Seedlings for Sandown

This spring, Growing Chefs partnered with Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture for a new way to get elementary school classrooms growing. Our new Seedlings for Sandown project meant kids got their hands in the soil, planted seeds and shared in the joy of the growing season, while learning about how food is grown and engaging with their community in a healthy way.

In April, Growing Chefs provided 230 students in 12 Greater Victoria Area classrooms with windowsill gardening kits. Each kit included sunflower and popcorn seeds from Metchosin Farm - a local farm and seed producer on the island - as well as a classroom gardening resource guide with information on the plants they are growing, and interactive activity guides for teachers to incorporate the gardens into their teaching. Students had the opportunity to plant seeds and nurture them into seedlings, while learning about the parts and life cycle of a plant, how they grow, soil, and our food system.

“Our corn seeds started to sprout this week ….. Yeah! The students are very excited and eagerly visit them first thing every morning! We talk to our plants and give them kindness to make them grow fast and healthy! We just planted our sunflower seeds yesterday so we are anxiously waiting for them to sprout soon.”

— Teacher, Quadra Elementary

In June, over 250 seedlings were transported from these participating elementary schools to the Sandown Centre’s new 83-acre regenerative farm site, where they were transplanted by a group of students from the nearby Parkland Secondary School. The Parkland Secondary class then had the opportunity to get their hands in the dirt while learning about regenerative agriculture. They heard from a few of Sandown’s farmpreneurs to learn about their start in a career in regenerative agriculture. The seedlings will grow to maturity at the Sandown Centre’s regenerative agriculture site - helping to break ground, regenerate the soil, and brighten this new community space!

Victoria Program Update

Hello Growing Chefs! community,

We want to bring you up to speed on some island-based happenings we have been working on, and introduce you to some of our friends and collaborators.

Springing into Action!

This spring, we had an amazing group of over 25 volunteers excited and ready to share their knowledge in Victoria classrooms. We were geared up for one of our biggest years yet, expanding our reach with 5 new teachers and 2 new schools to offer the Growing Chefs! program to over 100 kids. Unfortunately, we did not get the opportunity to connect in schools, but we found new ways to reach even more kids and families online!

As you may have seen, our team had a lot of fun finding creative ways to bring our Spring Classroom Gardening and Cooking program online, with Growing Chefs! at Home. We could not have done this without the help of our amazing volunteers who helped us continue to serve our mission by sharing their knowledge and expertise via video.

Growing Together From a Distance

Growing Chefs! is proud to have joined Growing Together as a key collaborator to form an island-based initiative of food literacy organizations and growers to support our communities in these unprecedented times. We look forward to curating educational materials and resource listings, as well as promoting opportunities for mentorship and volunteerism.

This website is the hub for the Growing Together initiative. Stay tuned! You can also check out this Growing Together video to learn more about our mission.

Want to support food literacy initiatives in Victoria? Head to the Growing Together Volunteer Form to sign up!

Make sure to check out and follow along with the Growing Together social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.

Feature Spotlight from our Victoria Growing Chefs! Community

Indecent Risotto

Chef Andrew brought the Growing Chefs! Program to the island in collaboration with the Island Chefs Collaborative (ICC) in 2014. Chef Andrew and his partner Shannon have been major supporters of the program, volunteering in the classroom and participating in our Eat. Give. Grow. fundraising campaign. Together as local food champions, they run Indecent Risotto. We dig what they are up to! *Virtually passes the mic*:

Here at Indecent Risotto we believe that in order to cook great food you need to start with the best ingredients. From day one on our food truck we have always bought as many local ingredients as possible. From working with local farms for all of our produce, to local producers of meats, seafood and cheeses, we attain more than 80% local ingredients during the peak summer months.

The best part about doing things this way are the relationships that we have formed with our amazing suppliers. It is our way of building up our communities and truly understanding what it takes to create a local food economy. We feel honoured to be able to go directly to the farm 10 minutes down the road from us and see the changes the seasons bring. Being able to look at a crop and know in two weeks there will be a fantastic new ingredient ready for us to use is the best!

Andrew Paumier and Shannon Moriarty
Indecent Risotto Food Truck

Check out Indecent Risotto online at their website, or on Instagram or Facebook.

A Growing Team at Growing Chefs! – Introducing Christine

Hello! My name is Christine and I have just joined the Growing Chefs! team as a Program Assistant on Vancouver island to help support the Victoria programs. I started off with volunteering for Growing Chefs! in 2013 while living in Vancouver taking a year and a half break from my studies at UVIC in the School of Child and Youth Care. I was two years into my degree at the time and I had just come back from a trip to India that had blown my mind in regards to food, health, and the world we live in. My senses were heightened and I was really looking at things differently.

Living in Vancouver at the time, I found out about the Growing Chefs! Program. It was an ‘aha’ moment for me... I could combine my love for working with kids with this whole other world of food that really intrigued me and radiated importance. When I started volunteering with Growing Chefs! I had never planted a seed, and had not grown up thinking critically about where our food came from. However, I did grow up immersed in the food industry as my parents owned a family restaurant and I started working in the industry myself at 14 years old. From a young age, I had the opportunity to spend many hours after school and on weekends in the restaurant and felt very at home in this environment. I was able to witness the power that food had to connect people and build a sense of community. But being able to volunteer with Growing Chefs! was a pivotal moment for me in connecting with food systems on a deeper level. After that first spring session in the classroom with Growing Chefs!, I decided to go back to Victoria to finish my undergrad degree. I moved into an apartment with a South facing balcony, and planted an epic patio garden and we reached out to a neighbour to ask about creating a food garden in their unused space.

I continued to work in restaurants while I finished up my degree, and was saving up money to go on a trip with my partner. We eventually moved out of our apartment and left our jobs to go live and work on a little farm in Hawaii for a few months.

When we returned to BC, we were both looking for jobs and my partner found an opportunity to live and work on Southlands Heritage Farm in Vancouver. We moved into a tiny little home (175 sq. ft) and although I was working elsewhere at first, it was not long before I was working on the farm full-time. My main role was as the Program and Volunteer Coordinator. Southlands Farm offers many school and community programs and I was able to continue to witness the great impact that teaching kids about food, and where it comes from had. It was evident to me that visiting the farm was a very special experience for many kids and families in Vancouver who did not really have the opportunity to engage in this environment otherwise. I loved sharing these experiences with the farm visitors and being able to educate them about different aspects of farming, sustainability and food systems.

While back in Vancouver and living on the farm, I jumped on the opportunity to join Growing Chefs! again in the classroom as a volunteer, and even got to collaborate together on a couple of events with the farm. I really got to see all these passions of mine merging together.

One of my favourite parts of the job was hiring Workaway/WWOOFer’s from all over the world to come and stay on the farm. It was great to bring different cultures into our community, and we had many potluck dinners sharing favourite recipes from around the world. Some of my fondest memories at the farm were our outdoor dinners during golden hour and staying to chat and eat until after dark (normally followed by some music around the campfire).

Growing Chefs! was really the catalyst that started it all for me, in my adult life, and I am very grateful to now be able to support the Growing Chefs! programs here in Victoria. I think that ‘planting the seed’ young is so very important, and I am looking forward to growing the reach of the program here on the island. Not only am I excited about supporting the programs in the classroom, but also to be able to support the volunteer experience. Growing Chefs! was such a game-changer for me, and I really value the opportunities that volunteering in the program provided. I look forward to being able to work with the volunteer teams, in hopes that their experience is as meaningful as it was for me. I really look forward to getting to know you all in the Growing Chefs! community and will always be happy to meet over a cup of coffee and talk all things related to food, farming…and dogs!