It’s been said that if “If green is the color of Ireland, and a soft day the touch, and poteen the taste, and harp music the sound, then a turf fire must be the scent of Ireland.”
Poets love the Irish bog for its metaphoric possibilities; archeologists, for its preservation of the past; the government, for its exploitable natural resources; and the rural Irishman, for its source of free fuel.
But what is turf, also known as peat? A partially decomposed vegetable matter, an early form of coal, it is thick, muddy, and, when harvested, looks like dark, earthen bricks. Peat forms in bogs, a type of wetland with a high acid content. Like all wetlands, bogs are inhabited by marshy plants, like trees, grasses, and moss. The bog's acidity prevents this vegetation from fully decaying, and the partly-decayed organic material builds up in bogs. Over millions of years, it becomes peat.
Farmers who cut their own turf devote weeks each spring to harvest enough sod to last them a winter. A world of tradition and culture has arisen around turf cutting. The handmade Sleans differ from area to area - and a person's religion, we are told, can be determined according to whether he digs with the slean with his right foot or his left. A turf cutter is expected to leave a "straight face" in the cutting bank for the next cutter, reinforcing a sense of community responsibility. The entire family often takes part in the hard work of turf cutting, with the weaker members stacking the heavy sods on their ends to dry. A broken back was said to be preferable to a broken sod. The deeper the cut, the heavier the wet, rich turf. The lighter scrapings form the top of the dig were often dismissed as “hairy” turf, filled with bits of moss and scraw.
The Irish writer John O’Donohue remembers …“When turf is cut, it is thrown up on the bank in wet black sods. Really black turf is like black butter. It is soft and dripping wet. One could never imagine that, with some treatment from the sun, it can become ready to flame.”
The fresh-cut turf spends the summer stacked upright in a footing, which is turned by the family several times during the summer-long drying process. Once the footed turf is somewhat dry, it’s hauled out from the bog on a handwoven creel on the back of a donkey. Brought home, it is stacked to the east side of the house for protection from the westerly winds. In the days before the turf was harvested commercially, a wet summer meant a cold winter, for 50 days of clear weather are needed to dry the turf harvest.
Wishing you the warmth of home, of hearth and of the richest, darkest turf, this is Kate Scuffle, for the Celtic Cultural Alliance.
