 Hello, welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgart and co-host is Nanette Boulebache. Thank you, Jim. How are you doing? From El Carly. I'm doing great. And we have a great program today. We're going to be talking to an outstanding director of the Maywood Environmental Park. Which is an outstanding place. An outstanding park director. And a lot of things going on at Maywood 24 hours a day almost, I guess they do close down the park at a certain time in the evening, don't they, Dave? Well, we do shut it down to the public, but that doesn't mean that there still aren't a lot of things going on out there with wildlife. And this time of the year, of course, birds coming back. But anyway, welcome, Dave. Thank you very much. Welcome back. Thanks. A lot of things going on at Maywood. I know that you have these early feeding things. You have pancake and things. You just got done once a while back and you have that every year. All kinds of things going on. Why don't you remind people what they may have missed so far this spring by Flapjack Day and other programs that are coming up and we'll try to encourage them to come out. Sure. Well, although we do have things going on in the winter, March is when we really concentrate on one particular thing and that's maple sugaring. And so during that whole month, we're capturing sap out of our maple trees, processing it, making maple syrup and inviting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fourth graders to come on out and learn about that process. And we usually celebrate the whole thing by having Flapjack Day, which is that usually every year it's the third Sunday of March. So that's always a huge day when the public can enjoy learning about maple sugaring as well. Especially when you have a wonderful day that was and hopefully it'll be next year. Oh my gosh, this March has been just one of the best marches on record, I think. We've had a nice, steady, gradual warm-up. Not many days of sleet and rain and other nasty weather and the day for Flapjack Day was outstanding. And people can actually buy some of the maple syrup, can't they? They can, they can. Yeah, we sell it in bottles. We use most of the syrup that we capture in process for our maple sugaring program with our kids, so they get to taste it. That same day, they're tasting. They can taste it that day on Flapjack Day, but all the month of March when we have all these fourth graders out there eating pancakes too with our homemade maple syrup on it as well. And then whatever's left over will bottle and sell to the public. Well, how can, well, I'm interrupting the net here because my bias is they'll have in a wonderful environmental park. What kind of programs can people expect in the rest of the spring? April, May, and June, it's coming up. Yeah, there's, well, we'll finish off the academic part of the year through June with all these school programs, which there's a lot of, but public programs there are many, many programs, a good diversity of programs for the public throughout the month of March, April, May, and June when we do a lot with birding and hiking and just discovering what's out there in nature, we have that open and that's for everything from preschool kids all the way up to senior citizens. So one program we started not too long ago was our OWL's program, which is an acronym, stands for Older, Wiser, Livelier Seniors, and we do a lot of the same things with them that we do with young kids, taking them outside, introducing them to new discoveries that they might not have ever seen before in nature and opening their eyes and their hearts to what nature has to offer. I find that fascinating. What is it, what kind of comments do you get for those senior citizens? Oh my gosh, what do they like the most? I think the fact that they're seeing things that have always been right there in front of them, but they never took the time to discover. So whether it's birds, whether it's tree identification, whether it's use of a compass and mapping, just all kinds of outdoor skills and interests that these people are finally discovering for the first time. That's, I will get out there. Well, you have a Lunch and Learn program too where people on a certain day, if they look at your schedule, they can bring their lunch out, you'll give them coffee and water to drink or whatever and they eat their lunch and they learn something about the out of doors or watch a movie or whatever you do on that lunch and learn. Yeah, that's another wonderful program. And in fact, on the one that's coming up, we're having some folks from an organization called WOW, which stands for Wildlife of Wisconsin. And they're bringing in some wild critters. So it will be a great family program. So if parents want to come out with their kids for that one, that one's coming up over the spring break period. So I think the kids will have off of school. So they can come out during that lunch hour on that day and discover some of those critters. How wild, what are the critters? Oh, they, I'm not sure what they're bringing this time. Sometimes they've brought birds. Sometimes they've brought big turtles. You just never know. Sometimes snakes. Maybe. I know kids love them. You've got your own snakes there, don't you? We do, yeah, we do have a box turtle there. We have a snake there too that are great teaching tools for us. That's what's so wonderful. When I walk into the Maywood Center, just being there, it's, you feel like, wow, the city's not that far away, but here we are in this sanctuary. You really feel like you're crossing something. You do, yeah. It feels like you're in northern Wisconsin, although you're right on the very edges of us, our urbanization, but yet here we have all of this, these wonderful habitats in a very concise area. And even if you come on a bad day, say it is sleeting and snowing, you walk inside and you've managed to bring a whole lot of the outdoors inside too, with your displays and your natural, you're giving people, you can see birds, you can learn so much as walking through, it's sunny, it's beautiful. We have several indoor exhibits and in fact, we also have an indoor beehive that's always fascinating for people, so you can get right up close, stare into the glass and watch these bees working as they're going out. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, you lost someone one winter, didn't you, and you got them back again? Yes, yeah, I think most bee-raising folks were having a difficult time that winter with keeping their bees, and so a lot of us had to go back and buy new batches of bees, so, but now there seem to be thriving now. Well, one of the interesting things if you walk in, there is a rude awakening that tells people the reason we need environmental places like Maywood and others is that we don't necessarily always take care of the environment. There are two passenger pigeons that are mounted and the last of them died probably about 2000, I mean, 1900, 1905 or a little bit before. Right, right. There's none left and there used to be millions and millions that used to darken the Wisconsin sky, and there's not one left. Because we ruined their habitat. We ruined the habitat, changed the things and they couldn't recover. And over-consumption, a lot of hunting and over-consumption of passenger pigeons. More than barrels of passenger pigeons to the Chicago market. That's why we've never been friendly to the Illinois people again. Well, on a positive note, I can't help noticing this incredible display and it's all these kids with smiles on their faces, they're doing things outdoors. And I understand that now Maywood recently started a partnership with Camp Lycota. Right. So tell us about your youth program. Couple years ago, I approached the president of the YMCA, Donna Wendlinton, suggested that maybe we ought to work together, Maywood and Camp Lycota in order so that we could reach more kids. Because really, in essence, what we're trying to do is create the next generation of stewards of this planet. And if that's truly our mission, we need to be working at a much faster pace because we're losing more and more kids all the time with their introduction to screen time. And so many kids are spending just inordinate amounts of time in front of computers and handheld devices and don't have opportunities to spend time outside seeing the wonders of nature. So these are just a few pictures of some of the things that kids have gotten to experience in their time out at Maywood. And it happens throughout the year. So you can see some winter scenes, spring and summer scenes, and it's just wonderful to see these kids out there for the first time experiencing something that should have been something they've seen many, many times in the past, but all of a sudden, here it is, a brand new thing. They've never seen this before. Oh, that's so great. So these are the memories they will take with them as they grow up. Yep, absolutely. I grew up on a lake in northern Wisconsin, and I spent just tons of time just on a canoe or back in a bog, and it was those experiences that got me into a position like I have now, and that's what I'm hoping for these kids. Well, you have something that's coming up during the summer in cooperation with Camp Lycota, we're gonna do another program for next week, which we will delve into it, but you're gonna be dealing with summer programs that for whether five to seven year olds, eight to nine, and then 10 to 14, something for everyone during the summer. Well, Camp Lycota, first off, they do an outstanding job of putting this brochure together, and in the brochure, they have programs beginning as soon as school gets out. We don't start ours at Maywood until after the 4th of July, but that don't count out June, because there's a lot of great programs that they have at Camp Lycota. During the summer months for us, though, we start our programs after the 4th of July, and we work with kids ages. We have what's called our eco-buds, and that's for five and six year olds. Every week we have these five and six year olds there, but every week we also have ages, a group for seven and nine, and also for 10 to 14, they all have different subjects that they're focusing on. And they go home every night, except some of the older ones have an option to stay over at night one night and have a camp out. We usually have one night of the week, usually Thursday is our evening camp out for some of those kids, and again, for many of them, and so that's a whole new experience, sleeping in a tent. Yeah, that's right. So if a parent is interested in enrolling their child in your program, say, they would just contact you directly. So if they wanted to get into our camp, they just contact Camp Lycota. They'll handle all of the registration there, and Camp Lycota's staff will then be doing the programs with them, but at Maywood. I see. And all those staff are highly trained and have to pass certain tests. So people have children, they wanna make sure they know that they're protected, and these are highly skilled young men and women that have made this a passion for teaching kids. Yeah, I used to work at a camp way back when I was a college student, and all you needed at that point was first-aid training. Well, it's well beyond that now. They go through a long checklist of things that they have to be trained on before they're hired as camp counselors. Well, and then this fall, you're gonna have something that we'll talk a little bit more about next week, which is a school program that is at Maywood, and people should really pay attention to that because it gives kids a chance to get outside and see nature as it really is. There is a new movement afoot at Maywood. We have discovered that in all the years of doing programs, we usually worked primarily with third grade on up, and we discovered that since all of these students now are kind of addicted to being in front of a computer or a television. Even at a young age. Even at a young age. I think they give iPads to babies. Yes, we've discovered that we definitely have to try to reach out to a much younger age. So this fall, we're starting a nature-based preschool for four-year-old kids. Oh, my, that's wonderful. But we must end it. Thank you, Dave. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you so much. And everybody who's come to join us, so if you're interested about Maywood, please stop out there and visit or look at the brochure at Camp Waikota. If you have a child that may need some experience and some excitement during the summer, that's the place to stop and go and visit. Till next week, this has been Legislative Update.