>>> production funding for common ground is made possible by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund. >>> hi, and welcome to this week's edition of common ground. i'm your host ashley hall. common ground is a new weekly series that highlights northern
and central minnesota culture. each week we'll explore the unique people, places and events that are an important part of our region. each week, common ground videographers, editors and myself will take viewers on a journey of exploration into the
worlds of artd, history and culture. this week, we'll introduce you to curt fisher, a wine maker from walker who shares his knowledge of wine with the community. emily hovelsrud of park rapids creates custom rustic furniture.
and meet nancy williams of brainerd who gives us a sweet >>> we make all kinds of wines, wild grapes, cherries, raspberry, apple, pear, anything anybody will giver -- give me for free, for sure, if i'm going to use fresh fruit. locate the fruit, preferably
free, pick it, freeze it, thaw it again, because that helps break down the cell walls and let's the juice out easier. and then you crush it, add water and the chemicals you need to make the bad bugs not grow and let the yeast grow still, and then add sugar, and you let it
go in an open fermenter for a week or so, and then you strain it out and press it into the big jugs that you see here. what they're doing is sanitizing the inside of the bottles with a sodium solution that sprays up inside, and then they hang them on the bottle tree, and it hangs
them at the right angle to drain them. so the inside of the bottles are all sparkling clean and no bugs in them so we'll be ready to put the wine in them. when you're picking bottles off the still, face around the tree, otherwise it will get heavy on
one side and fall over. so it pivots on its base. just like that. push down. we kind of stumbled on this place, because the community education director and the owner of this place are friends. and we were looking for a place
to offer the class, because you can't do wine on campus, of course. they really wanted to offer a wine class. so i said, why not? and she said, i know ann. so they put their heads together and figured it was just a
wonderful thing. they said as long as the residents can come down whenever they want to, and we said that was great. so that's how that came about. and that's how we happened to be here. >> yeah, that's good.
>> thank you, sir. not yet. okay. got to make sure it's lined up. one bottle of wine. each class is four classes over five weeks. we do the initial class where we put everything together, and a
week later with the fruit, we prep the fruit. with this, we just take it out, and we do a kit wine class, too, and in that one, too, we just take it out of the open fermenters and into the glass, and then we do the stabilizing and stuff.
this is the last class. teaching other people, i guess, and watching them have fun doing it, and getting phone calls from them when they run into something they don't know about. i give them all my contact information, e-mails and phone numbers and all of that, make up
an information packet for them. undoubtedly, almost invariably run into something they don't know about or can't find. and years of experience helps. it's like raising kids. each one is different. it really is. just when you think you've got
them figured out, they throw a curve at you, and you've got to >> i'm going to make a four drawer dresser. i'm going to start by making the legs, and straight at some lumber, clean off the bark and make it into something. i'm emily hovelsrud.
i've a full blooded icelander right off the ice, and i do all kinds of furniture, work a lot with customers. i love the nature look, leave what the nature has done. i've been making furniture now for probably about 11 years. i started using my imagination
more just a few years ago. i thought about it for a long time and started trying, and i found out that, hey, there's more ways than one to do furniture, and it doesn't have to be a square box. make it look fun, make it functional, make it a piece of
art that also has purpose. all the furniture i do is made for a carpet. it's for storage, and it's also for the look. working with plain wood gets a little boring. i started studying the grain in the wood, and i wanted to mold
with the grain, show what the wood has. i started oo allowing my mind to work and go with the wood. i wanted to do something different and fun to look at and well built and functional. these will be the sides of the dresser.
i'll have to chop them up and clean them up, shape them a little bit and sand them. peel some bark off. this is my draw knife. it's very, very sharp. it's an awesome tool, though. it saves me a lot of grief. yeah, we got them in here.
that's a good one. i started using the worm carve wood six years ago. those little critters are awesome. i put -- there could be some live ones in here since the bark is stuck. some busy buggers in here.
that's like unwrapping presents. this is my most favorrest part, just to see the different marks that they make. i wish i could see them when they're working. when i have the knots and then the nice carving, i decide if it's going to go the sides of
the dresser or if i'm going to use it for the face, the front. the doors or drawer fronts. i like to put the pretty stuff right on front where you see it. oh, here's a live one. let's get him. he's moving. i've seen them twice.
it's amazing how much they can do. they can chow away, and you can actually, if you're in a quiet room, you can hear them, just a little crinch -- crunch, crunch. see how little he is. that's what they do. they chew up the wood.
it's kind of hard to get the bark off around the knots. whew, yeah, that's pretty. the dust worms leave behind sticks in there pretty good sometimes. i like to use the wire brush to clean them out. and when i'm looking through the
wood, my piles of wood, and i find different looking things, the character, i set them aside and think about it and maybe in the middle of the night, i wake up and go, yeah, that's what i'm going to do. and i get up in the morning, and i go and study and put the
picture together. it just happens. it just kind of happens. sometimes i find -- it's kind of rare -- where the tree has been injured or a porcupine has chewed a hole or something, and then the tree starts trying to get healthy again, and it makes
really fun shapes. when i find those pieces, i set them aside and make sure they go right where your eye catches it. i like to put the character on the face as much as possible, and i like to keep the branches on as much as i can get away with.
i like to stack the wood so it's not uniformed, it's thick over here and thin over there. i wanted to see the furniture move and it just doesn't have to be boxy. i wanted to bring the grain out and take the squareness away. that's why i cut my legs like
that, and also it puts more dimensions into the piece. it just has so many different surfaces to look at rather than just the flat piece or flat box. so this, to me, it's kind of likenedless fun, and every time you look at a piece, you see a different view or something that
you didn't see yesterday. so it's not boring, and that's what people tell me. they say, you know, this piece is never going to be boring, because i'm always going to find a new something about it, another knot that looks like something.
i think maybe it's the artist in me that wants to see something different, and if the wood isn't -- doesn't look quite the way i want it, then i can cut it and shape it and put the look in that i'm after. yeah, i do a lot of custom orders.
people come to me with their ideas, and i try to make it happen. it's well built. it's made to last, and i will work with people's ideas so the piece is theirs, from their mind, and i get to play with it and make what they're looking
for, and then they can stand by, too, and say, you know, this is what i was looking for, and she makes what i want, and when my customers are happy, i'm happy. i think going out to my wood pile and looking through it and peel the park off. bark off, i call it my gold.
i enjoy that. i can, as i'm going through it think about what i could make with that particular piece of wood. i set them aside. this pile is for something i have in mind. sometimes i start a piece and
i'm not sure so i sit in the shop sometimes for weeks and think about it or i don't have the right piece or i want to look for something different. i think just putting them together or putting the wood -- picking the pieces, putting them together in my mind, and then i
can go and to it. i like standing back when it's done and going, yep, that's what i was looking for. i sell a lot of my furniture on shows. i try to do the higher end shows, do maybe four to five during the summer, and then it's
repeat customers and word of mouth. i went to my friend's house and saw this, and so i don't have to advertise. i don't have it in any stores. it's basically the few shows i do and then custom orders, custom work.
there. cleaned her up. so nobody has to worry about the first. so many people think furniture has got to be like this and everything has got to be the same, it's going to be perfect, and that's all right, too, but i
like the imperfections nature has and just work with what >>> i started about 7 years ago, and i didn't make my own chocolate at the time. i just bought from different companies, and everyone kept saying, do you make your own chocolate.
so finally i decided to start doing it, and i taught myself. this will be the fourth year, and i'm getting pretty comfortable with it. it's chocolate international, et cetera. i died to put the international in there because there were
other chocolate et cetera stores aren't nation, so just to be legal and differentiate myself i put international in there. i do get the chocolate from other parts of the world, so that helps. well, these three -- these trees are very straggly looking trees.
they vary in size, approximately this tall, and they're round shaped like a football, and these trees can only grow under the shade of the rain foretrees. so if the rainforest goes, we don't have chocolate. and then these are called pods. they open up the pods and inside
there's like little -- oh, i don't know. it's like a spaghetti squash, and then on the inside they take out these little knits or whatever and dry them out. normally they're sent to a company that makes the chocolate, and the chocolate
goes through a process of being ground, and it's ground very, very fine, so it gets that real liquidy -- that's how we know chocolate exists, and then they're pressed into these, either blocks or nibs like this. this chocolate is 53% dark. i also use 70% dark.
this comes from colombia. so 70% comes from venezuela that i get. and then i have milk chocolate from belgium. and they come in blocks, and then i just chop it up. chocolate exists in different chemical states, just like
anything else. it has to be tempered so that when it's cooled, it goes back up to a certain temp, depending on whether it's white milk or dark. goes up to a certain temp, down to a lower temp, and then back up to the temp that you dip at.
if it's tempered properly, it will have a shine to it when it's disun, -- done. so when i mold the chocolate or dip chocolates, it has a nice shine to it. so this machine does it for me. otherwise you can to it in a bowl.
in the old world, when they made their chocolate, they heat the chocolate up, but they to it either in the microwave or they put it -- they could do it in the oven, or they could put it on a heating pad and heat it up to that temperature. it's like 120, you know.
it's not very hot, but that just melts the chocolate and gets it up there so that those crystals break down, and then when you go back down to the cool temperature, you know, then they start realigning, and then when you go back up, all of the crystals are in the perfect
state. so i'm putting in chocolate that is already been tempered and left, and then i use it to feed the chocolate that i'm making now. it helps cool down the other if you were doing it in a bowl, you would put in a handful of
chocolate, and that would actually melt right into the bowl of chocolate that you're doing, and then when it's cooled down to the proper temperature, which is about 90, then you take what's left out of the bowl. in here in, this machine, i just put it in a separate
compartment, and it helps cool down that chocolate, and then i take it out. and then it will go back up to the right temperature. i'll do the molds first, and then i'll do the ganash. this is all done, so i'm going to take out what i need for the
ganash, otherwise have to -- i'll have to retemper it. so that will be ready for the ganash, and then i'll do this mold. it's so quiet when the machine goes off. and then i tap it. to get the air off from the
bottom. and then i put it back in. and that's the empty shells for the holes. so i'm going to put this in the back room so that it can cool and harden up. so then the next step is the ganash.
so then we just add this to the so it's just chocolate and cream mixed with ganash, and so i will. really fast. and that is probably it. and then i take this out and put it in a pan. and cover it with saran wrap and
let it sit usually overnight, but then this is the ganash after it sat. and it's still soft, and this is milk chocolate. so then these are pretty easy to roll. and then i take the ones that i've rolled and use my dipping
fork and dip them in the and then i put it on my pan. that would be the chocolate. then this is the cream that i make. i just started making my own cream. i used to buy it all. so i make up a big batch of
cream, and then when the mold is ready and it's all set up inside, put it in here, and then normally i would put these in and let them -- just let the cream stiffen up so i can core them with the -- so i can cover them with the chocolate, push it down in there, and then they're
ready to go. so as soon as the chocolate is ready, we'll put the bottom on. so then i'll just let it set up. i make several different kinds of milk truffles, sometimes pistachio, sometimes has habane, irish cream, cocoa. in the dark i make raspberry.
in the while mocha, and then in the creams, i just started doing those because i had to get a mold that i like, which is this one here. this is easy for me to work and these molds are $25 each. so it's difficult to experiment and not put a lot of money into
it. but i make maple butter, cream, coconut cream, lemon cream, cherry and cherry cream. and then i make turtles. i've started making carm elsewhere they just get rolled rolled -- carmels where they just get rolled up into wax
paper. i do nut rolls usually in the summertime, and then i do marshmallow scarce, peanut butter -- scares, squares, peanut butter cups. teaching myself to make chocolate was really difficult, but after i get to where it's
easy, then i really do enjoy it. at first -- you have to enjoy it to start it to, do this to begin i wake up and can't wait to get but it's painful, you know, just like learning anything. but after you learn it, then it's just fun. >>> thank you so much for
joining us. we hope that you enjoyed tonight's show, and we looked forward to seeing you next week right here on common ground. if you have a segment idea for common ground, please contact us at legacy at lptv.org or call us captioning provided bycaption associates, llcwww.captionassociates.com
>>> to order individual segments or copies of common ground, please call (218)333-3020. production funding for common ground is made possible by the minnesota arts and cultural