Music.
On the first part of our morning show today, we're focusing on Cross Currents Heritage Center at Tipisaki Farm near Blue River.
Ben Moffatt, curator of events at Cross Currents Heritage Center is in the studio with us.
Good to see you again, Ben.
How are you doing?
Very well.
Thank you for having me.
Did you summer well?
Yes, except I was back in Hawaii getting prepared to come back here and we had that tropical storm Lala.
had a 40 hour power outage that was tough
oh man
yeah i didn't even realize that so yeah the big island got hit horribly really
devastating lots of damage and
yeah like a foot of rain you know a couple feet of rain just amazing
Fortunately, we didn't get any of that back here.
How did the farm go through the summer?
Farm is doing fine.
Good.
Well, let's talk a little bit about it.
You've recently had an event this past Saturday.
We
actually had two events.
Mark Kup and I presented it.
Blue River Autumn Fest marked it his talk on mastodon hunters and mound builders.
And I presented about my great aunt Lottie Coom Robertson and it was called a girl from Blue River.
And we had a very appreciative audience, lots of local folks.
My piece, I'm going to try to make a little video for our YouTube channel.
because in the spring I was visiting cousins, kum cousins, in Seattle and one of my cousins pulled out this videotape that he took from 1983 and at that time Lottie Kuhn was 80 years old in a wheelchair at the round barn motel and spinning her yarns and so my wife clipped them and we put it into a program so the people in Blue River
heard her and saw her telling these stories about being a girl in Blue River early 20th century.
A childhood completely unlike any childhood today.
She had a pony, she could go anywhere.
Six or seven years old, she had to go to the hospital in Chicago.
When it was done, they put her on a train alone.
Six, seven year old put her on a train, comes back to Blue River.
She could take the train to Lone Rock to play with her cousins.
Stay all day, come back after supper, take the train back.
And then at age 12, she learned how to drive a car.
Just amazing.
A wonder child there,
it sounds like.
So that was the morning.
And then we were double booked that afternoon.
We had artists in the farmhouse.
three Ho-Chunk artists talking about art and their processes and it went very well.
We had another good audience and then at the end of the day the sun cleared and people could hang out on the lawn, eat chocolate chip cookies, have snacks and it was really a wonderful day.
As you look over the crowd Ben, is it local people?
Is it a lot of people coming from a long ways away?
Not too long.
It's a mix.
We get some local people.
Certainly the Blue River crowd was almost entirely local.
We've gotten some people from Madison.
Some, some from Verroqua, Spring Green.
But largely people around there.
A lot of retirees.
Some young people.
You
have some things coming up here in, I always hate to say fall, but it's not going to be quite fall, but we're calling it fall foraging.
What can you tell us about?
Yeah.
So this is a chance to get some free food and you learn what is safe.
What are some of the lookalike plants?
Maybe there's a plant that, you know, part of it is edible and part of it is not.
or you can prepare it some way, you know, if you boil it a bit or saute it.
And the leader is a very dynamic woman named Abby Lehmann.
And she is the kitchen gardener and foraging expert, Ataliessen.
And she's been running these workshops at Ataliessen.
But there, of course, you're going to pay a little more.
And so she will orient people in our
19th century farmhouse where we have a lot of our gatherings.
And then people will go into our west wood lot, which has never been clear cut.
Some big old oak trees there.
And she will take about 20 people and show them what to eat, what not.
And I think she's planning to prepare a little treat at the end too.
Can you give us some examples of some of the things that she
picks?
I remember sweet Cecily.
I walked with her last fall.
Sweet Cecily was one.
That's the one I remember most, but she knows it all.
She's an expert.
It always makes me wonder the first people to
try something.
Oh, no, that ain't going to
work.
Don't eat that uncle.
Uncle Rupert did or, or I'm thinking it's the kids, you know, kids will just put stuff in their mouth.
Oh, well, they ate those berries.
Let's watch that one.
And I've noticed, uh, you know, in the last few years that there are lots of edible mushrooms that.
I would never even have, I'd be like, no, don't stay away from them.
You know, stay away from them.
They're poisonous, but a lot of people know what they're doing
out there.
Yes.
I don't think she's going to cover mushrooms as much as other things.
And that is Saturday, September 12th at one PM.
And you need to register and you register at our website, crosscurrentsheritage.org.
You scroll down to the post that says 2026 fall events, click on that and then
find that event and there's a button to push to register.
So hopefully people will do that.
Is there a number?
Is there a limit of people?
It'll be 20.
Yeah.
She doesn't want any more than 20.
Okay.
So and I think we've got about five or six already signed up.
So
September 12th, a special day.
And then I know you're going to be doing some old house tours.
Yes.
And these are September 19th and 20th at three.
October 4th at 10 you register the same place our website crosscurrentsheritage.org and go down to that fall events and this is not your typical tour partly because I'm the fifth generation to live in that house
And we have these artifacts that we can pass around, or you can handle, or you can smell.
So I like to say that you will see, hear, touch, feel, smell, and even taste history.
And I choose, we could, it's one of those situations where I've seen other
friends do tours of it, and it's just overwhelming because there's too many things.
So I've, again, sort of curated it.
Okay, what is an object that has a story attached to it?
Stories from the family, either from John Coombe, the settler who settled it in 1838, or his sons, or grandchildren.
And so every object I talk about is connected to a story, to a person.
And so you get to know a few of the family members, not everybody.
And there are some ghosts, not real ghosts, but some of John Coombs children who died young and their death haunted the family.
So there's those stories too, which are suitable to October and September, I suppose.
What about the objects?
I'm guessing there are quite a few of them that are extinct, right?
That people have no clue what they are.
Yes.
And we actually have a on our YouTube channel.
Roger Bailey from Muscaday discusses several tools.
There are two short videos where we try to stump him by showing him tools and he'll talk about how they were made and where and when.
Yeah and that's actually very fun for children to show them something and say well what do you think this is for?
And a lot of times they have no clue because it might be to help you darn socks.
or an iron without a plug, you know, that sort of thing.
It's amazing that your forefathers, you know, they chose to keep some of those things.
Were they hoarders in their day?
I think they were.
There's a story about Lottie one time as a girl going to the farm and I don't remember who was there with her.
It might have been another of the younger generation.
They said, let's clear some of this out.
The old folks were
gone to an event and so they just emptied the basement and attic and all this stuff had it on the lawn you know this is all junk and the old people came back and said put it back put
it back good thing they did
right yes and no because Bruce and I are still sorting through stuff we haven't seen everything Bruce is my brother we still haven't seen everything in there
Why do you think the the buildings have survived because there are a lot of structures that were built around that time that didn't make it?
Well, it's that old post and beam for one thing and then just a lot of care.
But then getting back to Roger Bailey, this master carpenter from Muscaday, we say he's saved four of the five buildings at one point.
We had to, with the old parlor, my mother had reprinted the wallpaper, taken a scrap of it, it was falling off the walls, and it must have been right around the time of scanners, maybe 2000 or 1999 or something, sent it off to a wallpaper company, and they had to guess at the colors it was so faded, and they reprinted it.
But we didn't want to put it up, because in the middle of the parlor there was a big sag in the ceiling,
cracks in the walls.
And Roger, having worked on these old buildings in that area for 40 years, he knew just what to do, which was put in steel girders.
Because when it was built, there was a upstairs wall five feet away from the downstairs wall.
So that was causing the sag.
That upstairs wall was pulling it down and then pulling the joists out of the ends.
So he knew to put these steel girders in and then he took all the plaster down and saw that the lath had not been overlapped.
They probably you know some teenage boys or something putting up the laugh and the seams lined up so the plaster is gonna crack So he went to the store to buy it laugh, you know eight foot laugh Not available Only like little four foot lengths He ended up making laugh in his basement over the winter in his shop
in his spare time.
Yeah, and then we got a
restoration plasterer who had worked on the Capitol in Madison.
She did the plastering and then we got a third or fourth generation wallpaper person to put it up.
So the parlor really looks like it would have in 1860s.
The houses were self-built lots of times, but a lot of times they had additions that were added on.
Is this house, does this house?
It does.
The kitchen is added on.
It was just a porch and then a summer kitchen and then
a porch, but other than that it's the same footprint, no big additions.
But this tour, we do a little bit outside and then we come in, we can see the privy, the smoke house, the outhouse I should say, the smoke house, and then you come in and you see the family room, that parlor.
is kind of the climax.
And you also get to look into the master bedroom where some of the original wallpaper is still up.
So you can see just how faded it was.
I'm guessing it had a pretty good roof over the years too.
That's the other key
to keeping a
building,
right?
Yes.
We've been pretty good about that.
And that was one thing we asked Roger to do.
And he said, oh, I'm too old.
But he'd done so much work inside.
I think he got some prices from some young guys.
And he said,
I can save you money, but I think he also felt like I'm not going to let some young guy put up a bad roof and then all the plastering and everything I've worked on is gets ruined.
So he did it himself, but he had a lift.
But he did the end though.
So the roof is a good 30, 40 year roof with, I forget the type of the force of wind it can withstand.
He got the best shingles we could get.
So that house should stand for more generations
than
it sounds like.
And I know you're also talking about the school program.
We've talked about that touched on in the past, but you're excited to be bringing young people to that house.
Yes, we want them to feel proud of where they live.
And as you know, you don't really know yourself if you don't know where you came from and your history, but also to realize
Again, how fast things have changed, you know, you just I mean some of my cousins use the outhouse, you know, there was no Toilet in there until the 1950s.
There was no bathroom in there until the 1950s.
When did you get electricity?
Do you know
I think that I don't know not exactly sure I think in that house it was in the 50s also because my mother remembers Visiting her uncle will and it was all kerosene lamps and
and candles and of course the soot from those you know stained the roof and the ceiling so so for these kids it's yeah getting a sense of that but also that there's this history right in their backyard because the site was also the site of a Native American village actually probably several villages and then right across the road is Wanik's bird man bird mound
Five miles to the east is Frank's Hill.
So you know that for Thousand years, maybe several thousand people have been living there and that's something we can all be proud of because it's We're part of that human community that has lived there.
I think maybe I've asked you before but students Impressed I'm sure by this but what what are they usually what really gets to them when you show
more?
Well, we've done high school and
the ick value is always pretty impressive.
You get a response when you bring out a chamber pot, you know, and talk about the dead of winter, you know, and... Ick factor, okay.
Yep.
Are you really going to go out there to that privy, you know, in a dead of winter?
You just got a pee, you know?
So show them that or... Yeah.
Oh, we have a cannonball and the little kids just...
are awed by that.
There's a old dinner bell for calling in the workers or I suppose for emergencies and people can get to ring that.
So those are things.
So we have set up with Riverdale Elementary that every fall we get their teachers over during their institute days last week of August and tell them what we're going to be doing
in the spring so they're prepared they can even teach some of it ahead and then in the spring when the kids are starting to get a little restless is when they do the field trips and we're also setting up a kind of outdoor classroom well in an outbuilding a former hog house we're going to put in a classroom so we can split the group in two and have two different activities
or two different speakers.
And that way in the house, we maybe only have 10 kids or so at a time.
Is there plans for welcoming other school districts too as well?
Yes.
We're going to try to set this up with Riverdale first.
Riverdale High School came in the fall, in the spring.
And Dan Pulvermacher, who's the history teacher at Richland Center, he's on one of our boards and he, we're going to try to get his students this spring too.
Um, and then, yeah, start opening it up to, uh, Bosco bell and, um, various, whoever wants to come.
Yeah.
That's great to be able to see that history.
face-to-face yes maybe it maybe it hits home to him a little bit more
I think it definitely does and it's also just such a beautiful spot on this terrace looking over the river valley it's just a it's been a gathering place for thousands of years who's a gathering place for our family and continues to be a gathering place
well Ben you recently got to ride a canoe yes
back
home didn't you
yes in June we got a invitation from the Ho Chunk Nation
Bill Quackenbush, who has since retired, it was one of his last things.
He was given, the nation was given a big cottonwood tree and they made a dugout canoe out of it where you dig it and then they burn it and dig some more and burn.
And the nation was having a canoe ride about three or four days, I forget how many days, from Portage
to the Mississippi River and he invited us to join from Muscaday to Port Andrew and there was a whole flotilla of canoes and kayaks and then this dugout and we all took turns paddling the dugout for a little bit and then when they it was a mix of Ho-Chunk other Native Americans and Euro-Americans for one of a better term.
Real community mix.
and we got off at Port Andrew and then the whole crew came up to our farmhouse and took a tour and we got to tell them what we're doing with cross currents and it was really great and great to meet some of these people and always good we feel to have the Ho-Chunk on the land telling their stories but it's it's complicated because we tell our story and that's their nightmare you know so
But
we feel it's better to be open about it rather than sweep it under the carpet.
Well, it's all a part of history.
Exactly.
And that it adds to the richness and understanding what humans do to each other, good and bad.
Because John Coombe, there are some stories where it's very friendly with the Ho-Chunk and then others where he's trying to move them along.
His house was burned.
A couple of
times.
He had two cabins burned, yeah.
Yeah.
And didn't let it stop him.
I don't know if I had two cabins burned, whether I'd go back and build a third.
Yeah.
What was your first clue, right?
Yeah.
How long did it take you as far as a canoe ride?
How long of a ride was it then?
That's not too long.
Maybe two and a half hours or so.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good.
When you're on the river, do you kind of like close your eyes and imagine what it was like for the early settlers?
Oh yeah.
Well, thanks to the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway, you can really get lost because leaf on you don't see
Anything, I mean, there are houses that were grandfathered in, but they're long stretches where it's just wild.
And we saw eagles.
I've seen kingfishers out there.
It's, it's really magical.
I'm sure it is.
Well, a lot of things coming up this fall, um, you know, and I know you're going to do some storytelling a little bit later on this fall.
Yes.
October 17th.
We have real down home storytelling then backport storytelling.
And we're bringing in a professional.
named Jim May who grew up on a farm in northern Illinois.
His father was a farmer and I think he was the youngest son so he was like his father's shadow and his father was a horse trader also and Jim is really a professional.
I met him first in Hawaii.
I think I saw him two or three times.
The state library would fly him over because he's such a well-known storyteller.
He's also won Emmys.
He's a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee.
In fact, he's going to be there again this year.
So he'll be the featured storyteller.
He'll tell at the beginning at the end.
We'll have some music in between because I like
I've seen a lot of storytelling and sometimes they go story to story to story and you don't have time to let it sink in.
So it's nice to have a bit of music in between kind of a palette cleanser, let it seep in.
And then in between we'll have a local teller named Cecilia Farron and she grew up on a century farm and she tells a very beautiful poignant story about her father and home baked bread.
And our goal is, I don't think I'm giving too much away, to start a loaf baking in the kitchen at just the right time so that when all the storytelling is done, you've got that smell and we slice up the bread, put some butter, jam, whatever, and everybody gets a taste of that.
So there's that example of tasting history.
Definitely.
And that's coming up in October.
We'll have you back and you can tell some of your own stories maybe.
Yes, that would be great.
Give us a little pregame show
for that.
That would be
great.
Great.
And so again, you want to make sure that people pre-register if they're interested in the fall foraging.
Or any of our events, you go to crosscurrentsheritage.org, scroll down to the post that says,
2026 fall events, click on that.
And then all the events are individually listed and described.
And there's a button for each to sign up.
Fall time is your favorite time, I think at the center.
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
Thanks for coming in, Ben.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Ben Moffat joining us, the Cross Current Heritage Center at Tipasaki Farm near Blue River.
And again, check out their website and their socials for the upcoming events.
We'll be back with more coming up on the morning show.