File: hughesemmett06-oh-agriculturalpractices_M.mp3
Speakers:
EH – Emmett Hughes
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
EH: At that time there was as much trade as there was using money. The farmers mostly always went to Clarke [Clarke's General Store in Mount Stewart] in the Spring of the year and they'd order the fertilizer, and sign a note. And that's all Clarke had then until the Fall when the potatoes got fit to dig. Then he'd haul the potatoes till he got his fertilizer paid for. He'd go to the field with a big truck and haul them out of the field.
KP: So he would actually go around to the different farmers?
EH: That's the way it was done then. Back then it was all horses, there was no tractors for haulin' them with, and for a load of potatoes, you took twenty-five 75 pound bags, that's a pretty small load compared to today where you take a carload at a time. See now they'll take 1000 bags quite easily in them big trucks.
KP: How many bags of potatoes would it take to pay off the fertilizer?
EH: It was all according to the price of potatoes in the Fall. Some Falls there would be perhaps 50 cents, some Falls there would be a dollar, for a 75 lb. bag. There was no little wee bags of potatoes back then at all, if you weren't farming you bought 75 pounds of potatoes. You didn't buy five pounds, ten pounds. I remember them plowing the potatoes out. They'd just take the plow and the plow just would loosen it up and then you go along and you claw all of that down, and pick the potatoes on out of it. And there usually was ten pickin' and two or three dumpin' the baskets, kept you gettin' up and down all the time, and they'd dump them in carts at the first of it B The carts holdin' about 25 bushel. And they dumped them in the cart. And when that was full, some lad then would go to the house and dump them in the cellar. What you stored in the cellar was usually left for shippin' in the wintertime. What you shipped in the Fall never went into the cellar, they were dumped out in a buildin' or taken out of the field with a truck.
KP: Where were they shipped?
EH: Every five mile there was a train station, a place for loadin' cars, a place where you could keep your cars there, and another track for the train. And you hauled your potatoes down there and possibly somebody here in Dromore here, loadin' the car. And when the conductor come along, he looked at the car on the side; he took the car then, he backed the train up and took the car out of there.
KP: You're talking about a train car?
EH: A train car. And they'd leave another car perhaps for somebody else who was loading.
