Smoke Farm has been an essential focus of the Rubicon Foundation since its inception. Jenny Christensen, Matt Cary and Stuart Smithers formed the Foundation in 1993 after the farm was found and negotiations to purchase the property began. Owned and operated as a dairy by the Smoke family, the site was chosen because of its beauty, biological diversity, privacy, and proximity to Seattle. Alternative, non-traditional, and non-repressive schools like Summerhill, Deep Springs College, and Simon’s Rock College were inspirational models for our experiment as a creative educational research foundation.

When the economy tightened in 1999 and the Foundation faced the financial challenges of the times, Rubicon directors Craig Hollow and Stuart Smithers focused the foundation’s work on conservation – developing a stewardship program for Smoke Farm, enhancing the land, sustaining biological diversity, and preserving the property for future generations. Through the efforts of the directors and a coalition of environmental organizations and activists, we began our unfarming program – initiating major restoration work in salmon habit and wetland restoration, including re-channeling Pentland Creek, our salmon-spawning tributary to the North Forth of the Stillaguamish River. Our conservation and restoration partners include Cascade Land Conservancy, Snohomish Conservation District, Snohomish County, the Stillaguamish Tribe, Salmon Habitat Restoration Funding Board, and the USDA's Wetland Reserve Program. These efforts and relationships continue through today.

The values that inspired our education vision are still alive in the Foundation’s mission to establish an art, education and culture collective for Seattle and the Northwest. The ideal of an alternative, non-traditional, non-repressive, self-governing community remains an organic component of any program that takes root at the Farm. Dancers, poets, gardeners, architects, thinkers, printers, yogis, environmentalists, filmmakers, and musicians all want to share their work. Beauty wants to be shared. Good ideas need to be shared. The impulse to share work, beauty and ideas is the most essential basis of community.

In addition to our annual performance festival, programs at the Farm have included: Blacksmithing Camp for Seattle youth, retreats with the Global Visionaries coalition, numerous tree-planting and restoration events, field trips for students from the University of Puget Sound, fund-raising galas, philosophy camps, a Guy Fawkes Celebration, Northwest Documentary Filmmakers Association’s Docfarm, the annual Bioblitz with inner-city children from Seattle, poetry retreats, workshops for theater-makers, and support weekends for young adults with Asperger's.