Fifth generation winemaker Dustin Heineman talks about growing up on South Bass Island and operating the family vineyard. His great-great grandfather Gustav, a German immigrant, began planting grapevines in the 1880s. Heineman’s Winery has been in business for 137 years, produces more than a dozen varieties of wine and is the oldest family-owned winery in Ohio. He also covers the 1897 discovery of Crystal Cave, the largest known geode in the world, and how it saved the family business during Prohibition.

Let’s visit the bustling Erie-Ottawa International Airport in Port Clinton and chat with Kara Clifford, chief pilot and director of training at Griffing Flying Service. We’ll also talk to her father-in-law Tom Griffing, whose family founded the company in 1937.The airline owns or operates 17 aircraft, including several jets,and is a vital link between the Lake Erie Islands and the mainland – especially in the winter months after ferries that service the islands shut down.

For decades Mona Rutger has operated Back to the Wild in Castalia, a few miles from Sandusky Bay. She and her dedicated staff at the wildlife rehabilitation center have taken in and released thousands of animals, including many Lake Erie birds such as eagles, swans and other feathered creatures but also including rabbits, possums and other woodsy residents. Let’s visit and chat with this advocate for all wild animals.

Catawba Island resident Cathy Coffman has turned her hobby, scouring beaches for old glass, into a long-time business on Kelleys Island. She uses beach glass and stones of various geological origins from island beaches to create one-of-a-kind earrings and pendants. Let’s visit with Cathy to find out more about beach glass, how to find it and what can be done with it.

While most people think of taxi cabs as a big city thing, on Lake Erie’s Kelleys Island, taxi cabs are the only thing for folks who don’t drive or have had a few adult beverages. The ins-and-outs of this family-run business, Island Rides,are irritating, amusing and heartwarming. Let’s talk to Bobby and Natasha Skeans and find out more....

Kenny Kreutzfeld began working on vintage wood boats when he was a kid. And now more than 50 years later he’s still at it, operating K & M Restorations in Marblehead. From turn-of-the-century boats to more “modern” Chris Crafts and Lymans from the 1950s and 1960s, he tears them apart and puts them back together, troubleshooting and eliminating the number one problem with wooden boats: leaks. And some of the industrial equipment he uses is more than a century old. Let’s visit his workshop and talk about old wood boats.

Alberto Rey fled Cuba with his parents as a child. More recently he retired as a distinguished professor from SUNY –Fredonia. The painter, Orvis-endorsed fly fishing guide and conservationist talks art, kids, water and fishing from his studio on the banks of Lake Erie tributary and steelhead stream, Canadaway Creek in Chautauqua County, New York.

Let’s visit with long-time Kelleys Island resident Vicki Finnegan and Ploy, one of her many “adopted” grandchildren. Ploy (Wassana Prommanat) is one of many international students who visit and work on the island and in the region each year during the summer season as a part of a U.S. Department of State program that allows college students from abroad to live and work in the country temporarily. Vicki takes students under her wing on the island, and they call her “Grandma….”

Dick Carstensen is one of thousands of landowners nationwide who participates in one of several programs that pays for or shares the cost of improving or restoring wetlands or creating new wetlands in critical areas. His 135 acre Jerusalem Township farm near Lake Erie is now about half marsh. He waterfowl hunts there and his wife photographs birds. In this episode we’ll visit with Dick and a friend on the marsh.

Kimberly Kaufman, executive director of Black Swamp Bird Observatory in Oak Harbor talks conservation, birds and the Biggest Week in American Birding, which takes place in early May. Each year tens of thousands of birders flock to northwest Ohio to check out all types of birds including the stars of the show, migrating warblers which pass through the area traveling from the Caribbean, Central and South America to their nesting grounds in Canada and Alaska. She also talks about the recent expansion of habitat conservation in the region.