According to historian John Hussey, the company had routinely provided its posts with garden seeds, hogs and hens since the first permanent post was established on Hudson’s Bay in 1670. But the company’s Columbia Department stretched from California to Alaska, delaying supplies shipped around Cape Horn for three or four months. The corporation tasked its governor, George Simpson, with reducing the cost of supplying all future outposts in his department. Simpson decided each would be self-sustaining, which meant growing its food, and that Fort Vancouver would be the district’s supply distribution center.

After setting the fort up in 1823-1824, McLoughlin took the first step toward making Fort Vancouver self-sufficient. In the spring of 1825, he planted beans, potatoes and peas on a small plot and established the fort’s first farm. The experiment was steadily expanded, adding wheat, barley and more. The farm’s success helped make Fort Vancouver the chief agricultural center of the Pacific Northwest. The crops produced eventually fed the Bay Company’s officers and those living around the fort, which in 1830 totaled between 500 and 700 people from a variety of cultures. Hunters continually augmented the food supply.

A few years later, in a letter dated March 1, 1832, McLoughlin wrote that the farm’s yield was 1,800 pounds of wheat, 1,200 of barley, 600 of peas, 400 of Indian corn and 600 of potatoes. As the permanent depot and distribution center for the HBC’s Columbia Department to all company forts in the Pacific Northwest, Fort Vancouver set the tone for future farms that would come, including the Cowlitz and Nisqually farms.

McLoughlin also introduced fruit and livestock — cattle, horses, sheep, chickens and hogs. He forbade killing cattle even for visitors dining for years. As the herds grew, managing livestock became burdensome. In 1838, the chief factor founded the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, which managed farming and provided flour and dairy products the company consumed or sold to Russian forts in Alaska. Hides, wool and food surpluses went to England.

Volunteers continue to plant a large garden, using varieties of vegetables popular in McLoughlin’s day, in front of the reconstructed trading post.