The Turf...

So this past Saturday, I got a cultural experience! A lot of Irish homes, their main rooms are heated by a fireplace and what you burn is called turf. Turf is organic compressed earth that used to be a oak forest before the glaciers moved through a long, long time ago covering the forest and making it into bog land. In the ground turf is referred to as 'pete' and when being cut, dried and burnt; turf. If the 'pete' were to remain in the ground and compressed, it would become coal and later diamonds. Anyways, there are no diamonds that I know of but the Concar's (friends of the Rays), own a section of a bog (where turf come from) and we went and moved 4 wagon loads of it. The turf has to be cut, then stacked and laid out to dry. The process takes a long time! They used to do all the cutting by hand however now there is a machine that will do all the work. The Concar's still have at least 8 more wagon loads out there in the bog. It was good hard work and it was a satisfying job. The work was "down to earth" as Mark put it. (No pun intended) The company as fun and the meal that the ladies prepared for dinner was amazing!