Your Farmer Has a Name

Walk into most grocery stores and you’ll see words like farm-fresh, sustainably grown, or locally sourced. These phrases appear on labels, menus, and even mainstream media. But too often, those words float without gravity. The farm remains anonymous and unseen.

This is the commodity system hard at work. A system whose end goals are efficiency, uniformity, and high profit margins. One that cements growers and suppliers as completely disconnected with the end consumers. Establishing a world where the supply chain grows without ending, increasing this distance between consumers and suppliers.

At Westland, we believe something different: your farmer has a name. For us, transparency is a working relationship, one that is vital to how we innovate. At Westland, from day one we wanted to step beyond the way things have been done before us. It was quite early on in our whiskey making journey where we crossed paths with some of these likeminded cycle breakers. One of the people at the center of that relationship is Farmer Dave Hedlin, whose family has been farming in Washington State’s Skagit Valley for generations at Hedlin Family Farms in La Conner, Washington.

We were not running for the award or the recognition or the score on a page, connecting ourselves with network of people, soil, and grain that ultimately shapes what’s in your glass. These connections are ultimately what our B Corp certification looks like in practice.

The Pacific Northwest leaves its fingerprint on everything we make. That starts with climate and soil long before a mash bill is ever written. Just 70 miles north of Seattle, the Skagit Valley sits between the Cascade Mountains and the Salish Sea. Marine air moves inland, river sediment nourishes the soil. The result is one of the most prolific and distinctive agricultural regions in the United States.

Productivity is not the hero of the story, however. The land is prolific because of the care and attention given to it. At Hedlin Family Farms, Dave and his family practice regenerative organic farming, prioritizing soil health, biodiversity, and long-term stewardship over short-term yield. Instead of chasing maximum volume, the focus is on growing crops for quality—the same philosophy that guides how we approach whiskey.

The Skagit Valley region, though less than two thousand square miles, grows more than 80 crops of commercial significance, an extraordinary level of agricultural diversity that strengthens soil health and reduces dependence on monoculture. Among those crops are heritage grains, experimental fruit and vegetable varieties, and specialty barley grown with flavor in mind. This kind of farming that mirrors the way we think about whiskey: patient, place-driven, and deeply collaborative.

For many distilleries, grain is a commodity and simply a means to an end. It arrives by the truckload, anonymous and interchangeable.

At Westland, grain is the beginning of the story. Our partnerships with regional farmers, including Dave Hedlin, are closely tied to ongoing research with the WSU Bread Lab, a pioneering program exploring flavor, nutrition, and resilience in grain agriculture. Together, farmers, researchers, and distillers are asking a simple but powerful question:

What happens when you grow grain for flavor instead of commodity markets?

The answer is already reshaping food and drink across the region. Hedlin Family Farms has supplied hulless barley to Stone Barns at Blue Hill Farm, one of the most influential farm-to-table programs in the world. That same philosophy, treating grain as an ingredient worthy of attention, connects directly to what we do in whiskey. When we talk about American Single Malt reflecting the Pacific Northwest, this is what we mean. It’s not just the water or the barrels. Every distillery in the world could share a story about their water and their barrels. But almost all of them distill from identical monocrop and mass-produced grains. But for us it’s the grain itself, grown in soil that carries a maritime climate, tended by farmers who see themselves as stewards of the land.

Every March, B Corp Month invites certified companies to talk about the impact behind their work. For Westland, that conversation often begins with a number. Our B Impact score of 103.1 is more than double the average business. But numbers alone don’t tell the story.

The Customers category of the B Impact Assessment focuses on transparency and ethics, on whether a company genuinely serves the people buying its products. In other words, it asks a simple question: Are you telling the truth about what you make and how it’s made?

For us, the answer means showing our work. Something we have been proud of for our entire company existence. We want to tell you where the grain comes from. We want to introduce the farmers who grow it. We want to explain why these relationships matter. We don’t want you to drink whiskey because a label suggests it’s sustainable. We invite you to drink whiskey where the path from soil to spirit is visible.

The truth is that whiskey is rarely the product of a single place or person. It’s a collaboration across time and geography: farmers, maltsters, coopers, distillers, and consumers all playing a role. But when those connections are invisible, something important is lost. When we know our farmers, and when you know them too, everything changes. Grain becomes a central ingredient, and it becomes an expression of place.

That’s the real meaning behind Westland’s commitment to “changing the whiskey landscape.” Not just new flavors in the glass, but a deeper understanding of where those flavors come from. And it starts with a simple recognition: Your farmer has a name.

His name is Dave Hedlin. And the barley he grows in the Skagit Valley helps shape the whiskey you hold in your hand.