School: Tyrrellspass (2) (roll number 13743)
- Location:
- Tyrrellspass, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Mrs Payne
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0731, Page 198
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- Taking out the Potatoes
Taking out the potatoes is one of the last jobs that the farmers has to do in the Autumn.When you are going to take out potatoes you make a pit somewhere on high ground. If you put potatoes in a house they take wind & this makes them very ugly for eating. There are many ways of taking out potatoes the fork, plough & the potatoe digger. The fork is generally used for digging out the potatoes in the garden. The plough is used in the field where there are not too much. The digger is used where there is a large quantity to be handled.When you are taking them out with the plough you burst up the middle of the drill & the potatoes fall out each side. This is a slow way but you can sort your potatoes & you cannot sort them when you are taking them out with a digger. The digger is a very quick & good way but you want a lot of pickers. Some say that it cleans the ground. The digger is not used very much in this county because there is very little tillage & the land is rocky. It has to be drawn by two horses because it is very hard work.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Alan Hodgins
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 13
- Address
- Dalystown, Co. Westmeath
