They don't get the chance as you don't see any fields planted with the crop now. But then that's probably not a bad thing. They'll have many years to catch up on back-breaking labour, so why do it at an early age?
When we were young we'd bounce al
ong muddy tracks on the back of Jonty Carr's trailer being pulled along by a tractor. One year the bone-jangling ride was so rough, I was thrown clean out of the back and had to run to catch up, Micky Statton and Nigel Scott struggling to haul me back aboard as they were rolling around on the bare wooden boards laughing so much.
I remember the rough brown sacks, the waxy-skinned potatoes brown with soil and the loaded trailer. But I can't actually recall ever picking tetties.
Micky probably had some scheme to get us out of the graft. Maybe it was just me. But if we could get out of doing something, we did. Or perhaps I dreamed it.
The lads who lived on farms were always working. Beating the heather to get pheasants up for shooting parties, lambing, coming into school with straw on their blazers.
Fellas like Big Mick Armstrong who could chuck hay bales like they were light as paper and carry a sheep under each arm as casually as shopping bags.
In later years, when he also worked behind the bar in a local pub, he was equally happy to carry out any troublemakers in the same fashion.
Another time on a night out in Newcastle, we watched on in amusement as the doormen on a club strained their necks up to look at him and kept very quiet as we strolled through unhindered. A friendly tap on the arm would leave you wincing in pain. A mountain of a man. They'll never invent a machine to replace Mick.
But I never really saw the attraction of countryside work. I'd rather chew on a blade of grass and lie on my back looking up at the clouds than spend hours bending down to howk vegtables from the earth.
There was an outbreak of potato blight when we were young and there were posters up in the Post Office showing the symptoms of the disease.
While it was a deadly serious problem that caused so much famine, death and misery in Ireland in the 1840s, it gave me a great excuse not to go working in the the fields.
I've got to admit, the only potatoes I like to see are mashed up with milk and butter and served with mince and peas.
