Christine, Farmer Extraordinaire
Growing up in rural Southern Ontario, at the ripe age of 7 Christine started her first vegetable garden. A small patch next to the kitchen was lovingly tended for years and slowly expanded into the yard as new crops came onto the radar of this young food grower.
At 19 years old Christine became dissatisfied with her schooling and began to question her pursuits in life. Christine traveled to New Zealand for a year where she met Matua, a dear Maori friend.
During their time together Christine saw how Matua was caring for his community with the food he grew and how the community was caring for him in turn. This experience, and this friendship brought to fruition Christine’s dreams of belonging and community building. From this point onward it was obvious that her path forward was land stewardship and small scale agriculture.
Returning to Canada, Christine finished her degree at the University of Guelph and then moved to Vancouver Island for the longer growing season and milder winters.
After completing two farming apprenticeships Christine became active in the urban food scene of Victoria. Working first with City Harvest Cooperative, she became instrumental in setting up school gardens throughout Victoria. During this time she met both Jesse and JJ and transitioned her skills and passions to Mason Street Farm. As a young person passionate about food production, community building, and sharing farm knowledge, urban food growing has proven to be the crux of these passions.
During her off season Christine is involved with food sovereignty work around the world. Setting up food forests, community gardens, and running volunteer farm programs she has been able to build community around the world and gather knowledge from far and wide to help feed her curiosity and passion of plant cultivation.
There isn’t a day that goes by where Christine isn’t grateful for all she has learned from Matua and her farming mentors.