About

We are on a little adventure.

We both grew up in smallish towns in the Pacific Northwest (me in Oregon, he in Idaho) and had pretty normal smallish town/suburban upbringings.  At 19 or so I moved to California by way of Iowa and spent about 10 years there.  Bengt moved to California at 22 and spent about 12 years there as well.  Independently we rode the Internet wave through bubble and bust and had some amazing experiences along the way. Luck landed both of us at a large company that has roots in the Pacific Northwest where we also fell in love.  We discovered that we both shared a passion for our home region as well as many other areas of interest.  In late 2007 we had the company move us, our two cats, bird, hamster, and goldfish out of our little apartment in the middle of everything to our newly purchased house on 15 acres on the outskirts of a quite small town of 7,000.  Once there we added two dogs, dairy goats, and chickens to the mix. Our lives are now that of technologically advanced wannabe farmers as we strive for the right balance between modern living and living sustainably.

While we have a shared goal of being more independent and sustainable as a family we each bring different approaches to it.  Sometimes these differences require compromise (Greenhouse tomatoes vs. Grid energy) but I think it keeps us both grounded and more apt to consider the whole picture.  Bengt is very focused on our energy independence and water conservation.  These tie in to his love for electronics, technologies, and building systems.  He is also pretty handy when it comes to the hard labor.  My focus is on natural and sustainable living.  The garden and chickens have been my pet projects as well as moving us away from potential toxins in products in all aspects of our lives.  Admittedly many of the household pets are due to my soft spot for animals as well.

Our decision to leave the Silicon Valley and move to a recognized Agricultural Production District seemed a bit dramatic to many, even friends that know us well, but we made the decision both for ourselves, our children, and for our community.  Our world is changing in more ways than we can imagine and our approach was to take back control of our lives in as much as we can while still contributing to society and our community.

We are proud members of the Snoqualmie Valley Slow Food Convivium, regular patrons of several farmers markets, and willing to stop for most any random farm stand.

Our farm took the name Misc or Miscellaneous Farm partly as an off shoot of Bengt’s existing domain misc.org.  When trying to determine what to call our farm the fact that we didn’t yet know what we were doing or what we wanted it to be when it grew up made it a bit challenging to settle on a name so here we are.

Our home is situated on 14.99 acres in King County, Washington.  We are on the hill side of Cherry Valley which is an off shoot of Snoqualmie Valley.  Our land has been uncultivated, but was at one point logged.  The original owners built the house in the early 80’s.  Since the landscape of the land didn’t lend itself naturally to any particular uses, the house was placed at the northwest corner of the property, nearest the main road through the valley.  The land is now pretty heavily wooded including many evergreen and deciduous varieties.  Our back property line is a year round creek that is rumored to be home to trout and/or salmon, and our property contains a gravel road easement to the neighbor’s 48 acre property behind us.

Our family is fortunate to also include Bengt’s daughters and part-time farm kids, Celeste and Eva.