Welcome to NeighborGrown!

Thank you to those who have stuck around while I learned the logistics of building a website and found a path forward with this business. I wanted to start by introducing who I am, because I'm building this from my heart and my passion for food.

I'm Alex. I'm a grower, a gardener, a nurturer. I've always loved cooking food and sharing it with others. That grew into caring about where my food comes from, and focusing on what's in season, local, and organic. That led me to turning my urban yard into a robust garden over the years, and growing that knowledge into canning and food preservation.

I wouldn't have reached this point without meeting so many other growers along the way.

For eight years, I followed my husband through his military service. Five moves in those eight years alone. We never really got to put down roots. In the middle of all that moving, we lost our three-year-old son, and grief didn't leave much room for anything else for a long time. When we finally did settle somewhere and I could plant something and watch it grow season after season, gardening became part of how I healed. There's something about tending soil that doesn't ask you to rush.

Six years ago, our family moved back to the Portland metro for good. It was time to come home and lay down roots. I started working the front end of a locally owned grocery store that focused on locally sourced products. That meant I got to be a face people recognized, but it also meant I got close to our customers, our produce and grocery team, and the vendors who came in every week. Around the same time, our family started supporting a local CSA on a small farm. Both of those things opened me up to so many small local farms and food providers in my area, and that's what ignited my passion for learning more about how and where our food actually comes from.

Working the front end also meant I saw something I couldn't unsee: cartfull's of food, every single day, that couldn't be sold. Perfectly good produce, pulled because of a bruise or a sell-by date. I was lucky to work somewhere that donated

most of it and let employees take home what was expired or unsellable. My family lived on food that would have otherwise gone in the trash. That never left me.

Most grocery stores are owned by a large corporation. That corporation buys from other large corporations. The food is grown in soil that's been stripped of nutrients, sprayed with pesticides, picked by machines, put on a truck to a factory, packaged up in mostly plastic, and shipped thousands of miles over weeks to get to you.

Food is fuel for our bodies. But what is that fuel, if it's so disconnected from nature and care?

I wanted to change that for my family. What began as two garden beds in my backyard has blossomed into fifteen (and growing), overflowing with vegetables and, more recently, fruit. I started making our own bread, yogurt, canned tomatoes, sauces, applesauce, jams, homemade peanut butter. Slowly replacing our pantry, one homemade thing at a time.

I love growing and making my own food, but I can't grow and make everything my family needs for a whole year, not in the space or climate we have. I rely on other growers for that. Aaron, who runs Stoneboat Farm and is behind our CSA, has been a huge part of that for me. One of the people who first showed me what it looks like to build a life around growing food with care. I want to see the face of the person pouring their heart into the food they're growing to sustain my family. I want to support a small family farm that values my business the way I value their time and experience. No one grows food for the money. It's not a lucrative business. Growing food takes a lot of upfront cost, hard work, time, and knowledge. I want to support those people.

This year hit me hard in a different way. I left my job in March. It was a good company, but it wasn't my passion, and it was draining my soul a little more every day. I wanted to spend my days gardening, baking bread, building my pantry, and being with my kids, who I also homeschool, which is its own full-time job. I felt like it was time to invest in myself and in what I actually care about: good food, quality food, local food.

Around me, I keep watching small farms go out of business. I know it's happening everywhere, but it's hard to watch up close. Farmers and food producers I know personally, some of them aging out, most of them with no real way to get their products in front of the customers who'd want them. I went looking for those people myself, figuring a quick search would connect me to them. It didn't. There was no easy way to find who was growing what, near me, right now. So I decided to build that connection myself.

Here's the thing: as a backyard gardener, I grow more than my family can eat. My friends do too, too many plums, too much basil, more than any one household can use. At the same time, I think about how uncertain food access can feel, and I want there to be a real resource for finding the food that's already being grown near you. So I'm taking a leap that maybe I can help bridge that gap.

I'm building this for the growers. You deserve to get your food directly to your community. You deserve to sell your products.

I'm building this for you, my neighbors. You deserve whole foods. You deserve local, fresh foods. You deserve real food.

Your local grower has that food. They just might not look like a commercial farm.

And I'm building this for my kids, honestly. They're why I work from home. They're why I garden and learn to make everything from scratch. They're usually right there in the kitchen with me, cooking and baking, learning that same joy. Each of

them has their own garden bed. They picked their own seeds and they tend it themselves. They come with me every week to our CSA pickup. They know the farmers who grow our food by name.

We're here to empower the small farmer. The backyard gardener. The local farm stand. The cottage baker. The neighbor looking for fresh food near them.

I can’t wait to see what we can all grow together!