SEED-TIME HARVEST 
and after many difficulties, raised and sent 
home two barrels of PugerSound Cabbage 
Seed, It was large, plump, nice looking 
seed, raised from whole, large, perfect, 
selected heads, and proved to be a great 
deal better than any seed they had ever 
before used. The farmers liked the plants 
better than ever, and would each year 
thereafter ask for plants from the Puget 
Sound seed. 
For years the boys had sold seeds to their 
plant customers and quite a seed business 
grew up along with the plant trade. They 
also had each year raised a few early cab¬ 
bage, tomato and pepper plants in hot-beds, 
and found sale for all the hot-bed plants 
they could raise. They had extended the 
plant business in every direction around 
them and it was not uncommon for men to 
drive from twenty to thirty miles after 
plants, 
Then they concluded to start a shipping 
business, so advertised in the papers, and 
began to send off plants by express; thus 
extending their trade into adjoining and 
even remote states, In this they had much 
to learn, and were not content until they 
found how to so pack the plants that they 
would carry hundreds of miles and be in 
good condition for setting. They even 
found how to fix the plants so they would 
be in better condition for setting, after they 
had been taken up a week, than when first 
pulled. This enabled them, not only to 
send plants long distances, but to put them 
in the market, where the dealer could keep 
them fresh on hand for sale. And also 
they taught the farmers that there was no 
need to come in to the plant farm, all in a 
rush, on rainy days, as the plants could be 
taken up any day and taken home and set 
out at any time convenient. Of late years, 
there is no day, from June 1st to July 25tli, 
except Sundays, that they do not take up 
and sell plants to some one. From the first 
they refused to sell on Sundays, although 
some people came long distances sometimes 
on Sunday after plants, and occasionally 
would be quite angry because the boys 
would take up no plants on the Sabbath. 
The shipping business increased until the 
plant beds covered two acres of ground, 
and the sales reached nearly 1,000,000 plants 
per year. They also began to send out each 
year a Seed Catalogue and their seed trade 
rapidly increased. When they first began 
to sell plants, their farm was a mile from 
any post-office, and two miles from a depot, 
although the main line of the great Dela¬ 
ware Lackawanna and Western Railroad 
crossed the farm. The situation was shown 
to the authorities at Washington, and the 
establishment of a new Post Office followed, 
as a matter of necessity, close to the farm, 
and one of the boys having brought home 
a bride, the name La Plume, the nom de 
plume previously used by her was given to 
the new Post Office, and the Seed Store 
placed in the same building. Thus a town 
began to grow, and the Railroad Company 
soon commenced to stop their trains there, 
to take on shipments of plants, seeds, etc. 
The boys, with the help of the post master 
and some of the residents of the place, 
built a neat depot. More trains stopped, 
and the Company made it a regular station 
for passengers, and gave it a place upon 
their time tables. Thus grew La Plume, 
built up through the seed and plant busi¬ 
ness. One of the brothers (both men now,} 
is still stationed on Puget Sound, managing 
the most northern and western Seed Gar¬ 
dens in America. The other brother still 
lives on the old homestead, manages the 
Seed Store, edits and publishes a monthly 
magazine, Seed-Time and Harvest, and 
still raises and supplies the surrounding 
country with plants. A steam engine does 
the printing on a large cylinder press, being 
the fourth xiress, whicli the growing busi¬ 
ness has obliged him to procure, each suc¬ 
ceeding one larger than its predecessor, 
A type-writer is employed to do the vast 
amount of letter-writing. Many families 
are given employment, from father down to 
the children, in folding, stitching and cov¬ 
ering the magazine, of which editions of 
50,000 are not uncommon; also the annual 
Seed Catalogue which is sent out in very 
large editions. All this business in its 
many branches, some of which we have 
neither room or time to mention here, 
stretching across a great continent, from 
Atlantic to Pacific, and doing business in 
every part of the United States and foreign 
countries, has all sprang and grown up 
