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I got the boots.
That would be me.
Yeah, I think we're going to go visit the forward stockyards today.
and get to feel for you know what what those cowboys do with the with the long horned steers and things like that.
My daughter who lives down here can't wait to show it off.
So she's
excited
She is.
Well, I've seen some video when when she's taken other other guests there.
So apparently it's a it's a big deal.
So I will be talking about cattle tomorrow.
I promised.
But I do have the boots.
I actually do have a very good looking black cowboy hat.
Just I don't have any need to wear it.
Yeah, I'm not doing anything that that's deserving of having to pack that thing away.
I did not bring it.
You know, if I see, I might see a better one.
So,
I might have two cowboy hats by the time this is all set and done.
Nice to have you back here.
It's just about what's 707 right now.
And coming up this hour, we're going to be talking to Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association and dairy farmer Hans Brighton Moser.
We'll talk about the apple crop in Wisconsin.
We'll talk about the trade war.
We're going to talk a little bit about that in this segment as well.
and the ways that the government shutdown is being made worse by people like Donald Trump and his transportation secretary Sean Duffy.
That's all coming up.
First, let's check the mailbag here.
Rob says good morning from Tigerton.
Clear skies 40 degrees right now.
Yesterday he was doing paperwork for the mowing season.
took pictures of the farmers that leased my family's property that were chopping up corn.
We talked about reading rainbow in the last segment and Alicia was all over that in YouTube saying reading rainbow is very much a millennial thing.
So that's great.
We were talking about the Ozzy Osbourne documentary coming out and Tony puts up, there's just always something interesting about a guy who eats bats, you know, just saying.
on Band Book Week, which you can read about in the Up North News Daily newsletter.
Alicia says that the Milwaukee Public Library has a great TikTok on banned books.
The Milwaukee Public Library has had a lot of great TikToks.
And so yes, I would definitely be looking forward to reading about that.
Let's see, Tony also was expressing his happiness with the the great emotions of Jacob Mizorowski coming out of the bullpen yesterday.
And Roger from Stevens Point says, I'm grateful for Andrew Vaughn's home run, which was the first inning equalizer in yesterday's game.
Yes, absolutely for folks that might have missed it.
And, you know, some of us did go to bed early, but.
It felt like the game was well in hand.
The Brewers defeated the Cubs last night in game two of the National League Division Series.
Final score seven to three and all of the all the runs for the Brewers came on home runs this time compared to game one where the Brewers scored nine times and none of them came off of home runs.
But yeah, you had the Andrew Vaughn three run homer in the bottom of the first to Offset a Cubs three run homer in the top of the first you had a William Contreras solo shot and then you had Jackson Churio
with his own three-run homer to help the Rearers beat up the Cubs and take a two-nothing lead in the series.
And so they are just one win away from going to the National League Championship Series where they will face the winner of the Dodgers Phillies series, which the Dodgers are up two games to none on Philadelphia.
It was a bullpen game for the Brewers because Brandon Woodruff is out with an injury.
So Aaron Ashby opened things up.
He did give up that three run homer in the first.
But after that, how's this for a bullpen game?
Nick Mears, Jacob Mizorowski, Chad Patrick, Jared Kenig, Trevor McGill and Abner Uribe.
Seven and a third innings of shutout relief and allowed just one hit.
And just a couple of base runners, Jacob Mizorowski, threw three scoreless innings to earn the win.
And he had pitches that topped out Parker at 104.3 miles an hour.
And I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I really do.
I'll say it again, one of these times, they're just going to, you're going to hear the player, the announcers going, Oh, his arm fell off.
Those arms just laying there in the grass.
So yeah.
Yep, I could, I could see that happening.
What he's on exactly.
And he just waves it and plugs it back in and throws it at 105 miles an hour, you know, the next time around, could totally see that happening.
I was a little concerned when he ran all the way to first base on a ground out to make the play himself, but he acknowledged after the game.
He was just feeling so pumped up.
He was afraid he would overthrow Andrew Vaughn at first base, which you know,
I could totally see that happening and it would just I would go crazy if that happened.
Oh, yeah, that was the other thing.
because again, you can get some really
Goofball injuries, like people who've stomped on home plate,
in from a home run and twist an ankle or something.
Oh, no.
That sucks.
See, even if you're an umpire, you got to do those stretches, you know.
No, it was one of those cases where again, the Dodgers Phillies game ran a little long.
And so they started the Brewers Cubs game over on TNT before moving it back to TBS.
We're here at my Dodgers place using one of those satellite systems that doesn't really, you know, you don't pick the channel so much as you pick the game.
And then it goes to that channel.
But of course, if it's on a different channel, good luck going to find it.
I mean, we did eventually find a way to find the right channel to do that.
But it's one of those TV things that just always bugs me is like, just just put the game where it's supposed to be.
funny that you should say that because game two or game three rather.
Oh, I've got my graphic is wrong on there.
Game three of the series will be at Wrigley Field, and that will be tomorrow afternoon.
The pregame will get started at 330 on several civic media stations, Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Park Falls and Hayward, where you could conceivably
see the Brewers sweep.
Now again, if they don't, then game four will be at Wrigley.
And then if needed, a deciding game five would be back in American Family Field come Saturday.
So they're again, it'd be nice to wrap it up tomorrow, but you just got to win one out of the next three.
That would that would feel really nice.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I could totally get into that.
So, so again, congrats to the brewers for a nice victory there and giving us a little distraction from some of the realities of our headlines today, which include, you know, a trade war that include a government shutdown and things like that.
You had President Trump saying yesterday indicating that he would be supportive of doing some kind of a bailout.
plan for America's farmers since China's buying nothing, nothing, not the $12 billion worth of soybeans, for example, that they typically buy in a year, but zero.
And so all these farmers have no market to go to with their beans and corn and everything else.
So Trump's quote from yesterday was, I'm going to do some farm stuff this week.
That'd be the president of the United States telling you and making farmers feel real good saying, I'm going to do some farm stuff this week.
The stuff is probably going to be some kind of checks that get sent to farmers to keep them from going out of business.
It's the same thing that happened in 2018 when Trump started a trade war with China.
It cost taxpayers $20 billion to help support farmers.
And by the way, we got nothing for that.
I mean, eventually China and the US, they just resume trade slowly and eventually.
But at the time, China wouldn't get the soybeans from Brazil.
And guess what they're doing right now?
They're getting their soybeans from Brazil and Argentina, a country we just sent billions of dollars to in a government bailout.
And Republican lawmakers told the New York Times that they think that a potential farm bailout this time around won't cost $20 billion, but cost more like $50 billion.
And what gets me is how they say this so nonchalantly, like, well, you know, it might cost us $50 billion.
The people who used to be described as fiscal conservatives, but don't think twice about this.
It does not occur to them to say, hey,
Maybe this guy, the president, yeah, he says he's in our party, but he's driving up the debt.
He's driving up budget deficits.
He's not accomplishing anything with these tariffs.
We're Congress, we can actually limit these tariffs and find another way to negotiate better trade deals.
We could maybe do that.
But they don't.
Everybody's just going along with what one guy says, no matter how
uninformed it might be no matter how harmful it might be because he's their guy.
Take the last shutdown, which not only had the big farm bailout, but you also had air travel that was starting to get gummed up as air traffic controllers and people working TSA and others stopped showing up for work because they weren't getting paid.
They were using sick days, vacation days, they weren't taking extra shifts.
You would think again, maybe this is something we want to avoid again.
But we are heading that way again.
And that's according to the US Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, former Congressman from up north who knows a thing or two about bad budget deals and government shutdowns.
And yet, what is he saying?
He's basically threatening, promising that everybody's going to be facing travel delays.
he says, and he's saying this in from the standpoint of safety, I guess, he says, quote, if we think there's issues in the airspace, we will shut it down, we will close it down, we will delay.
That's his way, I guess, of saying to Democrats, you guys ought to blink, you guys ought to cave or else there's going to be air travel delays, when again, the better course of action would be for
people like Sean Duffy to acknowledge that Americans actually don't want massive health care cuts and the government shutdown that you have forced as a result of it.
Because air traffic controllers, they are required to work through the shutdown, but they're only going to get paid
retroactively whenever the shutdown ends and it was their failure to show up for work last time around that led to the eventual deal that ended the government shutdown on Monday.
Duffy said that officials had seen quote a slight tick up.
sick calls from controllers since the current shutdown began last week.
The FAA has already started to slow traffic did so at three airports yesterday using a ground delay program that's a traffic management tool in which the agency holds flights from departing other airports if they are headed for one with limited capacity.
and as somebody who has flown this week and has had to sit on the tarmac for a while waiting for takeoff, I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that possibility again later this week flying back out of Dallas later in the week if this thing continues to drag on and all indications are it will continue to drag on.
We'll find out for sure in a live report from Washington DC in our next hour when we talk to Cam Stevenson
from Courier Newsroom and also author of the Below the Belt line.
I'm sorry, below the Beltway newsletter that you can get through Courier Newsroom.
We'll talk to Cam Stephenson live from Washington D.C.
and Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation Area about things that are happening in the Wisconsin state capital.
Again, that's all in our eight o'clock hour.
Coming up in about 15 minutes here, we will talk to Hans Brighton Moser and Sheila Everhart, a little more farm talk when we come back, especially emphasizing the apple harvest for this year.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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There is a new story on the Milwaukee Journal website from reporter Dan Bice the headline Representative Tom Tiffany erases abortion gun rights and other issues from his personal website and Bice notes, you know And actually let me back up a step before I tell you what's in the Dan Bice article today.
I haven't done this for a little while I want to make sure I do this when I share things out of
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the New York Times and elsewhere.
It is never meant to be a substitute for actually subscribing and reading up on some of these stories yourself.
You know, we, I personally am a subscriber to news websites, and you should do the same thing as well.
If some of these stories intrigue you and you want to go look for them, you should be supporting good journalism.
There are other places, you know, that that don't have a paywall yet.
They might have for example it up north news.
We don't have a paywall We're never gonna have a paywall But we do have what's called a gate and that gate invites you to share your email address So you can get a sample of our newsletter and maybe you want to subscribe to it that way once you've taken a look at it, but you know, there's also
other ways to support good journalism through subscriptions, and that includes the work that the amazing team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is doing.
So back to the Dan Bistory, he begins by saying, when you've been in office, state and federal, as long as Congressman Tom Tiffany, it's impossible to erase your political past, but you can certainly try.
And Bistory points toward a website called The Way Back Machine,
which preserves snapshots of websites.
And it shows that Tiffany at Tom Tiffany.com had a web page as of September 17 that listed lots of hot button issues and his positions on them, including abortion and gun safety and crime and immigration.
And as he likes to always call it, Communist China.
But if you look at Tom Tiffany.com today, the issues page is gone.
It's been replaced with something called
solutions with things like protect what makes Wisconsin great and lower costs for every Wisconsinite.
And apparently the new solutions page, according to the Dan By Story, makes no mention of guns.
There is one mention of immigration.
There's one mention of China, nothing about abortion, nothing about the deficit.
That last one makes complete sense because Tom Tiffany is as hypocritical as any other Republican in talking about the deficit.
We can't afford that.
We can't afford to support health care.
We can't afford to support education.
We're spending too much.
We've got to keep the debt and deficit down, they love to say, until they just voted as they did to add another $4 trillion to the national debt.
to pay for more than $4 trillion in tax cuts geared toward the very wealthy.
So I'm not surprised that he's saying a little bit less about the debt and deficit.
But Bice goes on saying the interesting note here is that Tiffany and his team made the switch in the days leading up to his September 23 announcement that he is now running for Wisconsin governor next year.
Wisconsin Democrats, of course, were quick to call out Tiffany.
You had Phil Shulman, the spokesperson for the State Democratic Party, saying Tariff Tom is scrubbing his website of abortion and other issues because he knows he's going to have to deceive voters about his extreme record if he's going to win next November.
Now folks with the Tiffany team say there's nothing unusual about updating your website when you're running for, you know, a new office, in this case, Governor.
but Folks have also noticed that when it comes to for example abortion rights that Tiffany is in fact Some would say shifting his view on abortion.
I I do not say that I believe he's shifted his views one moment one little bit He's simply trying to have it both ways and we've talked about this shortly after he announced that he was running for governor and talking about in a very
shall we say generic way that he supports current state law and current state law is a 20 week limit on women's reproductive health rights.
And I stand by that and I will uphold that legislation is what Tiffany told reporters on September 4th.
He says as the governor, I do not plan any changes.
And that's very key.
That's that's very well thought out.
I do not plan any changes.
in much the same way that Scott Walker had said, I'm not planning to do anything with new union busting laws.
And of course, once he was reelected, like the very first bill that was sent to him by the legislature was some more union busting laws.
And he could not sign that thing fast enough.
And of course, one question, he was like, Oh, it wasn't one of my priorities, but they clearly was the legislature.
They sent me this bill.
What was I going to do?
I support it.
I'm going to sign.
That's exactly where Tom Tiffany is.
He has consistently been supportive of near or total abortion bans in Wisconsin.
He's been endorsed by a couple of the most extreme groups out there that would remove women's reproductive bodily autonomy.
And so don't think for a moment that if he were elected governor,
And if the Assembly and Senate were to stay in Republican hands and were to send him a near total abortion ban in Wisconsin, that he wouldn't sign it.
He would sign it at the drop of a hat.
And so the fact that he does not advertise that, he does not trumpet it on his personal website, the way that he used to, does not reflect some kind of evolution.
This all is, again, a reminder that
You cannot simply look at what any candidate or politician says in the moment, unless they are explicit.
If they explicitly say, I have changed my position on something, I've changed my way of thinking on this.
That's one thing.
But when you get what Tom Tiffany's given you is just kind of this, you know, mealy mouth dwell, I support the way things are right now.
Again, people will say a lot of things to get elected.
And then once they get elected,
You see who they really are, which is a lot of what's reflected in what they've already said and written.
Hans Brighton Moser and Sheila Everhart are coming up after the Midwest Farm Report.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Coming up in one hour, we'll be talking to Dan Schaefer from the Recon Population Area and Civic Media's political editor, and he helps put together Civic Media's new daily newsletter.
Sign up for it at civicmediatoday.substack.com again, civicmediatoday.substack.com.
All right always nice to welcome back in a couple of friends talking to us about Wisconsin agriculture that of course would be Hans Brighton Moser a dairy farmer from the Merrill area up in Lincoln County and Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association great to see you both as always we're going to get to a very plentiful and variety filled apple crop coming up in just a bit here but Hans I also wanted to of course take note of the government shutdown and its impact on farmers and
And then there's also some some upbeat news about it being National 4-H Week.
So let's let's get the not so happy stuff out of the way first here.
A government shutdown makes for, you know, a lot of political headlines, but it's got real life impact.
And what does that mean for farmers across America, for example, with the Farm Service Agency offices closed?
Well, it it's sort of stinks Pat because the farm service agencies are our local connection to the federal government than any federal government programs and so forth and one of the things that happens this time of the year of course is that there's a lot of corn and soybeans being harvested and what a lot of guys will do is is Especially when prices are low They harvest that those those commodities and rather than sell them at harvest low prices They will borrow against them through the farm service agency
and because it helps cash flow.
And right now, if you try and call the Farm Service Agency, you get a recording that says that they're not there.
So it's very difficult because we don't have that resource to work with at a time of the year when we sort of need it.
And I think the other thing that I'd like your listeners to understand is that
You know, all those nameless, faceless, terrible bureaucrats that are getting laid off all the time are not just a bunch of people that live in Washington next to the Capitol.
They're people that live in Wausau, Wisconsin and in, you know, Chippewa Falls and all the places around our friends and neighbors are the ones who are right now sitting at home and they would rather be at work.
So that's, that's, it's not just the farmers that are being impacted, but it's the people in those offices.
Yeah, absolutely.
And with those offices closed, it means farmers are not getting access to farm program signups, no disaster aid processing, no loan approvals, no access to market data that the government normally provides and more.
So I just wanted to get some of the real life impact of this ongoing shutdown.
All right, it's four h week, Hans will start with you.
And then over to Sheila, talk about the significance of four h is it again, for a city kib.
for a city kid, they go, Oh, that's something I've heard of.
But was that something from from the olden days of Wisconsin farming?
Or is that something still very relevant to rural life in Wisconsin
It's very relevant.
And and I think I
If you're a parent or a grandparent, please check out 4-H if you're not familiar with it because there are just so many cool programs.
Our kids have been in 4-H for years and years.
And there's the usual things that people think of, of course, about bringing projects to the local county fairs and so forth.
And that is a part of it.
It's a big part of it.
It's a really cool part of it.
But there's also so many other things like my children have taken advantage of really cool civic engagement type things and trips to exotic places.
like Washington D. C. and New York and Philadelphia and so forth.
And other places just right here in Wisconsin that I've chaperoned a couple trips for as well.
And so it's a great opportunity for kids to learn leadership skills and really, you know, civic engagement and so forth.
There's so many opportunities, educational opportunities and travel opportunities that 4-H offers that I think a lot of people just don't know about.
And it's also a great place for grown-ups to get
involved with you know with the rearing of our children as far as you know chaperoning these trips and so forth because it does by God take a village.
It sure does and Sheila you know for National 4-H Week you you talk as well about 4-H getting people ready for a career and frankly just getting ready for life as well.
Absolutely, you know, it's all about celebrating our youth, helping them prepare for college and career and life readiness.
You know, a recent study said that those children, those students involved with 4-H likely to live life intentionally and with purpose and three times as likely to participate in community service and volunteer in our communities.
And as Hans mentioned, it's about leadership roles,
planning events, running meetings, and organizing service projects.
So support our local 4-H.
Absolutely.
Again, for National 4-H Week.
So we wanted to make sure that we made mention of those things.
But let's also turn to something that's rather seasonal here.
We have our share of apple orchards and products and varieties and things.
And I mean, to be clear, I mean, it is a
sliver of Wisconsin agriculture and you know national agriculture as well but there's hardly anybody out there that wouldn't accept a slice of apple pie or have a glass of cider or Sheila just enjoy the experience of apple orchards in Wisconsin so it may not be the biggest part of the egg industry but it's one of the more visible ones and frankly one of the more enjoyable and delicious ones.
Absolutely enjoyable and delicious and my favorite fall food is not only apple pie, but caramel apples and you know.
traveling from orchard to orchard to see who has the best caramel apples.
That's right up my alley.
October is National Apple Month, and we celebrate that in promoting the consumption and appreciation of our Wisconsin apples.
This started in 1904, but people enjoy eating fresh apples, picking apples from the tree, learning about the best ways to bake apple desserts, and
just to experience apple cider donuts, fresh apple cider.
So it's important for us to go out and support our family farms and
pick up some apples along the way.
There's some really cool apples up in your neighborhood, Pat.
Apple orchards all on County Highway 00.
Are you familiar with some of those orchards,
Pat?
I have definitely seen them, and they are most certainly busy places this time of year.
And so tell folks a bit more about what you can expect if you want to go visit some of these orchards.
Right, you have bushel and peck on highway OO and Chippewa Falls and the count Connell family orchard Family roots orchard is the oldest orchard up in your neighborhood and then there's Dick's Dickson's apple orchard and it's really interesting about mr. Dickson Fred he had started growing a famous champagne apple that he Helps to create some
apple ciders and some apple side um hard apple ciders with that champagne apple and on our wisconsin agricultural tourism association website we have a blog page that just was launched yesterday talking about all these different apple orchards like the little
Farmer and Malone, over in Prescott, if you want to take a drive, there's Young Acres.
Avenue Orchard is up there in Eau Claire.
Of course, in the Gaze Mills area, we have Sunrise Orchards that also have activities.
And you can actually see them sorting and washing their apples and pressing that apple cider.
Over in the Elkhorn area, we have Apple Barn Orchard and Winery.
And you know, several of our orchards are also wineries, just like SeaQuest Orchard and Latenbach orchard up in Fish Creek.
And then we have M&T Gibbsville orchard in Sheboygan Falls, and then Heritage Orchard.
They're known for their fresh...
apple cider in Chilton area.
Very nice.
Do you like apple cider, Pat and Hans?
I like apple cider and I like the hard cider as
gonna ask Hans about that if he's got a particular favorite apple product.
I wanted to mention Helene's Hilltop Orchard is two miles from my place and absolutely a beehive of activity this time of the year.
They do a wonderful job.
They got lots of trees in a bakery and it's just a total hotspot in our area this time of the year.
I
love seeing Olivia and her husband and they do great farm to table dinners and I have toured their farm and it's a beautiful bakery.
So if you have a chance to visit Helene's Hilltop, get out there and enjoy the orchard.
For the for the hard cider now, we're turning to the adult portion of the apple discussion here.
Again, it's a fermented beverage made from apple juice.
When the yeast converts the apple sugars into alcohol.
And so again, you've got different types, different flavor profiles, you're using different varieties with them.
And so Sheila, it's not a surprise that a place that you know, started with, you know, the beer industry, but now we have our share
of wineries in the area that, you know, cider would also be a natural byproduct of some of the many good things we produce in Wisconsin.
Yes.
And you know, our farmers are innovative and they're creative.
And so they always take, look at what they are producing and how can they add value to their crops.
And by producing hard apple cider, that is just have opening another market for them to sell their products.
Yeah.
Now, in terms of the, the variety of products and how to use them.
And I work, it's been a while since I learned this, but it took me a while to appreciate
appreciate that, you know, not all apple varieties are created equal.
And something that you might like to eat, you know, as a as a plain apple is not necessarily the best one for for a pie or for jelly or something like that.
And I know you shared with me a rather detailed chart of all the different apple varieties you can get in all the different ways you can use them, which is not to say you can't use them for everything, but you know, some are going to taste better than others, I would, I would imagine.
Absolutely, you know and some of them are across the board because the chart was
created by sunrise orchards and gazed mills.
And so if you take a honeycrisp apple right across the board, they're perfect for everything.
Eating pie, sauce, baking, freezing, jelly, salad, and pickling.
But if you take something like the Rudd, Wisconsin delicious apple, they're known for eating and they're known for salads.
So, you know, when you're going out to pick your apple,
Of course you want to pick for flavor, but also decide if you're buying your apples in bulk.
Maybe you're going to get a full bushel of apples.
You want to look at how are you going to utilize those apples and finding the apple guide variety and availability and uses chart is a perfect way to help you make your apples go a lot further and last all the way through the winter season.
Yeah.
I will,
I will second,
I will second that by noting that, yes, it's something when you realize that red delicious apples are wonderful for eating, you know, right off the table there, but are not necessarily going to be the best thing to put in a pie and then you discover something else that is at the other end of the spectrum, you mentioned honey crisp is like perfect for everything.
That's so true that I sometimes have to remind myself Hans to go shop for some other varieties.
I get man cannot live on honey, honey, crisp.
Well, maybe I could, but you really should find
what else is the right thing for you.
I've talked about Sherry's apple crisp being just amazing.
Do you have a favorite either a pie or something else that's your favorite apple product besides the beverages Hans?
no, you got that that all American look to you as as any dairy farmer would here in Wisconsin.
And again, to learn more, you can always check out the Wisconsin agricultural
Tourism Association website.
And there's so many other resources to learn more about apples in Wisconsin.
We definitely appreciate the diversion to visit a virtual orchard here for a little while.
Hans, thank you Sheila Everhart.
Thank you so much as always.
Hope you have a great day.
you, Pat.
Thank you for supporting Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism and our family farms.
We appreciate Civic Media.
Well, thank you so much.
I
appreciate that, too.
Dan Schaeffer from the Reconbobulation Area and Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom live on Capitol Hill coming up, my pack right now.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Well, we have covered a lot of ground today and we've still got more to do.
And of course, not everybody can sit around here for three hours.
I mean, I do, but that's my job.
Sit here from six to nine a.m.
sharing all this information with you.
But if you can't hang around for the whole three hours, well, don't miss anything.
You can pod this program by heading over to Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcast.
Follow us that way and that way you can listen at your leisure.
The other thing I like about it is the speed button.
And I don't know, Parker, James Kelly's with us well from the Civic Media Newsroom.
Either one of you listen to podcasts and then you kind of put it on that, you know, one and a half speed or even double speed when you play it back.
I can't say I ever do that extra speed on it.
Oh, you don't?
Okay.
Oh, apparently, I'm not taking in my information as efficiently as possible.
Well, again, we it's best to do it live here.
But I've got one that, frankly, the person I really needed at least one and a quarter speed or one and a half speed.
Sometimes if it's a guess that I'm not necessarily I don't have to hang on every word, I will double speed that thing.
Parker, you're you're young, you probably triple speed it all and ingest it instantly.
Yes, I that's right YouTube also lets you do that and it kind of frustrates me that on my DVR I wish you could do that You could you only simply have the fast forward button, which is not the same thing Whereas if you could play some of your programs back at double speed That would be very handy.
But look at James over here.
He's very intense He's gonna get all the information in real time the way that God meant it to me.
Yeah,
luckily I talk fast too
And it works out well for you.
So James is following several stories for us at Civic Media at the newsroom in Chippewa Falls.
And let's start in the Chippewa Valley among the stories you're following.
Folks around the state might recall that a little over a year ago, there was the abrupt closure of Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire and St.
Joseph's Hospital in Chippewa Falls and some Prevea clinics all done by an Illinois based company that just
Up and shut the hospitals down on virtually, you know, no notice is a very short window and there's been talk ever since then about
how to essentially restructure healthcare in the Chippewa Valley, not to mention these facilities that have been sitting empty.
So what's the latest happening there, James?
Yeah, so the latest is that an organization affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, essentially their real estate arm has sold the Sacred Heart Hospital property on Claremont Avenue in Eau Claire.
They sold it to Commonwealth Development Corp, which is kind of in the early stages of planning a potential medical research and tech park.
So that's going to open up a lot of
interesting collaborative opportunities with the university.
And the university is actually going to be holding on to about five acres of that land.
It's right next to where their campus is in downtown Eau Claire.
So they'll have some opportunities to expand there as well.
So certainly an interesting development about the future of a pretty major transportation corridor there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because when I heard that the land.
for Sacred Heart Hospital was going to be taken over or purchased or owned by, you know, like you said, an offshoot of UW Eau Claire, which is right next to the campus.
And of course, everybody started talking about whether, whether Sacred Heart Hospital would become, you know, another, another dorm, you know, essentially, it's not that far away from towers dorm, which is similar to some of the dorms and some of the other campuses here.
And so there was a lot of speculation, but instead, like you said, maybe maybe some medical research and other things.
But I know the university is going to hang on to, would you say, about five acres of land
there?
Yeah, five of the 27 acres they'll hang on to for future expansion opportunities.
Exactly.
So if you've got a landlocked campus and there's a way to get around that and maybe grow the footprint a little bit, I mean, why wouldn't you do that?
So there will definitely be developments happening there and we'll certainly keep an eye on what's happening in the Chippewa Falls site as well.
Let's head much farther up north for the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline and
what's happening with either rerouting that oil and gas pipeline, or some are certainly still trying to fight its operation at all, what's happening up there right now.
So as you know, Pat, there's been this contested case hearing going on for a few weeks between Ashland and Madison.
They've had multiple hearings and last week they finally wrapped up.
So the decision is now up to an administrative law judge on whether the project will go forward or whether there are environmental concerns.
One thing that I did find interesting in a WPR report about this project is that the Biden administration's EPA found that there could be some risk of substantial impact to the area waterways.
which is the main concern of tribal groups and environmental conservation groups, and the EPA under the Trump administration found that there would be no negative impacts to the surrounding areas.
So a little bit of disagreement there.
Either way, this decision can be appealed.
I would assume that whichever side ends up on the losing side of the administrative judge decision will appeal that decision, so this will probably go forward.
I am shocked.
Shocked, I tell you, to hear that there's a difference between the environmental harms that the Biden administration saw versus the environmental harms that the Trump administration has not seen.
I am absolutely floored by this, but I don't doubt that James will continue to follow the hearings themselves.
And if you're not familiar with all the background of it, Enbridge is line five that runs across the northern edge of Wisconsin there.
the bad river band of Lake Superior Shippewa wanted to stop operating and Bridge has said actually we'll just route it right around the reservation but of course it's still in an environmentally sensitive area which is why you you have these ongoing hearings that James was talking about and finally let's look at the Red Cedar River
which flows through Rice Lake and then down toward Menominee.
And it has long had a problem with phosphorus levels.
What's the latest on what the research is showing there, James?
Yeah, so this was a report, the annual report from the Red Cedar River Water Quality Partnership.
They kind of do monitor these issues with the Red Cedar watershed, which spans nine counties, mostly in Dunn and Barron counties.
Last year's report found that they kept 11,000 pounds of phosphorus out of the waterways in large part due to
kind of better soil health practices for farmers in the area supported by DNR grants and research efforts.
There's a lot of university research going into water quality these days, especially in this region, so certainly an area of impact.
Oh, gosh, without a doubt.
I mean, the algae bloom problem has gone on for decades.
And so every little advancement to keep phosphorus out of there is appreciated.
James Kelly, following these stories and more across northern and western Wisconsin from our civic media newsroom in Chippewa Falls, James, good to see you.
Have a wonderful day.
Have a good one, guys.
All right.
And coming up in our next hour, we'll be talking to Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom, live from Capitol Hill, and then later Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area on what's happening at State Capital.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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