There’s a moment in any new initiative where you can feel whether it’s being carried—or whether you’re pushing it uphill alone.

This doesn’t feel like that.

Mayne Island Growers is being built in the open, in real time, and it’s being met with support at every layer—practical, financial, and human.

The Gulf Islands Food Co-op stepped forward early to submit the funding proposal on our behalf to the Community Economic Sustainability Commission. That backing matters. It’s what allows a pilot like this to exist in the first place—not just as an idea, but as something resourced and accountable.

On the administrative side, Tsi-Tesakotitsén:tha•The Healing Place Foundation is handling coordination, disbursements, and tracking across the CSA and market—ensuring growers are paid, produce is accounted for, and the system holds together as it grows. That structure also allows us to allocate funding across the coordination work itself, and to create space for mentoring and community-based events alongside the food.

On the ground, support shows up in very practical ways. The Mayne Island Agricultural Society has sponsored space at the market, and The Trading Post has dedicated part of its bulletin board to Mayne Island Growers—meaningful pieces of visibility that help connect people to the work.
There’s also a wider layer of community support—through the Seed Library, the Mayne Island Collective, and others who are contributing to the conditions that make local growing and sharing possible.

And then there are the people who make this real.
The growers—planning, seeding, adjusting, and committing part of their harvest into something collective.

And the eaters—stepping into a system that’s still taking shape, trusting it enough to participate, and in doing so, making it viable.

This isn’t a finished system. It’s a working one.

And when it’s supported like this—across organizations, land, and community—it starts to move differently. More steadily. More realistically. With a sense that it can hold.

That’s what this feels like right now.

THANK YOU! Here's to a great season.