• Clear Creek Wood Bank served 402 families

By Peder Schaefer
Buffalo Bulletin
Via Wyoming News Exchange

BUFFALO — For more than 50 years, Jack Pehringer has taken his pickup truck deep into the Bighorn Mountains, where he has collected firewood to help heat his home.

But this year, Pehringer took a different tack — he went to the Clear Creek Wood Bank.

“I’m 79 years old, and it’s a little hard to go backwood anymore,” Pehringer said, sitting at home with his wife, Peaches.

The first year of the Clear Creek Wood Bank was a roaring success, as generous donations of logs, hundreds of volunteer hours and smart advertising led to the distribution of more than 60.3 cords of cut and split wood to those in need from across Wyoming.

For those keeping track, 60.3 cords of Bighorn-cut lodgepole pine is enough to heat around 24 1,500-square foot homes all winter, using wood as the primary heat source. The average residential monthly heating bill was more than $150 in Wyoming last December and January, according to Montana-Dakota Utilities. 

Burning firewood helped homeowners save money during an especially cold Wyoming winter.

Kelly Norris, the former District 5 state forester and now the interim state forester for the state of Wyoming first came up with the idea for the project. Local logger Joe Landsiedel helped turn it into reality when he offered to donate three loads of wood he had cut in the Bighorn Mountains.

“In Wyoming, we have a subset of the population who have been struggling to keep their houses warm for years,” said Norris, who has a long working relationship with Landsiedel and is the daughter of Paul Muum, who also helped run the wood bank. “We also have a population that, as they get older, they are no longer able to physically do the work of cutting down trees, hauling it, bringing it into town and splitting it.”

Norris said that often during her time as a district state forester, people called the office asking where they could access firewood. After years of working with the Bread of Life Food Pantry in Buffalo, she decided that there should be a place to find heating for homes too.

“It’s about not having to choose between heating and eating,” Muum said.

Families from across Wyoming came to pick up the wood on Tuesday afternoons, when the bank was open. While many families from Buffalo took advantage of the resource, people from Story, Gillette and Sheridan also stopped for wood there. 

A rotating group of more than 20 volunteers helped distribute and load the wood in smaller, one-seventh of a cord increments, that families could take once per week.

Brad Johnson, a disabled veteran, and his wife, Elizabeth, heard about the wood bank from Muum.

“My back would not allow me to do that,” Johnson said. “To go and get wood and cut it into pieces, and split it and all that.”

Every week they drove down from Banner, where they live, to Buffalo, where volunteers helped load their one-seventh of a cord allotment into the back of their truck. The couple has a 30-gallon wood stove that helps heat their home and keep utility costs down.

“Johnson County is lucky to have a wood bank, and they are lucky to have the people who are volunteering to help with that too,” Johnson said.

Over the winter, 402 families visited the wood bank. 

According to data kept by the wood bank, 45% of the families were retired, 26% had a veteran in the family, another 10% were unemployed and 8% had a family member with a disability. Some weeks, more than 30 families showed up.

While the wood bank accepted donations in exchange for wood, some people did not have much to spare.

“One gal brought us cookies all the time,” Muum said, laughing. “Really good chocolate chip cookies.”

Landsiedel, the logger, donated over $15,000 worth of wood, while the 440 volunteer hours to split the wood amounted to nearly $11,000 in donated labor. Volunteers Mike Pertile and Liz Knap took the lead in splitting the 60.3 cords, according to Muum.

“I don’t want to just talk about stuff; I want to get it done,” Landsiedel said. He told Norris that if she wanted to go ahead with creating the nonprofit and organizing the distribution, he would “make it happen.”

And he did. Landsiedel and his crew cut the wood in the spring and let it dry all summer, before helping deliver it behind the KOA.

Aside from a couple of small donations, Landsiedel was the only one to make a large donation to the wood bank, but Norris hopes that changes next year.

The wood bank plans to continue operating from the same location near the KOA. With so much interest this past winter, Norris said she is hoping to be able to distribute at least 100 cords next winter and is looking to coordinate with private landowners and donors to make that happen.

Norris said the organization is looking for grant funding for next year.

“It was one hell of a thing, through the blizzards and everything,” Muum said. “We are looking forward to doing it next year with even more wood.”

“It was wonderful; it was the greatest thing they’ve ever done,” said Pehringer, who said he saved hundreds on gas alone because he no longer had to drive deep into the mountains.

“It’s a good thing for old people, is all I can say,” he said.

People interested in donating to the Clear Creek Wood Bank to support next year’s efforts can mail checks to P.O. Box 755 Buffalo, WY or reach out to donate at clearcreekwoodbank@gmail.com.