School: The Vale (An Gleann)
- Location:
- Leiter, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: S. Ó Brolcháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1010, Page 439
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: The Vale (An Gleann)
- XML Page 439
- 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
- Potatoes are grown on our farm. We sow about one acre each year. The potato crop varies from three roods to one acre.
My uncle prepares the ground. The ground is not manured before being turned up but when it is turned up it is manured. Farm-yard manure is put on it. Sometimes the potatoes are sown in ridges and othertimes they are sown in drills. When the potatoes are sown in ridges the land first of all is ploughed and shaped in ridges. A ridge is a piece of land about three feet wide with a furrow each side. When they are making the drills they first of all plough the land and then they harrow it. Then the come along and open the drills. A drill is long piece of land with a furrow each side and one each side of the furrow there are two heights of clay. when the manure is put out it is placed in little heaps in the furrows and then it is scattered over all the furrow. Then the seed is put on the manure and the work-man comes along with a plough and throws in the two heights of clay on the seed and that is called the closing of the drills. The ridges are finished with a spade and the drills with a plough. The first plough that was introduced into our locality was the wooden plough. It was made in Navan. There are none of them to be seen now. The spades that are used nowadays are bough in the shops. The potatoes are brought into a(continues on next page)
