Williams
Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a three-part series on local access TV.
“Chasing Down Madison Brown”
Again, we have a young lady who tours the country, interviewing in the heartland of America. Madison Brown was educated as a lawyer in Florida. She is a graduate of Stetson University, but her heart and desire is meeting citizens like you and me, who make up Americana. She has visited many lighthouses in the east, farmlands and the food produced, done stories on how that food is processed and winds up on our tables. She speaks with the fruit pickers and those who deliver piglets on large pig farms. A very interesting program – she visited a large commercial dairy where they milk 4,300 cows a day. This farm has a huge section devoted strictly to birthing and nursery, as they deliver 25-30 calves a week, year-round.
The facility is immaculate. The amazing thing, to me, was a huge carousel-type milking parlor where the cows stand side by side in a huge circle, about 75 feet in diameter, and this carousel revolves. There are probably 75 head in this circle being milked at one time. The milk is separated, pasteurized, some diverted to a cheese factory – laid out like an assembly line. The manure is processed into dried material and sold as fertilizer.
This is typical of Madison Brown’s programs. It is true insight into what makes the economy revolve and keeps food for you and me on the table.
A visitation she made to a Texas rattlesnake roundup was one that I was reluctant to watch at first! But it was so very educational and well done about the good that comes from venomous rattlesnakes. In this show, the snakes are rounded up and gathered in a stall about 30×30 feet, with walls about 3 feet high. There were hundreds of diamondback rattlers, and they are milked for their venom, which is used in the medical field.
To show her grit, she wore heavy boots and chaps. The pant legs were duct-taped to her boots, and she and a snake handler walked among the snakes. The snakes moved away from them, but did not strike.
An in-depth orientation was given by the snake handler on the characteristics of the diamondback, sidewinder, and timber rattler. I’m not particularly a snake lover, but I deeply respect the area in which they live.
In past articles, you may have read about my visits to my roots in Montana, which is snake country. It does not possess the snakes that you find in the south, like copperheads and water moccasins. I remember, as a boy, each time I visited my grandmother, the first few days I was very cautious, thinking there was a rattler hiding behind every bush. But as days go by, and you don’t see a snake, you start to just enjoy the fresh air and blue sky of Montana. But always, in the back of your mind, you know this is snake country.
My cousin Danny, a year older than me, and I would go up into the hills behind my grandparents and hunt rattlesnakes. At one time I had a whole jar of rattlers.
All things from childhood!
I highly recommend the above programs. They are wholesome, free of political slander, and filled with good people that we meet along the way. And the hosts and hostesses are happy and it is very obvious they enjoy what they are doing, bringing stories of America to the TV viewing public.
Chasing Down Madison Brown is available for South Lane. Times vary. You can find the program listed on the website. She started the program in 2017, and is in her fourth year.
At the end of the 3rd season, she was very much pregnant, and still forging ahead with fishing trips and doing things that we all enjoy. And like the hostess of Small Town Big Deal, she enjoys eating! And showing America the various foods of various nationalities throughout the U.S.
When these programs end for the evening, you can be assured of a happy feeling, and not depression.
