And without further ado... we're off! We've been putting off starting a blog for some time now, because well you know how life gets. Raising kids, keeping a household, running a business, serving others, etc. Despite the reasons (ahem, excuses), I’m/we're doing it... now!
The purpose of this blog will be to keep our totally awesome patrons and supporters updated on what we've got going on. The intent of these posts is to both educate and inspire the reader; with such themes as meet-your-farmer, food & agriculture education, behind-the-scenes with the Gathered Harvest team, helpful recipes, and everything in between.
But first, allow me to introduce ourselves, the owners of Gathered Harvest, Leah & Peter Hatfield. Without going into the lengthiest of diatribes about our personal histories, I’ll just say that after being married for over a decade with three kids in tow, before starting Gathered Harvest we had grown more and more interested in where our food came from and what we were feeding our family. I suppose if you're reading this you can definitely relate. We both loved the idea of ensuring our food was medicine (not poison), stewarding God's creation well, and helping others do the same.
I, Peter, had always had an eye on the natural world and how we humans interface with it, through study, work, or otherwise. After my service in the Marine Corps ended, I was convinced that I would farm, specifically by raising chickens to start. Thanks, Joel Salatin, for all your books on the topic! But alas, I just couldn’t figure out how to make that happen without the income to support the endeavor or family land to take advantage of (I’m good at excuses). So we did what we could with what we had living in town, which looked like personally sourcing local food from several farms.
Fast forward to the spring of 2020, when the world had seemingly lost its ever-loving mind, we were even more acutely aware of the poor access to local farm-fresh food grown the way God intended. Farmer's markets were shut down and Leah was driving for Instacart and Shipt to help earn extra income for our family. And the stuff Leah was buying for people didn’t sit right with her, a bunch of junk food and alcohol. I had previously dreamed of starting some sort of local farm/food network of sorts (it was one of those real fuzzy ambitious ideas – you know the kind). And one day in May of 2020, it just kind of hit us – let’s stop waiting and do something now to help fix the broken food system, on a local scale. So we went to the sad, shuttered Vancouver Farmer's Market with our kids and red wagon and started buying groceries for ourselves and talked to farmers (such as Windy River Livestock and Quackenbush Farm) about our idea to sell and deliver their food to local families. And to our vulnerable, shy selves we were happily surprised to hear their support!
[Our little family back in May 2020]
And thus Gathered Harvest was born, although in those real early days we called what we were doing "Farm to Family". There was no website, no social media, just a weekly email and word of mouth. All deliveries were done by us on Saturday in two cars with our kids tagging along. Need I say they were quite grateful when we started hiring drivers to help us so they didn’t have to go on EVERY delivery. Very soon after we started, the raw milk dairy (Mountain Laurel Jerseys) that we had been personally buying from for the past couple of years agreed to work with us to add raw milk to our offerings. And that has by far been the biggest hit with everyone!
I can’t believe that’s been six years ago now – it seems not that long ago and longer ago at the same time. A lot has changed over those six years. We have developed a pretty great website to display well what is available and handle the growing order volume. Social media is quite active and helps show folks what we’ve got going on. We employ seven drivers to pick up from farms and deliver to homes all over Clark County with drops/pickup locations in Cowlitz and Skamania Counties. The Vancouver Farmer's Market entrusts us with delivering over a hundred orders each Saturday (March-October) for their Produce Prescription Program. We now offer many non-food items (all locally made from the best ingredients) such as bar soap, tallow skin care products, and candles. We are small and mighty, and we’re just getting started!
[Family photo from our recent roadtrip to Yellowstone in July 2026]
So those are some things that have changed with us since our very humble beginnings, but here’s what hasn’t changed. Our mission is still to deliver the best, most God-glorifying, farm-fresh food our area has to offer to as many families as possible. We only partner with farmers and makers who are morally sound and use healthy/sustainable production practices. We are farmer first – we don’t hide where the food comes from, we highlight and celebrate it! Our customer service cannot be matched because of how much we believe in what we’re doing and know truly how important each and every patron of ours is.
There is just so much more I could say about everything but I wanted to give you, the reader, a little taste of our story. If you’re new here, welcome, I hope to meet you at some point soon. If you’re a regular, we thank you from the bottom of hearts for choosing and trusting us!
May the Lord continue to bless our business endeavor so that we may continue to bless others. May we continue to operate in alignment with God’s will so that we may fulfil our function as the hands and feet of Jesus.
P.S. If this post seems a bit quirky, it's because we are! AI was not and will not be used to create or edit these blog posts :)
Farewell, until next time!
Much love,
~Peter (and Leah) Hatfield