The Spud Hut Mystery

This weekend just gone was the Trentham Spud Fest. Trentham is pretty much potato country and it has a history steeped in growing spuds. The soil around Trentham is just fantastic (as I think can be witnessed by the beautiful garden we have at Meran Vale). As part of the spud fest - there's a tour of what are called Spud Huts. I think at the height there was 84 or so Spud Huts around Trentham and surrounds. Potatoes were big once! So Larry & I were at the Mechanics Institute checking out the spud displays and there was a display on the Spud Huts and we went looking to see if our Spud Hut was indicated.

No.

So we informed the local historian that we did in fact have a Spud Hut on our property. She didn't quite believe us to start with. So we all trotted over to the house to let the local historians have a quick look at the hut. We do indeed have a Spud Hut on our property.

Brief Explanation Time:
A Spud Hut is a dwelling (normally about 2.5 metres by 3 metres) were potato pickers would stay during potato picking season. The majority were built in the mid to late 1800s. Unfortunately most have fallen into various states of disrepair :(


So back to the mystery... they're not sure where our Spud Hut is from. There's a suspicion that it may have been moved in from an out-lying property. It's been on the property before the people before us. So it's been there at least 6 years if not more. I'm actually now quite curious to find out what the story is! :)