Community Restoration Projects
Learn more about our Community Restoration Projects here!
Training to respond to natural disasters and community crises is hard work. These students put in that work this summer and received their Wilderness First Responder certifications at the Bucket Brigade Academy - with special thanks to #4pointsguides and #lightsupsb #bucketbrigadeacademy
Say yes to farming for food aid with the Bucket Brigade.
This is your weekly chance to get your hands dirty and make a difference in our community. We have grown, packed, weighed and delivered over 10,000 pounds of organically grown produce already this year. Come and join us!
Sign up on our volunteer hub - space is limited! Click the farm link on our bio to learn more!
#bbhumanitarianfarm #sbbucketbrigade
Humanitarian Farm Party tonight with Paper Moon @mosaiclocale
Waffles from @goodlandwafflesandmelts.
Free admission - Come and join us!
6PM - 9PM at 1131 State Street
Join us this Saturday for a Humanitarian Farm Party with Paper Moon at Mosaic Locale! We will be at 1131 State Street with @goodlandwafflesandmelts @mosaiclocale and @draughtsmen Aleworks! You are invited!
Summer vacation - whatever.
#bucketbrigadeacademy #sbbucketbrigade
Madre Fire at 10% Containment. Don’t wait until it is too late to evacuate.
Head-on-a-swivel time in the Cuyama Valley. #sbbucketbrigade #communityselfrescue
“1-hour fuels” dry out quickly and can be a real fire hazard this time of year. Most “fuel modification” projects don’t address the core problem: type conversion to non-native grassland in disturbed areas. We can’t just weed-whack our way out of this problem. We need to replace the flashy fuels with appropriate plantings to retain topsoil, prevent erosion and reduce fire risk. We are planting a nopales cactus farm on this hillside to replace the flammable non-native grasses and weeds with highly fire-resistant edible succulents that are native to California. Climate adaptation - Bucket Brigade Style. #sbbucketbrigade #bucketbrigadeacademy #bbhumanitariangarden
Our Community Restoration Projects reduce fire risk, restore native habitat, preserve endangered species and grow food for local food aid. Can you get to that? Learn more about Bucket Brigade Academy - click the link in our bio. #bucketbrigadeacademy #sbbucketbrigade #communityrestorationproject #bbhumanitariangarden
Climate change and natural disasters have taken a toll on our local ecosystem. Repeated wildfires, record-breaking droughts and short-duration, high-intensity rain events have caused all kinds of problems in the past 10 years. The Bucket Brigade has been working to restore ecological damage since our first deployment in 2018. Our restoration work began in the debris-flow damaged areas of the Ennisbrook Open Space and the Casa Dorinda Open space where we spent a whole year removing man-made debris, digging out native oak trees, rebuilding trails and replanting areas that were struggled with post-disaster invasive species pressure.
This work really resonated with volunteers, with the neighborhoods where we worked and with communities served by these restorations – so we stuck with it. To carry our our mission to train volunteers and volunteer leaders, we found a damaged area of a beloved local park and began a 7-acre Community Restoration Project: The Bucket Brigade Humanitarian Garden.
The garden sits in the heart of a vital watershed ecosystem that was badly damaged by failed agricultural ventures and a decade long drought. For this reason, it seemed like the perfect place to teach restoration leadership…by actually restoring the whole area together. The work began with weekly volunteer projects to remove flammable invasive plants to reduce fire risk and to clear areas for restoration. We then replanted the area with endangered native trees and an edible native cactus grove. We also created a 1-acre buffer area with 72 species of native nectar-producing plants to create a native pollinator demonstration garden.
In 2022, we launched the Bucket Brigade Academy at the Humanitarian Garden where we have trained 66 local students to lead volunteer deployments and restoration projects. Many of those students have gone on to lead flood-relief and sandbag assistance projects in the community. 8 elite students have become professional volunteer coordinators for the Bucket Brigade and lead local restoration projects at open spaces, schools and trails.
Our current restorations projects include The Humanitarian Garden (ongoing), Ellwood Mesa Butterfly Preserve (on behalf of the City of Goleta) and The Bucket Brigade Humanitarian Farm – a 1-acre urban farm restoration where we grow produce for local food-aid.
