jail was supposed to be a safer design for both the guards and the inmates, but once it was put into practice, they realized that a lot of these inmates were receiving fractures and amputations to their limbs that were stuck outside of the bars before the cells were rotated.

♪ In the 1930s, there was a renovation to make this a stationary jail as the rotary jails were no longer considered safe.

♪ We have 16 cells on the rotary level and we have a women's cell, a maximum security cell, and three cells in the infirmary level.

That's where those amputations and fractures were cared for.

♪ The sheriff and his family lived here on property.

The jail is not a quiet place.

And so there was very little privacy for the sheriff and his family, because they could hear the inmates at any given time.

The design for the rotary jail is based on a railroad turnstile.

All the cells are built on top of that turnstile, and we hand crank that around to move the cells to the entry points.

♪ We make sure to turn the rotary jail on every single tour that we have so that everybody can experience that before we lose that function.

♪ We could hold 37 inmates at any given time, but we were rarely at capacity.

This was a jail and not a prison.

So most of our inmates only spent one to two days, and over half of all of those arrests from 1881 to 1973 were alcohol-related.

One of our most famous inmates that was here at the jail was John Coffee.

A lot of people will recognize that name from "The Green Mile" by Stephen King.

John Coffee was executed, and it was later found out that he was completely innocent of his crimes.

Instead of having the mouse from "The Green Mile," we had a raccoon.

And it was around for about 20 years, and it would come up every night and get food from the inmates and the turnkeys, and it eventually began doing tricks for its food.

♪ We have a lot of different visitors, and they come from all over the country.

We have those that are interested in criminal law.

We have those that are in college studying history.

And we just have residents around Crawfordsville that have never come in before, and just want to see what we are about.

The rotary jail system is a really important piece of history, because this is from a bygone era.

It is technology that is no longer used.

It is one of three that are left in the world, and it has a lot of history behind it.

So I definitely feel like it's worth preserving.

♪ >> ASHLEY: You know, I had never heard of a rotary jail before this story, and I think after learning more about it, I'm going to keep my circular rides to carousels.

Want to learn more?

Just head over to rotaryjailmuseum.org.

>> BRANDON: Earlier, we caught up with Mike Kelley to learn all about the Kelley Agricultural Historical Museum.

>> We are at the corner of U.S. 31 and 550 North in Sharpsville, Indiana, Tipton County, Prairie Township.

This has been our corner since 1871.

The original 120 acres goes with it.

The dream of my uncle E.W.

Kelley, wanted to do just give something back to Tipton County.

So he established a museum.

Actually, it was established 43 years ago this month in 1978.

First building we moved here was the one-room schoolhouse.

It was built in 1887.

It was originally two miles east and two miles south of here.

They have school in the one-room school.

They bring in a schoolmarm, and have it just like it was back in 1887.

That was one of the main ideas with the museum, to create a place where the kids could come and see the way pioneer life, the way it was back then.

At one time, Tipton County had five round barns.

This is the only one left.

It original set in the southwest corner of Tipton County.

It was built by two brothers by the name of Spurgeon.

It has 50-foot diameter, what is called a double gambrel roof.

It's setting the same way it set originally with the big doors facing east.

I had plans of keeping antique farm machinery in it.

But there was a couple drove by here from Noblesville, one day, asked if they could get married in the barn.

We said, why not?

No electricity.

No restrooms.

So they brought in Porta-Potties.

We run extension cords.

They had their wedding.

And from then on, it was just word of mouth, and it turned into a wedding venue.

So I lost my barn to keep antique farm machinery in.

Well, I have a lot of memories in my house, of course.

This was my grandparent's house, and I farmed all of my life.

It means a lot.

I'm down here practically every day, and I like to take care of it, and keep it up.

We are open to the public.

We do not have any set hours.

You can call, and we'd be glad to give tours.

We don't charge for those.

>> BRANDON: You can learn more at the address on the screen.

And now mostly they are doing events here.

So if you could have an event here, what kind of event would you have?

>> ASHLEY: I would have my 40th birthday party here, which is in many, many years in the future.

Up next, we're headed south to meet some gardening gurus in Gibson County.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

♪ >> Lyles Station in its zenith had over 800 families here.

People were here, like, 100 years even before it became Lyles Station.

So it was a colony, and it was an area where the Blacks had came and settled and survived, and, you know, made a way for theirselves.

It's a farming community.

Even where we are at right now was a part of Lyles Station, because a man named Thomas Cole owned thousands and thousands of acres that went all the way to Mount Carmel.

He owned it, and he was a Black man.

When I grew up in Lyles Station, it was a whole lot of family and friends and we all went to Wayman Chapel Church, which was the center of Lyles Station.

We would have picnics.

We would have barbecues.

We would have fish fries.

And Lyles Station, right now, is the remnants of what it was.

Our part of the family, we've always worked the ground.

What it was then, it was farming, but it was also homesteading.

My father was recognized -- is recognized as one of the last remaining African American farmers farming land that's been in their family since pre-Civil War.

It's been passed down for generation and generation, and he's farming that still.

Today is the next generation, which is my son, who has decided that he wants to do the produce farming.

>> You know, there's a lot of things that you think that you might want to do growing up, and farming never was a thought of mine at all.

Around 2016, when my grandfather was getting acknowledged and Lyles Station, a bell kind of rung in my head, or a lightbulb as you could say, just kind of went off and was, like, you know, my grandpa is the last one that they are saying in our family.

So I just, like, you know, thought it would have been easy at the time.

Like, hey, I can grow a garden.

Hey, I can sell some fresh produce.

Not really knowing what it all took at the time, just had an idea and just ran with it, really.

>> We're actually on what's called on Produce Alley, and there's other produce stands on down the road.

So this is called the Gibson County's Produce Alley.

We do food giveaways.

So what we do is we go into the community, partner with organizations such as Young and Established, which works with inner city youth and give them programs.

We are doing a program with them to where we are giving away a fresh local produce bag.

You know, those are the most important seeds that I feel like I plant, is that -- is that seed of sustainability, that seed of opportunity.

We have hooked up with other Black farmers.

We did farmer's markets in the underserved areas.

In Evansville, we've hooked up with the churches that's in the underserved area, and we do youth programs.

With those youth programs, some of them we take them from seed, all the way to market, to canning and preserving.

So we teach them how to grow the food.

We educate them about food.

We educate them on the opportunities that agriculture can bring to them, because for them, agriculture is great, great grandpa or some old man sitting on a tractor making dust.

Agriculture is so much more than farming.

And that's what we try to plant those seeds.

>> My grandpa, he wants to see the best for me.

So he encourages me.

He gives me a lot of information to help me to be successful out here, because he's done it before too.

He's helped his brothers.

So he definitely gives me a lot of words of encouragement.

He probably won't say it, but I'm pretty sure he enjoys to see me out here.

>> You need to understand your roots, right?

For me, I recognized that Black farming is becoming extinct.

And I recognized the good life I had by living on a farm.

The people here worked, and they had their own community, and, to me, it's important for people to know, you know?

And it's important for people to get to come back home, you know, at some point in time, you know, because there's so much joy in the people coming.

And I guess for me, my joy comes from everybody else's joy.

>> ASHLEY: So Brandon, we just learned all about a farming family.

Did your family ever grow crops?

>> BRANDON: Yeah, my grandpa on my mom's side.

My Grandpa Young grew corn in his backyard, and it was one of those things that, like, after he passed away, they had so much of that corn frozen, and it was really special any time they broke it out.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Just head over to legacytasteofthegarden.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, we are headed to Monroe County to see what's been growing at the Bloomington Community Orchard.

Producer Jacob Lindauer has the story.

♪ >> The orchard was started by an I.U.

student.

It was part of her thesis project.

Kind of was just more of a hypothetical idea that the city somehow -- I think it landed on somebody's desk, and they really liked the idea and wanted to see it come to life.

There were a lot of volunteers involved to make it happen the first year.

♪ We have such a variety of people on our team.

We are all volunteer-based.

Nobody gets paid, other than any kind of contractors that we have come in and do work.

Everybody on the board, you know, everybody working here today, they are all just volunteers.

We have about maybe seven people on the board, recurring volunteers that we have coming back.

It could be such a variety every year.

I would say any given year, we could have, like, hundreds of volunteers come through.

People just can show up if they want.

They can come any time we have a workshop, workday, or, you know, any time they want, they can really come by.

We also have a website that they can sign up on.

♪ >> So we have work and learn days every week.

A few hours where you can just pop in for a half hour or the full time, and it's for people of all ages and ability levels.

When you come here, there will be an orchard leader who will show you what to do, and that could be weeding, mulching, pruning, planting.

We'll just show you what to do and teach you how to do it.

♪ >> We have a lot of different things that are here.

Our main attractions are our fruit trees.

So we have different types of pear trees and apple trees, peach trees, plum trees, cherry trees, and then some, like, native species like pawpaws and persimmons.

We also have a lot of different types of berry bushes, gooseberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries.

We have some nut trees too.

We have a couple of pine nuts, hazelnuts.

Other things that we have growing in here that you can eat are chamomile and oregano and fennel.

A bunch of different types of herbs here as well.

♪ So for harvesting, anyone is allowed to come in here and grab fruit whenever they want.

We typically try to say take some and leave some.

So when you come here, you can harvest what you want to eat, or maybe a few extras to take home with you.

At this point, we have haven't had enough in abundance where we have been able to give away bushels of fruit yet to places like Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, but we have been able to give an abundance of plants to them.

So when we have blackberries or elderberry plants, when they start spreading, we'll harvest those and pot them up and give them to food banks.

But the actual fruit is pretty much come here and pick and eat what you want.

♪ I think some of our strengths and some of the things that we want to keep cultivating is community, and so having a space here for people to come together and not only work together, but eat together, and play together, I think that's a big goal of the community orchard.

And also I think about educating people too, on how to grow their own food.

>> We have a lot of goals here, and I think it all kind of funnels down to giving people that food security and food autonomy, and really helping people take care of themselves and helping people take care of each other.

And we have really seen that just kind of infectious mindset in this place.

So it's really magical.

♪ There's so much that I get out of this place.

Just having a really comfortable kind of happy green space.

I've had a lot of people talk about it as being kind of a mini sanctuary spot, and I definitely feel that.

But the other thing I get out of it, I love community connections and interactions, and just seeing how this kind of connects people and brings people together and -- and just can really change the world.

That's what I would like to see come out of it.

♪ >> BRANDON: So Ashley, if you were part of a co-op like this, what would you plant knowing that, you know, you may not harvest it all, but that other people are going to get to experience it as well?

>> ASHLEY: I think berries.

My son loves berries so much, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, that I would love to share his joy of berries with other people.

>> BRANDON: You can learn more at Bloomingtoncommunityorchard.org >> ASHLEY: And finally, we were inspired by our visit to the Kelley Agricultural Historical Museum, to revisit the work of artist Cathleen Huffman.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

♪ >> A grain elevator, in simplest terms, is a place that farmers store grain.

In the mid-1800s, these were built about every ten miles so that farmers in their horse and wagons could get to the elevator, drop off their grain, and get home in the same day.

♪ The localness, the togetherness that grain elevators symbolize is significant in Indiana's history.

♪ I did not grow up seeing grain elevators.

We moved to Indiana when I was in about seventh grade, and, in fact, I really didn't notice them until -- the first one in about 2004.

I went and photographed Greenfield's grain elevator, and have been drawn to grain elevators really ever since, probably always will be.

♪ When I was home with kids for ten years, that's when I taught myself how to watercolor paint, which was tricky.

And so I read books, and I watched videos, and I practiced and I practiced, and pretty much piled up the failures.

And the first watercolor painting that I actually liked that I produced was of the grain elevator that I photographed in 2004.

♪ I think the ones that I want to paint are more picturesque.

They might have some unique feature.

They might be indicative of that sense of community that the grain elevator symbolizes for a small downtown.

They might have some architectural feature that makes it interesting, you know, a little brick wall or a cool door or the shape.

Sometimes the lighting.

There's all kinds of different things that make it paintable to me.

I have a little book, and it has all the grain elevators that I know about listed by county.

So on all the family trips, I can catch 'em when I can, which, you know, the kids love.

But there's pretty much 100 left on my list that I thought might be still out there, but the last trips I've taken in the last several years, have ended in the grain elevator being already demolished.

And once they are gone, they are gone.

They are not building them anymore.

The Bicentennial Legacy Project was developed by the state of Indiana to help celebrate Indiana's 200th birthday.

I think there were like 1,000 projects, and people across the state of Indiana could choose to do some project to help celebrate the state.

Knowing that once upon a time, these were so important to Indiana's story and now they were disappearing, I felt like I wanted to preserve that.

I think really the connections are one of the greatest parts of this project.

It's not just about the elevator.

It's about the people and the connections that they have to this from when they were growing up, and the memories that they have and the stories that they have.

And I would get calls from shocking amounts of people that have stories that they want to tell.

Sometimes architecture just gets demolished, and we don't really know why, and I think people felt like that this was really cool, that in this way, I was helping preserve these grain elevators that were so important to them in their farming backgrounds and their families and their communities and their childhoods, and they were just so appreciative.

Communities have turned grain elevators into hotels and museums and breweries and all sorts of things.

So I think the sky is the limit for somebody with some imagination and some interest in helping preserve the structure.

I think that my paintings help people appreciate them, and appreciation is the first thing that people need before preservation or restoration.

So in that regard, I am involved in helping promote preservation of these great structures.

>> ASHLEY: You can check out more of Cathleen's work at CathleenHuffman.com.

>> BRANDON: And as always, we would like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> ASHLEY: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> BRANDON: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we have been, and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

>> ASHLEY: But before we say good-bye, let's head back to Monroe County for a bird's-eye view of the grape harvest at Oliver Winery's Creekbend Vineyard.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!