School: Ballinvally (B.) (roll number 931)
- Location:
- Ballinvally, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: T. Healy
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0723, Page 261
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Ballinvally (B.)
- XML Page 261
- XML “The Potato Crop”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)clay and that is one side of the drill. The we come back the other side and that makes one drill. We keep on at this until the whole field is in drills. Then we put manure between the drills and drop the potatoes in them about a foot from each other. Then we close the drills again. Before potatoes are sown you cut the big potatoes in two or three parts leaving in each part one or two little eyes. Each piece is called a scalp. Wooden ploughs used to be used but there are none left. The spades are bought in shops. The local people help each other when planting the potatoes. When the summer comes the potatoes are sprayed to protect them from them blight. In autumn when the stalks wither it is time to dig them. My father and another man digs them with spades and I pick them. I pick them into a bucket. When the bucket is full I put them in a pit in the field. In about a month we bring(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Michael Fitzsimons
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Killadoughran, Co. Westmeath
