After six hours of traveling and waiting for firewood only to be turned away without so much as a piece of mulch, Matt Honanie knew he had to do something for his Hopi relatives and community.
Honanie was one of many people who had shown up for a free firewood distribution advertised by Coconino National Forest in 2021.
When Honanie and his wife, Hopi High School Principal Kaira Pahovana, got to the line at 7 a.m., it was already 2 miles long before the 8 a.m. distribution. As distribution began and their car inched along, Honanie and Pahovana saw that some people had brought horse trailers, packing their loads as tight as they could, taking tons of wood before others had a chance.
After four hours of waiting, Honanie and Pahovana were excited to finally see the big piles of wood, but when they reached the front of the line they were denied.
“For some reason they shut everything down and said that’s all that they could do for today,” Honanie recalled.
On the way back, Honanie and Pahovana saw the distressed faces from those in the car line that was now packed 5 miles long.
“We were passing people and we were seeing Hopi after Hopi after Hopi, and we were thinking, ‘what can we do for our people to try to get some wood going in their direction?’”
Honanie reached out to Forest officials and offered to help with the next distribution at Schultz Pass, organizing and taking care of traffic.
The officials were impressed with Honanie after he helped successfully distribute over 2,500 loads of wood, but he wasn’t satisfied. He knew there were Hopi villagers who didn’t have the financial means to drive all the way to Flagstaff, or that didn’t have access to trucks to carry wood back.Without wood, many on the reservation would be subject to freezing temperatures through the winter months.
“Everything kind of all started with the closure of the Peabody Coal Mines (in 2019),” Honanie said. “Since the coal mines shut down, we kind of have to shift our focus to primarily wood.”
Honanie gathered volunteers from his community, and they did everything they could to get the wood to the Hopis who needed it. Using the Hopi word wood, the nonprofit group now has a name that reflects the mission of the group: Koho4Hopi.
“We try and focus on bringing the wood here so we can have our volunteers come out with their chainsaws or their splitters and start splitting or processing wood on Hopi,” Honanie said. “The biggest cost to getting wood is transportation — how we’re going to pay for it, where we’re going to find it — it’s the biggest hurdle that we have to face because of the long drive.”
The closest forests to the Hopi reservation are in Flagstaff — over 100 miles away — and the demand for the wood is far greater than the supply.
“We did run into the (problem) of people needing more wood,” Honanie said. “‘Do you have more wood, do you have more wood?’ This is a constant question. It’s a demand that’s never going to be filled.”
An easier way
A Flagstaff excavation company thinks they can help. After learning about Koho4Hopi on Facebook, Joe Dirt Excavating decided to give them two pallets of their new briquettes to try out.
The briquettes are an all-organic fuel source created with wood waste – essentially condensed biomass.
“We got a grant to purchase a briquetter and a dryer so that we can dry all of our woodchips and our sawdust and all that waste, and we are now able to turn it into briquettes to be used for firewood,” said Joe Dirt accountant Jeannette Hentschel.
The briquettes are only two pounds, are not as bulky as firewood and are easier to transport.
“One of those is equivalent to three logs. They burn a lot hotter, they burn a lot longer, you don’t have to go chop wood and all that kind of stuff,” Hentschel said. “So we’re thinking that it might be a benefit to the elderly, and people that don’t have the ability to go buy their own wood.”
The consensus on Hopi so far is positive.
“The tests went really good, we did a little survey,” Honanie said. “The briquettes lasted between 45 minutes to an hour — just one briquette — and it did heat a home really well. If you put two bricks in, it heated a bigger home.”
Honanie said one brick did a great job of heating his elderly relatives’ kitchen, dining room, living space and back hallways.
“One of the biggest things people said they liked about it was that they’re small and that they’re able to put it in their cars, transport it easier, store it easier, and that it is something that the elders could use,” Honanie said.
Some elders were apprehensive at first, but came around.
“It seemed unnatural and the thing they were wondering is if there are any additives in it like diesel or gasoline, but the thing about what Joe Dirt is doing is they’re not adding anything into it, it’s all organic…it’s just ready to burn, as long as its dry,” he said.
However, using the brick doesn’t mean logs can be forsaken altogether.
“The thing though is that you have to have a good fire going first, then you can throw your brick in and it catches fire. So within that hour you’d probably be using two to four logs,” Honanie said.
Hentschel said Joe Dirt hopes to develop a market for the bricks soon, especially to those that rely on wood to stay warm. There are around 500-600 bricks in a ton, which the briquetter machine can make in an hour. A rough estimate for sale is around $1 per brick.
“We just started making bricks a couple of months ago, working through a grant to buy the equipment,” Hentschel said.
As the grant administrator, Hentschel believes Joe Dirt spent around $500,000 on the briquetter and dryer equipment.
“This is why no one does it, because it’s expensive,” Hentschel said.
The dryer works on propane, which adds even more to the cost.
“We have ideas on ways that we can use our waste as fuel so we’re not burning propane,” Hentschel said. “So eventually we’re trying to get to this situation where we’re using our own waste as fuel also.”
Joe Dirt partners with Pine Line Timber in Williams, which has a swamill and is logging the A1 Mountain area.
“There’s a huge waste problem with logging,” Hentschel said. “We have our mill that creates piles of woodchips and sawdust… typically we would resell some of these to the power plants…but mostly it would end up being in the dump.”
Hentschel believes despite the price, the machines will be worth it.
“This is new territory for us but we thought it was kind of a cool way to make use of all this byproduct that’s going into landfills,” Hentschel said.
Giving Back
As far as giving back to the earth, that is one of Koho4Hopi’s main principals.
“One of our main missions is to give back to the forests that provides to us, Honanie said. “The meaning in that is that the forest provides wood to us – so much firewood – that we ourselves try to give back what we can.”
Honanie said giving back means volunteering to clean up areas in the forest that would be fire risks and partnering with different groups to plant trees.
“On Mount Elden we’ve probably planted over 1,200 trees in the Radio Fire (burn) area,” Honanie said. “Just this past summer we planted out toward Williams and we planted about 5,000 trees over there.”
Along with fronting Koho4Hopi, Honanie is a full-time student at Tohono O’odham Community College and full-time father to his and Pahovana’s four daughters —ages 2, 4, 6 and 13.
He said while he makes no personal income from Koho4Hopi, he is fulfilled by helping the Hopi people and anyone that needs it.
“It’s not a way of how I can make a living…it does hurt the pocket every once in a while,” he said. “It’s just going back to that thing of how can we help our people — not just our elders, but just all of our people in general — how can we help them prepare for winters. It has been colder and colder every year.”
Honanie said they are always looking for volunteers or donations. More information is available at koho4hopi.org. Those interested in briquettes can email Joe@joedirtx.com.
After six hours of traveling and waiting for firewood only to be turned away without so much as a piece of mulch, Matt Honanie knew he had to do something for his Hopi relatives and community.
Honanie was one of many people who had shown up for a free firewood distribution advertised by Coconino National Forest in 2021.
When Honanie and his wife, Hopi High School Principal Kaira Pahovana, got to the line at 7 a.m., it was already 2 miles long before the 8 a.m. distribution. As distribution began and their car inched along, Honanie and Pahovana saw that some people had brought horse trailers, packing their loads as tight as they could, taking tons of wood before others had a chance.
After four hours of waiting, Honanie and Pahovana were excited to finally see the big piles of wood, but when they reached the front of the line they were denied.
“For some reason they shut everything down and said that’s all that they could do for today,” Honanie recalled.
On the way back, Honanie and Pahovana saw the distressed faces from those in the car line that was now packed 5 miles long.
“We were passing people and we were seeing Hopi after Hopi after Hopi, and we were thinking, ‘what can we do for our people to try to get some wood going in their direction?’”
Honanie reached out to Forest officials and offered to help with the next distribution at Schultz Pass, organizing and taking care of traffic.
The officials were impressed with Honanie after he helped successfully distribute over 2,500 loads of wood, but he wasn’t satisfied. He knew there were Hopi villagers who didn’t have the financial means to drive all the way to Flagstaff, or that didn’t have access to trucks to carry wood back.Without wood, many on the reservation would be subject to freezing temperatures through the winter months.
“Everything kind of all started with the closure of the Peabody Coal Mines (in 2019),” Honanie said. “Since the coal mines shut down, we kind of have to shift our focus to primarily wood.”
Honanie gathered volunteers from his community, and they did everything they could to get the wood to the Hopis who needed it. Using the Hopi word wood, the nonprofit group now has a name that reflects the mission of the group: Koho4Hopi.
“We try and focus on bringing the wood here so we can have our volunteers come out with their chainsaws or their splitters and start splitting or processing wood on Hopi,” Honanie said. “The biggest cost to getting wood is transportation — how we’re going to pay for it, where we’re going to find it — it’s the biggest hurdle that we have to face because of the long drive.”
The closest forests to the Hopi reservation are in Flagstaff — over 100 miles away — and the demand for the wood is far greater than the supply.
“We did run into the (problem) of people needing more wood,” Honanie said. “‘Do you have more wood, do you have more wood?’ This is a constant question. It’s a demand that’s never going to be filled.”
An easier way
A Flagstaff excavation company thinks they can help. After learning about Koho4Hopi on Facebook, Joe Dirt Excavating decided to give them two pallets of their new briquettes to try out.
The briquettes are an all-organic fuel source created with wood waste – essentially condensed biomass.
“We got a grant to purchase a briquetter and a dryer so that we can dry all of our woodchips and our sawdust and all that waste, and we are now able to turn it into briquettes to be used for firewood,” said Joe Dirt accountant Jeannette Hentschel.
The briquettes are only two pounds, are not as bulky as firewood and are easier to transport.
“One of those is equivalent to three logs. They burn a lot hotter, they burn a lot longer, you don’t have to go chop wood and all that kind of stuff,” Hentschel said. “So we’re thinking that it might be a benefit to the elderly, and people that don’t have the ability to go buy their own wood.”
The consensus on Hopi so far is positive.
“The tests went really good, we did a little survey,” Honanie said. “The briquettes lasted between 45 minutes to an hour — just one briquette — and it did heat a home really well. If you put two bricks in, it heated a bigger home.”
Honanie said one brick did a great job of heating his elderly relatives’ kitchen, dining room, living space and back hallways.
“One of the biggest things people said they liked about it was that they’re small and that they’re able to put it in their cars, transport it easier, store it easier, and that it is something that the elders could use,” Honanie said.
Some elders were apprehensive at first, but came around.
“It seemed unnatural and the thing they were wondering is if there are any additives in it like diesel or gasoline, but the thing about what Joe Dirt is doing is they’re not adding anything into it, it’s all organic…it’s just ready to burn, as long as its dry,” he said.
However, using the brick doesn’t mean logs can be forsaken altogether.
“The thing though is that you have to have a good fire going first, then you can throw your brick in and it catches fire. So within that hour you’d probably be using two to four logs,” Honanie said.
Hentschel said Joe Dirt hopes to develop a market for the bricks soon, especially to those that rely on wood to stay warm. There are around 500-600 bricks in a ton, which the briquetter machine can make in an hour. A rough estimate for sale is around $1 per brick.
“We just started making bricks a couple of months ago, working through a grant to buy the equipment,” Hentschel said.
As the grant administrator, Hentschel believes Joe Dirt spent around $500,000 on the briquetter and dryer equipment.
“This is why no one does it, because it’s expensive,” Hentschel said.
The dryer works on propane, which adds even more to the cost.
“We have ideas on ways that we can use our waste as fuel so we’re not burning propane,” Hentschel said. “So eventually we’re trying to get to this situation where we’re using our own waste as fuel also.”
Joe Dirt partners with Pine Line Timber in Williams, which has a swamill and is logging the A1 Mountain area.
“There’s a huge waste problem with logging,” Hentschel said. “We have our mill that creates piles of woodchips and sawdust… typically we would resell some of these to the power plants…but mostly it would end up being in the dump.”
Hentschel believes despite the price, the machines will be worth it.
“This is new territory for us but we thought it was kind of a cool way to make use of all this byproduct that’s going into landfills,” Hentschel said.
Giving Back
As far as giving back to the earth, that is one of Koho4Hopi’s main principals.
“One of our main missions is to give back to the forests that provides to us, Honanie said. “The meaning in that is that the forest provides wood to us – so much firewood – that we ourselves try to give back what we can.”
Honanie said giving back means volunteering to clean up areas in the forest that would be fire risks and partnering with different groups to plant trees.
“On Mount Elden we’ve probably planted over 1,200 trees in the Radio Fire (burn) area,” Honanie said. “Just this past summer we planted out toward Williams and we planted about 5,000 trees over there.”
Along with fronting Koho4Hopi, Honanie is a full-time student at Tohono O’odham Community College and full-time father to his and Pahovana’s four daughters —ages 2, 4, 6 and 13.
He said while he makes no personal income from Koho4Hopi, he is fulfilled by helping the Hopi people and anyone that needs it.
“It’s not a way of how I can make a living…it does hurt the pocket every once in a while,” he said. “It’s just going back to that thing of how can we help our people — not just our elders, but just all of our people in general — how can we help them prepare for winters. It has been colder and colder every year.”
Honanie said they are always looking for volunteers or donations. More information is available at koho4hopi.org. Those interested in briquettes can email Joe@joedirtx.com.