Turf Cutting Has Begun In Our Street...

The turf cutting has begun...an enormous machine squeezed its way down our street first thing this morning...cutting is no longer allowed on the left hand side of the bog road...that side is now a designated 'Area of Interest'...doesn't mean much actually. Just looks good when council officials are asked about nature conservancy in their area...

The turf cutting machines scoop the top layer of turf from the ground then they spew it in long lines on an adjoining piece of land to begin drying out...

Of course it is the drivers of these machines who are the first to see human remains and toghers...perhaps what looks much like a bit of twisted metal may turn out to be a gold torc or neck ornament from the long distant past...wooden barrels of what is commonly known now as 'Bog Butter'...thought to have been put in the bog to keep cool and fresh and then maybe forgotten about...

The cynical side of me wonders how many treasures are lost forever because the driver is more interested in getting the job done in the shortest time than he is in unearthing and identifying some ancient artefact...or having the site swarming with experts while he sits and twiddles his thumbs...

The bog often yields up little treasures...I once found a stash of what is often called fairings...little china figures of milkmaids and boys in breeches...they were all of them cracked or chipped or broken but I put them in my pocket and brought them home...another time I found some glass marbles...the blue milky ones.

Would love to find some amber beads worn by a woman from the Iron Age...actually, I'd much like to find the remains of a woman from the Iron Age. Or a man...wouldn't want to discriminate.

There are a few older people who still cut their turf by hand...then they stack it in heaps about five feet high...designed so the rain runs off and doesn't make the inner layers wet.

I've never seen anyone using a donkey and cart to bring the turf home...it's all high powered tractors now and metal trailers that rattle as they go round bends...once the saving really gets underway, they'll be working well into the night...only going home at three or four in the mornings.

Come the autumn, when the evenings are beginning to be chilly, the scent of burning turf hangs low over the town...the smoke from the chimneys in our street curls upward towards the darkening sky...there is little which is so evocative as the smell of a good turf fire in the hearth.