From the peat bank

A dry-ish morning had us heading out to the peat bank early on.  We are hoping to get the peats cut over the next couple of weeks, give them the summer to dry out, and then stack them at the house for our winter fuel.  Many people do still cut their own peat - as one of the other Mums in the village said - "It's just so worth it"  And indeed it is - so off we went.
Our peat bank is a good bit out of the township, at the side of the main road, so our newbie flounderings are visible to the entire community as they drive by, tooting their horns and waving, not to mention the various camper vans and tourists who slow down just a bit, hoping to see some traditional crofting :)  Maybe I have appeared on someone else's blog post about their holiday?

Anyway let me give you a wee insight into our day.

 

These are our tools.  The flat spade for lifting the turf, and the tarisker is the blade shaped tool, which is the actual peat cutting implement.  We have 2 tariskers - one is the working one, and the other is an older one which has recently had the shaft replaced and we wanted to try it out.  We also have a spade which is designed for cutting the peats on your own.  It was made for us by one of the men at John's Gaelic group, and we were trying that out today too.  Normally only the tarisker and flat spade are required.

The first task is to turf the bank and expose the peat.  The turfs are placed down in the trench made by last years peat cutting, and they will regrow and so aid the regeneration of the moss. Our bank has not actually been cut for several years, so it has overgrown quite a bit. John was out and did the turfing a few days ago, so it was straight to work.

Anyway - the next stage is to cut the peats, using the tarisker, or peat iron.  This is really a two-man job - one to cut  and the other to catch and throw the peat block up onto the bank, but I needed John to operate the camera. Hopefully you can see the process, as demonstrated by yours truly here. We take turns at cutting and throwing.
In the past this was very much a community event, as whole villages and families all gathered to cut everyone's peats for the Winter.  Nowadays it seems to be smaller groups or husband and wife teams going out for a couple of hours when they can.  While I would appreciate a whole clan of folks helping out with the cutting throwing and laying out to dry, I was secretly relieved that my clumsy and slapdash methods did not come under too much scrutiny from the village elders.

And then a wee rest and a shared cup of tea -

before we set the day's harvest out to dry. 

We'll keep cutting over the next couple of weeks, as the weather permits and then we should be able to lift them and stack them into little piles to dry out completely, but more on that another day.  

It is beautiful stuff when it is cut though - like rich, dense, chocolate fudge cake.  You could almost pour some double cream on that.
Aye, you fair work up an appetite after a morning at the peats!