The Bucket Brigade Academy (BBA) is a leadership training program for high school students interested…
Humanitarian Farm
A Community Farm Restoration
With help from over 430 volunteers, the Bucket Brigade has restored a 1-acre urban farm that had been fallow for 7 years. The transformation of this land is creating real impact. In 2024, 17,392 pounds of food was grown, harvested and donated to Veggie Rescue, Unity Shoppe, and the SBCC Food Pantry.
The Bucket Brigade Humanitarian Farm is more than a restoration. The farm serves as a leadership training ground and a part of the Bucket Brigade’s real-world resilience laboratory. Youth leaders and community volunteers are working together to increase food security and build local resilience.
Goals of the Humanitarian Farm:
Grow Food For Charity
With over 215,000 neighbors receiving food aid in Santa Barbara County, the farm is helping to increase local food security. Fresh produce makes up a small percentage of food bank items, so we grow and donate a variety of organic fruits and vegetables.
Train Youth Leaders & Community Volunteers
The Bucket Brigade Academy is a youth leadership program that trains high school students how to lead volunteer restoration projects, including weekly work days on the farm. Youth leaders team up with master farmers to teach sustainable farming techniques to community volunteers.
Strengthen Local Resilience
The impacts of climate change and natural disasters are increasing. If we prepare now, we can respond effectively in times of crisis. The humanitarian farm is strengthening our local food system, training leaders in volunteer deployment, and building community resilience.
The Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade has developed a unique model of training, restoration and response.
This community resilience engine empowers youth and adults to become local leaders, helping to prevent natural disasters and to respond effectively when they do happen. We know that community resilience goes beyond responding to the next crisis. From seeds to harvest, the farm provides year-round opportunities for people to make a difference in ways they can touch and taste.
Youth leaders and community volunteers are getting their hands dirty to strengthen a local food system. Their work is breaking down barriers and building direct connections between volunteers, local food-aid partners and food insecure neighbors. The Humanitarian Farm is a success story showing the Community Resilience Engine at work – a local project that is growing food, growing leaders, and building community connection.
A Community Partnership Project
OUR PARTNERS:
Veggie Rescue, The Unity Shoppe, SBCC Food Pantry, Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara County Food Action Network, UC Master Gardeners of Santa Barbara County, Boys Team Charity
Community Resilience
The Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade was founded to organize, train and deploy community volunteers in response to crisis. Food security is a fundamental pillar of community resilience and Santa Barbara county is struggling. Over 215,000 residents are food insecure. That is almost half of our community! To help fight hunger, we work together with volunteers and our community partners to grow and share food with hungry neighbors.
A National Tradition
During the First and Second World Wars, victory gardens on private property and public parklands provided fresh fruits and vegetables to citizens during wartime rationing. In 1943, 40% of the nation’s fresh vegetables were grown in victory gardens. These gardens didn’t just feed hungry people, they also boosted morale and community spirit by connecting individual gardeners to a bigger cause.
Humanitarian Farming for Challenging Times
We are growing fresh, organic produce at our urban farm and donating it to neighbors in need.
In 2024, we restored the last piece of the original Yankee Farm on the Mesa. It had been fallow for over seven years. Over the next 12 months, Tom Shepherd, Steven Hanson and the Bucket Brigade youth leaders grew, packed and delivered 17,392 lbs. of food to local food aid partners.
Generational Wisdom
For hundreds of years, farm agriculture has been a key part of Santa Barbara’s cultural and economic fabric. Our original organic farmers are slowly retiring and they have generational wisdom that needs to be passed on to the next generation of farmers. We have created a place where master organic farmers can help train the next generation here in Santa Barbara.
Youth Leadership
Climate stress has reached epidemic levels among young people across the planet. The Humanitarian Farm provides a place for teens to learn how learn how to grow food for food aid in a changing climate and provides them with a way to make a real difference in their own community. Students learn modern organic farming, meet new people and earn community-service hours each week.
Make A Difference Now
Humanitarian Farming is a great way to get outside and to safely connect with other caring community members, especially for people who may feel isolated after the pandemic. At the farm, volunteers become an important part of the community food resilience network here Santa Barbara County. Come give it a try on Sundays and Wednesdays this year!
The Benefits of Humanitarian Gardening
- Develop fundamental farming and gardening skills, such as seed propagation, transplanting, composting, landscaping, construction, and maintenance
- Build practical understanding of the food system’s connection to soil health, the natural world, culture, and your neighbors in Santa Barbara County
- Improve physical health with nutritious food and moderate outdoor exercise
- Enhance social and emotional health by working in a calm and safe environment with positive social interactions
- Make a difference in local public health by improving the diets of our most vulnerable community members
- Expand the use of community gardens and encourage the construction of permagardens and food forests on private property and public spaces to build local food resilience
- Ensure the continuity and development of local farming and gardening wisdom
- Get away from your computer and go outside with a purpose! We all need a little more quality time away from screens these days. Get out in the garden!
“We restored and urban farm and grew 17,392 lbs of food for local food aid last year!”
– Amber Ross, Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade Youth Leader
“Winning is only possible if we win together.”
– Thomas C. Parker
President, Hutton Parker Foundation
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