Dave Hedlin recognized for over three decades of farmland preservation efforts

Dave Hedlin dined with friends Saturday night.

And those friends filled St. Joseph's Center in Mount Vernon, where the La Conner farmer, an ag spokesman and former school board member, was feted at the 24th annual Celebrate Skagit Harvest Dinner and Auction.

Hedlin was honored during the four-hour event, a major fundraiser for Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, the group he and his wife, Serena Campbell, helped found more than three decades ago.

The couple was among those families who launched SPF in the late 1980s to thwart growing threats by large commercial entities to develop prime rural a...