School: Carnamoyle (roll number 7344)
- Location:
- Carnamoyle, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Hugh Mc Kee Fleck
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1113, Page 519
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- XML School: Carnamoyle
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- XML “The Potato Crop”
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- We have no farms, but my father plants half an acre of potatoes on his employers farm each year. The employer prepares the ground, first he ploughs it, then it is harrowed, and made into drills, the bottom of each drill is covered with farm-yard manure and then covered with clay. Spades are not made locally, they are bought in the shops. A spade is something like this (see margin). During the summer when the tops are well up through the clay, the weeds and clay are taken from around them with hoes, this is called moulding them. Then there is fresh clay put up to them with the ploughs. About a month after they are moulded they are sprayed. This is to prevent a disease called the blight from coming on them and to make them grow out. In October the potatoes are rip and ready for digging. If the Season is not too wet they are nearly all dug with potato diggers, and it is mostly children that gather them.
They are then put into pits and covered with straw and clay and some of them are put into lofts.
Epicures, Kerr's Pinks, Aran Banners, and Aran Victors, are the potatoes that grow best in this district.
- Collector
- Bridget Lynch
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Carnamoyle, Co. Donegal
