We are a certified organic seed farm and nursery operating since 2004 on 10-acres of land in beautiful Metchosin, BC.
The farm is owned and operated by ethnobotanist Fiona Hamersley Chambers with a small team of staff and regular volunteers. We are situated on a coastal bluff over the Juan De Fuca Strait and nestled in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. From this, our farm benefits from a rare temperate Mediterranean climate - an ideal and unique location for 100% Canadian seed crop production!
Although we are a small operation, Metchosin Farm is very diverse – growing over 300+ seed varieties and 20+ kinds of roots and tubers along with dozens of fruit trees, berries, and native species. We do this because we strongly believe in the need to increase plant diversity on farms, in gardens, and nature throughout Canada. We live our motto: Seed the Change!
Grâce à notre petite ferme, nous visons à restaurer la biodiversité qui était autrefois commune dans les jardins, les fermes et la nature du Canada !
Nous ne pouvons pas y parvenir seuls ! Si vous souhaitez nous rejoindre, nous vous encourageons tous à cultiver des plantes et à conserver des graines. Ensemble, agissons !
All of our plants and Forager Pet products are grown here at Metchosin Farm. We are strong supporters of Canadian food security, and as such all our varieties are open pollinated (pure-bred), allowing anyone to save our seeds and use them for future planting. This is in contrast to the large Canadian seed companies who do not generally grow any of their products directly, rather they resell products that are grown on the international industrial market and repackaged for their brand.
All of our seeds, roots and tubers are processed and packaged by hand in small batches here at the farm. A hands-on approach ensures we produce high-quality seeds with excellent germination rates, genetic purity (true-to-type), and roots and tubers that are vigorous, viable and free of contaminants and disease.
We guarantee all the products we sell. If you have any issues growing our seeds or plants, please get in touch with us via the Contact Page.
Only 15-20 potato varieties are grown on an industrial scale in North America. There are 4,000+ registered and named varieties...
Since 2017, we have led an active research project on the farm to selectively breed new potato varieties. We do this using the tiny seeds from the Potato Fruit (not the tubers).
New varieties could give you desirable traits like flavour, fun colours, productivity, and disease resistance.
Read More on our Forager Farmer Blog
As old-school farmers we only use traditional methods for our crop production and plant breeding.
We use small-scale selective breeding techniques and only save seeds, roots and tubers from robust, healthy plants with desirable traits like flavour, vigour, colour, size and productivity.
We also use a variety of methods to gather and hand process seeds—from rubbing or shaking dry seed heads onto sheets and trays, to foot stomping or bucket threshing, to winnowing and separating seeds from chaff with an array of screens, sieves, and fans.
Hand processing seeds is a full body workout! Many of our wet seeds—such as squash, tomato and cucumber seeds—are carefully ‘overripened’ for days to months after harvest and sometimes fermented to produce top-quality clean seed with high germination.
We support Canadian food security by stewarding heirloom varieties and creating new ones too! As global food genetic diversity continues to shrink on a global scale, it is important for home gardeners to grow and experiment with new varieties. Without which we would suffer from disease plagued monocultures.
We offer new varieties like potatoes, tomatoes, and leafy greens—all selected and developed by us! See the Metchosin Farm Originals.
Fiona Hamersley Chambers is an accomplished ethnobotanist, wild foods enthusiast and author of numerous North American field guides on wild berries. She holds an MA from the University of Victoria, an MSc from Oxford, and a Masters in Environmental Design from the University of Calgary. She lectured at UVic from 1999-2025 and also taught at Pacific Rim College, BMSC, Royal Roads University.
Growing up in the First Nations communities of Nitnaht Lake (Clo-oose) and Penelakut (formerly Kuper) Island and at her grandparent’s farm in the UK countryside, Fiona’s love of the outdoors, plants and nature began at an early age. She is a long-time organic farmer, native plant expert, champion of heritage seeds and creator of new food varieties.
Fiona Hamersly Chambers could pick and brew you a wild herb tea while creating a basket using native fibres and weaving techniques. Equally she could discuss carbon sequestration in the Kyoto Protocol. She is one multi-talented academic, author, instructor, forager-farmer and ethnobotanist.
