This community's response to the calls for wood, bark dust and pallets for Nickelsville has been amazing...
On behalf of the residents, thank you.
You are making a huge difference.
Many of you have been emailing me directly to ask how to make your donations more effective,
so i thought i would take this opportunity to let you know that we are in the process of putting together a donor's group that will become a clearing house for status reports, information and collaboration.
In the meantime, there are some exciting things happening at Nickelsville.
They are on the verge of fulfilling one of their dreams which is a simple living structure composed of donated pallets.
Yesterday, at the Central Committee meeting i learned that a group of young people will be meeting at nickelsville mid month to begin deconstructing pallets to use as building materials for their first structure.
This means that pallets with usable building materials will be diverted from use as firewood to use for building materials ..
which makes firewood even that much more important.
Their need for usable firewood will increase in the next couple of months until the weather settles down into predictable Seattle spring/summer.
Usable firewood is any wood that is not pressure treated or painted,
cut into lengths not exceeding 18".
The wood will burn more efficiently if it has been seasoned,
but downed trees cut into usable lengths are always welcome.
as long as there is other burnable wood in camp,
the camp is willing to stack and season them
the camp currently does not have the resources needed to cut longer peaces of wood into burnable lengths..
due to ecological concerns related to their current location ,
they do not use gasoline powered tools at Nicelsville
and try to limit the use of electric tools to those that can be run on rechargable batteries.
wood that is delivered in longer lengths either has to be cut up in the parking lot by a non-resident volunteer or moved to an outside location where it can be cut and redelivered.
pallets that are too weathered to be used for construction will be deconstructed and burned.
which brings me to the second item... pallets.
they are in the process of constructing a holding area for construction materials to make more living structures.
in a couple of weeks we will be asking once again for pallets to make those structures possible. I am told that although making living structures out of pallets is exceedingly labor intensive, using them cuts the cost per structure more than 75%.
and lastly, wood chips...
i am making a personal request that those who are currently using funds to purchase wood chips for nickelsville sue them to purchase cut firewood instead.
One of the local tree trimming/landscaping companies delivers loads of chipped branches to Nickelsville on a regular basis.
Right now there is a lot of free material available due to the storm.. and we are heading into the spring landscaping season that should provide even more.
Bark or chipped wood matter makes a huge difference at Nickelsville.. without it the paths would be little more than mud bogs...
so.. if you happen to be doing some chipping yourself.. the camp would be grateful if you delivered it to them.
you can call the camp at 206-450-5268
Nickeslville has also been getting free gravel deliveries... so for the time being we are not contributing dollars to gravel.
I am in the process of contacting the companies i am aware of who are currently donating to Nickelsville to get their permission to publicly thank them all....
and to make sure that they have the information they need to recieve a donation letter from Nickelsville so that they can claim their donations with the IRS.
if anyone knows of an individual or company that has been generous to Nickelsville and might like a little credit.. either publicly or at tax time.. please feel free to email me at joanne@brayden.org. I would be glad to help.
Once again.. thanks for being such a great community. The volunteers who donate time at Nickelsville wouldn't be able to accomplish nearly as much without you... and the residents would be a lot colder, wetter and hungrier.
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