Seed Cutters
Seamus Heaney Seed Cutters
The seed cutters are preparing potatoes for seeding in March or April. I have done this myself having been taught how to cut the potatoes slowly, leaving two eyes in each section and hopefully getting more than two sections from each potato. From each section a new “tap” of potatoes will grow. Done outdoors in March or earlier this is a cold operation, kneeling by the potato pit and taking some shelter if the pit is close to a hedge.
"They kneel under the hedge in a half circle
Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through."
The setting is based on one often used by Brueghel (e.g. The Harvesters). The protagonists often feature on high ground overlooking a broader landscape. The triple portrait of my former colleague David depicts a typical “circle” at work at the end of the pit. We were organising "Seed capital" for start-up companies at Queens University. In the lower landscape it is winter graduation at Queens with its landmark Lanyon building sitting apart from Belfast at the mouth of the River Lagan, at the foothills of Cavehill and Napoleon’s nose