Delicious Peatland, 2023
RSPB Birsay Moors, Evie
At first, I thought everyone knew what peatland was…
At least British people may understand it.
I know ‘mud’,
I know ‘charcoal’,
but I never know ‘peat’
(In Chinese, the words "mud" and "charcoal" combined together mean peat.)
The day we drove to Birsay Moors, Evie, they were discussing peat.
‘Pit’ or ‘Pig’?
We saw sheep, we saw cows. They were all very fat,
but we never saw pigs.
I missed it.
What happened?
Was some of the sheep I saw actually pigs?
Peatland is a blanket bog.
The surface of peatland in good condition is covered with thick sponge-like moss (Sphagnum moss), which is soft like a carpet when stepped on and can absorb 10 times its own weight in water. After they die, they are buried and burnt into peat underground. The peat, which gets darker underneath, is an ideal fuel. The peat with moss in the upper layer is not completely burned and is not a suitable fuel.
In the context of the energy crisis caused by the Russo-Ukrainian war, people reminisce about the past practice of burning peat for heating.
Delicious Peatland
We have a ‘deep’ love for dark chocolate.
Photographed in September 2023
This section was created by a peat harvest two months before we arrived in Orkney. The scars on the cross-section are traces of peat cut by machines. A package of cut peat fell from the truck and was left in place.
I inquired about the peat cutting process—typically, the deepest black peat is considered the most ideal fuel. The upper layers, especially the moss layer, are essentially useless.Is it feasible to harvest only the necessary layer? Our geologist said we can cut away the peat at the bottom and put the upper layers back. This would result in a reduction in the height of the peatland, but it could regenerate without compromising its efficacy. However, given the urgent demand for peat today, doing the right thing is like herding cats.
From London to Orkney I brought a piece of woven cotton fabric 0.7m wide x 1m long. When I embed the cotton into the peatland section, its length is exactly the depth of the peat cut (minus the surface moss) - one metre of peat is a thousand years of accumulation.
The place where the machine dug left long pits. Some moss layers fell into the pits and could still grow, but most of them died due to being soaked in water.
Unlike clay, peat cannot be reactivated by adding water after drying. Fresh peat is black goo, but after it is dried and water is added again, it will only look like a dry grass block.I tried to use peat to leave colour on the fabric, but it is not spreadable and pushable like clay, it is very fibrous and the colour can only be attached by rolling or pressing.
I once used the same fabric to hang on the Thames river wall, metaphorically representing it as a layer of skin built by humans to separate themselves from the river. But the peatland has no skin. Cutting the peat only digs out the flesh and blood from the land’s body. The water flowing into the pit isn't black, but rather the colour of tea—red. The embedded cotton is merely a band-aid on a bullet wound.
On that very day, just a 20-minute drive from where we now stood in the peatland, peat-cutting operations were in progress.