I’ll never forget our family’s first winter on Vashon. Remember 2006? It was warm and lovely, until December. The help of good landlords, who invested in a wood stove, and the help of neighbors who taught me how to cut and stack wood, enabled us to get through that winter and several more without bankrupting ourselves on fuel oil. My congregation, in its efforts to share wood with others, has continued to teach me lessons about heating with wood. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

To get through a Northwest winter, it takes at least two cords of dry wood. Oh, and by the way, a cord is four feet wide, four feet high and eight feet long. It’s a lot of wood. It is a lifestyle choice.

“Dry” means start now, for next year. Green alder, split now, will burn pretty well next fall. Fir will burn, but not great. Green madrona? In two years, well enough. Better wait three. Next winter? Forget it.

Northwest winters lead to complacency. No one who heats with wood in New England or the upper Midwest would even think of going into the fall without having purchased or split several cords of dry wood. A mild Midwest winter out here would kill people. We sometimes get mild winters here when temperatures rarely dip below 40 degrees. But sometimes, sometimes, it dips to near zero. Planning for the mild winter is a recipe for crisis. Two cords, dry, at bare minimum, no matter what the Farmer’s Almanac says.

There’s also a growing need for the teaching of wood skills on the Island. A significant number of younger, able-bodied Islanders have approached us at the Presbyterian Church seeking wood in the last year. Some of them were on a learning curve in their endeavor to become more self-sufficient; they had miscalculated somewhere and needed a little extra. One grateful couple we helped out showed up at one of our September splitting parties. There they got a chance to use all the tools of the trade, learned a bit about the different species and moisture contents of the wood we had and downloaded all they could learn. Skills and knowledge were successfully passed along, and they are now taking care of themselves. The point of this happy-ending story is that this needs to happen more broadly and intentionally among those younger people who desire self-sufficiency.

A growing population of seniors and disabled people also rely on wood but can’t get enough of it. This, too, needs attention. It seems there are a lot of folks on Vashon with wood skills who aren’t able to cut and haul like they used to. To make matters worse, the cost of living is increasing for these folks while their incomes stall and their services are being cut. Cuts in the federal heating assistance programs are going to hit these folks hard. The more that able-bodied people are able to cut and stack their own, the more energy and wood can be devoted to those who truly need wood brought to them if they are going to be warm next winter.  Local congregations, along with the Vashon Island Rotary, want to focus their efforts on those most vulnerable. If you’d like to be part of that strategy, please contact your congregation or Rotary.

Many Islanders can play a role in addressing this situation. The young couple I mentioned now have wood skills. What they may yet lack is access to downed timber for next year’s pile. Islanders can help other Islanders stay warmer next winter by allowing neighbors access to downed trees on their property. Because of past clear-cutting, the Island has a surplus of alders, which are reaching their “expiration date.” The wind blows, and down they come. Alders make great firewood, but left on the ground they rot quickly. How sad to see so much downed timber go to waste when neighbors are struggling to stay warm. Why not advertise to have them removed? Craigslist and Freecycle are excellent tools for advertising free wood.

We’ve been blessed with a lot of fuel on this Island and a storehouse of knowledge.  Generosity in sharing both will go a long way toward helping this community to be truly warm and caring through future winters.

— Rev. Dan Houston is the minister at Vashon Presbyterian Church, where he and his congregants run an informal wood bank.