Irish Turf/Peat Incense and Burner

Smells amazing
Love it, makes me want to put on winter clothes and have a hot drink close by.Long slow burn. One of the squares lasted around 30 minutes.

I’ll give a B+ for effort
If you’ve ever spent a cold spring day wandering the hills of the wild western way of Ireland, you know the smell. Unforgettable, lovely earthy scent of aged turf, hand cut, and dried. Watching them do it is amazing, if you try it yourself It’s an exhausting task they seem to do like cutting butter with a warm knife. And despite all the modern technology, the old way of cutting turf is still the done in many parts of the country. My grandmothers farm was fortunate to have it’s own turf, and her home was exclusively heated by it (not to mention the fuel for cooking, the boiler, and anything else that required heat). My only issue with this is that despite actually containing real turf, which you can smell in it, it also has a base that is used in most incense, so it picks up that familiar smell too. Of course it has to, as that component is what makes the product possible, but it does not provide the purity one might hope for. So, as a proud Irish American I can say, it’s lovely to have that reminiscent smell, but if you want the real thing I guess you have to go there. And these days many people are using wood stoves, and heat by oil or electric heat pumps, so it’s harder to find closer into the cities. My family are from the back roads of Roscommon nearby many of the larger commercial turf sites, so the scent is very ingrained in the location. I did still enjoy the hint of my memories of Ireland. Scent is such a strong component of memory, as a child we lived in a small township an hour from Boston, so whenever I smell diesel I always think of Boston because when we’d visit the harbor and it always smelled like that to me. In the Pac NW where I now live, every time I leave for even a few days, as soon as I smell Douglas fir I feel a sense of calm, and home. Scent is such a strong trigger of memory and emotion. There is certainly enough turf in there to get the memory reflecting, but I guess you have to be there for the real thing. But, I have enjoyed it. I think it makes me want to go back there more, rather than satiate my memories, lol. Recommend as a gift or a small memory booster, but anyone who has spent a lot of time there (or certainly is from there, especially from the older days when burning fuels as a means of heat and cooking were more common, I am a major advocate of modern air or ground source heat pumps, they will save the world, but the scent is less common these days, to save the world it’s worth it, but ahh the old days, right) will feel it’s just not quite the same. Times are changing, and hopefully one day we won’t need to burn fuel for energy, but the smell of turf on a chilly misty morning, dew hanging from the oaks and grass, sheep in the fields, a hot cuppa, the fields of blue bells ringing in the spring, a certain silence of the country morning, and that scent of turf hanging dense in the air. I guess I’m getting old and nostalgic, but I’ve many good memories of my grandmothers homeland. It’s a sweet little gift, if not perfect. Forgive waxing poetic seems to be an inherited trait of the island.

Torn apart on arrival
I am so disappointed. This was meant to be a gift and it arrived in completely destroyed packaging.

Perfect for a gift or to enjoy yourself!
Let me start off by saying that this isn’t what I expected. It comes with a small stone dish, a square with a rounded depression in the middle. The turf/incense is small cubes. You light it similarly to regular incense, but you need to hold the flame to it a bit longer. The more of it that’s smoking, the stronger the smell. It’s not for everyone but I love it. It’s a sort of earthy campfire smell and actually very relaxing.