Today, Chelan Fresh has grown to become one of Washington state's largest marketers of fresh fruit with an estimated annual sale of ten million boxes of apples, one million pears, two million cherries, and 350 thousand boxes of stone fruit. Through volume and diversity of product offerings, Chelan Fresh continues to effectively provide quality fruit, outstanding levels of service and appropriate technology that results in consistency every day of the year at competitive prices to retailers and consumers.

While serving as the link between the growers and the retailers to move fresh fruit; Chelan Fresh Marketing provides the vehicle for 419 plus growers to market their fresh products under one roof.

As a result of the original merger, Chelan Fresh Marketing, shares roots with
the oldest operating apple businesses in Washington State part of Gebbers Farms 4000 acre orchard near Brewster, WA.

In 1885, Dan Gamble, great-great grandfather of the Gebbers Farms
family, walked west from Nova Scotia to settle in Brewster,
Washington.  Within a few years he began growing fruit and running
a local sawmill near the Columbia River in northern Washington.

Now in their fifth generation at Brewster, the family has become one of
the largest apple and cherry growers in the world and also controls
over 30,000 acres of timber land.

They farm 5400 acres of apples and cherries, including a 4000 acre
block that is one of the largest contiguous apple orchards
anywhere. 

Large tracts of orchards are planted with uniform parent varieties,
allowing the company to produce uniform grades of apples.  Over 70
percent of their Red Delicious apples grade out as Premium or
Washington Extra Fancy #1.

In 1968, the family planted some of Washington’s first Granny Smith
apple trees and is now one of the leading sources of that variety, as
well as Fuji, Red Delicious, Gala and Golden Delicious apples. 

Over 20 years ago, Dan Gebbers foresaw the opportunity to expand the
cherry marketing season by planting late-ripening cherry varieties at
high elevations above Lake Chelan.  “High and dry” is a good
combination in the cherry business, as rain at harvest time is
detrimental to cherry production.  Dan’s chosen location was so
rain-free that the wheat farmer who previously occupied the site went
broke hoping for summer precipitation.  Dan went to work building
a 3-1/2 mile pipeline that pumps lake water 1600 vertical feet up the
mountain.  Gebbers Farms now picks cherries in late-July and early
August and has expanded the highly successful cherry orchard to 300
acres.  The family also owns additional cherry orchards near
Brewster and Bridgeport.

The Gebbers family has prospered and expanded, even when others were having trouble.

During the depression while other farmers were going bankrupt, Martha
Gebbers issued her own scrip to pay her employees and vendors and
continued to grow her operations.

During difficult fruit sales years of the late 1940s, the Gebbers
family used their logging trucks to deliver apples to Los Angeles, San
Francisco and Phoenix where family members went to sell the fruit
directly to the public.

While many fruit growers in the Northwest lost their trees to severe
winter cold in 1969, the Gebbers’ trees were fortunate to survive,
allowing the family to expand their acreage.

During the mid-1980s, the family secured water rights and land holdings
that allowed them to add hundreds more acres of Granny Smith and Fuji
apples.

In the 1990s, the company pioneered one of the earliest produce
supplier relationships with Wal*Mart.  Through this long-term
partnership, the company was among the first group of produce vendors
to initiate vendor-managed supply chain replenishment.

In 2001, following two difficult pricing years, the Gebbers family
assumed full ownership of the Brewster Heights Packing facility where
they had delivered much of their fruit to be packed and were
shareholders.  Working closely with BHP’s lenders during a three
year workout period, the family took over management, refinanced the
company, and recently changed the name of the packing operation to
Gebbers Farms.  The name reflects the family’s long-term
commitment to the fruit business.

In 2003, the Gebbers combined marketing forces with other neighboring
shippers to organize the AltaFresh marketing agency, which sold fruit
for their own company, as well as for MAGI, Gwinn White and Prince,
Apple House and Obert Cold Storage. 

In 2004, Chelan Fruit Company joined the marketing venture, and AltaFresh was renamed to Chelan Fresh Marketing.

Gebbers Farms is 100 percent family owned and managed.  Currently,
brothers Cass Gebbers and Mac Gebbers, and sisters Jody Crane and Sonya
Taylor manage the company.  John Gebbers, the oldest son of the
next generation has stepped into the leadership role in fruit packing
and customer service.

Now in its second century, Gebbers Farms is focusing on customer
service, productive farming practices, and sharp management to prosper
for the next generations to come.

Its roots are in three former regional
cooperatives: Trout, Blue Chelan, and MAGI.  Currently the
Cooperative receives bins of apples, pears and cherries from 15,000
acres located from the Canadian border south to Central Washington and
from the Lake Chelan valley and east 60 miles past the Columbia
River.  A 13-member Board of Directors set policies and procedures
that are administered by the president.  The staff is made up of
approximately 600 administrative and warehouse employees.

It took nearly 100
days to pack the total Trout apples produced.  Each year’s crop had to
be packed and shipped in a maximum of four months because apples could
not be kept and stored beyond that time.  Therefore, from January
to August each year, the warehouse would virtually shut down until the
new crop was delivered.

In September of 1995, Trout, Inc. and Blue Chelan, Inc. merged to form
the largest apple packing cooperative in the world.  From the
original eight and 26 growers, these two companies have merged and
increased their membership to approximately 250 members who farm 11,000
acres of apples and pears to produce 4,000,000 packed boxes of fruit.

Because Trout-Blue Chelan, Inc. is a cooperative, it is owned and
controlled by the growers with whom it does business.  They elect
a Board of Directors which guides and directs the management of the
warehouse.  Trout-Blue Chelan is a marketing cooperative where
fruit returns are pooled.

In 1974 Omak Fruit Growers
merged in to the Brewster Mutual Growers Association which resulted in
the official name change to MAGI INC.  Magi continues to bring
into the fold, Caribou Growers in 1987 and Star Crisp Growers, Inc. of
Okanogan in 1989, and in 1998 Crisp N’ Spicy Growers joining the unit,
resulting in the largest crop of 240,000 bins. Magi Inc. mission
statement:  “Provide our growers superior fruit returns via low
cost packaging and aggressive sales while at the same time providing
our customers the quality they seek-making the MAGI brand a preferred
label of Washington State Apples, Pears and Cherries has contributed to
their success.

It took nearly
100 days to pack all the apples produced. Each year's crop had to be
packed and shipped in a maximum of four months because apples could not
be kept and stored beyond that time. Therefore, from January to August
each year, the warehouse would virtually shut down until the new crop
was delivered.

After being sorted, it was shipped in one
bushel boxes with labels glued on the ends informing others whose fruit
was in the box. They selected Trout as their label. These labels are
now a popular collector items. This initial cooperative was the
foundation for today's Trout-Blue Chelan, Inc. K.J. Hendershott was
appointed manager of Trout, Inc. in 1921, and led the organization
until 1966. To recognize his years of service a scholarship fund to
further education in the agriculture industry has been established in
his name.