Peat harvesting in County Mayo

As we continue our home stretch of this ‘Children of Lir Loop walk’ we witness more evidence of this traditional custom in this part of Ireland. Peat harvesting has been carried out here for millennium, originally as fuel for local home heating and cooking but more recently as big business for use in horticulture.
We see here a tractor helping in digging rows of shallow trenches, where the brick-sods are cut out (slices of peat) and laid in rows on the surface nearby, in order to dry. You can see on here the outline of many years of peat harvesting covering the whole area. As we walked past dwelling, we could see many piles of these peat sods under canvas or shelters ready to be burned indoors. Even before seeing all that, you could smell the very distinctive aroma of burned peat.
The Pip (last photo) shows a similar bog field just some 20 miles away.

Nowadays, with the sure knowledge of climate change it is recognised that these wetland peat bogs, often many thousands of years old are great reservoirs of carbon and the harvesting of peat emits greenhouse gases by releasing that carbon. In that respect there are plans afoot to halt all commercial cutting. See link: www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/27/ireland-closes-peat-bogs-climate-change

See last photo for a little more info.