Producer

Hayton Farms was established in 1876 by Thomas and Sarah Hayton on Fir Island in the Skagit Valley of Washington, where they grew grain and made hay barged to Seattle to feed the city's workhorses. In the early 1900s, the farm transitioned to a dairy under James and Maude Hayton, and by the 1950s, Leroy and Irene Hayton shifted operations to crop farming, focusing on peas and hay. Today, Hayton Farms Berries is a fifth-generation family farm, now led by Angelica Hayton, who purchased adjacent farmland in 2016 and has since dedicated herself to expanding the berry operation. The farm grows an impressive variety of berries including strawberries, raspberries (red, yellow, and black), blueberries, blackberries, tayberries, loganberries, and hardy kiwi.

Hayton Farms operated as a certified organic farm for 15 years before making the difficult decision in recent years to step away from organic certification, driven by increasingly untenable weed pressure from thistle and dandelion that traditional methods could no longer keep up with. Weed mat, organic herbicides, and other approved approaches proved either ineffective or damaging to the berry plants themselves, leaving labor costs as the only remaining option — one that was no longer sustainable. Today, the farm applies a non-organic herbicide to the hills and rows approximately twice per season, primarily in winter, to get ahead of spring weed growth before it can take hold. Importantly, no non-organic pesticides are ever sprayed directly on the fruit or plants themselves, and their blueberries and hardy kiwis continue to maintain certified organic status, a reflection of the farm's ongoing commitment to growing the cleanest fruit possible within a practical, real-world operation.