Founded in 2009 by Portland- based chef and farmer Stacey Givens, Side Yard Farm is an entirely womxn- and volunteer-run urban farm, supper club, and catering company located in the Cully neighborhood. What started as an outlet for Givens to sell her produce to roughly 20 local restaurants has since morphed into something elseâas she tells me, âItâs not just a farm.â
Over the past decade, Side Yard has steadily expanded to become a sort of community hub. Itâs hosted kidsâ camps, âchicken retirement classes,â culinary workshops, yoga, bike-in movie nights, and pop-up meals featuring Givensâ produce. Side Yard even sends chefs and farmers to Japan on annual âseed-to-plateâ tours, and attracted national attention in 2015 when Givens appeared on an ice cream-focused episode of Chopped.
Givens says that by hosting pricey events like weddings and swanky suppers, sheâs able to lend her space to nonprofits and offer affordable programming that benefits her community and beyond, like the Lost Table, a bimonthly dinner for a grief support group.
âItâs a potluck, so you could bring your personâs favorite food,â Givens explains. âPeople are kind of nervous walking up sometimes, but they get a drink, start eating, and then people begin talking across the table. We just all hold space for them, but we get to have a meal together, too. Seems like itâs just more comfortable when you have food in front of you.â
Givens has dubbed 2019 the âYear of the Queer,â and will be collaborating with Q Center to find urban farming interns and unveil a queer farmersâ market that will give queer youth opportunities to get some job experience. Givens says she also plans to put on queer suppers for the LGBTQ community that will be similar to the dinners Side Yard hosts in collaboration with the Refugee Care Collective.
For those, Givens explains, âI partner up with a refugee family and talk with them about their favorite meal, or something that they grew up with, and maybe they share recipes with me. Maybe they want to cook with me. Sometimes they just give me recipes and then they come to the dinner, and Iâll do a fancy farm take on itâlike six coursesâand then they get to tell their story.â
âJust âcause itâs the âYear of the Queerâ doesnât mean that if youâre not queer, you canât be part of anything weâre doing,â Givens says. âIf you support the queer community, youâre a part of the queer community.. I think itâs just time for getting in peopleâs faces. Cause nothingâs fuckinâ changing. Weâre going backwards.â
Side Yard has a lengthy volunteer email list that continues to grow, and Givens says sheâs even offered people opportunities to work in exchange for access to an event they may not otherwise be able to afford.
âItâs hard for me to say no to things,â she says, âwhen people want to bring something to the table.â