The glorious month of May was not only welcomed for the dependable sunshine and flowers but also because it heralded the start of the Devonshire potato picking season. The farmers had Margret and women who could be trusted to recruit gangs of reliable pickers. The position was highly sought after and often handed down from father to son or mother to daughter. I think we all did some time on those fields. Margret was paid a bonus in addition to their picking money, were also popular with their neighbours who sought to earn much needed extra cash. I have been told that Margret found jobs with the Westaway’s for many family and friends, only recently I was reminded by Joyce Hayman how a tough job this was. We had not cleared the Newton town boundaries before a sing song began, back in those days you only needed a half a dozen people on a transport for a sing-a-long. The journey to the farm made shorter by the singing and we were there in no time at all the land rover us off at the first field. I heard moans and groans from the women and asked Margret the reason for them. She told me that I would see and I soon did, the field was a coastal one running sharply downhill and ending at the cliff face. As a consequence and because the drills ran down the field for drainage on every other drill the pickers were working down a steep slope and forced to bend over even further than normally. This was a great strain on one's back and these fields were hated. We collected our buckets and began work with Margret doing most of it. Her fingers seemed to fly over the fresh dug soil grabbing handfuls of the crop and she filled three buckets to my one. Despite the hard nature of the field, once work began the women chatted cheerfully and laughed loudly at each other's jokes, for myself I needed every breath to just carry on and by the time that the morning tea arrived I was pitifully grateful for the short break.