By JEFF EPSTEIN
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CORNISH — A pickup truck with a donated load of wood rolls into the Cornish Recycling Center on Route 120. A few men gather around the pickup and quickly off load the wood. They add it to the pile that will be split and eventually go to Cornish residents who need it to heat their homes.
The men are among six to eight volunteers this afternoon who came here to split wood for this purpose. It’s just one of things residents in Cornish do to help each other.
“I don’t know a single house in Cornish that doesn’t use wood in some capacity,” says Marie DeRusha, the town’s director of general assistance, who is also here. When a family urgently needs firewood to keep from getting cold, they go to her.
“So many people in Cornish have wood stoves,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just a supplement for their heating system, and I know a few of them that heat primarily with wood.”
DeRusha makes the decisions about who gets free firewood. She’s only been in the job a few years, although this wood service has been happening in the community for at least 35 years or so, she says.
While some of the wood comes from the town, much of it is donated from others in the community. So DeRusha doesn’t require a formal application. She knows who people are. If someone were to request wood when she knows they have seven cords in front of their house, she would decline the request, she says. But she usually says yes.
DeRusha also helps Cornish families get a Thanksgiving turkey, if they need it.
“The community is … such a little bubble,” she says. “Everyone is willing to help everyone else.”
Over at the splitter, one man picks up a large piece of log and hands it off to another man, who loads it into the splitter. Then George Edson, who owns the machine, carefully makes sure the log is secure for cutting. It’s a small machine, but it is loud, and the blade is sharp and tough. It has no trouble splitting the log into smaller pieces in seconds.
Other volunteers load the split wood onto a carrier, and then drag it off to the storage bin.
Once DeRusha has given the OK to someone, a person can come here to the recycling center on Saturdays to pick up some wood.
Cornish residents can let Marie DeRusha know they need firewood by calling her at (603) 558-0391. She can also be reached by email at [email protected].
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