The bogs of Ireland give up their old secrets reluctantly, but it's no secret that the manual turf-cutting industry is in serious decline, writes Brian O'Connellafter a day cutting peat.

I'm standing on a bog in west Clare, and, frankly speaking, the Tollund Man (the preserved remains of a man dating from the 4th century BC, found in a bog in Denmark) is about as relevant right now as handbags and Gucci shoes.

Beneath me may well be a Jungian memory bank where layers of Irish identity are preserved, but I'm not seeing that. What I see is a dark, moist, contrary carpet, with an uncanny ability to prompt hand blisters and broken backs. A site of hardship and painstaking labour, where generations toiled, and a few stubborn souls remain loyal to a version of themselves long since collectively re-imagined.

For Michael Bohannon, though, the bog is a sanctuary, a place where he has worked by hand for more than 60 years, spurning modern machinery in favour of a sleán, a pair of hands, and buckets of sweat. In Bohannon's approach, the process looks effortless - dig, extract, turn and repeat. Like a surgical knife cutting through flesh, he methodically reclaims the peat from the ground, pausing only to shift focus or moisten his palms with spit. Bohannon is the last of his kind in this area - for those who still save turf, the inclination nowadays is to hire large machinery to do the work for them.

Turf cutters such as Bohannon are now only called in to places where the machines can't get to, and a combination of bad weather and rising labour costs has seen very little turf cut by hand in west Clare this year.

"The first thing you do is take the top layer of the bog off with a shovel and a hay knife," he says. Normally you'd take six inches off the top, known as the stripping, and you start cutting away then after that. Once you get into a rhythm you try and keep to that."

The ground is soft, and large pools of water have collected at the side of the bank where the turf was last saved. Typically, by mid June, the turf in this bog would have been gathered and stored; yet the weather during the past few months has made this impossible.

There is a fear that, unless a dry spell appears, much of the turf will be lost. "Once we have dug out the turf, we leave them here to dry," says Bohannon. "The plan then is after two weeks you'd turn it, and after two more you'd foot it. Normally you'd start this before the summer and be ready to take the turf home two months after that - even before it, if the weather was good. This year many people are waiting for the land to dry out sufficiently to allow machines to get in. It's been one of the worst years I can remember."

Some farmers are also finding that turf-cutting-machinery owners are less numerous, with rising fuel costs and a drop off in demand forcing many out of business. DJ O'Gorman, a well-known contract turf-cutter in west Clare, says this year may be the last he offers his services for this line of work.

"There has been a gradual trailing off in demand for turf over the past few years but I think this year could finish it," he says. "We had people who booked turf from us and didn't take it because it was too wet to save it early on." The days of large-scale turf-cutting may be over in this part of the country, as a new generation, short on time and big on convenience, takes root.

"People are getting oil these days and I feel once the old generation are gone, that will be the end of it," says O'Gorman. "I have two young lads and they wouldn't even look at a bog - neither of them even has a solid fuel fire or know-how to put down a fire." While the work may not be there to make turf-cutting commercially viable, O'Gorman says he'll continue to visit the bogs. "There's only work now for a few weeks. I'll probably continue to save the turf for some of the older people here locally, but that's more of a vocational pursuit than anything else. Even if the work dries up, I'll still go to the bogs though, even just to get out and walk there in the fresh air.

"Work in the bog can be hard physical work, but you have people going to gyms nowadays and they get nothing out of it. The bogs would make them as fit, and won't cost them a penny."

THERE IS NOdoubt that for many farmers there has been a trend towards putting bogland to other uses. In particular, judging by the volume of Sitka spruce planted on bogs on the main road from Ennis to Kilrush, forestry has provided a welcome source of income for farmers in west Clare.

Local Green Party councillor Brian Meaney admits that the changing use of bog land is an inevitable result of our changing socio-economic patterns. Yet, he says the environmental impact of recycling bogland is not clear-cut.

"There are incentives present now for landowners to generate income from land which was traditionally hard to take an income from," says Meaney. "There is no doubt that this is significantly changing the character and landscape of many Clare bogs. Yet we should also take into account that growing these coniferous trees creates large carbon sinks. While they may make for a very bland landscape, they do make a positive contribution to the environment. Although I have to say that, when they are felled, the landscape is left looking like a view of the Somme after battle."

Meaney, whose family had Turbary rights (the rights to cut turf) on a bog near Lissycasey, doesn't look back on his days saving turf with a nostalgic glint in his eye. "It has to be said that harvesting turf by the traditional sleán method was extremely labour intensive.

For the older generation, including my father, getting to the bog was like a call to the wild - if they weren't on a bog by mid-April there was something seriously wrong. The subsequent culture that has sprung up around saving turf may be romantic, but as a means of getting a hard-won fuel from the ground, the reality was far from romantic, I can tell you."

And if the physical graft didn't get to you, there was always the local insect population to overcome, says Meaney. "I realise that getting to the bog is something that is culturally ingrained into a lot of people. It's been six years since I saved turf - I couldn't take the midges any more. It was appalling being eaten alive by insects and I don't think people are prepared to endure that hardship for fuel any more."

DESPITE THE CHANGINGeconomic realities, and the sharpened backward glance from some quarters, back in west Clare, Michael Bohannon has no intention of giving up his days saving turf. This year will be his 60th year harvesting, having begun on the bogs at the age of 14.

"Everyone in the house would have done it back then," he says. "If you were going to school, you'd come home in the evening and if the bog was anywhere near you'd help out.

"On Saturdays it was seen as a fun day out, with lots of children around. Most of the community around here would have spent some part of their youth on the bog, but not any more - nothing stays forever."

There are no young lads in the area looking to turf-cutting as a potential career, and Bohannon is acutely aware that he is the last in a long line of bogland workers using traditional methods.

Yet he continues to harbour a deep-rooted affection for what Seamus Heaney calls our "slime kingdoms".

"There is no one following on here locally after me - the attitude nowadays is that if the machine doesn't do it, they will leave it," says Bohannon. "I myself am just cutting it to pass the time. I like to go to the bog when the sun is shining, although we haven't had many of those days this year.

"But for me there is no better place than the bog on a fine day - it's as good as going to the beach."