A Home-Warming Story

The Waldo County Woodshed brings neighbors together with a common goal

“Imagine a local food pantry or food bank. Replace the focus of food with firewood, and you have a center known as a wood bank.”

“How hard could that be?” wondered Belfast businessman Bob MacGregor when he read those words in a 2014 Bangor Daily News op-ed by researchers from the University of Maine School of Forest Resources.

Sabrina Vivian and Jessica Leahy had plotted 2010 census and other data points on a map of Maine, including where people burn wood and where it’s available. Two spots stood out, MacGregor recalls: Waldo and Piscataquis counties.

MacGregor was in Arizona at the time, but he soon recruited a committed group of volunteers who provided firewood to keep their neighbors warm. Today their Waldo County Woodshed has expanded to nine distribution spots that reduce time to pick up wood – eight in Waldo and one in Knox. Grants from MaineCF’s Waldo County Fund have helped the nonprofit organization purchase equipment and build a system to provide emergency supplemental firewood to households in need.

MacGregor came to the mission with solid wood credentials: a forestry degree from the University of Maine and 25 years of selling equipment to Maine sawmills. His co-founder, Dawn Caswell, also knew the wood world: she had worked at Robbins Lumber and currently manages Maine Grilling Woods in Waldo.

The Woodshed started at Caswell’s business, but moved to Searsmont as the operation grew. Today its distribution sites are run by volunteers and range from transfer stations to Unity College’s McKay Farm in Thorndike. The Searsport shed is run by Bud Rivers, who also donates wood. “He oversaw the robotics team at Searsport High School, so he got those kids involved splitting wood,” says MacGregor. Most of the wood is processed by a local firewood producer, the rest by volunteers.

During winter 2018-2019, the Woodshed provided 170 cords of wood to 145 homes in 32 towns across four counties, totaling over $46,000 in assistance. Wet forest conditions this year limited logging time, so the supply was more limited. This year it will be closer to 130 cords, although a few loads of ash helped extend the season. “We buy logs from loggers at whatever the going rate is,” MacGregor says, “and then we pay the guy to process the wood whatever it costs per cord.”

MacGregor and his team are always looking for new sources of support. “Fundraising is the biggest challenge,” he says. Last year, the sock company Bombas donated 1,200 pairs of socks that Woodshed volunteers offered with wood and distributed to area soup kitchens, food pantries, and the public nursing service.

“Honestly, you’d never know that some of these people have next to nothing,” says volunteer Sonja Twombly, who runs Lally Broch Farm with her husband Sean in Frankfort and coordinates wood pickups. She and MacGregor note how many clients pay it forward, arriving on a Saturday to help neighbors load their cars and refill the bins. “They don’t have money, so they come and put in sweat equity,” Sonja says. “Most of us want to do for ourselves.”

The firewood is distributed in quarter-cord allotments. Now in her second year as coordinator, Twombly says she didn’t realize until last fall how much she missed talking to people through her Woodshed work. Some weeks she speaks with as many as 80 families. “These are folks who are dealing with illnesses, or are between paychecks, or have a broken-down furnace,” she explains. Some of the cases are heartbreaking. “I love what I do,” Twombly says. “I also cry every single week.”

To learn more about the Waldo County Fund, please contact Leslie Goode, senior program officer, at lgoode@mainecf.org.

Photo: Bob MacGregor works at the Waldo County Woodshed on equipment purchased with MaineCF funding. Photo Ashley Conti.

Waldo County Fund at 30

$693,008

Total county fund grant dollars awarded

276

Total county fund grants awarded to 189 nonprofit organizations

$40,492

County fund grants awarded in 2019

$13,276

Donor-referred grants in 2019

$429,214

Other MaineCF competitive grants and all scholarships to Waldo County in 2019