(gentle music) - [Lence] Well, we have 14 blinds.

Anyone can take part that's disabled or have a medical condition.

- [Brian] We're actually at a party and just made the joke about rearranging the letters of cranberry, Apple, and granola to spell Crapola and its-- - Wouldn't that be funny?

(laughs) - And wouldn't it be funny?

- [Niki] The range of our capabilities is pretty immense.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by SafeBasements of Minnesota.

Your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist Since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie waters, where peace, relaxation, and opportunities await.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area covers 33,000 acres, with 9,000 of those acres designated for a wildlife refuge.

The heart of the refuge is Rosemoen Island.

Managed for wildlife, the Island is a paradise for deer, pheasants, waterfall and a variety of non-game species.

It's off limits year round for non DNR personnel with only one exception.

- [Lence] Well, we have 14 blinds.

Anyone can take part that's disabled or have a medical condition.

- [Narrator] Each fall, the DNR opens the Island to a special deer hunt put on by capable partners.

There a group of volunteers helping physically challenged sports men and women enjoy the outdoors in Minnesota.

- I've been a member for capable partners since 2004 and I love the organization and what they do for disabled people and stuff like that.

- To me, it's very important.

I mean, it helps people who are in wheelchairs, people on the crutches like me that can not get on very well.

- This has just been wonderful to be able to be out and do this.

Never found another organization like this.

So we've only been able to hunt on our own.

We have property where we live, but it's not set up for me to do this sort of thing.

- [Narrator] For nine days each season, disabled hunters are able to sit in blinds, built specifically for them.

(gentle music) - Oh, It's got a ramp.

It's elevated.

You can see for a long ways, it's beautiful.

Well there's room for me and my able-bodied assistant.

It's just wonderful.

The Island itself is gorgeous.

It's just breathtaking.

Creeks and streams and cornfields and high grass and timber.

It's just amazing.

- [Brent] Ramblings feet - [Jennifer] Ramblings feet (laughs) Gotta take my leg off.

- You want your-- - Brent is a good friend of the family.

He was another encouraging factor in getting me out here.

He is very good Hunter.

He hunts on our property at home.

He's taught me a lot as far as what deer, what it sounds like when deer come toward you.

What it sounds like when they're in the timber.

What it sounds like and what their behaviors are.

So, he's taught me a lot.

And he talks to them and he draws them in.

He can call to them and they... We had two this morning that were walking a doe and a buck, and the road that leads towards our blind, they were stopped at the end and (Blent bleating) he bleated like a deer, and the buck was with the doe.

He goes, "Oh, you go ahead hon, "I'm going to check this out."

(laughs) And so he came in and up the road, and he came halfway up the road until he saw our vehicles.

And then he goes, "well, I'll just sneak off this side "come around the side and see what she looks like."

And he came all the way around the side until he goes, "Oh, well, that doesn't smell like a deer.

"So I'm outta here."

(laughs) But he was a big handsome boy.

I don't need a trophy on my wall.

I don't need, that's not what I'm after.

I want tender meat, juicy meat, sweet girls.

(chuckles) (tense foreboding music) We're in the blind, and I heard something behind us.

And so sure enough, a doe and two fawn eventually walked over into our line of sight and he handed me the crossbow.

(Blent bleating) I took the safety off and I got her in, shot her.

Then she took off.

Moving a little ways and the fawn went after her.

They went one way, she went the other.

And I was certain that I hit her, but I don't think we found, yeah, no we didn't find her.

It's really tall out there.

I saw both fawns leave, but I did not see her leave.

She just kept sinking a little bit, little bit, little bit and then, didn't see her anymore.

So I thought she was out here.

- [Narrator] When you slow down the footage, it appears her bow may have caught a branch, allowing that doe to duck it.

An unfortunate drawback of using a crossbow.

- I have degeneration joint disease.

And so I've had both my shoulders replaced, and I've lost a knee to it.

And it's easier for me to hold, it's not as heavy, it's not as long.

It's much more lightweight and easier to maneuver.

- [Narrator] The DNR supports wildlife by planting food plots across the Island.

- Sometimes it's corn, sometimes it's beans.

Sometimes it's just alfalfa fields.

So they kind of rotate the fields out here a little bit.

I like it because it benefits everything out here.

- I hat, well, uh, right now, I have a Mossberg 935 semi-automatic.

Now I have a... it's called a tree pod and I slide it onto my foot plate, I can move my gun all around wherever I want.

It's pretty articulated.

- [Narrator] We were in stand six along with Dean's able-bodied Jim.

- Plenty or room for three of us, even though it seemed like every time we've seen a deer, I was spinning around in a circle, Oh, there's deer over here, snaz back around the other way.

- [Narrator] Having three sets of eyes though, gives you at least three different directions to look for deer.

- [Jim] That looks like a bigger deer.

- [Dean] Yeah.

- [Jim] It's running.

- [Dean] Yeah, that's a pretty nice buck.

- And then when the buck did come up, my camera man was in the way and so was my able body.

(laughs) - [Jim] It stopped.

- Sorry about that, It's always a camera man's fault.

- Year and that's right.

(laughs) He kept saying "there, there's deer over here."

So I was going around one way.

Jim would say, there's a deer over here.

So I spin it around the other way.

- [Jim] Sorry about that.

- No, no, it was fun.

- [Narrator] Even though these hunters have the chance to bag the buck of a lifetime, it's the opportunity that matters to them.

- I've seen a lot of deer though today.

You haven't seen some (laughs).

That was fun.

(laughs) - [Hunter] Seen bucks?

- I had a huge buck at 30 yards but I was facing the wrong way.

I turned around and he's seeing me.

It's like a dream out there-- - Had one, I can't believe it.

(birds quacking) - I just like being out in the outdoors and being out in God's green earth or God's creation.

- [Narrator] Ultimately that's what it's all about.

But this year was extra special for Lance.

- [Presenter] Well, here we are October 4th afternoon haunt with cable partners on Rosemoen Island.

And the great Hunter Lence Tebben bags his biggest buck of his lifetime.

He's a 14 pointer, isn't he?

- [Lence] Yes, he is.

- [Jeff] What a big deer.

(gentle music) - [Andrea] I never thought we'd be here now in the early days.

It just kind of seemed like a funny on the side thing we would do locally.

- [Cathan] We came to them with one design that was a little modern and a little more modern than they were comfortable with.

And then really switched it up at schematic design to be the design that you see now.

(playful dramatic music) - [Narrator] Ely Minnesota is known as the sledge dog capital of the world.

The gateway to the boundary waters.

Home of the International Wolf Center.

But that's not all.

It's the world headquarters of Crapola, no joke.

The tasty granola is sold in hundreds of stores across the Midwest.

However, Crapola did start as a joke.

- Now, we were just sitting around and having fun.

And we were actually at a party, and just made the joke about the play on words there like that, that you could rearrange the letters of cranberry, Apple and granola to spell crapola.

And we just-- - And wouldn't be funny.

(laughs) - And wouldn't be funny.

You know how you say things like that all the time.

"We should do that" or "Wouldn't that be funny if someone did that" And somehow we convinced, I convinced I guess myself, and more amazingly, I convinced Andrea (Andrea chuckles) that this could be something we could actually do in real life.

(playful music) - [Narrator] Brian and Andrea Strom were living off the grid on a small farm near Ely with their two children.

In June of 2007, for fun, they mixed up a batch of their granola, stuffed it in coffee bags and sold Crapola at the local farmer's market and grocery stores.

One store printed a flyer, that made it on a Jay Leno's headlines on the tonight show.

- This is why I hire people to come up with a professional name.

Now locally made Crapola.

(audience laughs) - Yeah.

And so literally four months after we did this silly thing at the farmer's market.

We got this plug by Jay Leno.

But it was too much too soon.

We didn't even have a website-- - We didn't have a web, we had nothing.

I never thought we'd be here now in the early days.

It just kind of seemed like a funny, on the side thing we would do locally.

I had no idea we blossomed into a real full-time business.

(laughs) - So it started as the joke and then from there we had no plan to do anything else.

There was no plan to launch a second flavor, but when it came to that time, we said, "Well, what should we call our second flavor?"

And then naturally Number Two seemed like the perfect name.

- [Narrator] Next in line was a red, white and blue themed granola called Colonial Times.

Kissypoo followed that.

Names related to our digestive systems seems appropriate, for a high fiber cereal.

- All of our customers are regular.

(crowd applauding) - So the ingredients we use include five organic grains.

We have oats, obviously oats is kind of the base for granola.

Organic oats, rye and barley, puffed rice and millet are the grains we use in the original recipe of Crapola.

And then we have a variety of seeds.

So flax seed is an important one.

And we do grind that prior to mixing it in for increased bioavailability and digestion, as well as sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, almonds and pecans and then obviously cranberries and apples.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] When Crapola hit the market, organic farmer Carmen Fernholz of Madison had started growing flax.

The grain was once grown in abundance for oil and textile markets.

But when cheaper cotton out competed linens in the 1940s it almost vanished from the countryside.

Because of flax as omega-3 and CLA content, University of Minnesota researchers saw potential in organic food markets, and asked Carmen to plant a 10 acre trial plot.

- I mowed down seven of the 10 acres that I planted but save the other three acres and started a direct marketing program with a few people.

We were putting it into local food co-ops into some of the local stores.

And my wife was always looking at different markets, and she saw this Crapola granola in the stores, and she saw the ingredient of flax in there.

So she called the gentleman from Ely directly and said, "We've got this organic flax, would you be interested?"

He said, "Well, we'll give it a try."

- [Narrator] Last year, Carmen turned his organic operation over to Luke Peterson, who Carmen had mentored, when Luke decided to convert his farm to organic.

He now grows 500 acres of certified organic grain.

- [Carmen] We have younger people who are looking what I'd say outside of the box.

And looking at the history of their grandparents and their parents struggling, with trying to make it on big acres with corn and soybeans and it's not working - [Narrator] Last summer, Luke planted 40 acres of plaques and buckwheat in the Lac Qui Parle wildlife management area.

- What's kind of cool about this farm, is that we planted the flax early.

It'd come into bloom and it was wonderful for pollinators.

And both the time that that field started losing its flowers, the buckwheat kind of took over.

And it's kind of cool, cause you can stand over here and you can hear all the humming and the buzzing, it's loaded with bees.

- [Narrator] Farmers plant about 2000 acres in the WMA, ranging from corn and soybeans to alternative crops.

Cooperative profit share agreements, allow growers to harvest part of the crop in the fall, and leave the rest until spring, or plant a winter cover crop.

WMA manager Walt Gessler points out a corn plot, that was seated between rows with turnips and radishes, which will stay on the ground after the corn is harvested.

- And it provides a more diverse food source for the deer than the humans.

A number of years ago, we found a number of dead deer that appeared healthy.

But they were only eating corn, and they died of a disease called acidosis.

So we started adding alfalfa for example, to diversify the food that was available to deer.

We'd leave hay out for them to eat, so they would so they wouldn't get sick.

And now we've started to diversify it more by adding additional crops within our planting.

- [Narrator] Luke's wheat was sold to Seven Sundays in Minneapolis for muesli, and the flax to brainstorm bakery for Crapola.

After the two crops were harvested, Luke planted kernza.

A perennial grain crop that will be harvested every fall for about three to five years.

It remains in the ground to provide wildlife habitat and protects the soil from erosion.

- [Luke] We know we're gonna be doing this for a long time, that we need to look a long way in the future and try to do the best job we can.

- There's so many benefits to just to supporting the local agriculture, local community, local economy.

And we just like to be able to know the people that grow our ingredients and meet them and shake their hands, and ask about their process and where things come from.

- Quality is super important to us.

How it's grown is important to us.

We have two young kids that what they eat is important to us and how we raise them.

- The humor is a little bit too much for some people, but by and large, the overwhelming majority of people get the jokes and they appreciate the fun, and we feel like laughter is medicine.

So in a way we're putting out joy out into the world, that humor out into the world, you know, with every bag of granola that we make.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The international Wolf center in Ely, takes visitors inside the lives of wolves.

From pups in a den, to packs on the move.

Designing and building this world-class exhibit, required skilled workers.

From artists and carpenters to engineers and managers.

All that talent, can be found under one roof, at Split Rock studios in Arden Hills.

(upbeat classical music) (upbeat music) In 2018, when Split Rock was asked to update the Wolf Centers 15 year old exhibits, designers first sat down with the center's founder, Dave Mech.

- As basically the leading wolf biologist in the world, he was really the one who was guiding us and advising us on the content that was going into the exhibits, that he was very invested.

- The developer and I sit to sit together, and kind of come up with a crazy board full of post-it notes and lines and all sorts of stuff.

It kind of looks like a murder mystery is being solved.

But we then come up with kind of the plan of what kind of lessons we wanna teach, how to teach those, what kind of style and furniture kind of fits their approach.

We came to them with one design that was a little modern and a little more modern than they were comfortable with, and then really switched it up at schematic design to be the design that you see now.

We changed It up and went with more of a North woods feel, using some of that Barnwood and recaptured Barnwood look, as well as tweaking the colors.

But what I really wanted to do with the design was make it a lot more timeless than it was before, while still being playful and fun.

We really wanted to humanize the Wolf throughout the exhibits.

Not only pull people into the family life of the wolf and start to see the wolf as in the similarities that you see your family in.

But also we wanted to give them a couple of experiences that they got to feel like they were actually the biologists that were studying the wolf.

So from the activity where you're get to pet the with wolf's fur and pretend to give it an injection, all the way to the flight simulator that we created for really putting people into the experience of not only researching wolves, but also kind of pretending to be a wolf in certain situations.

The Ariel simulation was by far my favorite part, because I did actually get to go up into the plane and connected cameras to all the windows and film us tracking the wolves.

We created a plane with several different screens on all the windows, so that you feel that you're immersed into that space and get to see what it truly feels like to be flying and counting and tracking the wolves to learn their population numbers.

- [Narrator] Graphic designer, Steffany Schmit use texture as well as color to help tell the story of wolves.

- Part of the exhibit was also focused on human interactions with wolves.

It was the more human oriented became brick work, that was the background texture.

And the more wolf oriented became trees.

(gentle guitar music) (camera shutters) (camera shutters) - [Narrator] Split Rock was chosen because exhibit designer Chris Wilson had worked with Dave Mech in the 1980s on a science museum traveling exhibit.

In 2000, Chris founded Split Rock Studios with Craig Somerville.

A few years ago, they decided to retire and sell the company to their employees.

- So we personally all benefit from the company doing well which only brings good things.

- [Narrator] The studios 55 employee owners, work in a 50,000 square foot design and build space.

- [Niki] Work with everybody from nature centers, to museums, universities, and libraries, all the way through zoos and aquariums.

The range of our capabilities is pretty immense.

In our fab studio, we have everything from neural paintings to ham sculpting to 3D molding, like you name it.

We're a custom shop, so we literally just come up with ideas and then figure out how to build them, and we have the capabilities to build pretty much anything.

In our wood shop, we have master carpenters there building custom cabinetry, custom interactive components.

- [Narrator] Split Rock Rock projects, vary widely in size topics and location.

From the musical instrument museum in Phoenix, to the Fagen fighters world war II museum in Granite Falls.

(gentle somber music) - They were really interested in highlighting stories about POW's during world war II, as well as focusing on the Holocaust.

And so they had arranged to purchase a train car from Germany that had been used to transport likely both Jews during the Holocaust and POW's, and they wanted Split Rock to both design and fabricate kind of a scene in which to put that.

And then also interpret what that was.

- [Narrator] When we visited Split Rock, designers were finishing up an exhibit to be installed in Texas at Dallas's old municipal building.

- And that's where the police department was located in 1963, when JFK was shot.

Oswald was arrested, he was taken to that building, held there for about two days, interrogated, and then killed in that building.

There's a lot of interpret chronology about how the press played a role in how the events unfolded over the course of that weekend.

And some really bizarre pieces about the architecture of the building, and how that kind of put Oswald in the same places as the press and created this really big media frenzy.

We have a couple different installations in the exhibit that are really focusing on what that media looked like, what the process was like.

The birth of the 24 hour news cycle happens at this point.

All of these reporters, hundreds of reporters from around the globe, crammed into old city hall in Dallas.

And it is, when you see the footage it is just completely chaotic.

- [Reporter] Now going at a fast rate, thus selling at a very high rate.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The first stage of every project is figuring out the message and the best way to deliver it to the public.

- It might be with the touch screen.

It might be with video.

It might be pushed buttons and led lights lighting up.

If you want a visitor to understand what cow's digestion looks like, you might want to start with a see-through cow, if you wanna see how food moves from one stomach to the next.

So we had a cow fabricated and projected with a short throw projector animation onto the side of the cow's stomach, so that you could see how things move from one stomach to the next, while you had audio explaining the process.

- Someone comes to us with something that's just way out of our field.

For example, I was asked by the American Swedish Institute, can we get a 20 foot tall dollar horse?

And you know, for their budget it wasn't necessarily realistic to build a dollar horse out of wood.

But we used our partner who was an inflatables company, to create an inflatable 20 foot tall horse.

And so even if we can't build it here, we have contacts and connections to make it happen.

Once a project is finished being built, our builders will actually painstakingly package it in a way that it can be safely transported.

And then we will rent as many semis as we need to get it to the project site in one go.

When we did a project in Kuwait, we even had to hire a refrigerated shipping systems to make sure that the exhibits weren't affected by too many changes in climate, as they made their journey out to Kuwait.

Every day is something new and creative, and requires a lot of problem solving to make sure that it can actually be installed successfully and work well for 10, 15, 20 years in the future.

The most rewarding aspect, always of any project is seeing it all come together, and seeing visitors in the space.

Seeing them enjoy the things that we've come up with, and just having the reassurance that our ideas are actually things that people find compelling and interesting.

- It's always so much fun when something that you've started creating that's just first in your head then on a computer screen, suddenly it shows up and it's a real thing.

Every project is unusual in its own way, and it's always fun to discover what that is.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] funding for this program was provided by SafeBasements of Minnesota.

Your basement, waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie waters.

Where peace, relaxation, and opportunities await.

And the members of pioneer PBS - Smells so good in hear you can't not eat something.

(indistinct talk) - And I'll be honest.

When I looked at it through the window, when you think about it, with the ingredients and the type of cookie it is, I expected it to be a little bit, you almost expect it to be a little hard or a little bit crunchy or crispier and it's not.

It's like soft.

It's amazing.

It's totally delicious.