Kristine grew up as the heir to Skarbø Farm. Here she developed a deep love for cows, mountains, and her village, while also feeling a strong curiosity to explore the world. At 16, she had the golden opportunity to live for a year in Tokyo, and later she pursued studies at Ås, which eventually led to a PhD in anthropology in the USA. As a student and researcher, she had the chance to live in many places around the world. Along the way, she met Carlos, and when they were living in Medellín, Colombia, they decided to return to Norway and become farmers in Stranda. During the first years, farm work was combined with jobs at Western Norway Research Institute and NMBU, but now their days are filled to the brim with cheesemaking, tastings, and all sorts of lively farm activities.

Carlos comes from Andalusia in Spain. He grew up in the city but has roots on the Granada coast and in the Sierra Nevada, where many in his family are involved in farming and horticulture. His family grows and produces their own wine, and during his childhood the city garden was full of hens, vegetables, avocado, and citrus trees. The family also keeps goats and cows that graze in the vast mountain areas above Granada, and in the summers Carlos and his siblings joined their grandparents there for small and big adventures. Carlos studied forestry and became an engineer, and when he is not working on the farm, he can be found as part of the staff at Stranda municipality.

Skarbø is among the oldest farms in Stranda, with people having lived and cultivated the land here for at least a thousand years. The farm stretches from the shoreline up to the mountain pasture Smørhola. Flowing down from the mountains, through the farm, and into the fjord is the Skarbø River, which cuts a gorge through the fields. One day in the 1870s, Kristine’s great-great-grandfather, Rasmus Skarbø, was working the Storåkeren field below the yard. There he found a sword and a whetstone from the Viking Age. It is both strange and wonderful to think that our ancestors have worked this same soil for hundreds of years, and that we now care for it and live from it.