Thirty-six years ago when I worked on a small farm on Arran under the tender mercy of a well known local character and employer called "the Twin", things were done the old traditional way and God help me if they weren't. Himself was a hard task maister.Inshore and lobster fishing in a small open boat in all weathers and in conditions a sane man wouldn't contemplate.Aye, that would be a right enough fact too.Taties for the table, for sale,for the home grown and home slaughtered pigs that hung for the last moments of their lives in the yard in front of the byre.Taties for the cows and boiled up brock for the hens.Carrots,onions,kale, cabbage,neeps, beets and other veg supplied the table and the stock.Home grown oats, barley and corn were cut and reaped by binder,stooked on the field in sixes and turned.to dry out and taken to the stack yard where resided an old thresher power by belt.Most of the farm equipment was ex horse drawn,the half shafts cut of and a draw bar replacement. The folk about had their own taties and veg. and although many had the coal, local peats were in demand. I went back to Arran for a visit a few years ago and most of the veg was store bought and the same for the peats.May be I was lucky to have an insight into pre second world war ways of life and farming before it disappeared;But when you're out in a cauld,wet and muddy field thinning and weeding neeps by crawling up the drills with sacking wrapped round your legs then I am not so sure that it was worth the experience.Aye, everything has to be convenient now for busy folk in a rush to do something or other with their precious time. Skills lost can't be re learnt in a museum, thats a fact.
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We have peat at Saddleworth Moor, my next door neighbour cut it in the old days.

I'm wondering if someone can tell me though, why can't they put a large tent/ marquee cover over the peat they are cutting? If it had side flaps to roll up - the wind could do it's drying job and make the lifting easier...woundn't it ?

I used to cut softwood from shelterbelts on prairie farms but when natural gas was piped out to all farms in the area (mid '60's) the demand disappeared. The shelterbelts have also disappeared as they got in the way of irrigation systems (they were cut/piled/burned.) We used coal as the primary winter fuel and softwood for summer cooking as softwood burns too fast & does not give enough heat for heating purposes, coal-mining shut-down in this are about 1964 so the cost of trucking it in at least 100 miles became too high, besides we had a never-ending supply of cheap natural gas, right? With natural gas prices increasing daily I see more people using pelleted coal or wood as fuel (the trees are already gone), all in about 30 years.