(upbeat lively music) - Celebrating vibrant people, captivating places, and remarkable things.

This is "Living West Michigan."

(upbeat lively music) - [Announcer] Celebrating our vibrant community together, powered by your dedicated support.

Thank you.

(upbeat lively music) - We start today in Belding, Michigan, where one goat farmer is living out her dream, sharing her love of animals with the community.

Dream Goats offers West Michiganders a chance to join the herd, taking part in goat hikes, goat cuddles, and even making your own goat soap.

I took a tour with head herds woman, Leah, to explore.

(gentle upbeat music) (goats bleating) So we are here at Dream Goats here in Belding at the farm here with lots of friends, and Leah Sienkowski is here.

Leah, I know you from Ada when you were farming goats then to graze the grass at, what was it, Ada Elementary or what were you doing there?

- Yeah, Ada Christian.

Yeah, so we were part of the outdoor education team there, basically.

So the goats did some land clearing, and taught the kids about chores, and that sort of thing.

So yeah, we had kind of a fun five plus years of school era with a bunch of elementary school students.

So the goats came very well socialized before we moved here to Belding.

- Okay, and so how long have you been here in Belding?

Because this is really a part of your dream per se, as to what you're doing because you have a lot more land actually.

You have a lot more goats as well, correct?

- A few, yeah, a few more.

We're slowly, slowly growing, but yeah, there's a lot more space here.

We have like 40 acres to graze at Idlewild, and yeah, we were able to build this beautiful barn a couple winters ago.

So we've been here I think about not quite two years, year and a half, something like that.

- So you raised money through a Kickstarter campaign a while back to pursue your dream.

Tell me about that dream and what it encompasses, and also, why goats?

- Yeah, good question.

A lot of people ask that when I started, but yeah, I just, for some reason I got interested in farming, and agriculture, and food, and I worked on vegetable farms first and then made a kind of crazy leap to get goats and be interested in dairy, and I like the way that goats interacted the land and bring attention to land.

I like how goats can sort of thrive in a lot of areas where a lot of other livestock can't, and goats are just a lot more capricious and a lot more charming than a radish per se.

So I think they are a really good entry point into talking about food and farming.

Yeah, and connecting with people.

I do really like being part of the food system, and so the backbone of the farm is that we are a dairy farm, we're a dairy herd, and so all the decisions that we make and all the things that we offer are all tying into that.

And so we milk the mama goats every morning.

We raise the kids to be really social so that they're easy to handle for volunteers to milk them, and then we sort of plan events and things around the fact that we want the goats to graze on the wild forage all the time, and so we sort of plan our day based on when the goats need to go out to graze, we take them on goat hikes so they can access more of the property that way as well.

- And what's with the goat cuddles?

Because is that kind of therapeutic in nature, as well as just a cute thing to do?

- Yeah, people always ask like, is it natural?

Like, do the goats like cuddling?

But when you experience it, you'll see that they genuinely are pro cuddlers.

Like, they cuddle each other, they cuddle themselves.

They can like wrap their little heads around and like sleep on their own backs.

They just really like to nuzzle and snuggle in, and it's kind of seems to be part of their nature, and then when you introduce them to people and you put people into that equation early on, they tend to really cuddle up with people too, and people seem to really enjoy it.

So to me, like, the farm is all about like, sharing the magic, I guess of like, goat world and whatever that is.

And so yeah, goat hikes, we do a lot of the year spring through winter or summer through winter, I guess.

And then the goat cuddles really were born out of the fact that there's about four to six weeks where the baby goats don't know how to hike yet and don't understand the point, and so we just invited people in to kind of experience the joys of baby goat season before the goat hiking began.

So hikes and cuddles are a big part of what we do, and then we have a little bit of a community milk program or herd share.

So folks pick up the actual dairy product, and then, yeah, I make soap.

So that's another thing that keeps me busy in the off season - I was gonna ask, do you do goat milk soap?

- Yes, yeah, just on a small scale.

Yeah, so a lot of people who come do a goat hike and a cuddle will take some, yeah, buy some soap as kind of like a souvenir or something to remember the experience.

- So you keep busy, and now how many people do you have helping you with this?

Because as we came in and all the goats were surrounding us and whatnot, it's busy and they garner a lot of attention as well they should.

- Yes, yeah, so we also have like a volunteer program.

So I have I think between like 20 and 30 folks that either herd goats or milk goats.

So I kind of have people who do two or three shifts a month that'll come out and get their goat fix and spend some time with the herd, but genuinely like, work and participate in like, the needs of the goats and the needs of the herd.

So yeah, quite a few people have their hands as part of this.

- So let me ask you this personal question.

At this stage, moving from the various points that you've gone through, how happy are you doing this?

- I honestly, I'm always excited to get up and figure out what's happening, and yeah, people say, is it boring?

You have to milk every single morning at 7:00 AM, which I do have some help with, but yeah, I don't know.

To me that's like the only thing that stays the same.

Like, everything is different.

There's always a problem to solve, there's always something new to learn, there's always something that goes wrong, which keeps things interesting, and I like that I can sort of unfold the business as the economy changes, as people's interests are changing, as the herd is growing as well.

So yeah, we're at 23 goats I think now.

- Do you stay busy?

I mean, because I look at the schedule and it's like, you've got the graze, you've got the hikes, you've got the cuddling.

I mean there's so- - Yeah, we've been doing like, 14 hours of cuddles a week for the last six weeks.

I'm kind of like ready to put cuddle season to rest and start on the hikes.

Can't do as many hikes, which is nice, so it slows down a bit.

But yeah, things always keep moving, so there's always something to do.

- And finally, what do you do in the off season?

So winter hits, what happens here?

- I sleep in, I drink my coffee slower, I do a lot of planning.

So it's kind of the time to like, reconsider everything that's happened throughout the year and figure out how to do it better.

A lot of like, onboarding new volunteers, onboarding new herd share owners, things like that.

So sort of administrative stuff, and some rest, which is good.

- Well, thank you very much.

Let's get some goat action.

(gentle upbeat music) Next, we are taking a trip through history.

On the shores of Muskegon, the USS Silverside Museum is the only place in Michigan where you can tour a real World War II submarine.

Kylie and the team take us below deck and into the lives of 1940s soldiers.

- We are in Muskegon now, and I am so excited as a history buff myself because we are at the USS Silversides Museum.

The only place in Michigan where you can go inside and tour a World War II submarine.

Let's dive into this history.

(upbeat lively music) So BethAnn, tell me a bit about USS Silversides.

- Yeah, so the USS Silversides Submarine Museum has been here since 1987 in Muskegon, Michigan, and we have not only a two story museum full of different exhibits, but we also have two different vessels.

So we have our Gato class submarine from World War II, and we also have our US Coast Guard vessel, which is the cutter McLane, and that was a Prohibition era vessel that was brought back out into World War II.

So a lot of rich history here.

- [Kylie] Am I correct in saying that this is the only place in Michigan where people who want to get an up close look, a tour of a vessel like that, a submarine, they can only do it here?

- Absolutely, and not only can you take a look, walk through, really explore below the waterline, you can actually stay on board overnight, which is a really cool experience.

I actually got to do it when I was a bit younger, and it was a ton of fun.

It was a great night's sleep, but also just a humbling experience because you get to be where so many walked before you and in, you know, pretty intense moments.

But the amount of passion, the technology that surrounds it, it's really truly amazing.

- This is one of the favorite spots in the boat for the kids to sleep.

Wartime, they would've had 16 torpedoes up here.

So they would have six in the torpedo tubes, so you got one, two, three, four, and then five, six are below, and they would've had 10 out here.

Right now we have two, but the eight remainders would be side by side next to each other, so the beds would all slide into the center.

This at the end, this was your bed when you slept on board.

- This one right here.

So I got to sleep right next to, you know, this warm torpedo here.

But yeah, it was a great night's sleep.

You know, we had plans of doing all these, you know, crazy things on the sub of, you know, oh, we'll play hide and go seek and we'll do this and that.

This was one of the best nights of sleep that we had all summer long as, you know, staffers at a youth camp, and so this was a great night that we had and something that's definitely memorable for sure.

- And then this is enlisted birthing, so this is where the majority of 'em slept.

- [Kylie] And these are really tight quarters.

- Yep, you got to know your buddy really well sleeping here.

Yeah, officer country was forward battery, and this is underneath this floor is the after battery space.

Most of the ship had AC air conditioning service, but it was more to control the humidity of the boat.

Doesn't really, didn't really cool off the boat very much.

The whole boat is lined in cork to also cut down on condensation.

- What does it mean to have a snapshot of that history right here in West Michigan?

- [BethAnn] Yeah, I think the interesting thing that we're up against now is that generation gap, right?

So a lot of our young folks now, including myself, we don't know everything about World War II.

The opportunity to learn about it really is at museums, and what we wanna do is we wanna be the catalyst, right?

To get people excited and curious about these things so that they can then leave the museum and explore it even more.

So we're just kind of the starting point.

You don't have to be a history buff to come out and see a submarine and learn about it, right?

But we want to engage you and get you excited about learning once you leave our doors.

So I think we have an amazing opportunity here to get the next generation talking about this, and continue to have them understand what happened in history.

- So there's wings on the front of the boat and on the back of the boat so they could adjust how the sub was floating through the water, or on the surface to help it dive or surface faster.

- And would that be turning these then?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- Yep, they would turn 'em as fast as they could.

They have their depth gauge.

So they are constantly adjusting those wheels to make sure that they're staying at the correct depth.

- And what does that mean to you to be able to honor those people who are in the service?

Because I know it's been a big topic right now, how our veterans are treated here in the US, some of the resources that they're fighting for right now.

What does it mean to say, hey, let's not forget the important work that they did?

- [BethAnn] I think that it's having our civilians better understand, you know, what it is about, you know, veterans that they're going through.

So understanding the language to use, understanding, you know, their trials and tribulations is really important, and there's so much to the military world that civilians just don't, they don't know, they don't get to see, and we'd like to unveil that just a little bit more so that they do feel supported when they come home, or even when they retire.

- And I know that you have so much here.

It is a huge museum and then you have vessels outside.

What is your favorite portion?

- Ooh, so I think my favorite portion right now is looking at our remotely operated vehicle programs.

So ROVs, and they're actually submersible.

So they go under the water, the kids get to put 'em together and even some adults, and so it's really cool to watch them learn and figure out, you know, buoyancy and how to keep it down under the water, and move it around.

That's really neat to see, and then for them to actually understand the concept that the big huge vessel outside the submarine does the same thing, or did the same thing.

And so that's really cool to see them connect right in the moment of going this is what that did.

Just a lot of fun things happening here at the museum.

(upbeat bright music) - With swinging monkeys, grazing zebras, and huge hippos, the John Ball Zoo is a trove of captivating experiences waiting to be discovered.

Join Shelley as she takes us on an exclusive journey behind the scenes, delving into the secret lives and habitats of our favorite animals.

- Ever wonder how the food's prepared for the Pygmy hippo?

Let's go behind the scenes here at the John Ball Zoo.

- Essentially, what I do is manage all of our animals' nutrition.

So what we call the commissary is essentially the zoo's kitchen for all of our animals.

- [Shelley] Because they have to eat.

- They do.

- And they have to have special diets, many of them?

- [Shakira] Every single day.

Most of them have to eat and they do have very specialized diets, many of them even have their own special type of formulated feeds that we order in, and they eat all sorts of different fruits and vegetables as well.

- So how did you learn this craft?

- I went to school to essentially become a zookeeper.

So I knew I wanted to work in a zoo for quite a while, and then from there I ended up here at the John Ball Zoo working in our commissary, and I've stayed here for quite a while.

- [Shelley] So let's take the Pygmy hippo for example.

All right, you've walked in at eight in the morning.

How do you prepare the meal?

- [Shakira] Every animal has their own diet sheet.

We have them all in our computer system.

- [Shelley] According to their names?

- According to their names, yeah, they have their own individual identification number as well.

From there, our prep consists of pulling all the produce that they might need, reading our ingredient list off the chart, and measuring everything out to the gram.

So their diets are all pretty specific.

- What are they eating?

- [Shakira] They do eat a lot of lettuce.

That's definitely the bulk of their produce diet.

Cucumber, they do celery as well, and then sweet potato and carrot are the regulars, and then here and there, their keepers can actually request other food items a few times a month for different enrichment.

So something they don't get every day, so maybe it's something like a big melon that can float in their pool, something interesting for them to interact with.

- And of course, this is seven days a week, 24 hours a day?

- Essentially, yeah, essentially.

We have someone here even on the holidays, even on our own birthdays sometimes just to make sure that everybody's fed and well taken care of.

- [Anna] My name is Anna Kohns, and I am the grounds and warehouse manager at John Ball Zoo.

- Wow, well, by the look of the grounds, you're doing a pretty darn good job.

Congratulations on this gig.

- Well, thank you so much.

We have a great time taking care of everything behind the scenes and all of the guest facing areas, so we have our hands full, but it's a beautiful, beautiful place and a beautiful job.

- [Shelley] What do you do for the animals?

- [Anna] For the animals, most of what we do has to do with moving products throughout the zoo, and so we have the privilege of delivering the animals' diets every single morning.

- All right, give me an example.

How do we deliver a lunch to the meerkat?

- Everything actually gets delivered in the same way.

Very first thing in the morning, it will be packaged up by our wonderful commissary team, and what we do is we load it onto our vehicles, and we take it throughout the zoo, and we place it usually in an internal holding for the zookeepers to deliver on schedule.

- [Shelley] And how about for the pygmy hippo?

- [Anna] Well, the pygmy hippos have a lot of different dietary things.

We see the commissary make very special things for like occasions, like a birthday or things like that that I've seen bring out.

But for the hippo, we take it right to the back of their enclosure, and we deliver it.

And like I said, the zookeepers do feed out the snacks to the animals, but we just make sure that it's there in the morning for them.

- What else do you do to your grounds to either make the grass look extra green, or make things look extra pretty?

- We have a wonderful horticulture team with a lead horticulturist that has a ton of experience in making things look beautiful all year round.

So there's a lot of consistent care that goes into just beautifying the spaces.

A lot of it is a lot of natural beauty, so the plants have been planted in a way where they sort of bloom in a staggered fashion, where every single part of the season there are different things that will be in season and in bloom.

Other than that, we just maintain lawns like you would probably at a golf course.

We aerate, and we mow, and we weed whip.

- [Shelley] What about like the spider monkeys?

Their land needs horticulture, correct?

- Correct.

All of the inside of our enclosures are taken care of by our horticulture team, and then the cleaning and the maintaining is done by the zoo keeping team.

The spider monkey island itself it gets emptied and pressure cleaned quite often to make sure that water stays clean and nice for everybody.

- What about where your great lion lives?

- He lives, well, he's outside during the day, as you can all see, but he stays indoors during the evenings as well.

- And again, there's attendance, there's attending to his decor as well.

- [Anna] Yep, yep, and also managed by our horticulture team.

- [Shelley] What do you get out of this opportunity?

- I love seeing how the behind the scenes works to serve our guests, so all of the smiles that happen during the day are really supported by what happens kind of behind the scenes, and and what we do to make sure that everything is clean and nice so that it's not distracting.

When a guest comes in, they can really have their focus set on our animals and on our mission, and what we're really trying to express, and that they never would be distracted by a trash can that's too full, or a grass that's too long, or anything like that.

- And what can your visitor do to make your job easy?

- Visiting the zoo, if you wanna make the waste stream recyclers job really easy is to make sure you're looking at the labels of the thing that you're eating or drinking out of and when you're disposing of it, to make sure that it matches all of our marked bins, whether it be the compost, the landfill, or a recycling receptacle.

It's a huge help to us to not have to sort it on the back end.

- And don't feed the penguin.

- Certainly not.

No.

The penguins get fed plenty on their own.

- [Jennifer] "Living West Michigan" takes a few seconds now to show off some wonderful things happening via local organizations in our community.

Take a look.

(upbeat lively music) Warm weather is here, and West Michigan is blooming.

Today we welcome back J Schwanke, who is showing us how to sprinkle some flower power into our homes and/or our workspaces.

Let's see what stunning arrangement he's crafting on today's edition of "Living in Bloom."

(upbeat bright music) Okay J, is it Gerbera or?

- Gerbera.

- Gerbera.

- Both are correct.

What's not correct is Gerber.

- Gerber.

- It's not a Gerber daisy.

- Right.

- Right?

It is G-E-R-B-E-R-A.

- Right.

- So Gerbera or Gerbera.

- Gerbera.

- In England they call it a Gerbera.

- Gerbera.

- So they have a soft G. - We're not gonna confuse it.

We're gonna stick with it.

- And the Gerberas come from Jersey, in England, so it's Gerberas from Jersey.

So that's, yeah, it's fun.

- And I'll let you say that.

- Exactly, exactly.

- What are we doing?

- What we're gonna do today is I thought it would be fun for us because you love these flowers.

They're happy flowers.

- Absolutely.

- They come in such a wide variety of colors.

So what I did was I took waterproof scotch tape, and I just ran a grid over the top of this so that it will hold our flowers in place.

So when we stick it in there.

- [Jennifer] Places perfectly in the water.

- Right, and they're holding 'em in the water, they're sitting 'em up high.

Now, one more secret.

Because our Gerberas have these crazy fuzzy stems, when they go down into water, they create bacteria very quickly because of that fuzziness.

So we use what we call as a gerbera pill.

Okay, and it's a little pill like that.

It's for a liter of water.

There's two liters in here, so I'm gonna put two of those in.

They last for three days.

It's like a little chlorine tablet like you'd have in your swimming pool.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- And that helps them.

- It helps keep the water, and it's gonna make these straight, and stiff, and strong.

- Okay, and very vibrant looking, and really pretty centerpiece.

- Exactly, and so I think we should make it an ombre effect.

So we've got orange, we'll go to the gold in the middle, and then we'll have the yellow on the end.

- [Jennifer] Do you want me to start over here?

Where do you want?

- Sure, sure.

Let's meet in the middle.

- We'll meet in the middle.

- Let's meet in the middle - With the gerberas.

- Right, right, right.

Exactly.

I love it.

You know, I think that it makes people so happy, and one of my favorite things to do is to make flowers with friends.

- Yes.

- Because it's kind of like cooking with friends, you know, is that, you know, it's just a time for you to do things together and play.

You get to talk, you get to share, you know, stories, and I think that that's the best part.

- It is the best part.

- It's just the best part.

- And it's kind of a, you know, bringing everybody together kind of thing.

You can almost have like a flower party kind of thing.

- Of course you could, right?

- That would be fun.

- It's wonderful.

- Like part of the dinner thing.

People could create.

Didn't you say, don't people bring flowers somewhere, and then that's like a gift or something somewhere?

- In Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, people always bring flowers when they come for dinner.

Okay, and so then in the US some people, Martha Stewart loves to tell everybody don't do that because the hostess has to make the flower arrangement then and she's busy with everything else, but I'm of the opinion that we help her.

- Exactly.

- And we help make the bouquet together.

So it's a wonderful opportunity for us to do that.

- And something that kind of kicks off your dinner party.

- Sure, sure, sure.

So it's a fun way to do it.

Oh, see, you got a couple more.

- Oh, I got one more.

- Yeah.

Let's go with all with them.

- Fill it in there.

- [J] Let's go with all of them.

There you go.

I think one more down here on your end.

Oh, right there.

- [Jennifer] Absolutely.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Oh my gosh.

- And there's one more still sitting there.

We're gonna go right there.

- We're gonna just put it in there.

- We're gonna go right here with it.

- [Jennifer] Beautiful.

Look at that.

- [J] See, look at how that color transcends across.

- That is absolutely beautiful.

- We can still visit over the top of it.

I think it's a wonderful way.

- [Jennifer] That is gorgeous.

I mean, what a beautiful centerpiece.

- [J] And it was fun, we made it together.

- I know.

Exactly.

See, that's what we're talking about.

- Exactly.

- The whole flower thing.

- It all goes together.

- Flower power?

Is that what they call it?

- Flower power.

Sure, exactly.

Thanks.

(upbeat lively music) - More content can be found on WGVU's YouTube channel, or the PBS app.

Be sure to also check out wgvu.org/livingwestmichigan, where you can submit ideas for future features on the show.

I'm Jennifer Moss, and this is "Living West Michigan."

(upbeat lively music)