MINOT — After realizing she liked a task most people don’t, and always wanting to give back to her community, Shae Long decided it was time to step up and stack up.

“I read about wood banks in other areas of the state and started thinking about starting one up in this area since I couldn’t find any around us,” the Minot resident said.

The result has been a woody win-win for both Long, who loves to stack wood, and Minot-area residents who could use wood and a hand stacking it.

Long is a full-time insurance company employee by day, working out of her home, spending long periods in front of a computer. To augment her income, and get some physical exercise and some mental downtime, she slowly created a business producing and selling kindling. And stacking wood for people.

“I have to use my brain all day, so when I’m out stacking or splitting wood, it’s like meditation, and I can focus solely on this one task. It’s kind of therapeutic,” she said.

It all started when Long bought her house a few years ago. She had heat pumps installed, but it was costly and not efficient on really cold days, so she bought a wood stove, and started buying and stacking wood.

“I found I was pretty good at it, and really enjoyed it,” she said. “My boyfriend, Taylor, said I had a knack for it and it got me thinking about starting a business offering my services to help people stack wood that they had delivered.”

That led to the creation of her business Shae Stacks Wood, and to an offshoot producing kindling.

Her boyfriend lives in Greene where he grew up and has a small sawmill. Wednesday morning the two were splitting wood for bags of kindling to take to Long’s home that has open fields to let it dry out over the summer.

In the process of building her business, her desire grew to help others. “It’s always been in my nature to help, I guess that’s part of my background in social work. It’s in my blood,” she said.

She started to explore wood banks — organizations that provide wood to people who struggle financially to heat their homes. Maine has more than a dozen wood banks now, including a new one formed last year in Franklin County.

After some research, Long said that felt like it might be too big a task to take on, so she decided to start smaller and formed “Stack it Forward,” an effort to find sources of firewood for area residents in need — and to stack that firewood for those unable to do it themselves.

After a lot of research, phone calls, emails, texts and in-person meetings, she secured donations of wood and money from several area lumber yards, mills and non-wood industry businesses.

“I began to spread the word (about Stack It Forward) through my Facebook page, Shae Stacks Wood & More,” she said.

That led to taking applications from people who could not afford, or who are no longer able, to buy and stack wood themselves. “It’s hard to decide who is most needy, and select some and not others,” she said.

Most of the donated wood, which is green, gets delivered to the recipients in the fall or spring and seasons over the summer. “I’ll go back in the fall and stack it for them for free. It’s such a great feeling to give back.”

Long said that while she continues to try to grow her wood-stacking business, she looks forward to finding ways of stacking more wood donations and her free stacking services into her busy schedule.