School: Coill na Leac

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1. The Digging of the Potatoes

   

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   The potatoes are usually dug with a spade in the month of October. Most of the farmers nowadays dig them with a potato digger. About nine or ten men are needed for the digger, it takes one man leading the horses, another man keeping the plough straight, and the rest gathering the potatoes. They gather the good potatoes first, and piles them in a great heap, they keep doing that, until the heap is about 8 ft long, then they cover them with rushes, and outside the rushes they put clay, being about one foot deep. The small potatoes are gathered, and they are covered the same as the good potatoes, and then used for feeding pigs and hens, while the good potatoes are put in a house in January and kept for seed.

   

   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

2. The Setting of the Potatoes

   

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   The way we set our potatoes is. We plough and harrow the ground, and then make drills out of it. Then we put manure in it, we also put bone-manure in it. We cut the potatoes into two or three splits, and puts them in the drills. Then we close the drills. We do not get potatoes from other lands to set. We usually set our

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   Topics

   1. activities
      1. economic activities
         1. agriculture (~2,659)
            1. potatoes (~2,701)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Sean O' Hare

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Hackelty, Co. Cavan