North Country Distributors began in 1978 as an agricultural products distributor with Tom Fancher, the current Company President. North Country Distributors has been a Fancher family-owned and operated company since then. That fall, peat from the Bonaparte Lake area in the highlands of the Okanogan Valley of Washington was sent to Moses Lake, Washington for testing. The testing confirmed that the peat soil was hypnum peat and that it had excellent qualities for use as a growing medium. That became known as Bonaparte Peat. North Country Distributors became the sole distributor of this unique hypnum peat, Bonaparte Peat.