Part 11 (2/2)

10.--_The Cutting of Peat._--a. _Preparations._

In preparing to raise peat fuel from the bog, the surface material, which from the action of frost and sun has been pulverized to ”muck,” or which otherwise is full of roots and undecomposed matters, must be removed usually to the depth of 12 to 18 inches. It is only those portions of the peat which have never frozen nor become dry, and are free from coa.r.s.e fibers of recent vegetation, that can be cut for fuel.

Peat fuel must be brought into the form of blocks or ma.s.ses of such size and shape as to adapt them to use in our common stoves and furnaces.

Commonly, the peat is of such consistence in its native bed, that it may be cut out with a spade or appropriate tool into blocks having more or less coherence. Sometimes it is needful to take away the surplus water from the bog, and allow the peat to settle and drain a while before it can be cut to advantage.

When a bog is to be opened, a deep ditch is run from an outlet or lowest point a short distance into the peat bed, and the working goes on from the banks of this ditch. It is important that system be followed in raising the peat, or there will be great waste of fuel and of labor.

If, as often happens, the peat is so soft in the wet season as to break on the vertical walls of a ditch and fill it, at the same time dislocating the ma.s.s and spoiling it for cutting, it is best to carry down the ditch in terraces, making it wide above and narrow at the bottom.

b. _Cutting by hand._

The simplest mode of procedure, consists in laying off a ”field” or plot of, say 20 feet square, and making vertical cuts with a sharp spade three or four inches deep from end to end in parallel lines, as far apart as it is proposed to make the breadth of the peats or sods, usually four to five inches. Then, the field is cut in a similar manner in lines at right angles to the first, and at a distance that shall be the length of the peats, say 18 to 20 inches. Finally, the workman lifts the peats by horizontal thrusts of his spade, made at a depth of three inches. The sods as lifted, are placed on a light barrow or upon a board or rack, and are carried off to a drying ground, near at hand, where they are laid down flatwise to drain and dry. In Ireland, it is the custom, after the peats have lain thus for a fortnight or so, to ”foot”

them, i. e. to place them on end close together; after further drying the ”footing” is succeeded by ”clamping,” which is building the sods up into stacks of about twelve to fifteen feet long, four feet wide at bottom, narrowing to one foot at top, with a height of four to five feet. The outer turfs are inclined so as to shed the rain. The peat often remains in these clamps on the bog until wanted for use, though in rainy seasons the loss by crumbling is considerable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.--GERMAN PEAT-KNIFE.]

Other modes of lifting peat, require tools of particular construction....

In Germany it is common to excavate by _vertical_ thrusts of the tool, the cutting part of which is represented above, fig. 2. This tool is pressed down into the peat to a depth corresponding to the thickness of the required block: its three edges cut as many sides of the block, and the bottom is then broken or torn out by a prying motion.

In other cases, this or a similar tool is forced down by help of the foot as deeply into the peat as possible by a workman standing above, while a second man in the ditch cuts out the blocks of proper thickness by means of a sharp spade thrust horizontally. When the peats are taken out to the depth of the first vertical cutting, the knife is used again from above, and the process is thus continued as before, until the bottom of the peat or the desired depth is reached.

In Ireland, is employed the ”slane,” a common form of which is shown in fig. 3, it being a long, narrow and sharp spade, 20 inches by six, with a wing at right angles to the blade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.--IRISH SLANE.]

The peats are cut by one thrust of this instrument which is worked by the arms alone. After a vertical cut is made by a spade, in a line at right angles to a bank of peat, the slane cuts the bottom and other side of the block; while at the end the latter is simply lifted or broken away.

Peat is most easily cut in a vertical direction, but when, as often happens, it is made up of layers, the sods are likely to break apart where these join. Horizontal cutting is therefore best for stratified peat.

_System employed in East Friesland._--In raising peat, great waste both of labor and of fuel may easily occur as the result of random and unsystematic methods of working. For this reason, the mode of cutting peat, followed in the extensive moors of East Friesland, is worthy of particular description. There, the business is pursued systematically on a plan, which, it is claimed, long experience[17] has developed to such perfection that the utmost economy of time and labor is attained. The cost of producing marketable peat in East Friesland in 1860, was one silver groschen=about 2-1/2 cents, per hundred weight; while at that time, in Bavaria, the hundred weight cost three times as much when fit for market; and this, notwithstanding living and labor are much cheaper in the latter country.

The method to be described, presupposes that the workmen are not hindered by water, which, in most cases, can be easily removed from the high-moors of the region. The peat is worked in long stretches of 10 feet in width, and 100 to 1000 paces in length: each stretch or plot is excavated at once to a considerable depth and to its full width. Each successive year the excavation is widened by 10 feet, its length remaining the same. Sometimes, unusual demand leads to more rapid working; but the width of 10 feet is adhered to for each cutting, and, on account of the labor of carrying the peats, it is preferred to extend the length rather than the width.

a.s.suming that the peat bed has been opened by a previous cutting, to the depth of 5-1/2 feet, and the surface muck and light peat, 1-1/2 feet thick, have been thrown into the excavation of the year before--a new plot is worked by five men as follows.

One man, the ”Bunker,” removes from the surface, about two inches of peat, disintegrated by the winter's frost, throwing it into last year's ditch.

Following him, come two ”Diggers,” of whom one stands on the surface of the peat, and with a heavy, long handled tool, cuts out the sides and end of the blocks, which are about seventeen by five inches; while the other stands in the ditch, and by horizontal thrusts of a light, sharp spade, removes the sods, each of five and a half inches thickness, and places them on a small board near by. Each block of peat has the dimensions of one fourth of a cubic foot, and weighs about 13 pounds.

Two good workmen will raise 25 such peats, or 6-1/4 cubic feet, per minute.

A fourth man, the ”Loader,” puts the sods upon a wheel-barrow, always two rows of six each, one upon the other, and--

A fifth, the ”Wheeler,” removes the load to the drying ground, and with some help from the Bunker, disposes them flatwise in rows of 16 sods wide, which run at right angles to the ditch, and, beginning at a little more than 10 feet from the latter, extend 50 feet.

The s.p.a.ce of 10 feet between the plot that is excavating, and the drying ground, is, at the same time, cleared of the useless surface muck by the Bunker, in preparation for the next year's work.

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