 Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground, I'm producer-director Scott Knudson. In this two-segment episode, Lucio Bavelli invites us into his brainered leather studio. Also, Karen Heller takes us along as she forages to make a springtime salve. My name is Lucio Bavelli, I do leather work. I make wallets, smoke cases, everything in leather and I use some other material for lining. We are now in my shop, it's located in Baxter, Minnesota. I started working with leather in 1999 in Florence. And I started working in a small shop just behind the Bobbley Garden. And I was there for about a couple of years and I really enjoyed it. And then I opened my shop here in Baxter in 2009 and I do some upholstery work. Today I'm going to make a bifold wallet. So there are different kinds of leather. I'm going to be using some annuling dyed leather. It's a chrome tanned leather and a dark brown. It's actually in order from a customer. First of all I have to make a cardboard pattern. Of all the parts I have to cut so there are lots of leather pieces that will make all the credit cards. And then also there are lining. For lining I use a polyester lining, really thin but really strong. This is one. Then I need two of these. I need three strips for the lining. Just a couple of strips of leather. Then I will have to make it thinner and then glue them to the lining itself. I need some lining. The lining is just ripped up nylon. So now we are going to cut all the linings for the wallet. And for this wallet I will need the lining for the outside. And this one is the one. One for the middle. And then I'm going to have another lining for the inside and all these little pockets. So I'm going to start with that side. So one of the differences between my wallets is that I try to design them always with crooked credit cards. Most of the time you find wallets with straight credit cards. And to me it's easier to find the card if it's crooked. And it's also a little more unique. You know, it's a little bit of a different design. Okay. So now then I have all the tearo cuts. The next process would be to thin the leather, the right thickness for the wallet. We are going to use a splitting machine over here. I can show you how the machine works. So there is a blade going through the machine. And there are two stones that sharpen the blade while it's thin. The leather will go through this part. And I can adjust the thickness in a fraction of a millimeter to how thin I want it. So I'm going to start the machine and the grinding mechanism. The blade has to be always very sharp. And what it's going to do is going to cut the leather in the thickness. So making it the thickness I need. So now I set the thickness now. Okay. So now that I'm done with the splitting machine, I'm going to walk to the Skyview machine over there. And I'll show you the process that I'm going to work on. So it's almost like a cup, then spinning. And this is actually the blade of the machine. Then there is stone that spins and it sharpens this blade. So that's what it's doing. It's making the edges thinner. The edges then I will have to fold to then sew the wallet together. The next step will be to thin the middle of the outside. So when the wallet is done it will fold easier. And we are done with this machine. I'm going to glue the lining and the leather together before we sew everything together. And we're going to do it here on the table. Now I'm going to just glue all the parts together. In order to glue the two parts together I have to apply glue on both sides. Otherwise it won't stick together. And also I'll have to wait until the glue is a little bit drier. And then I can glue them together. So now that the glue is tacky then I can put the leather and the lining together. So I will leave a little bit of leather exposed. This leather is going to be glued and then folded with this folding machine. And so then the edge is going to be leather too. So what it does is it folds the leather onto the lining. So the next step will be to make a line on the credit cards. So I'm heating up the tool then we'll then make a line on the cards. And as you can see there is a line now. It's going to be in the finished product. I'm going to do all the cards. The next step will be just to mark where the credit cards are going to be sewed on. And I just use an awl. It's important to glue first and then sew it so when I sew it the credit card pocket doesn't move under the sewing machine. And this is where I am going to sew the wallet together. Always backstitch at the beginning and at the end of the seam. So the next part of the process will be to trim inside of the wallet to fit the wallet itself. And so I use the pattern that I designed and used this knife to do so. After this I will have to glue and then sew the pockets inside the wallet like this. The next is to trim the corners to make a 45 angle cut. So when I fold it, it meets in the middle. I just have to cut it on an angle of 45 degrees. Now that it's all glued together I'll have to just fold the edges over. And then I'm going to be ready to sew it at the sewing machine. So the last step will be to sew the outside seam. This seam will keep everything together. So the last process now is to put my name on it so it's metal embossed. Then I have to heat up with a heat gun and then it will be done. Test it first on a piece of leather to make sure that it's not enough and that will be it. I'm Karen Heller and I live in Wind River Township, Wadena County. And I make saves with wild plants. Today we're going to make balsam poplar save. It's also called Balmagilead, Tacma hack, whatever you want to call it. But it's a resin, it's got salicin and phenols in there. That's good for scrapes and cuts and rashes and all kinds of skin ailments. This is what it looks like where it grows. And here's where I cut last year. I just cut that this year and there's a line here and you can cut there. This one I cut here like two years ago. And then last year I cut it here, here and here. And now all this has grown. So here's the little line you cut there. We picked some balsam poplar buds. We're going to go make some save down at the cabin. On the way we're going to stop at my garden, which I have built here on the pipeline. Okay, this is my messy garden. And here is the St. John's wort that I planted from seeds two years ago. I use the St. John's wort for empty nest syndrome. When I get sad the bus goes by and no kids are here. I get lonesome. So I eat the flowers and then I feel okay. And here we've got bee balm growing here. And I have all native plants in here from around this area. And I'm keeping it here because I can't walk very far anymore. I've got blueberries. This is wild mint. I brought it from the swamp and it likes it up here. Salmon seal. And then over here I have black cohosh from Kentucky. That's doing fine here over the pipeline because it's nice and warm. And I've got wild ginger, bearberry, wintergreen. A wild orchid there. In here I've got labelia. There's a lot. And my goal is to use food and plants instead of drugs. And I've been pretty successful so far. So that's why I have this here I guess. I just love working in the dirt and plants. I had trouble with my knees so I looked up away besides a knee replacement. I did not want a knee replacement. And they said try goldenrod tea. And I remembered that I had some goldenrod that I had picked for making dye. I had saved the flowers and they were in my craft box. So I went in there and took it out of there. They were like five years old. I made a tea with it and my knees actually did feel better. I could hardly believe it. So then that summer I got a bunch of it and started drinking it every day. And my knees got better and better and better. And I didn't have to have any replacement. So this here is my goldenrod garden of the stiff goldenrod. There are seven kinds of goldenrod here. And that's one that tastes the best. So I take care of that one the best. We're going to go up to the cabin now and make our sav. Here we go. Now we have to take all these buds off and put them in a pan. And you can usually do this. It's usually cold out when you're doing this. So you can sit by the fireplace and do it. But you need to wear these because there's so much resin. And it's really hard to get washed off. It's going to be kind of different using these leaves. I've never done it with the leaves before. You can see our little bit past the bud stage. But they're still full of the same resin. It's just that it's in the leaves now. So we'll just break them off. And we're going to boil them in oil and get the resin out into the oil. Here's another one from the freezer. And you need almost as many cups of this as your lard or tallow or oil. Olive oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, whatever kind of oil you want to use. Bear grease. You need about almost as much plant material as the oil. This cabin is a primitive cabin. We have a pitcher pump for water. There's no electricity, no phone, no internet, no phone service for your cell phone. So when you come here you learn all about what it was like back in the olden days. The house was built by hand. We moved away from the city. We grew up in the city and we didn't want to raise children in the city. So we moved out here and just started homesteading. It's made of jack pine lumber that we got from a neighbor. The windows are from an old torn down house next door. I sheet rocked it later after I got a job. This would be a winter bud and this would be a leaf bud. The resin, you can still see the resin on there. It's shiny. It's not quite as sticky as it usually is in the winter. But we're going to use these today and it'll probably turn a little more green than brown. But it'll still be good medicine. First we're going to measure how much we got. Looks like we're going to have about two cups. It's perfect. So we got about two cups of that. Put it back in there. So then we're going to need two cups. And this is beer towel that I rendered. Just need to warm up the edges a little bit so we can get it out of there. I bought this at a garage sale on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. One of those big mansions. So now we're going to measure two cups of beer towel. What we're going to do is we're going to put a little sunflower oil in there. It's a messy job. It's a very messy job. You don't want to use your regular dishes for this. Now we're going to put it on the stove. And we're going to make sure that it doesn't go past 225. When you cook the buds, they pop open. And even when they're brown when they start, they pop open and you can see they're green inside there. And then you cook them until they turn brown. And then they're done. But if you cook them too long, they're going to turn black. And you don't want that. It usually takes around 20 minutes, half an hour, because you don't want to rush it. It takes time. Then we have to add the wax. So we're going to have about two cups of oil. So we need two ounces of beeswax. They're still green. So we've got to cook it a little more. It's going up, though. It's over 150 now. It smells like home, I've heard people say. When you come to this area and smell that smell, because it's in those balsam poplar trees. Okay, it looks like it's pretty much done. It's not bubbling or sizzling anymore. So I'm going to try to strain it. Yeah, the main thing is not to burn it. So if you pretty much got most of the... It's crispy. Okay. So I've got my wax measured by weight. And I'm going to put it in here. And you can shave it up or whatever. It's already pretty hot. So it pretty much melts. It doesn't take long for it to melt. Now when it gets hard, it'll look this color. But after my kids got a little bigger, I wanted to find a way to make money besides going to town for a job. I wanted to find ways people could make money out here, especially women, shut-in women that had nothing. So I started doing recycling. I did some painting. I did, you know, odd jobs here and there. And then I thought, well, there's all these plants out here. So why don't we just make stuff? And so I just started doing it. And I was thinking that more people would want to do it. And they should, because there's plenty here. Join us again on Common Ground. If you have an idea for Common Ground in North Central Minnesota, email us at legacy at lptv.org or call 218-333-3014. To watch Common Ground online, visit lptv.org and click Local Shows. The soeds are segments of Common Ground. Call 218-333-3020. Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations, member FDIC. Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.