Pensioner firewood help sort by City Lions
As temperatures start to drop the Tokoroa City Lions are anticipating a busy season of delivering free firewood to pensioners.
With that in mind they are calling for more locals to sign up as Lions Friends to help out with delivers.
President Dexter Morgan said about 120 local pensioners were set to receive free trailer loads of firewood in the coming months.
‘‘When winter comes we have got a list of pensioners and from that list we will probably deliver three loads of wood to each of those recipients,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s all done by Lions and we deliver around 360 hand loaded trailer loads of wood so it is a lot of wood and we will do six or seven deliveries each with a car and trailer in the morning. The pensioners are so appreciative of it.’’
Morgan said the wood, which is stored in the Lions’ Whakaruru St shed is sourced from the likes of surplus wood from Kinleith Mill and old windbreaks on farms.
‘‘All sorts of people ring us up and say ‘hey do you want some wood?’ which then goes to our yard to be cut up,’’ he said.
‘‘In the past, before all the new health and safety rules, periodic detention (PD) boys would cut it up. They still help out but now we have got our own wood splitter as well which is good for the stuff you can’t cut with an axe.’’
He said the delivery days are usually a hit with local volunteers.
‘‘The deliveries usually come out late April early May and again in June and July and maybe August,’’ he said.
‘‘We throw the wood in sheds for the pensioners but we don’t leave loads of wood if no one is home as we have seen cases where it’s gone missing.’’
‘‘It's all done by Lions and we deliver around 360 hand loaded trailer loads of wood so it is a lot of wood and we will do six or seven deliveries each with a car and trailer in the morning. The pensioners are so appreciative of it.’’
‘‘It is a popular project. Delivering wood to people who need it gives you quite a nice buzz.’’
Morgan said if people want to sign up to help out they can do so by visiting tokoroalions.com where they will need to click on subscribe and fill out a form.
He said it’s just as easy if they want to unsubscribe down the track.
The Tokoroa City Lions are also involved in an initiative where people are able to go into local forests and load a trailer with wood for $10.
The initiative runs from October until late March each year with all proceeds going back to the community or to the Cancer Society’s Lions Lodge in Hamilton.