Northern Lights

After extensive scouting and research in 2014, Young Living purchased land in British Columbia, Canada, for the Northern Lights Farm and Distillery. The Northern Lights farm serves as Young Living’s main source of Black Spruce essential oil, an important ingredient in many popular Young Living blends. Ever mindful of the care it takes to preserve and protect these beautiful forests, the Northern Lights farm began pursuing a horticultural license and working with local governments and landowners to manage the nearby forests.

Black Spruce’s uniquely crisp and rich pine aroma makes it a key component of our popular Valor® essential oil blend. Valor has enjoyed such great popularity that beginning in 2013, it became clear to Young Living Founder D. Gary Young that Young Living would need to expand production of Black Spruce—and quickly. He traveled across thousands of acres, from Saskatchewan to Alaska, before discovering a remote, densely forested property with untouched, never-treated soil eight miles outside of Fort Nelson, British Columbia.

Gary purchased the stunning boreal land now known as the Young Living Northern Lights farm, set up camp, and broke ground on July 29, 2014, hoping to beat the onset of winter for the construction of the state-of-the-art, on-site distillery. Not only did he and his crew finish construction, but they also cleared land for the new fields that were planted before the ground froze in October that same year.

While this farm is located in British Columbia, black spruce is often found much farther to the east in the Adirondack Mountains and in Newfoundland, where it is the official tree of the province.

A slow-growing evergreen conifer, black spruce has been valuable to a number of indigenous groups, including the Plains people, who used its shoots and inner bark for food, the hardened sap for gum, and the wood for tepee poles.