Lottery winner gives out thousands of free potatoes from her North Yorkshire farm

A lottery winner has hit back at “selfish” stockpilers by distributing thousands of free potatoes from her farm to her local community.

Susan Herdman saved the potatoes – which were due to be ploughed back into the ground after the recent wet weather – and offered them free of charge to people in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire.

Ms Herdman and her family hand-picked the vegetables from the 27-acre plot and delivered them personally to self-isolating families.

The 51-year-old, who moved from Herefordshire to live on the farm after her £1.2 million win on the National Lottery in 2010, said she was inundated with messages after she offered the potatoes on Facebook.

Join our new coronavirus Facebook group for the latest confirmed news and advice as soon as we get it www.facebook.com/groups/yorkshirecoronavirusShe said: “We had 27 acres of potatoes in the land but, because we had all that rain, it was too wet to get on the field to lift them. It’s very, very late for potatoes to still be in the field so we went in by hand.

“I thought: we can’t plough them back in the land, with all the people stockpiling and the shortage of food in supermarkets, let’s share them free of charge and give them away.

“I just put a post on the local Boroughbridge Facebook page and it spiralled out of control.

“I delivered all day Saturday and all day Sunday, from 8am to 8pm. I have back ache, leg ache, had to pick them all by hand.”

“To me, it’s not a big thing, we’re just giving away potatoes. I don’t understand selfish people, I’ve been a giver all my life. And hopefully it proves that farmers aren’t that tight.”

In addition to delivering the potatoes, Ms Herdman placed a large bag of the vegetables in the town for people to help themselves and offered individual time slots for families to come to the farm and pick their own.

She said a home for disabled children and a single mother in self-isolation were among the recipients.

Ms Herdman said she used to live “month-to-month” while running a hair salon in Herefordshire, and winning the lottery was “a relief”.

She said: “To suddenly win, it was a weight lifted off my shoulders. I could actually buy myself some time, which was priceless.”

She added: “It’s lovely that I can now make people smile by doing this.”