(upbeat music) (keyboard clacking) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (keyboard clacking) (engine whirring) - In the morning, the most exciting part is when the tractor starts easy.

Because you've seen my tractor.

It's not the newest.

First off, I've had a good night's sleep.

I'm kind of refreshed.

I get to spend the day doing something I'm really going to enjoy.

(tractor engine) I began making maple syrup when we lived in Jackson, Michigan, because my son was in preschool and he came home one day and he was talking about maple syrup.

And I said, "You know we have maple trees in the backyard."

And I think we got a cup of maple syrup that year and we used every pan we had in the house.

Well, next year I'll be 70, and it'll be the 40th year we've made syrup back in the woods.

(tractor engine) I love doing maple syrup because it's the first good excuse to get out in the woods in the spring.

And so it's a wrap down at winter, the trees are starting to produce.

I just thoroughly enjoy it.

I find it an interesting challenge.

(tractor engine whirring) (bird chirping) And our maple trees tend to be nice and big, which makes it easier to do syrup.

I mean, I walk back there and I look at, we have a bunch of trees that are 30 inches or bigger.

And it's grown for 100 years or more, yet it's so vulnerable.

And to me it's just a thing of beauty.

(bird chirping) But the only living part of a tree is right under the bark.

There's about a quarter inch thick called a cambium layer.

And when the spring, the maple tree is one of the few trees that has as much sap go up it as it does.

The sap is the lifeblood of the tree.

And so in the spring it goes up and it has high amount of sugar to get the tree kick started.

(bird chirping) For the sap to start flowing, it needs to be in the 20s at night and above 40 during the day.

And so when that does, the sap will flow.

If it stays and it freezes for a couple nights in a row, and it stays below freezing, the sap stops.

Freeze at night, warm enough during the day cycle will happen for maybe three or four weeks in a row.

I started tapping mid-February because the earlier runs of syrup are sweeter.

They have more higher sugar content.

And so you theoretically get a better, clearer, lighter syrup.

(sap pouring) Since you wanna get into the cambium layer, 'cause that's where the sap is, you drill a hole starting the outside of the tree, probably an inch and a half deep.

And you don't want to drill too big a hole because you're actually wounding the tree.

And so I drill a hole that is seven-sixteenths of an inch around and then they have what they call a spile, which is a metal piece.

And you can see them and you drive that into the tree and then the sap coming up around it eventually runs out the spile, and that's what you hang your bucket on.

(sap dripping) I think they say the average tap will give out about the good average tap will give two gallons of sap a day.

And you can probably get that for a couple weeks.

Probably 30 gallons of sap out of a tap would be very good.

(sap pouring) For the last couple years I've put out 200 and some taps and that works with my system because on a day when the warm and cold cycle is working well, I'll get about 200 gallons of sap.

And I can boil down to 200 gallons a day.

The official ratio of syrup and sap is 40 gallons of sap, makes one gallon of syrup.

I try to boil down seven garbage cans a day, so that's 210 gallons.

And so I should end up with five gallons of syrup and I usually don't.

I end up with four to four and a half.

So this year I boiled six times and we ended up getting about 26 gallons of syrup.

The secret to my success is I can boil 30 gallons an hour when I'm cooking good.

(gentle music) (fire crackling) (gentle music continues) (fire crackling) I start up, I put just a little bit of syrup in a flat pan 'cause the flat pans are six inches tall.

The finishing pan is 12 inches tall.

And that's important because to keep a boil in the flat pan, I siphon from the finishing pan into the flat pan.

I have a soft copper tubing, three-eighths of an inch around.

I've found that one siphon will not quite keep up and two will go faster than a pan can boil.

So during the course of the day, I'll try to get about three to four inches of sap in the long boiling pan, and then I'll keep the finishing pan completely full all the time.

And that just slowly introduces sap into the boiling pan and it lets me keep my boil going all day long.

(gentle music) (sap pouring) (sap simmering) (gentle music continues) And then once I get down to where I've boiled all that I'm going to boil for the day, I'll let the finishing pan go down and I'll eventually empty that into the big flat pan.

I take my flat pan down to where it's maybe, try to get it down under an inch.

So I bail it out.

(gentle music) (gentle music) And then I tip it, and I put that into the small finishing pan and then I slide that on top of the fire and I finish off in the finishing pan.

(gentle music) So the toughest thing about making syrup is the last half an hour to 45 minutes.

Because you can take it past syrup.

If you take it off too soon, it tastes like maple syrup, but if you taste real maple syrup, it's not as thick as it should be.

(gentle music) To control it, to get it right to the exact right point, I mean, I'm checking the hydrometer every minute or every couple of minutes just because I want to get it right to that point.

Now when I take it off, I wait till it's on the hydrometer, it's two notches before it's gonna be syrup.

What I've found is that that's just about right.

And if you take it too long and it gets scorched, you ruin the batch.

(gentle music) I figure nine to 10 hours a day I can get my boil done.

And it's a challenge.

And I know that the end of the day, if everything goes right, I'm gonna walk up with four or five gallons of syrup.

(gentle music) The first run of syrup tends to have the highest sugar content.

So it produces the sweetest syrup.

And then towards the middle of the year, you get the syrup that tastes what you think of maple syrup as.

And towards the end of the year, the syrup isn't as sweet, it's stronger tasting and it's darker.

And so we just started combining syrup and I found by doing that, by taking the very first boil and the very last boil, and combining them in one and seven, two and six, three and five and leaving four standing on its own, or kind of blend in that middle, we get a syrup that tastes almost all the same and it's tends to be really good quality and consistency.

We bring it up here, we put it in a canner, and then we heat it up to where it boils.

And then I pour through what is a paper filter inside of a cloth filter and it gets you really nice clean syrup.

(gentle music) (syrup pouring) (gentle music continues) And then we heat up again and then we pour it into canning jars.

(gentle music) I got 26 gallons and I put about six gallons of it into a little eight ounce jars and then I put the rest of it into quarts.

(gentle music) The process isn't extremely technical, it just takes attention to detail to be careful.

I just enjoy doing it so much.

I enjoy the solitude and I get to do it at my own pace, by myself, how I want to do it.

And I just look forward to a day back in the woods.

(leaves rustling) - [Kelsey] So the drive-through is about a mile long.

It's divided into roughly five sections.

It's a great place for you to see animals that we want to conserve in the wild, but also a great way to support conservation.

(upbeat music) (keyboard clacking) (mouse click) (upbeat music) We are located in Port Clinton, Ohio, which is about halfway between Toledo and Cleveland, right along the water.

It's a fun place for nature, outdoors, fun activities outside, and just a little relaxation from the city life or your country life, if you like.

(upbeat music) We are a drive-through safari park.

You drive your vehicle through the park as you go.

You feed the animals while you're out there as well.

It's kind of a self-guided safari.

It's a little over a mile long.

We've got animals from all over the world out there from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, you name it, all over the world, out in our drive-through.

And the animals come right to your car windows.

So when you're out there feeding the animals, you really get to see them up close and personal and you get to make memories with your family out there while you're feeding them, which is my favorite part, because you're just laughing.

Most people are laughing the whole time.

There's a few scaredy cats, but for the most part, it's a fun family experience.

(upbeat music) So the drive-through is about a mile long.

It's divided into roughly five sections.

And we rotate the animals a little bit around based on who gets along with who, as well as to give them some enrichment and to change up their day so they're not always in the same space.

And the animals that are in the first couple sections are what I like to consider our easy feeders.

Those are our alpaca and our cows.

They're super gentle with guests.

They love to feed.

(lively music) Then in our next section we have our bison, elk and deer, which get a little more exciting.

They're a little more excited to take your food.

They like to steal cups occasionally, and you get a good laugh out of them.

(light laughter) - [Visitor 1] He's pacing you.

Wait, let me get this.

He's pacing you.

- [Visitor 1] This is so cute.

- [Visitor 1] Look at that.

Oh, his ears are pinned back.

- [Visitor 2] There you go.

I have no more food.

(light laughter) - [Kelsey] And then our last section is a mix of some of our more exotic African species.

So we have East African mountain bongo out there, we have zebra, giraffe, we have a few different species in that last section of the park that is more of the exotic animal feel.

(upbeat music) As you go through, it's kind of a winding road.

You can't really see always where you're going up ahead so that there's a little mystery about where are the animals.

The animals have free choice in the drive-through, so they can be anywhere throughout their sections at any point in the day, kind of every time is a little bit different who you're gonna see first or second, or who wants to come feed.

They have opportunities to hide from the guests or come up to cars, either one.

(upbeat music) In the summertime when the full park is in operation, we have over 900 animals in the park.

It's about 45 to 50 species, depending on the season.

Bison, our probably number two favorite.

Giraffe is always everyone's number one.

That's why people come here in the summer.

But bison are pretty cool.

They're here as well.

We've got over 20 bison for people to feed and see in the drive-through.

(upbeat music fades) Animals can eat all of the same food.

There's a couple different options.

Each guest gets one free animal cup with their car purchase.

So each vehicle gets a complimentary cup on us.

And then additional animal food is for purchase here.

You can buy as much or as little as you like.

It's really a make it your own experience.

If you really like feeding the animals, you can go through all day.

We offer a couple different kinds of produce throughout the season, depending on the day.

We use the produce as sort of like an extra enrichment.

It allows us to help give the animals something exciting and new, but they also balance their diet out.

You will find that as you go through, some of the animals have their favorites and what they like more than others.

For example, our giraffe do not like the regular grain.

They're picky.

And they get to be picky 'cause they're so cool.

They prefer the produce and the lettuce.

We also sell browse, which is a type of willow tree that we cultivate specifically for the giraffe, and that's their favorite.

So you kind of figure out who likes what.

(light laughter) - [Visitor 3] I think it did something.

Did it just wink?

(laughter) Oh my god.

(laughter) - [Kelsey] African Safari is a education and conservation place for the family.

Each visitor is given a park map when they visit the park.

It has an animal identification checklist in there for you to see every animal that you're gonna come across today.

And some animals that may be out at a different point in the summer They're all included.

- [Visitor 4] Oh, look at this little guy.

- [Kelsey] We have a QR code for a very interactive experience, so you actually can scan that QR code and follow along on our website with lots of other information about the animals.

Additionally, while you're out in the drive-through, you can always talk to a ranger staff.

We have rangers out there that know these animals very well and they love to talk to guests about what each animal is, what kind of animal they are, their names, things like that.

We like to make sure that guests are understanding and learning as they go.

Our park does a lot of different things in the way of conserving animals and plants locally and in the wild.

Part of the guest admission ticket does go towards our conservation efforts.

Additionally, all of our gift shop and food service locations have roundup and go to our conservation fund.

It's a great place for you to see animals that we want to conserve in the wild, but also a great way to support conservation.

Throughout the year, we also do conservation themed events here.

One in particular is our World Giraffe Day events.

We do conservation messaging all day, and do extra special giraffe things on June 21st.

It's the longest day of the year for the tallest animal.

And on World Giraffe Day, we fundraise for giraffe, but we also do special keeper talks and education messaging for the giraffe so that people learn about what's happening to them in the wild, but also what's happening to their counterparts in the wild.

- [Visitor 5] He's coming right for us.

- [Visitor 2] He's looking right at you.

- [Kelsey] My favorite part about working at African Safari is the guest interaction with the animals.

When you go to a normal zoo, you are far away from the animals.

They are for you to look at only.

You don't get to touch, interact, or have an experience.

And those experiences are what connect you to that wildlife.

You're never gonna forget when the giraffe licks your fingers.

And those are the things that really inspire me to work here.

- [Visitor 1] Oh my gosh.

- We just like to listen to what's coming out of the cars because it's hilarious.

There's guests laughing and crying and screaming.

You name it.

And every person's reaction to animals is different, but that reaction is what makes our jobs worth it so that they get to experience animals the way that we do.

- I guess you're hungry.

(jaunty music) - [Visitor 5] Am I hungry or not?

- [Visitor 1] She's debating it.

No.

You sure?

(jaunty music) (laughter) (juanty music) - [Visitor 1] Here we go.

(laughter continues) (juanty music) - [Visitor 1] Oh, is that not gross?

Nothing?

You're hungry?

All right, we gave you the shot.

(jaunty music) - [Visitor 6] Oh, this is awesome.

(jaunty music) It's licking the camera!

- [Visitor 4] No!

Hey!

(laughter) - [Narrator] Want to see your favorite local story featured on our show?

Head to our website at wbgu.org/scenicstops Find the blue button, and let us know where we should go next.

- When I come out here, that goes away.

I can alleviate all that stress, I can alleviate all those worries and those problems and create something beautiful that makes not only me happy, but makes someone else happy.

(music fades) (keyboard clacking) I started blacksmithing almost 24 years ago here at the Isaac Ludwig Mill in Grand Rapids.

A man offered to teach me.

I went to the Apple Butter Festival and stopped by and I had a full-time job that was extremely stressful.

I worked for the state of Ohio.

He said, "You look kind of stressed today."

And it's like, "I am."

"Do you wanna learn how to blacksmith?"

"Absolutely!"

And I didn't know that I would love it.

I thought I would just try it and it might just be a fleeting thing, but it's the biggest part of my life, other than my grandkids.

(hammer clanking) When I first began blacksmithing, I apprenticed.

And I was taught by another former blacksmith how to produce coke, how to manufacture tools, how to get my fire as hot as I need it.

So it's just a learning process.

And then once I got the basics down, it's just practice, practice, practice to create something that I want or something that somebody else wants.

And I am a perfectionist, so if I don't get what I want out of it, it goes back to the heat until I get what I want.

I blacksmith because it helps me reduce any stress that I might have in my life, whether it's family or outside events.

And it keeps me a more even keeled individual.

I can be kind of high-strung at times and I prefer the more low-key me.

When I begin my day, I start by getting my coal or my coke that I had from yesterday warm.

So I light a small fire and put fresh coal on the outside and get it moist.

I wanna pull all those impurities out of the coal to give me coke.

The coke is where I get my heat.

I want to bring it up to 3,000 degrees if I need it.

So I wanna get that heat there.

I get a piece of stock then.

When the fire's ready, put my steel in the fire.

If it's a short piece of steel, I will use tongs to hold it so that I don't burn myself.

If it's a longer piece then I won't need them.

And I've made a lot of my tongs.

So I have a tong that'll fit each piece of steel that I'm working with.

I have a hammer that I use, a two-pound hammer.

I might use quarter inch steel, three-eighths inch steel, half inch steel.

And once I get my steel shaped the way I want it, it might take several heats, then I will cool it off slightly, clean it with a wire brush so I don't have any scale on it and bees wax it and that will prevent the rust.

Rust is caused by oxygen.

It's not water, it's something in the water.

So it's nice to be able to teach and bring that forward too.

(soft guitar strumming) When people come out, you'll see me cranking a handle with my left hand.

That's the hand crank.

What I'm doing is putting air into the bottom of my fire pot.

It increases my heat.

I wanna work between 1,900 and 2,100 degrees, so that allows me to get there so I can heat the metal up and produce the items that I've decided to create.

(hand crank winding) The most common orders are generally names right now.

I write in script.

So I might write somebody's last name or their children's first names or a saying that a family would just like on their wall.

(gentle music) When anybody comes out to visit and sees me blacksmith, they might also see Molly and Sally.

Molly and Sally are two mules that pull the canal boat so people can actually enjoy that canal experience, ride the boat, take a leisurely tour into the past, and then come back into the future.

And they can come into the mill and not only see me, but we have a sawmill.

There's a grist mill upstairs, and it's a full experience of what would've happened in a small town and the 1800s.

I love working out here at the mill because it's so calming and there's so many people to interact with and so many people that I can bring something new to their life, something positive to their life, and I can learn from them, see what makes them tick, and it can go ahead and inspire me to make something new.

When I come out here, if I've had a rough day, one of my grandkids has been sick, there's a high stress level.

Somebody's changed jobs in the family, I try to take that burden on for everyone.

When I come out here, that goes away.

I can alleviate all that stress.

I can alleviate all those worries and those problems and create something beautiful that makes not only me happy, but makes someone else happy.

(gentle music) At the end of the day, for me, coming out to the mill and blacksmithing reduces all my stress.

It alleviates all my tension.

I can go home and be relaxed, play with my grandkids, garden, do whatever I need to do there and I feel fantastic.

And to know that other people have come out and learned something and enjoyed what they saw, that's all I need.

(hammer clanking) (hand crank whirring) If anybody wants to become a blacksmith, there are several people they can contact.

They can contact me, I can get them in touch with some clubs.

I can teach them so that they can carry this trade on.

We still need blacksmiths, even though a lot of people wanna go high tech.

If we don't have the low tech, we don't have the balance in our world, and we need that balance.

And that's what I'm trying to preserve.

I love training new people as well, so we don't lose the old arts.

If something were to happen in the future and we lose electricity, we lose all the technology that we have, how are we gonna get by?

This was a wonderful opportunity for me to come out here and learn something new and to be able to bring the past into the future.

We have lost so many things in our society going with all this high tech, and what I do is so very low tech and hands-on.

And it's so enjoyable for me to be hands-on and to work closely with something instead of to have that barrier because I'm not a real tech person.

So it's something that works for me.

It won't work for everyone, but for me it's a blessing.

- [Narrator] If you missed this week's episode of "Scenic Stops and Stories," you can stream the full episode for free anytime at wbgu.org/scenicstops (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)