An Creagán, the community-run heritage and nature centre in the foothills of the Sperrins, has become one of Northern Ireland’s leading hubs for culture, conservation and sustainable tourism. The centre has been working tirelessly to generate awareness of the importance of peatland habitats for many years and has more recently partnered with Ulster Wildlife, amplifying the efforts of both organisations.
Aiden Grimes is the Peatlands Officer at An Creagán and has been charged with the task of engaging with local farmers and landowners to showcase the benefits that peatland restoration can bring and who might be willing to engage.
Growing up on a dairy farm not far from An Creagán Aiden has combined his childhood labours and his current role in the form of what his colleagues have deemed an unhealthy obsession with bog butter! Ireland’s peatlands have a rich history of hidden treasures from Irish elk to bog bodies but one of the less sinister finds has been butter preserved in the bog. The anaerobic and cool conditions acted just like a fridge in the ancient past.
Aiden thought why shouldn't he give this a go? He could offer it out to local landowners and farmers as a way of encouraging them in. So Aiden got to work, he churned butter by hand using an old school churn. His colleague at An Creagán carved him a beautiful wooden vessel to hold the butter, and he wrapped and tied it in a nettle cord and buried it in Creggan Bog where it lay for 2 months.
Needless to say the landowners came along on the 18th October possibly more out of sheer interest in this mad scheme than tempted by the butter. However, when Aiden uncovered the vessel and revealed the butter, it was unchanged from the day it went in. Everyone enjoyed a bit of bog butter on a scone with a cuppa and shared their stories from the bog. We were pleasantly surprised by the number of local farmers who are really passionate about their patch of bog and wanted to get involved. And the most important thing was that nobody got ill from eating the butter!
