Children learned all about hard work tattie howkin’ on a cold, grey morning

Seventy years ago mid-October was always the time of the tattie holidays. Schools came off on holiday for a fortnight to let schoolchildren join tattie squads on local farms and pick the potato harvest by hand. Not much of a holiday, more like hard physical work for youngsters – and their parents – unused to spending all day bent double filling baskets with tatties.

As I had been packed off to boarding school and was playing manly games like rugby during the potato harvest I never got the chance, even if I’d wanted to, to go to the tattie howkin’, as it was called.

For many families the money from the tattie howkin’ was a welcome addition to the family finances. Mothers relied on the extra money to kit out their bairns with warm winter clothes. During the Second World War pupils from boarding schools, who had never been called on for such work before – their mothers probably took the vapours when they heard – found themselves called for active duty in the tattie fields. Doubtless a le velling experience for many of them.

Our three youngsters, however, all jumped at the chance to earn what for them was good money – certainly more than the Doyenne and I gave them for pocket money. They rose uncomplaining, earlier than during term time, their midday piece was made up the night before and they were off, come rain or shine, to clamber on a tractor bogie and be taken to the fields.

The tattie dreels were measured out in bits for adults and half bits for kids. The pickers were chased from pillar to post by grumpy grieves – well, that’s what our three said – to stop any backsliding. But at the end of each week they got the important wee brown envelope containing their wages, and that made up for all the discomforts. They learned that the world didn’t owe them a living and that hard work brings its rewards – lessons that the Doyenne and I are pleased to see them passing on to their own children.

Seventy years ago a great deal on farms was done manually. I remember as a laddie going out to Stone of Morphie farm between Montrose and St Cyrus and sitting in a horse drawn cart watching potatoes being planted by hand. The seed potatoes were held in a jute sack tied round the waist, and at every step the farm worker dropped a potato into the furrow and they were then covered, or “furred up”.

When the crop was lifted – by hand of course – the potatoes were stored in a straw-lined pit called a “tattie clamp”. To protect them from the winter frosts they

were covered with more straw and topped over with several inches of earth.

Gradually mechanisation took over and now just a handful of men and some very big machinery are needed to grow a crop of potatoes. Right now the harvest is in full swing. The countryside is full of red harvesters slowly working their way across the fields like giant insects. And the kids have a half term holiday.

Free lunch for birds

Last weekend I put out the bird feeders for the winter. I’ve never seen the point of feeding the birds during the spring and summer months when there’s plenty of insects and seeds and berries – all natural food – for them to forage for in the hedgerows and woodland margins.

We don’t get the numbers of birds coming into the garden but that is compensated for by the seasonal blossom

and foliage and the butterflies and bees that are attracted to it. But it’s amazing how quickly the bush telegraph gets the word out that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and the feeders begin to be mobbed.

Garden songbirds don’t build up fat reserves to see them through the winter months, so they must feed almost non-stop in the daylight hours to maintain body heat to survive the long nights.

Conservation and a sense of moral responsibility to aid wild birds’ survival are key factors why we feed them but research shows that connecting with nature and our personal wellbeing are closely linked. I’ve cleaned out the nesting boxes.

As I expected two had nests as we had seen the activity round them during nesting time. A nest had been started in the third but not completed. It may have been in an unsuitable position, so I’ ll resite it next spring.

The boxes should be carefully cleaned of all nesting material and the interiors scalded with boiling water to kill off any parasites that might survive the winter and threaten the health of newly hatched chicks in the spring. When they have dried out, hang them up again with a wisp of hay in the bottom – not straw which attracts bugs and insects – as roosting boxes for small birds on the frosty winter nights.

At the end of the week they got the important wee brown envelope

HARVEST HOLIDAY: Families and friends join together planting and picking tatties in the local fields during the October holidays.