Planting the tatties.No 35.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
d life shared by my younger brother David and myself on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay in the Orkney Islands, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
. RAIN ON MY WINDOW.

Planting the tatties, that most cherished crop of the farming year, the mainstay of many a family in days gone by. Farming conversation when they met was often “Have you got the tatties in yet?” The very best and deepest earth of that year’s turnip field was set aside for the tattie planting, sometimes a farmer set apart of bit of the lea field but some held that tatties in lea ground were more prone to scabby skins. It also took more cultivation to break up the clods. Planting tatties was not just for the Big Hoos but for the farm men as well. In Stronsay our father would at times set a row or two for a Villager, sometimes paid for, sometimes gratis for an old couple or a widow with little to rub together. Each farm worker had his 60 chains of tatties as part of his year’s wages, his to plant with his own cherished choices. An acre was 270 chains of 28 inch wide drills, the size of a football field. Some had drills 30 inches apart, bigger tatties with more space to grow.
The ground was prepared by many cultivations to get as fine and deep a tilth as possible, earlier than sowing the turnips. Harrows, rollers, grubber, and repeat until satisfied, with a final rolling to get a smooth surface. Then the foreman with his proud pair of horses and a single furrow drill plough or ridger opened the drills at a half depth, straight as an arrow, ten chains long, 220 yards or 200 metres. A scratch marker lever thrown over at each end marked the line in the earth for the next row. Forget to do so at your peril. Some who did not have a proper ridger tied a shovel with it’s back outwards to the land-side of an ordinary plough and it did surprisingly well.
Into these shallow drills the horsemen carted dung from the stable midden, strawier and lighter than cattle dung. They said it kept the centre of the drill more open where the potatoes would grow and warmer than cattle dung. One man with his horse and cart pulled large lumps of dung off the back of his cart with a long handled two toed dung hack, something like a walrus smiling, another helper followed with a graip fork teasing out the biggish lumps of dung to leave a continuous strip in the bottom of the drill. A bag or two of fertliser, normally a potash rich one which the potatoes relished, would be sown over the open drills with a horse drawn sower, sometimes just hand sown out of a carrying sheet carried over the shoulders. Some of the crofters on Rousam Head did just that, they had precious few implements. Sea weed (ware) was made use of by some if near the beach, a very good fertilizer indeed and as natural and organic as you could get.
Now all was ready for planting, a backbreaking job but just for one day. Sacks of seed potatoes were set out at strategic points from which to fill a bucket or basket of seed tatties, carried under one arm and the free hand see-sawing back and forth with a few tatties at a time to drop one every 12 inches in front of your toe, a long tackety boot length measure, walking heel and toe down the row. Spacing could vary according to choice, every 14 inches gave larger tatties, much closer if one was planting a new variety and wanted smaller tatties for seed for next year. There were many different varieties planted many of whose names I mostly do not remember. Duke of York for earlies, a round white potato, still used today, smaller bleams (foliage) with lighter green leaves, still used today by some gardeners. There is a rich red-skinned Duke of York which I do not remember seeing in Stronsay,. Sharp’s Express, an early variety still much used. Epicure, round, white, and deep eyed, could grow too big and coarse in rich soil. Beauties of Hebron, a wonderfully flavoured purple kidney-shaped tattie which we liked with a slightly creamy colour when boiled, and which we used ourselves many years later at Isauld, a good second early but also a very good keeper far into the next Spring, even into early Summer before the earlies of next year were usable. A bit disease prone. The favourite main crop potato we grew in Stronsay was Kerr’s Pink and that variety is still with us. King Edward, a coloured kidney shape, a good cropper and cooker. Golden Warden which I think became Golden Wonder, oval and with brownish skin, very firm when cooked, a good keeper but a poor yielder, wonderfully flavoured potato for the connoisseur at table. Majestic, more of a chipping tattie, big cropper but wetter when boiled, suited English tastes more than the Scots who preferred a dry mealy tattie. And the untimate choice for many a tattie was indeed the table where the women of the farms told the men what they wanted for cooking, and I will come to that another time!!.
The real artistry was with the farm men. Many would have shallow wooden trays to chit (sprout) some seed for early tatties, large tatties halved, having them ready sprouted for planting, some for their gardens, some for the field. Sometimes kept in their warm kitchens to bring on the first sprouts, sometimes in the rafters of the byre, warm enough. These chitted tatties were very carefully planted with the young sprout upwards. Varieties the men had were legion, a bit of fun in its way.
Planting tatties was a boys’ job where we could be useful and do well, so our help was never refused, a bit of pride as well to be with the men. The farm men had a wild mixture of differing kinds of potatoes, white, red, purple, a very dark skinned one I remember but not black, round ones, oval ones, early tatties, late keepers for next spring or even into summer before the earlies came in again. Our favourite early tattie at Whitehall was Duke of York, but the very earliest new tatties we had were often a “boiling” from one of the men of some new variety he had got from his “brither-in-law”. Each man bragged about his particular favourites, a planting of some new kind often exchanged between each other, “Try this one, Jeemie boy”. Flavours were also incredibly variant, where have they all gone with today’s tasteless tatties. The first earlies in July, a boiling new-lifted that morning from the field, having a sharp mouth-watering flavour we do not see today. Boiled in their skins, eaten with the fingers, and of course dipped in melted farmhouse butter. Oh boy!! Fresh herring landed that morning was an additional bonus in Stronsay.

To finish the planting the foreman split the initial ridges to cover with earth the new seed, the shallower the cover the sooner the new potato shoots would break the surface.
Next cultivation after a couple of weeks was to take a chain or link harrows over the rows, scrubbing down the tops and keeping the weeds in check. Sometimes a spike harrow on it’s back did just as well. The weed sprays of today which are now so efficient had not yet been invented, all weed control was by tedious and time consuming hard work. This harrowing was done just before the young potatoes broke the surface, a check being kept below the surface to see how near they were to coming through. This, timeously done, would be followed in a few days by the first dark green sprouts peeping through the surface. Then a going over with the hoes, and another shallow furrowing to shoulder more earth around the new shoots, but not to bury them. A single horse was enough for that easy task, treading carefully between the rows. Sometimes a field would be clean enough, more often weedy. So a scuffler would be used between the rows to loosen the earth and uproot the weeds, followed again by another furrowing up. Might be done more than once if need be.
Came the final furrowing with the tattie plants covering half the drills, heaping as much earth as possible around them, then leave them alone. The tatties by this time grew rapidly and soon met in the middle of the rows, “closing the drills”, covering the ground and keeping down weeds. Potatoes were called a cleaning crop and the grain crop the following year showed a singular lack of weeds where the tattie crop had been. That patch of next year’s grain was usually shorter, showing how the tatties had drawn the fertility out of the ground, a hungry crop.
In days of yore tatties were often the pioneer crop whereby a crofter who had been given a new piece of unimproved bare hill ground by his generous land-lord broke in it with hard labour from the sterile wilderness. He would have it for a few years without paying any rent, but as the crofter improved the ground so too did increasing rents appear. On the estate of the Earl of Caithness at the Castle of Mey this new five acres was at the cost of a previously improved five acres being taken back in hand by the Estate to make a bigger home farm, now Barrogill Mains. Nothing for nothing I am afraid.