With the house came Peat rights. So for my personal use I am aloud to cut peat on the common grazing. The previous owners of my house used a bank (sort of grove in the land from which the peat is cut) across the street. It is a very long bank (I don’t need that much peat as I am not cooking on peat, just heating) and it is in full view. It takes a few times cutting to do it right. It also should look presentable. So I chose to cut an bank along the road to Coppister, well out of site of public view.
First the bank needed straightning and cleaning. That took about a day. And it was another 3 days to do the actual cutting. Not more than 3 hours a day as that was about as much as my muscles would let me do. “Spierpijn” in Dutch and Spiggy in English (speagy, creeks or hansper in Shetland Dialect).
Once done I now  have to wait for about 2 weeks (if the weather holds) to dry of the cut peat. Then again it needs what they call raising. Putting the peat upright so they can dry even better. And than another few weeks to finally bag the peat and put them in my peat shed. From a water content of over 90% is needs to dry to less to 20% to burn well.
About 50 bags worth of peat should get me through even a very cold winter.
The last photo in the series shows you the Sphagnum. Its all because of this little wet moss that peat can develop. At a rate of about 2mm a year the bits I cut at the bottom of the bank can be as old as 3000 years. Just imagine…..