vided 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!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up, witness a 99-year-old tradition at the Orchard School in Indianapolis.

>> BRANDON: See what's growing at New Age Provisions.

>> ASHLEY: And learn the ins and outs of one of Indiana's fastest growing sports, pickleball.

>> BRANDON: 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 are coming to you from the WTIU Studio in Bloomington.

>> ASHLEY: That's right.

And this episode is all about the Circle City.

And first, we're talking about maple syrup.

So Brandon, what do you know about making maple syrup?

>> BRANDON: Making?

Not a lot.

Eating?

A good deal.

But fortunately, we found a group of first graders who can tell us all about it.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

♪ >> Our school was started in 1922, October 1st.

So we're getting ready to celebrate our centennial.

It was started as a progressive education school, based on the teachings of John Dewey.

We started off in somebody's home near the Children's Museum here in Indianapolis.

And it got the name the Orchard School, because there were trees on that property.

We moved to this particular facility in the mid-1960s, where we've been ever since.

♪ Nature as teacher is one of our four cornerstones.

And most of our outdoor education and play takes place here out in the woods.

♪ This is our 99th season of making maple syrup.

It is something we have done since the first year of school.

Big tradition!

Mr. Fred Lorenz was instrumental once we moved to this property.

We are very lucky to have a roofed sugar shack that we use for boiling down.

But when Fred first started, it literally was a fire.

And if it was raining, you were wet.

And if it was sunny, you were dry.

And then from there, Diana Shellhaas was our outdoor ed coordinator for 35 years, and she carried on the tradition as well.

All right.

We are going to go this way.

Let's go find a maple tree.

>> Let's go!

Jinx!

>> I use the maple syruping as a first grade science unit.

Does this look like it might be a maple tree?

>> Yes!

>> How do we know?

What makes it a maple tree?

Levi, what's one thing?

>> The opposite branching.

>> Opposite branching.

So the branches make a what letter?

>> V. >> V or a Y, right.

Okay.

What's another thing?

>> And throughout the unit, Orchard students learn the entire syruping process, starting with, well, knowing when to start.

>> Um, when the leaves start dropping off, and it's -- when the nights get shorter, and the days get longer.

>> So the buds are like, I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty, when the tree is awake.

>> It's kind of in the winter, in the fall.

It's like between.

>> So we know that at winter the syrup is running.

So the taps can catch all the syrup into the buckets.

>> It has to be above 32 degrees and below 42, I think.

>> 32.

>> 32.

>> Yeah, 32 degrees.

>> You go to number five.

>> Okay.

So we know when to start.

What else are we going to need?

>> Sap.

>> Sap.

>> Sap.

Just sap.

>> Maple sap.

>> That's it?

>> Yeah.

>> Are you sure?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> It's got to be harder than that.

>> Yeah -- no.

No.

>> Nothing else.

Just sap.

>> And um... Hmm.

>> A fire pit.

It's right over there.

>> Sap and just the fire.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Different people do it different ways, but here at Orchard School, we start a fire, and we just cook it down and evaporate away 93% of the water.

And go from a whole bunch of water with a little bit of sugar, which is sap; to a whole bunch of sugar with a little bit of water, which is syrup.

>> Starting and maintaining the fire which can burn all day during syruping season is Mrs. P.'s job, but the kids help, as they do with every part of the process.

And while they're working, they are learning, whether they realize it or not.

>> There are many, many different kinds of skills, starting with reading thermometers, skip counting by two, skip counting by five.

So there's a lot of math in there.

We are looking for that magic number of 32 degrees.

So we're asking, is it greater than?

Is it less than?

So lots of comparisons.

We have to measure the circumference of the tree to make sure that it's large enough to tap without stressing the tree.

And then science-wise, it's just loaded.

You've got the water cycle in action.

>> Wait.

Water cycle?

What's that?

>> Are you guys ready?

>> Yeah.

>> Ready?

>> April, you can just follow us.

>> Okay.

>> Three, two, one.

>> Condensation.

Precipitation.

>> I think we're doing it backwards.

[ Laughter ] >> Evaporation.

>> Condensation.

>> Precipitation.

>> Collection.

>> So which part of the water cycle, evaporation -- and it's fun to watch them piece it all together, because especially -- you do the water cycle, and inside your classroom, they don't understand it.

But then when you see that steam, you see that little lightbulb, like, oh!

Evaporation right in front of me.

The caramelizing of the sugar, as it heats, it starts to turn brown.

So the kids can understand that.

Just lots and lots of stuff that goes on in a very simple unit of making maple syrup.

>> Speaking of which, is this process going to take long?

>> Hmm... >> Uh...

Probably a couple days.

>> Um, a long time.

>> A while.

>> Um, long.

>> Very, very long.

>> Like, eight hours.

>> Three days or eight hours.

>> Eight hours.

>> Eight hours.

>> Eight hours.

>> You have to boil it for eight hours.

>> To take away all the water.

>> Yeah, you take away all the water.

Then it's just syrup.

Boom.

>> Well, there's some water in it.

Enough water to make it syrup.

>> That's it.

>> That's it.

>> And then you eat it.

♪ >> Oh, good!

That's the best part!

Any suggestions?

>> Pancakes.

No, maybe not pancakes.

>> Hmm... >> I would say French toast because I like about it because the French toast gets a lot more flavor.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes!

>> Especially banana pancakes!

With a little touch of ice cream.

I've done it before.

They taste good.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> I mostly like it with the Orchard's pancakes.

>> That's my third favorite.

>> Waffles.

>> Waffles.

>> Funfetti waffles.

>> Pancakes!

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> Um, pancakes!

>> Waffles.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes.

>> Pancakes or waffles.

>> Same.

>> My favorite is that ice -- you put -- what was it?

>> Sugar on ice.

Sugar on snow.

>> Snow.

It's snow.

>> Sugar on snow.

>> Pancakes.

>> Snow.

>> Yeah, snow.

>> So, first you make a slushy.

Like, a cup of smooshed ice.

And then you put maple syrup on it, and -- >> That's it.

>> That's it.

>> Yeah, it's called sugar on snow.

It's the best thing you could ever eat.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, that's my favorite too.

>> I sometimes do it with ice cream, but... eh.

>> A lot of sugar.

>> I don't want to waste my dessert time.

>> As for Mrs. P. >> Well, I'm really, really biased because -- you don't want to tape this.

I don't like maple syrup.

[ Laughter ] So it's too sweet for me.

It makes my teeth hurt.

>> At the end of the season, after the trees are identified and tapped, the buckets filled and carried, and the syrup cooked and bottled, the whole school gets a taste.

>> Our job as the Orchard School Maple Syrup Company is to provide the syrup for our All-School Community Pancake Day that we do.

It's 500 people come for pancakes.

And so our goal is to provide the real deal from our woods, and so we need a minimum of three gallons for that.

We shoot for five gallons so everybody can have plenty of syrup on their pancakes.

What I see from the kids is they are so proud.

They are so, so proud of what they're able to do.

They are excited to be a part of a big tradition.

And I think they get a better understanding for how hard it is to do.

When they have to carry those buckets.

Oh, this is heavy, and whoa!

Or they fall and they spill it on themselves, and they realize that, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into having a simple serving of syrup on your pancakes.

They're 6 and 7 years old, and a part of a very important tradition at our school.

And when you are 6 and 7, it's really hard to find something that you are good at, and this is something that they all have a very important role.

And no matter how big or how old they are, they can be a part of it.

I love this process.

It is, for me, a really special thing to get to be a part of.

But ultimately, their excitement and their joy, it fills my bucket, pardon the pun.

[ Laughter ] >> BRANDON: And the folks at the Orchard School were kind enough to send us home with some maple syrup.

So I have to ask, Ashley, what are you going to use that on?

>> ASHLEY: I use maple syrup on everything!

I sweeten -- I sweeten my coffee with it.

I put it in my granola, the homemade granola that I make.

Oatmeal.

I mean, I put maple syrup on everything.

I'm like Buddy the Elf.

Want to learn more about the Orchard School?

Just check out the address on the screen.

>> BRANDON: Up next, we're headed to the Indiana State Museum for our latest installment in our Treasures from the Museum Series.

>> A mastodon is an extinct relative of mammoths and modern elephants.

Mammoths and mastodons look very similar.

You know, sort of big, hairy elephants, but they weren't that closely related.

Mastodons were shorter, probably about 9 to 10 feet tall.

And their skeleton was more robust.

And their teeth were very key different.

They had these conical structures that were used for chopping and chewing sticks and leaves, and that's how they -- that's how they ate.

The Anderson skull is one that we recovered in 2002.

The landowners contacted us after they were digging a pond in a low-lying area, and they were really surprised to find bones.

This was up in Monticello, Indiana, and the museum excavated it, and we brought the bones home.

We know that it is a skull of a female who was probably between 21 and 28 years old, because of teeth wear, because of the small size and the tusks, and we know that she lived around 12,000 years ago because of radiocarbon dating.

We have either remains or skeletons of over 250 mastodons.

And there have been mastodons found in every county in Indiana.

And we have five mounted here.

So just seeing one, seeing a huge mounted animal is really exciting.

>> BRANDON: The Indiana State Museum is full of treasures, and you can learn more at Indianamuseum.org.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, we're staying in Indy to meet a farmer without land.

Producer Jake Lindsay and Adam Carroll have the story.

♪ >> Outside, it's less than 20 degrees, and inside it remains 65 degrees.

We grow hydroponically inside a shipping container, and each container we grow up to 3.5 acres of produce.

♪ So what we do is we grow fresh herbs, leafy greens, and lettuces, and we provide them to the community.

♪ So my name is DeMario Vitalis.

I'm the owner and founder of New Age Provisions Farms.

♪ Basil and thyme is one of our main things that we grow.

In terms of leafy greens, we grow different kinds of kale, Toscano kale, black magic kale.

And in terms of lettuces, we grow in different varieties, oakleaf lettuces, butterhead, Alkindus lettuce, which is in front of us, romaine lettuces.

And one of our best sellers is our lettuce mix, as a matter of fact.

And customers love that because it's fresh harvested lettuce, something that you usually don't get to have access to in your community.

So right now, it's Monday.

We're harvesting for the Tuesday dropoff.

So everything that you get from us is going to be freshly harvested, less than 24 hours before it's in your hands.

So what we do is we're able to harvest the leaves of the lettuce, and we'll provide them into a mix.

It's one of our best selling things that customers appreciate.

So what we're doing here is harvesting half ounces of basil.

And then what we'll do is we'll put them in -- so we either have half ounce, one ounce or three ounces, and then once we've packaged it, we will put our label on it.

That represents where it came from.

You know, New Age Provisions Farms, Indiana grown.

So we have to put the specific nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, those type of nutrient mixes inside the water of micro and macro nutrients, and that's what the plant uses to grow.

Some of the benefits of hydroponic farming are it allows you to control the level of nutrients that you are feeding your plants.

You can increase the nutrients or you can decrease certain nutrients.

♪ Water is huge.

During the summertime, we use even less water.

We have a problem with water overflowing, which traditional farmers don't have in the summertime, because I'm saving water.

We use 98% less water than traditional farming.

So as you can see, you know, water is heavily involved in hydroponic farming.

We even have to fill the water tanks once every ten days.

That's where we store.

Where in the traditional sense, we will be storing our water and pulling our water from.

So we have a shed back here where we have -- we store our water, 275 gallons of water in each container.

And what we typically do is we connect a hose to the water tank and feed it inside of the farm here.

As you can see, how cold it is outside, we are able to break ice off of it, but inside, it's 65 degrees.

So we have two greeneries.

This one is the first version of the greenery that came out in 2020.

And this one is an older model, and it looks kind of different aesthetically.

So let's go inside and see what we got.

♪ This is the seedling table.

This is where we spend a lot of our time growing.

So we're growing fresh lettuces, fresh kale, and these are seedlings.

So this is how the plants start off.

So you kind of want it to have nice roots on the end of them, and then once they grow into full seedlings, then we'll set them into the towers where they will grow to become full plants.

So this is the rack system.

And so with this, you know, we're able to adjust them here.

And then that will allow us to harvest in this aisle, or we can adjust it more, and harvest in this aisle.

So they have their pinion system, their little rolling system on it.

And that's what it is.

You know, at nighttime, what we will do is we will have these evenly spaced, kind of get them going, and then we'll turn the lights on.

♪ For 12 to 16 hours, this will be the kind of light that the plants will get.

So in a traditional sense, sun shines all types of spectrum, but in this, we only use blue and red, because that's what the plants absorb.

So this system is outfitted with special LED lights that only shine exactly what the plants need.

I started off with shipping container housing, and then eventually led to shipping container farming.

In Indianapolis, it's much easier to get shipping container farms off the ground than it is to get houses off the ground.

I also wanted to have an opportunity to own a business system, something that I can have and give to the community.

I wanted to provide my community with fresh herbs, fresh greens, and the opportunity to have that provided locally.

The food deserts is something that, you know, you are just now starting to hear a lot of, because it's been most publicized, and it should be as well.

Because it is -- in a sense, it is true.

If you are in a community and you don't have access to local foods, local fresh meats, local fresh vegetables, you are in a food desert.

If you have to travel long distance to get access to that food, you are in a food desert.

So having a container and an operation like this brings the food closer to the consumer.

It's one way that we have to combat that becoming a food desert.

Once we are able to either, A, produce our own foods or have them sourced locally, by companies like New Age Provisions Farms.

>> ASHLEY: You can learn more at newageprovisions.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, let's meet the members of the Indy Pickleball Club.

Producer Reuben Browning has the story.

>> 6-6, one.

♪ >> I explain it all the time.

Everybody is asking, what is pickleball?

>> Pickleball is the best sport ever!

>> Pickleball is an amazing sport that is a cross between tennis, badminton, pingpong.

>> Most people are, like, stop talking about pickleball because I talk about it all the time!

Once somebody plays, there's not very often that they won't be back out over and over again.

You play it on either tennis surface or gym floor, concrete sometimes.

A third of the size of a tennis court.

The ball is like a whiffle ball, and the paddle is a couple sizes bigger than a pingpong paddle with a honeycomb core inside.

So one of the biggest differences from tennis, you actually serve underhand.

And really from that, you are just keeping it in play.

There's a kitchen area that's 7 feet from the net that you can't get in, unless the ball bounces in there, but then you got to get right back out.

Remembering how to keep track of the score is probably the hardest out of all of it.

Most people, like, start out and they just bang the ball.

They just want to hit it hard, and then the better that they get, then they get closer to the kitchen line, and it will be more strategic.

And they will dink it back and forth and wait for somebody else to make a mistake before they attack.

Placing the ball is just as important as being able to hit it hard.

It's a big game of pingpong for me.

Anybody can play.

>> Fascinating game.

Slower.

Allows for just about every genre to play, every age level, every gender.

You will see guys starting with 10 years old up to late 80s, to be honest with you, playing on the same courts that I am and usually beating me.

>> Great sport to kind of get exercise, but also not too difficult to pick up and learn.

♪ >> Pickleball got its name -- the family that invented it, their dog's name was Pickles.

They were bored and a rainy day.

They had played badminton.

They lost their birdie.

And they went down to the woodshop, made some paddles, lowered the net, and from that, that's how pickleball got started.

>> Four years ago, my sister comes to me and says, Dan, what are we going to get dad for Christmas?

I was like, I have no idea.

She comes back.

She says, I got him something.

My dad opens up the gift, it's a pickleball set.

After that, I was hooked.

>> I played volleyball, and I never got into leagues after college or anything.

I missed the competitive atmosphere.

And then when my mom got me into pickleball, it kind of stuck with me, and I met a ton of friends and people I would have never met before.

>> So I had sales guy introduce it to me.

He kept bugging me to play.

I'm like, what the heck is pickleball?

I've never, you know, heard of this.

So I went out to the Y one Saturday morning, and I was hooked.

♪ Playing pickleball, I can play, you know, every day of the week and not be tired.

It's not as much running as tennis, but you can get just as much workout.

Pickleball, it's a lot more close action, and it's really not hard on your joints.

It's a good exercise.

>> Burn some calories out here.

It's perfect for me.

>> Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America.

Over 5 million people play, and there's courts popping up everywhere.

>> For me, it's the camaraderie, the friendships.

I've met so many people throughout the pickleball community that I enjoy hanging out with, having dinner with, drinks with.

>> I love the competitive nature of tournaments and meeting people across the country, and it's just a good exercise.

>> Indy Pickleball Club started a year and a half ago, and our goal was to help promote the sport of pickleball to give places to play, to start leagues, to have tournaments around here so we didn't have to travel.

So right now, we're close to 200 people in just a year and a half.

>> We're getting more and more players locally, as well as more tournaments throughout state and even the surrounding states.

>> Eventually, we would like to have a dedicated indoor venue for pickleball.

>> So we can have kids programs.

We would love to have schools come in and learn pickleball.

And just grow the sport of pickleball, not only in the Indianapolis area, but surrounding areas.

So that we can have the best place in the Midwest.

The club's goal is to have a facility that has 40 indoor courts so that we can host the national tournament, and then have 20 outdoor courts.

>> Anybody that's interested, come out and play.

Within ten minutes, you will understand the basics of pickleball.

If you are a social person, it's a sport for you.

If you are competitive, it's a sport for you.

And really, it doesn't matter your age, your skill level.

Our mission is to provide a place for people to come and play.

>> BRANDON: And you can learn more, maybe even find a nearby game at Indypickleballclub.com.

And before we say good-bye, let's spend a little time exploring Indiana's capital city from above.

♪ >> 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!