Off to the Bog!
For millennia, the bogs of Ireland provided the only fuel available for the ordinary people of Ireland to heat their homes. The cuttings from the bogs were known as turf or peat and its sweet aroma as it burnt in the kitchen fires of family cottages was a characteristic of the Irish countryside
Many family farms in the 19th and 20th centuries possessed a strip of bogland in the locality. Working it was a great shared family experience that often lasted from dawn to dusk over many weeks during the summer months. After the cutting, the sods of turf were dried out by staking them in cone-shaped mounds known in Irish as ‘coirceog’. The task was normally done by the children of the family. Once the drying was complete, the turf would be transported back to the homestead.
