The Innovative "Wood Bank" In Buffalo That Provides Free Firewood For People In Need

The patrons could be in a Mini Cooper, pickup , or any other vehicle with space to fit split pieces of firewood.

At the wheel may be the “cookie lady,” a widow, veteran, or the dynamic duo who haul weekly loads for a disabled vet and another person in need.

Anyone who pulls up to the Clear Creek Wood Bank at 97 U.S. Highway 16 East in Buffalo during the 2-4 p.m. window on Tuesdays will get a free allotment of split wood from the Bighorn Mountains to help keep energy bills down and homes warm this winter.

“We give you a rack of wood a week and we’ve measured it to be a seventh of a cord,” said Paul Mumm, secretary and treasurer for the Oversized Heart Foundation that runs the wood bank. “I have several people who will get a little over three cords per year … at $250 a cord they’re basically getting about $750 of free firewood.”

And that’s exactly the point for Mumm and co-founders Kelly and Nick Norris, president and vice president of the foundation and Joe Landsiedel, a local logging contractor, who with Kelly Norris first tested the wood bank concept in 2022.

The motto of the wood bank is: “Ensuring no one ever has to choose between heating and eating.”

Kelly Norris, who is also the State Forester for the Wyoming State Forestry Division, said the idea came to her after helping lead the local food bank during the pandemic and seeing needs. She read an article in the Washington Post about a wood bank in Maine or Vermont.

She also knew that locally, people were scrounging for wood.

“I personally had heard stories at that time of people coming and taking wood pallets from local stores just to keep their homes warm during the winter,” she said. “My home at the time, it’s in downtown Buffalo, and we had a fence at the time that was made out of split firewood, and it was getting stolen.

"People in the community were taking it to keep their trailers warm at night.”

Norris said as the district forester she also had several people contact her looking for “easy firewood” for older people who heated with wood stoves.

The Launch

The pandemic opened her eyes to the local population who survive on fixed incomes and were experiencing rising costs for food and heating, she said. Because of her experience at the food bank and knowledge and connections as a forester, she decided to launch the wood bank and shared her thoughts with Landsiedel who agreed to help.

Landsiedel donated three semi loads of logs and paid people to cut them up and split them and they decided to just see if people would show up, Norris said.

“The very first person who showed up, he was missing a leg,” Norris said. “He had a disability. He was in tears. He couldn’t believe that we were going to help him keep his house warm. He was a veteran; he was everything we were trying to achieve.”

Since that first winter, demand has grown and would be impossible to meet if a community member had not donated a wood processor that takes the logs delivered by Landsiedel, cuts them and splits them and makes producing the ready to load firewood a much easier process.

Landsiedel, a logging contractor for nearly 34 years in the Bighorns, continues to supply the means to deliver the logs to the wood bank. His semi can haul 17 to 18 cords per load. He said he delivered 10 loads of logs to the wood bank for this season, which began on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

“There’s about 200 cords there processed and ready to go,” he said.

After the wood processor was donated, Landsiedel said he “babysat” the machine and volunteers who operated it last year to make sure operations were safe. This year, the volunteers have experience and were able to process the wood without him.

Wood Stoves Plentiful

Landsiedel said in addition to hauling for the wood bank, his company does a lot of hauling of firewood logs for regular customers in the region. He estimates two out of three homes in the area use wood stoves as a primary or supplemental heat source.

“Last year, I hauled over 250 loads of firewood on my log truck,” he said. “That doesn’t include all of the saw logs and everything else we hauled.”

As forester, Norris said there is plenty of wood in the mountains and the wood bank uses logs from managed timber sales or from private forested lands that have forested management plans written by Wyoming State Forestry.

“So, it’s all in very good faith of forest health and it’s looking at the forest in a sustainable manner,” she said. For instance, if a tree is destined for the sawmill, but is found with rot, instead of putting it in a pile to burn, it’s now coming down into Buffalo to be cut into firewood and given away.

Norris said much of the firewood is lodgepole pine, but they also use Douglas firs and ponderosa pines. She said they don’t do much with cottonwood trees but do get a few hardwood trees from urban community forestry businesses.

Mumm, a retired banker who tracks all the numbers for the wood bank and manages the volunteers, said people drive from as far away as Kaycee, Barnum, Sussex, Clearmont and Sheridan to pick up the wood in addition to the locals from around Buffalo.

He said he has a couple of regulars who show up and get three loads. They get one for themselves and one for a disabled veteran and last year agreed to help Mumm. They hauled a load to a man who had lost his license and could no longer drive for physical reasons.

“He was an old veteran and when they showed up and knocked on his door, he just started crying,” Mumm said. “I have several people who come and get wood and haul it to a disabled person because they can no longer do it. So the spirit of helping your neighbor has really spread with this thing.”

‘Cookie Lady’

In addition to nearly 40 adult volunteers who help with cutting, stacking, and filling people’s vehicles with wood on Tuesdays, there are also students from the local Christian school and the New West High School in Buffalo who regularly come and help.

The students and volunteers all look for the weekly visit from the “cookie lady.”

“She’s only got one leg, she lost the other one in a motorcycle accident,” Mumm said. “She comes in and brings these cookies that are just out of the oven. They’re still warm and the volunteers just go crazy.”

Both Mumm and Norris said they are currently looking at expanding the wood bank concept into another community — possibly on the other side of the Bighorn range. What they’ve found is that there is a definite need and people are genuinely grateful for the assistance.

In the past season, which annually stretches from Nov. 1 to April 1, the wood bank served 845 families. Mumm said 73% of the wood bank’s patrons were retired, 33% were disabled and 35% were veterans.

This year to date, volunteer hours total nearly $20,000 and last year those hours totaled nearly $43,000, Mumm said.

Mumm estimates that many people who receive the wood on a weekly basis get 45 to 55 days of heating utility relief through the wood bank’s loads.

“We felt that after last year alone we were almost a $300,000 economic impact on the community,” Mumm said.

The wood bank has gone after and obtained grants to help with funding. Donations are accepted as well.

Norris said donations of $40 provide two weeks of heat, $125 for six weeks, and $250 for a winter of heat. Everyone working at the wood bank are volunteers, the funds go to purchase logs and haul the wood down the mountain.

Headed into its fourth season, they see continued growth on the horizon. And they plan to keep filling the vehicles that show up with their weekly allotment.

“The Bighorns has an abundance of wood. There is no reason anyone should be struggling to stay warm in winters around that forest,” Norris said. “Our small group of dedicated thinkers and doers and volunteers make sure we do our best to meet the needs in our communities through wood heat.”

Mumm said they have a smooth process in place to flow the traffic through the wood bank and on a recent Tuesday were able to give out 24 racks of wood in 16 minutes. And people show up in all kinds of different vehicles, many with bald tires who may have to get a push out of the wood bank as winter sets in.

“I have somebody who comes in a little old beat-up Mini Cooper,” he said. “We stuff it in the front seat, the back seat, the whole car is just loaded to the top.”

More information about the Clear Creek Wood Bank is at clearcreekwoodbank.com.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.