TURF was unknown fuel in the south east river town in which I grew up. Wood and coal were what we burned. The unique smell of turf was linked to the west, to small donkeys hauling home baskets of dark sods and to thatched cottages by Paul Henry.

Yet Ireland central bogs creeps to within a 30 minute drive of Dublin and for the people of Donadea in Co Kildare, the fact of turf and the memory of its harvesting is every bit as vital a tradition as racing horses across open plains. The top alone of Josh Rose's head is visible. He's down in a pit 14 feet by 12, cutting. Only this morning this was level ground but Josh has already worked his way five feet or more in, one "board" of turf at a time. His action with the slane, the two sided cutting tool, is as smooth as beeswax. The sods, each the size of two telephone directories, light brown in colour and jelly like in texture, fly up over the lip of the pit where they are caught by Ned Murphy.

Ned (79) turns from the hips, placing each sod exactly on the wooden dray behind him and is back ready as the next sod materialises between his open hands. There's no break in rhythm. When Ned's barrow is full, with out a pause Paddy Farrell is in position, catching and stacking. Years ago when money and time were scarcer and a man had maybe only three days off to cut what would heat his family for the winter, accuracy and rhythm in these matters was not negotiable.

Formed thousands of years ago, these bogs produce a carbon rich fuel. And although machines have largely replaced the old methods of harvesting, every year here in Kildare's Derry bog a competition takes place for the

Donadea Turf Cutter's Cup.

"I was brought up between the shafts of one of those barrows," says John Ward ruefully. A Kildare man who lived and worked for 17 years in England, his summers on the bogs would come back to him at odd moments, like when he would see bales of turf mould for sale in British garden centres. "I could never buy it," John says, "it would have been like buying back the top of my own field.

Josh Rose is taking a spell off, lying back in the heather and savouring the taste of a job well done. Overlaid with the drone of bees, the scent of fresh turf and the deep, unending silence, you realise this is a timeless place, a rare island.

"Your turn to do some catching," Josh tells me gently.

Paddy Maguire has a way of slapping the back of the slane against the wet board of turf before he cuts each next, soft sod. This is to wipe the slane free of the tiny wisps of grass and roots, the "wig", that the cutting blade has collected. I catch and stack. Catch and stack. You place the first sod an inch wrong on the barrow and a dozen later your whole enterprise is keeling over on the Kilcock side. Smack and cut, toss and catch. Stack. Wobbling away to tip my barrowful in open ground, young Jeff Ryan has taken my place and there hasn't been the slightest pause in production.

"You leave the sods two weeks for a skin to come on them," explains Paddy Farrell. "Then you scatter them, then leave them another week. Then you foot them."

"Footing" turf is building it up in little hives, each of eight sods, to allow the air filter through. Three weeks after that the turf comes home.

It's a lovely day for the bog, just the merest, teasing breath of wind. A hawk hovers, fastened to a cloud. In the distance the uncountable greens of the Dublin mountains wink in the balmy afternoon. Tea time, in fact. The women have brought it out in glass bottles the way they used to, and loaves of bread and hard boiled eggs. I here's usually a fire too, but not today the wind's too risky and the heather could go up like a torch. A generation ago a local came out here to burn off the heather from his plot and set the whole bog alight.

"It didn't go out for two years," says John Ward. "We all lived in thatched houses then. For two years, every night there was a wind we lived in fear of our lives."

So did the man who started the fire, it seems. Packed his bags that night, took the boat train to Fishguard and never came back.

Up to recently, before the widespread use of machines, sons and daughters came back from England every summer to help with the turf.

"Who'd want the seaside when you could have this?" laughs Maggie Watchorn. She grew up in Donadea and has come back today specially for the cutting.

"It was a ritual for us," says Josh, "it was an important part of our childhood."

After tea, we're back cutting and catching, heeling and scattering, allowing everyone to compete for the coveted title. It's a business that makes a fool of you twice as quick as you could ever imagine. I throw out the slane and clamber up from the ragged mess I've created. Josh jumps down and in half a dozen clean strokes has straightened the mutilated board and is making a solid are of sods in the air.

An hour later, back in Roche's Pub, an untouched jewel, Josh's cup for he won hands down goes round and round. And round. As the shadows lengthen the stories flow. Of the day, years ago on the bog, when the bees stung Father Gahan's ass. Of mighty trips on the Great Southern and Western Railway. Of great family reunions, of legendary men, of long summers' days and winters' nights when the only comfort or hope a man might have was when a fresh sod was placed on his hearth and the unique scent conjured up for him the hazy, faraway day on which that very sod had been cleaved from the great, benign bog.