Our story
Roots that
reach beyond the farm.
“I am a farmer, a master gardener, beekeeper, a mother, and a healer.” This is where Cultivate Farms comes from.
Christina Chambers · Founder
Food grown
on your own terms.
A Black-owned farm in the Seattle and Redmond area, started by a woman who learned to garden in her grandmother’s backyard.
From Africatown, Alabama, to the Pacific Northwest
Founder Christina Chambers grew up in Mobile, Alabama, in Africatown, the community founded by the survivors of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to reach the United States. That history is part of why she farms: growing food on your own terms is a form of freedom.
Her roots run back to Creola, where her great-grandparents owned land, gardened and raised chickens. She learned to garden in her grandmother’s backyard in Prichard, in a house passed down from her grandmother’s own father. “That is the ground I come from,” she says. “People who kept going.”
Learning the land,
one plot at a time.
Christina came to Seattle in 2006. She studied Sustainable and Organic Agriculture at Highline College, where she learned to run a market stand and helped build the campus microfarm, and became a Master Gardener through Washington State University Extension. She completed her internship with the Des Moines Food Bank.
She worked as an assistant farmer at a Black-led farm in Seattle’s Central District, then leased her first half acre through Sno-Valley Tilth’s Experience Farming Project in Carnation, learning to farm on her own, mistakes and wins at the same time. Her first contract was supplying a Central District food bank. Today she farms her second plot with Black Farmers Collective in Redmond, Washington.
“I want to cultivate the farmer in me, so that I can cultivate the farmer within everyone else. A whole farmer: healthy, physically and mentally connected to the land, empowered by spirit and purpose.”
Cultivate Farms grows fresh produce and gets it into people’s hands directly, at markets and through deliveries, and accepts SNAP and EBT so healthy food reaches families no matter their income. Christina also keeps bees, so the honey on the table comes from the farm’s own hives.
She teaches people to grow their own through concierge gardening and home garden packages, and builds gardens right inside people’s homes. Through Give a Gift That Grows, every garden bought helps plant one for a family who has never had one. See the garden services →
“I come from a family that broke apart, and I have spent my life growing things that hold people together. Food. Gardens. Health. Second chances.”