16 thoughts on “Turf Love

  1. Marbe

    That’s a lovely sight. A dreadful sight would be if the Ploughing Championship is allowed to go ahead, which is being contemplated presently. I realise it doesn’t need a licence as its termed an agricultural show, but it should be banned. We know what the result was from the gathering at Cheltenham, are we to see something similar again?

    1. Matt Pilates

      Ploughing champs could go online. Ideal for sharing, though I am sure there might be furrowed brows over it.

  2. Fergalito

    To foot or to clamp? That is the question.

    Tis’ the weather for the pismires too bedad ….

  3. Clampers Outside

    Ah yes, childhood summers….
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    . being eaten alive by bog midges! :0)

    1. GiggidyGoo

      ?
      I’d have put you as younger Clampers. We have this in common. I’d spend many happy days in the bog when I was around 10-12 years old.
      Long days.
      Paddy bottles (flasks you say? no) full of cold tea, and sandwiches….butter sandwiches as anything else would go off. No such things as mi wadi or bottles of lemonade allowed. No sireee.
      Cutting the turf with a sléan (not sure about the spelling), laying it out, returning in a few weeks to make stacks of 6-8 pieces like a haycock so that it’d dry out.
      Starving each evening after 10+ hours out.
      And then collecting the dried turf by donkey and cart, and re-stacking into a shed.
      Sure it was hardship, but enjoyable.
      Just sorry that I didn’t go ahead with my idea to make some model houses out of the wet turf, dry them out, and sell them to the american tourists.

      1. Janet, I ate my avatar

        my Dad carved and painted a load of those, pride of place in my home one that survived

        1. GiggidyGoo

          I hope he made lots of money from it. Would have been a good idea, but at the time I was too young to be let out to sell them.

  4. Johnny Keenan

    Great to read the lovely experiences  on the bog, without any s1ite talk.

    Giggidy  they would have been long days in yer day alrite. A slow but honest days work.
    My father would have cut turf with a slean/slane  (pronounced by Offaly patois).

    By the 80’s it was cut by machine.  By the time I headed for the big shmoke in mid 90’s they had machines for turning.

    Clampers you should have gone out early to avoid the midgets.
    We’d be out by sun rise, home by 3. Nare a midget in sight.

    I know most would be out turnin, footin’, stackin’ or drawin’, in the evenin’, when the midgets would be in hot pursuit of hairy heads. Caps or hats weren’t worth a mite to ya.

    After we looked after the family plot, that had the sanctimonious  ritual of getting it home quicker than everyone else.
    Before your good name was dragged through the bogholes of Glabe.
    If you didn’t have a tractor and trailer, ya had to book it, 3 generations in advance.
    Worse! , if ya had turf lying idle by August bank holiday you were either dead or worse. The shame would be enough for your own dog to turn their back on ya.

    Sick of family pride and not being able to find the 7 up and custatd creams the ole lad had hid, i decided to branch off.

    There was fast cash to be made beyond the low bank. This 14 year old  was heading to the heart of the turf rush.
    The midgets were the final straw though.

    A crew of 6 of us from the youth club would turn a plot a day. £15 punt a plot.
    The first one to finnish his 5 rows of 8 sods by 130 feet had to go back and help the lad who was slackin’.  Hence, we took our time and still got the job done.
    All we needed was money for swimming pool, games of pool, football pools, and a few swates.

    When we started going on camping weekends and Feile we went looking for more money.
    That’s when we learnt about capitalisim .

    There is nothing more liberating than a day on the bog. The total nothingness for miles. Peace and tranquility.  The only noise were frogs hopping and grasshoppers sissin, and never the twain would meet. At least, not within earshot.

    It would make you appreciate those long winter nights gazing into the burning sods stacked high, as they were, when we first stacked them together, carefully. So they would dry well and burn better by the time late October came around. The ventilation of the majestic, midland, may day breeze was of vital importance. No one wanted a shed of turf mould.
    There is an art to all this to.

    The reminisce smell of bog heather and dry straw, that came on the journey with their earthy companion peat linger longingly from the bottom of the bin, as their aroma fills your senses, even though it doesn’t, but you just want it to. If smell is the sense of memory, invigorate me now. Let it take us back away from dull cold winter days.
    When life was carefree and boglands were the height of activity.

    On one of those cold nights your heart lifts a bit.
    As you warm your arse and look across all you own and survey.
    You think about everything and anything, bar yer homework.
    Then a roar brings ya back to reality SIT DOWN AND LET THE HEAT OUT!

    Thinking of those long warm summer days (because looking back on Irish summers it never seems to rain , weird!) when your back and legs ached, but the craic was great. And wasn’t it worth it. To see those warm happy faces all cosy around the same place. The fire place. Like Christmas, only every day.

    An Bord Pleanala would do well to concentrate on corrupt cowboys like Johnny Ronan.
    And leave us bog boys to our simple ways.
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    #PowerToThePeatful

    1. Paulus

      Lovely to see a blast of clean bog air through here. As a townie, working on the bog with country cousins was demanding though. “Woulda look at the soft hands on him”.
      The very best best of people; and not a Mission Statement in sight. The only Horizon Scanning involved standing up straight for a minute to ease a sore back.

    2. GiggidyGoo

      Liked that.
      Funny you wrote ‘midgets’. Thats what I called them…..right up to a couple of years ago when the better half had right old laugh at me.
      And Fetgalito above mentioning pismires.

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