You need four tools for cutting the peats. There's a draining spade, that's the spaid mor for skimming the turf. Then a garden spade for levellling off after the skimming. The fork is a three-pronged fork. The cutting is done with a treise gearr. My father's trelse gearr had a cow horn at the top of the shaft to prevent the hands blistering. My treise gearr blade was cut from the bulkhead of the Nevada wreck. I drew the blade with white chalk on the bulkhead and this was burned out by a worker on the wreck. Then David Fotheringham from Gordonlea he fitted the shaft with light, white wood. This makes it easier handling, and I have been using this treise gearr ever since.

Everybody has got their own peat bank. It's usually when the weather turns good in April that they cut the peats, when the ground is dry. When there's a good scale, the peats dry a lot quicker. So we go out and we measure up the bank. We measure up two and half boots, which means 7 peats broad, and we go 2 feet deep. That means you cut 7 peats, and that helps the one that's going to do the forking. It's a three-man job. A man cutting the first peat and a man forking out from him, and another man coming for the second peat and doing all the work on his own. The forker has to keep well clear. He has got to leave a narrow passage for the next peat. and he daren't pass me, he's got to keep behind me or more or less level with me cutting the peat. If he passes by, the job is very akward. You're spreading the peat on both sides. There's a narrow bit left from the forking for this, half tops and half bottom. That's the way they are cut.

It's a lot of hard work in cutting peats. The spaid mor is heavy. The blade has to cut through thick turf and heather roots. In the old days you only had to ask and the blacksmith at the old smiddy would make a spaid mor for you before night time. Donald Sutherland was blacksmith in my father's time, and before him was John Kennedy.

The actual peat cutting is nothing. You hold the treise gearr with a hand on the top and the other hand half way down the shaft, and you cut down to the depth you need, and scoop out - that's the knack, and the rhythm you get into. The work is preparing to cut the peats, when you've got to skin the banks. You've got this big draining spade, the spaid mor, and you take the turf off, then you've got to put it in the row where you cut the peats from last year to level it off. When you start cutting, you throw out the peats to the side, and the fellow that's doing the forking scales them up - that means he spreads them out. And that's the peats on their way.

The treise gearr that does the cutting is a blade about 4 to 6 inches wide and a finger - that's about 6 to 8 inches. It cuts the peat in a block. The treise gearr is supposed to be kept upright. There's a knack to get the peat cut from the bottom, to puff it up, to slide it off your spade instead of sliding it into the bank when you're throwing. Some people can't do it.

The drying all depended on the weather. If it was good weather they would dry out in a week, then they would be upturned and they would dry out quicker. We Coll that "fitting the peats", 8 or 12 peats, sufficient to keep the whole lot standing, upended at an angle leaning together to make a pyramid. They would be left for a fortnight or three weeks. and then they would be ready for coming home. I would get Neil Galbraith to take them home in his tractor. Last year his brother John did the job, and got it done very smart. They're quite obliging, the Cliad boys. My father being an estate worker, 3 or 4 estate carts came first thing in the morning, and they took my father's peats home and my uncle Hugh's peats home.

I don't build a stack the same way as my father. I build it and I thatch it. I thatch it for two reasons. One reason is so that people won't see the bad job I made of building the stack, and the other reason would be to keep the weather off, the sun and the rain of. I do the sides and the ends with grass or hay, and I do the top with irises. I put a fishing net all over the top and that keeps it secure. I usually leave half the backside of the stack open, with wire netting over the backside, to let the air get in and that's enough to dry the stack.

My father was a good stack builder. He had more pride in building a stack than what I have. He would put his line down and he would start with the first row on the flat, and after that he kept them on their angle. When we were cutting the peats, the first peat that was cut was always wider at the top than at the bottom, after the bank had been left exposed to the weather and the frost since last year's cutting. It was more or less a wedge, so when we were building the stack everyone of these were the ones that made round corners.

When he started the stack, my father knew exactly the height he was going to go; it would be about a foot wide at the top when he was finished. All the dross and broken peat and stones that were left lying was all collected up and put on the top, and that kept the rain off. When we were in school, my father had a peat bog between the old school and the Lodge, where it was handy for him to nip up and see how they were and suchlike. So this day he said to us, "After tea we're going up to the peat bog to fit the peats". But we weren't wanting any of this night work, so we made up our minds, when the school would come out, we would go and fit the peats. We were all there, my two brothers and my two sisters, and we all made for the peat bank and fitted the peats, and home and had our tea. My father said, "Well, we'll go to the peats now". We said, "Vou're not needing to go to the peats. Well we've fitted all the peats". "Oh," he said, "That's fine. We'll go and have a look, just the same". So he took us all back up to the peat bog to have a look. And one look, and he said, "We'll just fit them all over again". So they had all got to be knocked apart because we had done it the easy way. We had left a couple of peats lying flat, and stacked the rest round. All the children and Women helped at the peat in those days, and they had to learn to do it properly. None of the young ones now are learning to do it at all.