Getting ready for a full season!! by Jody DicksonI cannot believe it is already March which means our season of events is only a couple months away! We are busy getting our events scheduled and finalized, so we can deliver on a season full of improving forest health, improving our resilience through a wildfire event, and building our amazing community. We can all make this place a better and safer place to be and enjoy ourselves while we do it! I also enjoy the sense of accomplishment at the end of every Saws & Slaws events. It is absolutely something to celebrate every time, even when things don’t always go…
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Saws & Slaws February News
The Marshall Fire shook me to my core. So much so, I hesitated to write this month’s article for S&S until I realized that many of us may feel exactly the same way! We have been bracing for a wildfire event in the mountains forever and to watch a suburban area go up in flames, fanned by 100mph winds, was surreal. My first thought: If a Target store, surrounded by a parking lot, can burst into flames, then who am I really kidding about the relative safety of my mountain home? We talk a lot about the effectiveness of a 30 foot buffer between the conifers on our property and…
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Saws & Slaws January News
Happy New Year!! 2021 flew right by, but we are very excited for the new year of 2022. For this year, with the end of our paid resource in Nathaniel, we are looking for some new organizational help. If you are interested in supporting our efforts through volunteering outside of events, please let us know. (Of course, you can volunteer at the events, too!!) Just like at our events, we have a job for everyone: operational (e.g. organizing events), education, marketing, communications, fundraising, community organizing, partner management and more. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of time or a little, every little bit helps our small and scrappy…
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Saws & Slaws December News
What a year!!I cannot believe that it is December already! This year went by so fast, and while we are still not back to normal, 2021 was a good year for Saws & Slaws. We had a handful of our normal-style events. While we haven’t been able to enjoy our traditional potluck meals, we’ve still been able to get a lot of work done toward making our community safer and more resilient through a wildfire event. By the numbers, here is an image that details some of our key data points from this season. I want to emphasize, particularly in this time of gratitude, that we would not be able…
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Saws & Slaws November News
Thank you, Nate!! As they say, all good things must come to an end. For a year, we’ve been blessed by having a part-time paid resource supporting and developing our activity in Nathaniel (Nate) Goeckner. This position was partially funded by a grant, but our time is up, so we are needing to say goodbye (for now) to Nathaniel. We are very grateful for his support, attention, and effort over the past year. Having a paid position helped us long-standing volunteers in keeping our work going. Fortunately, he is moving into a full time position at the Boulder Watershed Collective, so he won’t be far away. We might still see…
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Saws & Slaws October News
Saws and Slaws has been busy in August and September with legacy events. Much tree thinning and slash removal was accomplished at both events. At the August event, we worked in the Copperdale neighborhood on two neighboring properties. The properties had been marked by Boulder’s Wildfire Partners which makes it easy for us to target the trees we need to remove for effective mitigation. At the September event, we completed our last mitigation event for the summer 2021 season, and it went great! We were able to mitigate around 1.5 acres and remove roughly 80 cubic yards of slash at a property in the Lyttle Dowdle neighborhood. Thanks to all…
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Saws and Slaws June News
June Saws & Slaws News by Heather Hanson / Linda Martin June? already? The weather is great for getting down to business with the defensible space around your home. Defensible space can suggest alternate paths for a fire to follow away from your house. Any action is worthwhile for the health of your space. Many studies observe that homes with effective defensible space are more likely to survive a wildfire. 60 feet of defensible space combined with a non-flammable roof, your chances can be as great as 86%. *(Surviving Wildfire, Linda Masterson) Homes surrounded by pine and conifer ideally require 100 feet. This is known as zone 2. In zone 1…
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Saws and Slaws March News
As we approach March 2021, it might seem like several years have gone by since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, it has been an arduous and lengthy struggle to combat the virus and protect our most vulnerable communities. We have shown incredible resiliency in the face of the worst worldwide health crises in over a century. Webster Merriam dictionary defines resiliency as: “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” Small mountain communities across Colorado and the West have used this resiliency, whether they knew it or not, to adapt to pandemic life and how it has changed our daily livelihood…
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February Saws & Slaws News
Get Ready Now, So You Know What To Do Later With an unprecedented wildfire season behind us, many of us might be reflecting on how to better prepare ourselves for the next one. One simple thing we can do to eliminate stress and confusion is to compile an Evacuation Checklist before an emergency event. Mobilization is key when every minute counts. When you already have steps in place, you don’t have to think about what to do, you can just check your boxes. Prior to any threat of an evacuation, you’ll want to gather and assemble, an emergency essentials grab and go kit. This kit should contain essentials like first…
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Saws & Slaws’ 10th Anniversary!!!
We wish you a happy new year and gratefully welcome 2021! As the saying goes, time flies when you are having fun. If you need proof of that… Saws & Slaws is celebrating its 10th anniversary! Just like any child, we’ve grown a lot in our 10 years. We started with a group of community organizers coming together at first around wildfire and forest health education. The various stakeholder organizations (CCCIA, TEG, Fire Department, etc) found ourselves stumbling over each other planning education events without knowing the other organizations were planning some, too! Once that educational series was done, we wanted to put some of our learnings to work! I…