We are volunteers, no paid staff, nor office with its overhead. We grow food, give it away for free and teach basic life skills like nutrition, cooking and so many other skills. We’ve installed gardens to teach in and offer free workshops. This was our normal until November 8 th, 2018.
The Butte County Camp Fire happened. Help was needed, so we did what we do. Through grants we’ve been able to purchase a mobile sawmill. We’re turning burned trees into usable lumber for free. We’re teaching new skills. We acquired a backhoe/tractor/trailer and a dump truck. Our equipment is offered for free to do milling, trenching, leveling, hauling gravel or soil. We have built a crew of trained professionals to volunteer to do this work for us and to teach these fire survivors new skills. These are definitely skills in high demand, especially since the fires.
Our goal is to continue our normal programs, keep teaching fire victims new skills, as well as, learn to repair their own properties. It will even give them an opportunity to use this equipment on their own properties as they learn through our Community Tool Lending Library. Then we also give them the pride of having done it themselves.