School: Carrowbeg (roll number 10754)

Location:
Carrowbeg, Co. Donegal
Teacher:
Rachel Nic an Ridire
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1118, Page 478

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1118, Page 478

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  3. XML “The Potato Crop”

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  1. We grow two acres of potatoes on our farm each year and some times we have more potatoes off the acres than others. My father makes ready the ground. He has to plough it, then harrow, grub and drill it. When it is drilled he carts out manure and spreads it in the drills. The potatoes are cut in pieces and an eye in every cut and dropped on the manure, one foot apart. Then he closes them in with an iron drill plough. Some people have old wooden ploughs and other people who have only gardens, drill them with a spade. In olden times people had nothing but wooden ploughs. We buy our spades in a shop. The neighbours round help one another to put in the potatoes. That helping is called morrowing.
    Potatoes chosen for seed are often put into boxes and allowed to sprout before being planted.
    When the potatoes are about a month set, my father boards them to break the lumps. He then grubs and sets them up with a drill plough and that keeps back the weeds
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. activities
      1. economic activities
        1. agriculture (~2,659)
          1. potatoes (~2,701)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    James Lyle
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Moville, Co. Donegal
    Informant
    James Lyle
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    64
    Address
    Moville, Co. Donegal
    Informant
    William Lyle
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    67
    Address
    Moville, Co. Donegal