SAVING TURF IN NORTH LONGFORD

© John J. McNamee, Ph.D.

Bogs have played a significant role in Ireland where about one-sixth of the land mass is covered with them, most formed about 9,000 years ago. Though little appreciated till recently, bogs have contributed significantly to the ecosystem of the island for thousands of years. Before the role of wetlands and bog in the overall ecosystem was fully understood, bog was looked on as simply poor quality land where crops would not grow or not grow well. But they had one redeeming social value: when dried as turf they provided fuel to cook and heat. During World War II, when imports of coal from England dried up, turf became even more vital in Ireland. For decades Ireland has generated electricity with turf. Bord na Mona, established in 1946 to extract turf commercially, has supplied turf to heat homes across the country. Up till the last quarter of the twentieth century virtually every household in North Longford used turf for heating and cooking.

Rearing enough turf to provide a fire for the family for a whole year was an integral part of every farmer’s, indeed every household’s, work in the summer. For most families they were the only practical source of fuel. Each spring farmers cut and saved enough turf to last for a year. Over the years they learned how much they needed, though an extra cold winter could mean a dwindling supply by mid-summer. By the end of the summer almost everyone had run out of turf harvested the previous summer.

By the 1980s turf-cutting machines gradually replaced the ancient and very labor-intensive art of turf harvesting. In North Longford today most homes use oil or electricity to cook and heat. Today turf can be purchased in bundles in practically every supermarket. The role of a turf fire has changed dramatically. It has now become little more than a way to add atmosphere to a living room.

It took a lot of turf to keep a kitchen warm. The traditional hearth in North Longford was big, but so was the chimney, so that much of the heat went directly up it. The windows and doors were far from airtight and on a cold winter night when the wind whistled through them, a blazing fire was enough to keep you toasty warm in front, but your back could still be cold. Only the kitchen was heated, but the heat of the kitchen fire rarely carried through the house. Rarely were other rooms heated, even when there were fireplaces in them. In wintertime, going to bed at night was only a little less painful than getting up in the morning in a room as cold as the weather outside.

The last person to bed at night raked the fire: added a few fresh turf, then covered it with turf mould and ashes to keep it burning at a reduced rate during the night. In almost every household the raked fire cooked the stirabout—oatmeal porridge—slowly during the night. And usually there were enough coals left in the morning to start a fresh fire. Most important for starting a fire was getting some very dry clods—small pieces of dry turf—and if possible some cipins—small pieces of dry seasoned wood.

Most hearths had lots of place to burn logs, even big ones, that would throw the heat out into the kitchen on a cold winter’s night. But North Longford didn’t have enough wood to use as fuel, and even what firewood was used had to be cut with a hand saw or crosscut, and split with an axe or wedges, hard and time-consuming tasks. Using a crosscut took two people and endless hours of work. In really bad winters most supplemented their turf with firewood, systematically checking every fence and gap on the farm for Brosna—larger pieces of dry, seasoned firewood—which then had to be replaced by fresh fencing. The seasoned branches lighted easily and made turf burn better. Having brosna and cipins to help the turf burn was especially important if the turf were not completely dry, a common problem after a wet summer.

Manually harvesting turf was a process usually stretched over three-to-four months in summer. It began with cutting the turf. The first step in cutting turf was stripping the bank down at least several inches, often a foot or more, to reach the seam of good turf. Heather frequently covers bog, sometimes small trees or rushes, less frequently grass where farmers have tried to grow crops there. All of this debris had to be cleared away. It was tossed into the bog hole that remained from the previous year’s turf cutting. The area stripped was usually about six feet wide and as long as the estimate of what was necessary for a year’s supply of turf.

Actually cutting the turf took two people, one to cut them and one to catch and wheel them out on the bank. By far the most common arrangement in North Longford was a father cutting and one of his children wheeling. A turf spade and hay knife were essential tools. First a hay knife cut a slice across the bank from one side to the other to a depth of 15-18 inches at a width of about 8 inches. Then the turf spade cut that slice at right angles about every four inches to the same depth. The cutter then grabbed the spade with both hands, plunged it into the bank and sliced off pieces of turf about the size of large wet bricks, then threw them up to the catcher waiting on the bank with a wheelbarrow. Unlike most modern wheelbarrows, these had only a flat surface and a piece in front of the wheel to keep the turf from slipping off.

The catcher stacked the turf on the barrow like a load of wet and very heavy bricks. The size of the load was determined by the firmness of the turf, their weight, and the condition of the bog. If they were not firm they might break apart under the weight. The condition of the bog was critical. Usually the top of the bank was used as a drying field for the new turf. The wheeler had to push the barrow as much as 20-30 yards across the bank before dumping it off. While the catcher wheeled each barrowful out on the bank, the cutter prepared the next slice. It was generally a very efficient process, until something unexpected happened. The discovery and removal of an ancient tree or—more likely—a tree root lodged in the turf could set the work back substantially, sometimes taking days to remove. Such tree roots were thousands of years old, as old as the turf they were in. Since they too were saturated with water, even with a sharp axe it took a lot of time and effort to cut them up. Sometimes it took a group of neighbors to lift and push a larger root out of the way.

For days, perhaps weeks, the work continued till a year’s supply of turf was cut. By then the turf bank was covered in small piles of turf. Not all turf are born equal. In North Longford most of the turf were good quality black turf. But occasional turf banks were mostly white turf, often called spoddah. All turf were made of decomposed sphagnum moss, but in the case of spoddah the moss had only partially decomposed.

After World War II, the spade and hay knife process was gradually replaced by the slean, a far less labor-intensive method. A slean was a kind of spade with a five-foot handle that, a few inches above the blade, widened to provide a footstep for putting pressure on the blade to cut through the turf. The blade itself was sharp at the bottom, about eight inches long, four inches wide, with a narrow wing protruding about six inches from the bottom left side. The cutter could use body weight to dig out each turf, though it still required strong arms to throw them up to the catcher.

If the turf bank was reasonably dry, some catchers preferred to use a slipe, a low platform about three-by-five feet, mounted on a frame with two rollers for wheels. The roller wheels were necessary to keep them from sinking into the soft soil on top of most turf banks. A slipe could carry the equivalent load of three or four wheelbarrows and had the distinct advantage of being pulled by a horse or donkey. The platform had wings on three sides and was hinged to the frame on the fourth. A pair of handles on the side opposite the hinges allowed the catcher to dump the load. The size of the load was determined by the catcher’s ability to lift up the platform to dump the turf as well as the firmness of the turf themselves: they had to remain intact when dumped.

The newly-minted turf were left in piles for at least a few days, till they dried sufficiently to be spread, a process that involved separating them from each other so that each individual turf was exposed directly to the sun and weather. When they dried sufficiently they were footed: eight turf were stood up against each other on end, then three stacked across them and finally two on top. Doing this lifted them up off the frequently damp ground and gave them maximum exposure to the air for drying. There they dried still more over a few weeks, depending on the weather. When they were sufficiently dry they were clamped. A clamp of turf was a small stack, usually about one-and-a-half feet wide, about three feet long, and two feet high. The turf were interwoven with plenty of space between them so that air could circulate easily to dry and season them.

The importance of a supply of dry turf was especially clear following a wet summer. The year 1946 was among the wettest on record, a year when it rained so often, when the sun shone so seldom, most farm task didn’t get done: crops didn’t get planted on time, potatoes didn’t get sprayed properly or on time, hay took so long to dry that it lost most of its nutritional value. But nothing was more dramatic in its impact than turf that didn’t dry properly. When 1946 drew to a close, the whole of Ireland heaved a collective sigh of relief. But even the best new turf of 1946 were of poor quality, far from fully dry. The result was months of hardship and misery the following winter as households tried to cook and heat their kitchens with damp turf that wouldn’t light, or if they did wouldn’t burn properly. Farmers scoured their fences for broshna, any dead branches they could find to use for firewood or kindling. By Christmas most fences were picked bare. Some cut down trees to supplement their turf, even though fresh wood is difficult to burn.

Like everything else in Ireland, in good summers turf dried fast and with minimum work, sometimes letting the farmer skip the footing stage, saving a lot of time and effort. In a good year it was still hard work. In a bad year it was the ultimate hardship, when the turf might not dry properly and have to be footed or clamped a second time and brought to the shed or rick still damp. In extreme years turf could remain damp all winter…and make having a fire a constant struggle. The time between spreading, footing, and clamping the turf was almost entirely weather dependent. Since most who reared turf in North Longford were farmers, the different stages were also interspersed with completing other necessary farm tasks.

Although saving turf was time consuming and labor intensive, those who had turf bank on their farms had an enormous advantage: they didn’t have to spend much time traveling to and from the bog. Some had to travel a few miles to cut turf, and carry their daily food with them. Before automobiles the amount of travel time involved could be considerable, since the farmer had to make that trek repeatedly: to cut the turf, to foot them and later to clamp them.

Some farmers who had lots of bog rented bank to those who had none. This arrangement usually had the advantage that it was close by. There were many common bogs in North Longford. There cutting turf could be a great social occasion as well, as people took breaks during the day or huddled together in makeshift huts to escape a rain shower. If cutting turf involved a bog at several miles distance, it later involved considerable travel time with a horse and cart hauling turf home load by load. Cutting turf was a job for adults. But spreading, footing and clamping them were often done by children of the family.

Since turf was the universal cooking and heating fuel in north Longford, access to bog was very important locally. Every farm listed for sale in the local newspaper touted its everlasting supply of turbary, even if it had only a tiny turf bank.

By August when the farmer had saved his hay, he had time to draw the turf home. Most used a set of special crates on the cart that were about three feet high. In the bog he pitched the turf into the cart, drove it to the farmyard, then pitched the turf from the cart into the shed or built them into a rick. If there was someone to work in the shed or yard, he could dump the load and go for the next one.

Bogs by nature are damp places, so much so that it was sometimes impossible to bring a horse and cart all the way into the bog. Sometimes the answer was to haul the turf out to the cart with a creel—a large wicker basket—carried on one’s back. Along with being hard work, this was enormously time-consuming. An occasional farmer used a donkey and creels to bring the turf home. In such a case two creels were tied together across the donkey’s back.

In an age before television, the turf fire played a major role in the social life of North Longford. Only the kitchen was normally heated. The family gathered in a semi-circle around the open hearth to stay warm. Even when cookers—stoves—gradually replaced the open hearth, the turf fire remained the focal point of the household.