Producer

Over thirty years ago, John, Sally, and a few friends started Gathering Together Farm to provide one local restaurant with a wider selection of organic produce than was available at the time. Since then, GTF has become so much more, providing some of the finest organic produce in the Willamette Valley to farmers markets, restaurants, grocery stores, and through CSA and our own restaurant. Beyond taking care of the land, growing good food, and supporting our employees with home-cooked meals every day, we are proud to play an interactive role in our community by collaborating with both students and researchers. From simple school projects and interactive tour groups to statewide breeding and dry-farming trials, we maintain our original mission to gather together over good food.

Gathering Together is owned by John Eveland and Sally Brewer, husband and wife. John and Sally provide not only the vision that is Gathering Together Farm but are also the first ones to get their hands in the soil. They highly value the diverse staff that the farm requires to be successful. In the height of production, there will be over 120 of us working hard to nurture and harvest high-quality food, prepare it for customers, and sell it at market. Our field crews perform a variety of duties such as irrigation, cultivation, trellising, mudding greenhouses, seed propagation, harvesting, hand weeding, ditch digging, planting and transplanting both by hand and mechanically. We have 15 year-round farm field crew, which grows to around 20 come spring planting season. At the height of the summer, we can have up to 30 farm field crew members working through to the fall harvest. The portion of the crew most people see are our 'marketeers'. These are the wonderful staff that make the farm-to-you produce connection. For the winter markets we have seven marketeers on staff and as the season progresses and spring outdoor markets start opening, the staff increases to around 20. Come summer there is a total of 40 marketeers slingin' the finest in organic produce. To keep all of this running efficiently we have a full time mechanic and assistant, who are continually maintaining our farm equipment, tractors, and transportation vehicles. We also have our office staff, chef and crew, our farm lunch cooks and our seasonal Farmstand employees.