Kilbehenny gets set for annual potato festival
The annual potato festival in Kilbehenny is all set for August 11 and people from the community were this week busy preparing the community garden for sowing the seeds for the potatoes.
Strongly rooted in the 'Meitheal' tradition, the committee have acquired a new plot of land at Condon's Corner sponsored by Ned Condon and Martin Russell and many locals came out to help sow the seed spuds last April while many families came along to see the good work.
"We always depend on the older generation to advise us on how to grow a good crop of flowery spuds and there's a lot of work involved in minding the crop from blight and of course the crows.
"The ongoing work is to be utilised as a children's education project with the collection of songs, poems and stories relating to the potato in Ireland," Moss Fitzgerald said.
To help involve the children more, on Saturday, June 14, at 2pm, all children are asked to bring along their own home made scarecrow, poems, songs and stories relating to potatoes. All scarecrows will be displayed in the garden and around the village and Moss told The Avondhu he would love to see a scarecrow in Limerick colours, ahead of this year's Munster hurling final.
"Again, the whole community will come on board for the poppy picking in July and the spuds will be offered to the community and all funds will be used towards the new community centre.
"The Kilbehenny Potato Festival is listed on the Ballyhoura events programme and local people and members of local organisations with ideas about how to develop the festival are asked to attend a festival meeting next Monday evening, June 9 at 8pm in the community centre," Moss added.
"The festival committee would like to thank all those who helped out again this year. These include the following; Pat O'Connor who helped Kellie Lewis to plough the first sod, Mike Moloney and Liam O'Callaghan who did the harrowing, Denny Fitzgerald for rotavating and fertiliser spreading, Tom Mulcahy for sowing the seed potatoes with his vintage tractor and planter, Liam Condon for spraying, Joe Prendergast for the use of his van, Ned Condon and Martin Russell for sponsoring the plot for the garden and Patsy and Pat Dalton who feed everybody in the garden with a welcome cup of tea," Moss added.
For more information on the festival, contact Moss Fitzgerald on 087-8214991 or email kilbehennycommunitycentre1@gmail.com.
Published:
Friday 13th June 10:52am
