Bryse Thiboutot (center) stacks logs alongside Sarah Wills-Viega (left) and Linda Shaffer at the Bristol-South Bristol Transfer Station on Oct. 6. Thiboutot is one of a contingent of students from Lincoln Academys IDEAL Program, which provides regular off-campus opportunities for students to volunteer in high-engagement, individualized, and smaller-group learning environments. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
The Bristol-South Bristol Transfer Station was a hive of more than the usual activity on Saturday, Nov. 22 as the Wood Chips, an all-volunteer offshoot of the Community Housing Improvement Project Inc., made a major push to split and stack cords of donated firewood that will provide essential heating assistance in the cold months ahead.
“Neighbors helping neighbors stay safe, warm and dry” is CHIP’s mission statement, and the Wood Chips are playing an increasingly important role in keeping Lincoln County residents warm.
‘Nobody wants to be cold’
“They’re heating their home with the oven or the irons or the space heaters or whatever,” said CHIP board member and Wood Chips volunteer Linda Shaffer of the people they serve. “And somebody from CHIP drives up with a truckload of firewood and they have instant heat, instant warmth once they get that fire going … Everybody in the northern part of this country can identify with that. Nobody wants to be cold.”
New volunteer Stephen Mischel delivered wood to a man who he said was “literally going into town and buying a gallon at a time to try to heat his home.” Mischel has never experienced heat insecurity.
“It just hadn’t occurred to me how much I take things like that for granted, you know?” he said.
“It’s enough to give people a real boost,” CHIP Project Manager Brittany Gill said about the organization’s heating program.
That boost can be critical, she added, for people experiencing a “life crisis or a big life change … And some people count on it year after year.”
Barbara Britt first requested wood last year and will receive another delivery this year.
“Like everybody else I’m going through challenging times,” she said.
The cord of wood she will receive is a difference maker.
“I think the program is absolutely amazing, what they do for the community,” she said. “And the volunteers, they’re all heartfelt. They really care … I think we’re pretty blessed to have them.”
Wood Chips coordinator Jack Meehan has a thousand stories, but the time he delivered to a 10-foot-by-12-foot shed outfitted with a stove pipe sticks with him.
“When I dumped my wood, somebody runs out … grabs a few pieces and runs back in. So you know they had no heat,” he said. “And now this is in December.”
Driving away from that delivery, Meehan said he felt like a part of something important, something bigger than himself.
“But about two miles later I’m going in my head, ‘What are they going to do next month?’” he said.
‘High school kids, they don’t know what back pain is’
Community partners are a huge part of the Wood Chips’ ability to meet their ambitious goals. Larger groups of volunteers from organizations like Kieve Wavus Education, the American Legion, and The Carpenter’s Boat Shop allow them to process wood by the truckload.
“One of the tenets of the apprenticeship program here is service.” said Chelsea Fisher, apprenticeship program director for The Carpenter’s Boat Shop.
Service is a focus for students from Lincoln Academy and Medomak Valley High School as well. The two schools have been known to engage in a friendly rivalry around which one stacked the most wood.
“High school kids, they don’t know what back pain is,” Meehan said.
N.C. Hunt Lumber is another key community partner that, along with the Bristol-South Bristol Transfer station, makes it possible for the Wood Chips to process and store the large quantities of donated wood they receive.
“Jack Meehan and another neighbor of mine came to me several years ago and said we do a firewood program,” said Rob Hunt, president and co-owner of the company. “Next thing I knew I got about an acre of land all set off to the side for him.”
Hunt sees the fruits of that partnership at his lumber yard in Jefferson every time he drives past the rows of neatly stacked firewood.
“I think many of the people in the community, if they realized how some of our community is living, they would be shocked,” Hunt said. “And CHIP is in there doing and helping those people.”
‘If you can skip handling 1,500 pieces of wood once, you’re ahead’
The Wood Chips are hitting a tipping point. After winning a $25,000 grant from the Maryland-based nonprofit Alliance for Green Heat, they are ready to level up. They have a new splitter coming. A planned shed on the N.C. Hunt property will allow the Wood Chips to safely store their equipment.
“That’s going to be a big deal,” Meehan said. “It’s going to get all this stuff out of my yard and out of my garage.”
And an $8,000 conveyor will streamline the process of loading trailers for delivery.
According to Meehan, there are about 1,500 pieces in a cord of wood. “If you can skip handling 1,500 pieces of wood once, you’re ahead,” he said.
But with increasing capacity comes an increasing need for volunteers. The Wood Chips need experienced wood sawyers and splitters and volunteers of all ages to help stack wood. They need volunteers with trucks and trailers to make the deliveries. They need people to take on leadership roles and to help with behind-the-scenes organizational tasks.
“I’d like to see some more new faces, Meehan said. “We’re getting by but I’m concerned … I don’t want to have somebody burn up … because I can’t lose any of them.”
‘Here you get all kinds of folks’
There is a palpable energy among the Wood Chips volunteers when they talk about their reasons for giving up a few hours to benefit their community.
Sarah Wills-Viega is a retired school counselor who missed the sense of community she had when she was working.
“Here you get all kinds of folks,” she said.
Greg Shute, of Alna. has lived in Maine for 41 years, but it wasn’t until he served as a select board member that he realized the extent of poverty in the state.
“I saw the need that’s out there,” he said.
Eleven-year-old Nolan Pendleton is working toward his Citizenship in the Community Boy Scouts badge. Seventeen-year-old Braden Bessey came out for the first time Saturday. He heard about the Wood Chips from his peers at Lincoln Academy.
“I wasn’t really doing anything else,” Bessey said. “I think it’s the right thing to do – the firewood is for people who need it.”
For Thomas Vita volunteering with the Wood Chips helps “keep those in need warm through (the) harsh cold winters in Maine.”
For some volunteers like Shaffer, it’s the opportunity to be outside in the fresh air, to engage in physical exercise, to learn useful skills. Shaffer attended the recent chainsaw safety class led by Tim Libby, of Midcoast Conservancy.
“It’s very frustrating that I can’t get it started,” she said of her first attempt at operating a chainsaw. “But I’ve been doing more pushups.”
Emmet Nunes is one of a number of volunteers from Kieve Wavus who regularly show up in Jefferson.
“We love to come help out when we have a chance,” he said. “The community in Maine really benefits from programs like this. A lot of people need assistance they’re not getting from other sources.”
For longtimer Billy Claflin, “It’s working with wood. It’s working with a chainsaw, it’s working with a splitter … It’s fun to down a tree, limb it all up, like you’re carving a turkey.”
Wood-splitting parties in Pemaquid
CHIP has been around since 1984, when Carpenter’s Boat Shop founders Ruth and Bobby Ives saw a need and formed a coalition between private individuals and local churches to assist low-income residents of central Lincoln County with basic home repairs.
The Wood Chips, like CHIP itself, also began as a grassroots effort.
“I really can’t recall the dates but it’s probably somewhere I’m going to say around 2006 that we actually started gathering whatever dead wood we could find anywhere,” said Bill Schwanemann, who, along with his wife Lorraine and friends Chet Killam and Claflin, got the ball rolling.
Excess wood was shared and initially delivered in snowmobile trailers or the beds of pickup trucks. Eventually Schwanemann purchased a small utility trailer and then a gasoline-powered splitter. He held wood-splitting parties at his Pemaquid property.
As the operation expanded, they worked with CHIP to find more people who would benefit from a delivery. About three years ago, as Schwanemann was approaching 90, CHIP took on the entirety of the operation with Meehan coordinating the growing list of volunteers.
“I’m glad that Jack … has taken it over and expanded it,” Schwanemann said. “He’s doing a super job from what I hear.”
Last year the Wood Chips sawed, split, stacked, and delivered 46 cords of wood to households facing heat insecurity. This year they expect to serve 50 or more.
CHIP services are available to residents of Alna, Bremen, Bristol, Damariscotta, Jefferson, Newcastle, Nobleboro, Somerville, South Bristol, Waldoboro, and Whitefield. The organization can help with one delivery per heating season of heating oil, kerosene, propane, electricity or firewood between Nov. 1 and March 1.
To request heating help, call 380-9276. For more information about volunteering with or donating to CHIP, email info@chipinc.org or go to chipinc.org.
(Bisi Cameron Yee is a freelance photojournalist based in Nobleboro. To contact her, email cameronyeephotography@gmail.com.)
Nolan Pendleton, 11, stacks a piece of firewood at the Bristol-South Bristol Transfer Station on Saturday, Nov. 22. I wish I could split wood, said Nolan who is pursuing a Citizenship in the Community badge with the boy scouts. Operating machinery is limited to volunteers over the age of 18. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
