After nearly 40 years of growing organic vegetables along Grange Hall Road, John Eveland is ready to pass the carrot — he just wants to make sure the right hands are there to catch it.
“There’s been some definite sadness and some tears have flowed,” Eveland said Friday. “I mean, it’s something we put ourselves into really completely for decades now.”
Gathering Together Farm, one of the most recognized names in Willamette Valley organic agriculture, has been listed for sale, with Eveland and his wife Sally Brewer, 67, citing retirement. The asking price is $1.5 million for 33.57 acres, which includes a four-bedroom home, a cabin, and the farm’s stand-restaurant building. The business itself — the corporation, equipment, established accounts and all — is a separate transaction.
The farm’s roots trace back to 1987 when Eveland and Brewer saw an opening in the local food market. High-quality, locally grown organic produce was scarce and the organic movement was still finding its footing. What began on 8 acres with a handful of employees grew into an operation that at its summer peak employs more than 100 people, runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, serving more than 350 households in Philomath, Corvallis, Portland and Newport, and supplies produce to farmers markets across the region.
“It’s just changed in scale,” Eveland said when asked about how the business has grown. “More crops, more land, more people, bigger equipment, more trucks, the restaurant and the farm stand, which weren’t part of our beginning — that evolution.”
‘A willingness to be poor farmers’
The path wasn’t always smooth. Eveland holds a master’s degree in counselor psychology and was an early partner in Nearly Normals Gonzo Cuisine in Corvallis. Brewer grew up on a multi-generational family farm in New Hampshire. Both were educated. Both chose dirt.
“A willingness to be poor farmers,” Eveland laughed when asked about what got them through the toughest years. “I mean, we both have master’s degrees and we could have been doing something else and made more money.”
Some years were harder than others. In an early season, a car accident involving Brewer provided an unexpected lifeline — they used the insurance settlement to buy seed for the next planting. The pandemic years nearly wiped them out.
“I will say the government got us through the pandemic a lot,” Eveland said. “We probably would have been flattened out at that point.”
Through all of it, he said, optimism was the constant.
“You run through a whole year and you realize you’ve lost money and it’s just a hard thing to handle,” he said. “But you know, as farmers, we’re perpetual optimists and keep going for the next year. We’ve never had anything that stopped us from getting to the next year.”
At its height, Gathering Together Farm grows more than 50 types of vegetables in over 300 varieties across 67 acres of small, odd-shaped parcels. The on-farm restaurant and farmstand, built in 2003, became destinations in their own right, drawing visitors for wood-fired pizzas, house-made salsa, potato doughnuts and locally sourced goods.
The farm has also served as a community anchor beyond its produce. GTF has donated roughly $20,000 worth of food annually to gleaning groups and has functioned as an incubator for local food businesses. And their community ties run deep here — locals may remember Eveland’s role in rallying new members to save Marys River Grange from closure back around 2009, an effort that helped breathe new life into one of Philomath’s oldest civic institutions.
Among its most loyal customers are those along the coast, for whom a Willamette Valley organic farm fills a gap that coastal growing conditions can’t.
“For the people in Newport, we’re sort of a lifeline,” Eveland said. “A lot of crops that we supply over there through the farmers market in Oceania and our CSA just can’t be grown on the coast.”
During peak summer months, the operation employs more than 100 people — many of them are farmers market staff. For Eveland, the relationships built across decades of markets and CSA boxes have been among the farm’s deepest rewards.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to observe and to get the feedback from the people that we sell vegetables to,” he said. “To be at a farmers market and see the joy and happiness that people have when they’re shopping and buying our vegetables and the feedback we get from our CSA members when they open up a box.”
Eveland said the community response since word of the sale spread has been deeply moving.
“It makes us feel really connected,” he said, his voice catching. “The outpouring of support — I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s a really good feeling to know that we have indeed become such an integral part of the community.”
Pressure from all sides
The decision to sell didn’t come all at once. At 77, Eveland said he’s been looking for “ways to move the farm along” for several years. But the timing is also shaped by economic pressures squeezing farms of GTF’s size from multiple directions.
The farm currently runs approximately 49 full-time equivalent employees. Crossing the 50-FTE threshold would trigger an employer health insurance requirement that Eveland estimates would cost between $600,000 and $800,000 annually — money the farm doesn’t have.
Oregon’s agricultural overtime law adds further pressure. Currently, farm workers earn overtime after 48 hours in a work week. On Jan. 1, 2027, that threshold drops to 40 hours, aligning agricultural workers with the standard for most other industries in the state.
Eveland is deliberately downsizing the farm even as he prepares to sell it — a counterintuitive move aimed at making the operation more viable for whoever comes next.
“We want to have a business that is sustainable,” he said. “We want to have a farm that we’re handing off to somebody else that we feel good that they have a good chance of succeeding.”
He acknowledged that downsizing has also meant examining the farm’s overhead structure, including office staffing that grew to match the complexity of their many sales channels — the CSA, multiple farmers markets, restaurant accounts and the farmstand.
Eveland has fielded questions from people wondering why he’s having what some call a “fire sale” at $1.5 million. His answer — that figure is for the land and buildings only.
“For these buildings and that land, a million and a half is sort of the going market value,” he said.
The business — the S corporation, its established customers, farmers market seniority and positioning, CSA membership, restaurant accounts and roughly $800,000 in equipment and infrastructure — is a separate transaction.
“We’re selling a business opportunity within the sale of land,” Eveland said. “GTF is an S corporation, we’re shareholders, and we’re going to sell our shares in a corporation that has benefited in many ways that somebody just starting out in the business would take years to develop.”
While the property and business carry separate price tags, Eveland said the goal is to sell them together — to a single buyer who will take on both the land and the operation without losing what makes the farm what it is.
Interest has been overwhelming. Eveland said their real estate agents told him they’ve never seen a comparable response to a property listing.
The couple isn’t in a hurry. They plan to build a house before the transition on 14 acres across the road. And they are selective about who inherits the farm’s legacy.
“Mostly we’re not in a particular hurry because we are really looking for people that we can pass the carrot to,” Eveland said. “We have a good feeling about carrying on Gathering Together Farm, knowing that they will do things differently than we have, but we’re looking for people that will keep the land in organic production and will be a place that our present employees would want to work.”
He put it plainly: “It takes a certain mindset. We’re looking for somebody who wants to be true to the dirt.”
Hands still in the dirt
Even after the sale, the Eveland-Brewer chapter along Grange Hall Road won’t fully close. They’ll be living across the road, and both have made clear they intend to stay involved — in some capacity.
“I wouldn’t mind being a low-paid handyman,” Eveland said, “and my wife has been running that back shed forever.”
In the meantime, there’s work to do on their 14 acres. Eveland described the plan with the same matter-of-fact practicality that has characterized four decades of farming.
“The first thing we’re going to do is put in an ag tile because it’s real wet up against the hill there,” he said. “It’s good soil if you can keep the water out in the winter. It’s also where we’re going to put a house and I don’t want to build a house in the swamp. I might raise a few animals and my wife needs a place for horses.”
What Eveland says he won’t miss is the financial stress.
“I mostly won’t miss the financial worries of year-to-year — just making it through another year and trying to turn a profit on a hardscrabble business that’s increasingly competitive because of big agriculture moving into organic,” he said.
But much of what they’ve built is harder to let go.
“I can’t just say any one thing I’ll miss about the farm,” he said. “I still plan on interacting with the people that are over here because I’ll be living across the road. I’ll miss our house — looking out the window … we’ve got this big beautiful sequoia back there.”
The 2026 CSA main season starts June 9 with 400 members registered, and the farmstand and restaurant continue to operate.
