AT the end of tattie picking week in October, the countryside used to be adorned with piles of potatoes in pies – and groups of men brandishing strangely named items, like a riddles and igging sticks.
Their potato pie, which they also called a clamp, was a means of overwintering spuds, as we told three weeks ago.
“After the potato-picking, all the potatoes were tipped into a long row up to 60 to 70 yards long and then covered with straw and then with soil, which was dug out along the length of the pile as a drainage moat was created,” says Des Needham of Low Dinsdale, who witnessed the art of pie-making on his uncle’s farm in Nottinghamshire in the 1950s.