Work with us
Written for landowners first.
01
A local food system needs six things at once.
Secure land. Equipped producers. Actual growing. A way to pre-sell the harvest. Somewhere for the surplus to go. And a public place that feeds and teaches. Six functions. Any one of them missing and the other five underperform.
02
Most places have three of them.
Usually growing, usually some retail, usually a nonprofit doing education. What's missing is almost always the same three: land tenure, working capital, and conversion capacity. They're unglamorous, they don't photograph well, and they're where it breaks.
03
We build and operate the missing ones.
Rootstock stands up the functions nobody else is standing up, in one corridor, as separate entities with their own brands and their own books. Six so far. Each one exists to make the next one work.
04
You keep the title.
We say it early because it's the first question. In most arrangements the landowner stays the landowner. Foothold operates the property under lease and takes on the work, the staffing and the day-to-day risk. Where permanent protection is the goal, Three Field Commons can acquire — but that's a decision you make, not a condition of talking to us.
05
Different jobs, held in the right places.
Three Field Commons can hold multiple farm sites. Groundworks runs the main public-facing food work in McMinnville. Foothold operates properties and earns its keep. Harvest Provisions and Farm Fund Finder equip producers. LiveSwell converts surplus and brings people together. Keeping those roles clear protects charitable assets and keeps commercial risk where it belongs.
06
One corridor, on purpose.
Banks to McMinnville. Everything within one drive time of everything else, which is what lets a share box, a surplus crate and a lease actually move between the same set of people. Expansion is not the plan; depth is.
07
Who's behind it.
A decade across ranch management, market gardening, nonprofit development, event production and field operations. Operator background, not investor background — the work here is running things, and that's the experience on hand.
Three asks