In the Winter 2022 edition of TFH, there was an article about Harrison & MacGregor Root Cutters. That got me thinking about the farm where I worked before and after leaving school. In 1949, they grew 20 acres of green crops every year. There were two acres of potatoes and two acres of mangels, and the rest would be swede turnips.
Planting
The ridges for the potatoes would be ridged with the gauge set for a 30in ridge, but we reduced the gauge to 26in for the mangels and turnips. The potatoes would be planted by hand, out of what we called a ‘brat’. A brat would be a bag or sack that a hundredweight of cattle cake came in, split down one side and the two corners joined by a length of binder twine so that you could put your left arm through
