I spend some of summer days in the mountains. Each year my father cuts turf, or peat as many non-Irish seem to call it. We burn it in our fireplace each winter and it helps heat the water and radiators in the house too as we have a back boiler.

The cutting of the turf has been is done early in the summer or even spring, but there is still more to be done before it is ready. We have a 'bank' as it is known, in the mountains not far from here where we cut it. We don't own this land, but pay an annual fee to the landlord, which considering what we get out of it, is a bargain. For 2004 it was just 25 euro. The turf is cut out in sods, - long pieces, shaped like a block of butter - using a tool called a slane which is similar to a spade but having a wing on one side making an L-shaped end to it. When the turf is first cut out from the ground, it is very wet. It needs to be spread out and left to dry for some time. My father would spend a number of days cutting the turf, so there is a good quantity of it. I have been up a few times this year taking what had been cut and using a wheelbarrow bringing loads out to spread around the area we have at our disposal. That was all finished a few weeks ago. Today we were 'footing' it. This involves taking the by now much drier sods and standing several of them upright and leaning them against each other. This enables the air to get in between them to help dry them better and as they are upright rain will now run down off them. You could have 5 or 6 sods in a footing, often leaning more against the outside. Smaller broken bits can be put on the top of the footings, giving them also a chance to dry.

Today was a beautiful completely blue skies day. There was not a cloud to be seen. It was the warmest day so far this year in Ireland. Even on a day as nice as today, there is always a breeze in the mountains and it is not quite as warm as it would be lower down, not that we are very high up. It is quiet up there. You get the occasional plane flying overhead with people maybe going off to sunnier places, although with today's clear skies, nowhere could be any sunnier. You will hear the occasional bird, but there are not that many up there. Cars pass along the main road, which we are actually a bit away from where we are. There are plenty of insects around. From large flying things to small little crawlies that you will find under the sods of turf as you pick them up. The side on the ground is usually still wet and that is a good place for insects to be. At one point when I lifted a sod I uncovered a load of ants busily working shifting the eggs of their queen. Their unexpected uncovering added a little extra panic to their work. I found several slugs which I cast away to an area where they would be more protected from the sun. I also found a lovely looking very hairy caterpillar, which I also left to a safer place.

It is a fairly bleak, yet beautiful place. My father often jokingly refers to it as the "Third World." There are lots of reeds, rushes and heather around. While today it was nice, it is not a nice place on a wet day and in Ireland we get plenty of them. We have often had to run back to the shelter of the car to get out of the rain and await the passing of the shower or head home if it did not stop.

My father had been cutting turf in the same place since the 1970s, so we've had many days up there. It is something he loves doing, so it is as much as a hobby and an escape to him as it is work. It is something he did as a child and a young man as he grew up in the west of Ireland. On September 3rd, 1939 he was in the bog as the news of the war came and being very young at the time he was in a hurry to get home, afraid they'd all be shot!

Many of the people that cut turf with him there and where we do now have now gone to their eternal resting place. There were many good days with many men working together with all the fun and banter and slagging that goes on as they worked. The days we were would be bringing it home were long days and often the best as there would be a lot of people involved in the work. It was the day that most hands were needed. After the turf has been left to dry in the footings the next stage is to bag it and bring it home. At one time we used to put it in bags and empty them into a large dumper truck which we hired for the day. It would then drive down to the house and tip the turf off at the gate of our house. We'd then get the bags and fill from the pile and bring the turf to the back of our garden. The big pile of turf always aroused a lot of interest in people passing. In later years we just put the bags on the truck or in a van and did not empty them and brought them down and then carried the bags in, without having to re-fill them which made more sense. Once it is home the last job, done over the following days is to empty the bags and build 'clamps' of turf, which are very large piles as high as a man and many metres long with most of the turf piled inside and the outer parts being built by laying the turf lengthways, side by side and building up an outer wall to prevent it all from falling.

With so many of those that helped each other bring home their turf now gone, it is not the same, but the memories are still there and next winter we will again be kept warm as a result of the fruits of the labour of the past few years. We always have enough turf to last several years, so we are never burning what was cut in the year just gone.

Here is a photo of a day in the bog in the 1970s. That is me standing in front of my mum and dad with my brother, who is 4 years older than me. You can see a lot of turf behind us and behind on a lower level and just beside us. My father still cuts turf at this same bank, and I was making footings yesterday on the higher section.		This is a photo taken from the same place, some 30 years later. Not much has changed.

These two pictures are of a small pile turf in the back garden and a large reek of turf, covered in plastic, also in the back of the garden.

Our garden is in two parts. One part is about 60 foot long and then in a section closed off by a line of bush and hedge, with a gate in the centre is about another 25 foot in length. In here we have some fruit trees, some very large trees and the back and it is where we keep the turf. These two pictures show a ground level view and one from my bedroom window. In both you can see the reek covered in plastic from the earlier picture.

This is a picture of my house, which is semi-detached, from the garden. My bedroom is the one behind the large upstairs window in the centre.		This is a view of the Dublin mountains from my bedroom. This is not the mountain we cut our turf on, which would be behind this one.

This is my father bringing out some turf towards the road, which is just above the ledge ahead and you can see the ramp going up.		Here you can see the car with bags of turf ready to be loaded into it.

This is our little side road that comes closest to our bank.		This is looking from our side road out the road towards the main road.

This is my father filling a bag. You can see some our garden cuttings which we put up here too.		Here are a couple of filled bags and some turf waiting to be filled.

Here you can see the car and some bagged turf left under the ledge to be collected later.		This is a view from the main road. Our bank, is not far from the end of the road you can see, in on the left.

This is my father bringing in some turf towards the garden.		The final result. A nice warm winter fire.

My father died on the 2nd of January 2011. Rest in peace Dad.

Copyright © 2004 Flukey.
© 2004