Last Wednesday marked the end of a 37-year-long chapter in Dave Hedlin’s career and long-time commitment to protecting “Magic Skagit’s” agricultural character.

The farmer, who owns and runs Hedlin Farms with his wife Serena Campbell, is retiring from Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland’s board of directors. According to Executive Director Lora Claus, new board members will be announced in the coming months.

In an interview, Hedlin explained that he, his wife and sisters have been evaluating options on how to extinguish development rights and place a permanent conservation easement on their farmland. Realizing that Skagitonians might get involved in this process — thus constituting a potential conflict of interest — he said he felt it was time to step down, though he added that no decisions have been made yet on how to move forward.

Hedlin, who is among the farmers who founded Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland in 1989, attended his last board meeting about two months ago but was honored with a party at the Firehall Kitchen and Taphouse, where family, friends and long-time colleagues shared stories over a buffet dinner and cake.

Each table included a tiny sign with a quote — or “Dave-ism” — that Hedlin has come up with over the years.

“It took the Skagit River nearly 20,000 years to create the valley. Let’s not pave it over in a few years’ time,” one Dave-ism said, perfectly encapsulating Skagitonian’s ethos.

In an emotional speech, Secretary John Roozen acknowledged Hedlin’s impact on the Valley, stating that “God was working full-time when he put Dave into our lives.”

In the interview, Hedlin stated he was proud of the organization and his fellow board members, crediting their passion and diverse expertise as some of the organization’s biggest strengths.

“It’s amazing what Skagitonians and the people of Skagit County have been able to get done in the last 35 years,” he said, recalling how, soon after its inception, the nonprofit was struggling to cover expenses.

Today, the American Farmland Trust regards Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland as the top farmland preservation program in the state.

In a written statement, Executive Director Lora Claus said it’s thanks to people like Hedlin and Campbell that Skagit County was able to dodge the fate of southern counties that lost almost all their agricultural lands to development.

A few factors served as a catalyst for the nonprofit’s inception, such as the Trillium Corporation’s failure to develop a 280-acre theme park on Skagit farmland in the 1980s, or the County’s lack of strict rules to protect land from development, Hedlin said.

It was then that the farming community realized that, if nothing changed, the land would eventually get covered in pavement, he said.

“Skagit County farmland was gonna need an advocate forever,” he recalled thinking.

Five local families of farmers came together to form the organization, quickly realizing that farmers and infrastructure, and not just farmland preservation, had to be factored in when working towards ensuring agriculture remains viable for the generations to come, he said.

In its early years, Skagitonians successfully advocated for Skagit County’s Right to Farm ordinance, enacted in 1991, and helped shape the county’s current development code. In 1996, the nonprofit sponsored a survey that found most registered voters in the county strongly supported farmland preservation and increasing property taxes to purchase development rights on farmland — which the county adopted as an ordinance the following year. This led to the creation of Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program, which in partnership with Skagitonians, has helped retire development rights on more than 361 acres south of Mount Vernon and place over 15,000 acres of farmland under a conservation easement.

In the coming years, Hedlin Farms might be among those lands protected in perpetuity.

Currently, Skagitonians has been involved in the collaborative process of tailoring the county’s agritourism code to the Valley’s unique needs — a lengthy and contentious process that might end with a final vote of the Board of County Commissioners in the next few months.

While Hedlin doesn’t know what the next big problem is going to be, he knows that “Skagitonians will be there.”

Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.