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Peat: A Keep Fit Routine For All The Family Penguin News, December 2004 Sounding almost like an arthritic robot, the peat cutting machine whirrs and clanks its way through many metres of heavy wet peat in a day. Once the main source of fuel for heating and cooking in the Falklands, peat was essential to every household and the bane of both men and women's lives. The menfolk faced the back-breaking task of cutting the heavy partially-decomposed vegetable matter from the ground with a spade. Each household required about 200 cubic yards each year with each yard weighing a ton. Some men became adept at the task and top peat cutters have been known to churn out up to one hundred yards in a day. Once cut and scattered on the bank and left to partially dry it then had to be 'rickled', arranged in heaps so the air can circulated and finish the drying process. At this point the whole family got to work and many an enjoyable weekend was spent rickling and picnicking. The next stage was to cart it home and store it in the peat shed before it could be burned to produce heat for the home. Once delivered to the peat shed door Stanley's youngsters were again hard at work. There was a competitive edge involved in spotting a load being tipped to contact the house owner and offer to 'throw it in' for a small fee. Still the work went on, peat buckets had to be kept full, often a chore allocated to a child in the household, ashes removed from the stove and a continuous supply of peat fed into it. No such thing as setting the temperature on the oven when it came to baking, the housewife had to stoke to achieve a temperature and maintain it - an operation almost akin to driving a steam engine! Then there was the continuous dust generated from first the peat and then the ashes which had to be chased around the house. However, the peat burning stove was not treated as the enemy you would expect. Most homes housed a gleamingly clean 'Rayburn' lovingly dusted down after each refuelling operation, and women judged each other's housekeeping skills by the state of the Rayburn. It is easy to become nostalgic with memories of the tangy, peat smoke filled air that would hang over Stanley on a calm winter's morning as each household stoked the banked down stove back to life ready for the daily routine, but few would like to return to the system. Mike Triggs still cuts peat each year with a Klasmann machine imported in 1992. At the peak of the business Mike was cutting about 15,000 linear metres each year for Stanley and Camp customers, churning out 800 metres a day on occasion. The machine is normally set to cut at a rate of 80 metres an hour, but production depends on the peat bank type and condition, with most around Stanley being short and in poor condition. More recently the amount of peat supplied by Mike has dropped to 3,000 metres per annum. Few houses still use peat as the main source of fuel, using it instead in the open grate on a winter's evening. However, with rising fuel prices and more efficient peat burning stoves, peat could still be a fairly economic way to heat the home. This Article first appeared in the Penguin News on 10 December 2004 and is reproduced with the kind permission of the Editor
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Introduction, Brief
History, Timeline, 1982
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