Hearth and Haven's Origin

From suburban sprawl to country charm

Elaine and Matt Kellner own and run Hearth and Haven Farm. But they haven't always been farmers - in fact, the farm started in a suburban backyard!

Here’s how two Seattle suburbanites in the IT industry decided to head for the country. 

three ducklings and a dream...

After years of hunting for truly humane, free-range eggs at local stores, we were getting frustrated. Egg carton labels never seemed to tell the whole truth, and few businesses were truly transparent about the workings of their operation. Were their birds healthy? Treated with respect? Did 'cage-free' and 'free range' actually mean what they were supposed to mean?

We thought about raising our own birds, but Matt wasn't a big fan of chickens.

We were stuck...until one day we spotted a magazine with the headline, "Ducks Are the New Chicken." Ducks sounded ideal for rainy Seattle weather - and best of all, Matt confessed that he'd always kind of liked them.

But were duck eggs a substitute for the chicken eggs we'd always eaten?

It took some searching, but we finally found some duck eggs at a specialty store and tried them out. To our surprise, we both just loved them. In fact, we liked them much better than chicken eggs!

Our decision was made.

Ducks one, two, and three

After a lot of research, we found a local farm that sold Cayuga ducklings and brought home three little females. 

Since they were livestock, not pets, we didn't want to give them regular names. But we still needed to call them something, so we gave them numbers instead of names: Ichi (Japanese for one), Dos (Spanish for two), and Trois (French for three). 

From figuring out their diet to learning how to load bales of straw into a Prius, everything was a bit of a challenge at first. But it didn't take long before the ducks were part of the family, and hauling sacks of feed in the hatchback was routine.

Ichi, Dos, and Trois quickly graduated from their brooder bin and moved to their little duck house in the backyard. We loved watching them run around the yard, loved hanging out with them, and of course we LOVED the eggs!

We were spending more and more time in the garden with our delightful ducks, and thanks to their slug-hunting and fertilizing abilities, the garden itself was more productive than ever. We'd rediscovered something all of our grandparents knew: gardens and livestock work best together.

It was wonderful, but there was just one problem…we didn't have enough room to grow all the food we wanted to. 

Buying the Farm

We finally realized that we were frustrated farmers. We'd crammed everything we could into our little suburban backyard, spent hours playing farm games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, and still we wanted to do more. Friends, family, and co-workers were asking for more duck eggs, but we didn't have enough to go around. We wanted to share this with everyone, but we couldn't produce enough from our little yard.

It was time to make the leap to a bigger place. It took a year of house hunting across all of Puget Sound, but we finally found our dream home- a cute red farmhouse on 5.5 acres in Monroe, WA. The perfect place to make our rural dreams come true.

We moved in at the end of 2017, and began the long process of starting a mixed farm.

Why the name?

We're striving to create a farm where animals are given the best quality of life and where the land is respected. It's a place for friends and family to gather, for people to reconnect with their food - and, of course, it's our home.

We want this beautiful space to be both a warm hearth to gather around and the animals' haven. 

We hope you'll join us on our journey!