AN INNOVATIVE turf-cutters co-operative in Cahersiveen, Co Kerry, is looking across the pond for new revenue streams.
Yesterday, 10 tonnes of black turf from the bogs of Iveragh were being packed for shipment to the US in sod form.
It is being sold at a premium, to a US businessman who arrived in the town last night to inspect his cargo. Peter Baker of Sneaky Peat found that a sod of Irish turf smouldering alongside his barbecues attracted customers.
Now the co-operative intends to take a step further and bottle the smell of a sod of smouldering turf. The chairman of the Iveragh turf-cutters group Joe C Keating said they are already investigating setting up a bottling plant, so the smell could be bottled locally.
The blanket bogs of Iveragh cover whole valleys on the peninsula and have provided employment for generations. They were first mapped in 1811 by the Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo who was researching their potential for the Bogs Commissioners.
From the mid-20th century, whole generations of third-level students found summer employment when the turf was cut for the local peat-burning ESB power station.
“Everyone who ever got a degree in south Kerry worked on bog,” Pat Joe Fitzgerald, of the co-operative said yesterday.
The closure of the ESB station in 2003, which used 25,000 tonnes of turf a year, was a blow to the community of turf cutters.
However, demand for peat for domestic burning has grown in the light of rising fuel prices.