Wildfire Mitigation and Chainsaw Safety Workshop

What: A free forest health/wildfire mitigation and chainsaw safety workshop

When: Saturday, June 1, 2013 from 8am to noon

Where: 136 Cougar Run, Dan and Marylou Harrison

As a complement to our Curbside Chipping Program, we are excited to offer this free wildfire mitigation and chainsaw safety workshop this year.  The purpose of this two part workshop is to give homeowners in St. Antons the resources to effectively and safely mitigate their property with the goal of reducing wildfire dangers and promoting overall forest health.

The first portion of the workshop will be given by Ryan Ludlow, Boulder County Forest Health Education and Outreach Coordinator.  Ryan will talk to the group about effective wildfire mitigation, defensible space, beetle issues, forest diversity, and overall forest health.  For many homeowners, where and how to begin effective wildfire mitigation can be daunting.  Ryan has lots of experience helping homeowners devise a plan.  This workshop will be conducted outside and will involve evaluating the wildfire risk on Dan and Marylou’s property, their defensible space, and will expand to marking trees for removal, and discussing forest diversity and health.  This is an excellent opportunity to learn about our forests here in St. Antons and ask Ryan your forestry questions.  Ryan’s workshop is funded by Boulder County and offered in coordination with the $3000 Chipping Reimbursement Grant the county awarded our HOA this year.

The second portion of the workshop will be given by Phil and Jane Pitzer, owners of High Timber Firewood and Logging.  Phil and Jane are professional loggers and have watched many a homeowner/weekend warrior work on their property with their chainsaw and feel a safety intervention is in order.  To that end, Phil and Jane are donating their time and experience to host a free chainsaw safety workshop for the HOA.  They will cover basic chainsaw safety, proper safety equipment, how to drop a tree safely, how to bring a tree down that’s hung up on another tree, how to limb safely, and bucking into firewood rounds.  Jane will talk about easy ways to haul slash and demonstrate proper slash staging for our chipping program.  Their son Steve will wrap up with a chainsaw maintenance demonstration and talk about saw adjustments and carburetor issues.  This will be held outdoors and Phil will be dropping trees as part of this workshop.  If you’ve never seen a experienced sawyer work before, you’re in for a real treat.

Please email Marc with questions about the event at sahfahoa@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, June 1st at 8AM at 136 Cougar Run!

****  Please walk to the event or park on the roadway  – Thanks! ****