The Ranch 100.1 and Howick Mutual Insurance paired up to start a brand-new award celebrating Women in Agriculture who are making a difference. Over the past few weeks the station has been taking nominations from the community on people who they think are having an impact on Agriculture in 2022.
The winner of this year’s award is Chelsea Steenbergen. She lives just outside Palmerston and has had a life in Agriculture says her nominator, and her mom, Theresa Beyer.
Beyer says Chelsea has spent her entire life involved in the industry, growing up in a hobby farm.
“She was raised basically in the barn, she’s rode horses through her entire life and shown them. She progressed that she wanted to expand so she’s been involved locally with various different agriculture things. She’s been working in the industry basically since she could walk.” said Beyer.
She was riding horses by the age of 4 and showing them shortly after that. She has worked in multiple part-time and full-time jobs in the ag industry.
She was the Harriston Minto Farm Ambassador for two terms and is currently a volunteer with the Palmerston Agriculture Society, sitting on both the Crop Competition Board as well as the Ambassador Competition.
As Beyer says, her involvement as a volunteer is endless.
“She’s done the Fall Fair for Harriston because that’s where we are from, she was the Ambassador for that for two years but because of COVID she wasn’t able to go the CNE. She’s now volunteering with Palmerston Fall Fair as well as the Norwell High School and then with all of that she still helps me so if I need things done here at my own farm then she’ll run over and do my horses as well as anybody else who needs help at their farms too.”
In terms of education, she has already completed her Bachelor of Science in Major Crop Sciences and is in her Final Year of her Masters of Environmental Sciences.
She is currently employed by BASF as the Ontario Sales rep for horticulture, prior to that she held the same position for the Eastern Ontario Region for crops.
Chelsea is married to a dairy farmer and together they keep current with new technology on the farm, including a robot for milking.
Her latest endeavor saw the planting of an apple orchard with 4500 trees and will see her undertake a U-pic business starting next year as well as offering other vegetables.
Congratulations Chelsea.