"And it keeps me warm twice," he adds, referring to the physical labour involved in harvesting the dark, carbon-rich earth which is the first stage in the formation of coal.

The clumps of peat, or turf, are dug from Ireland's bogs -- waterlogged land formed after the last Ice Age. They must be turned regularly and stacked to dry before hauling them home.

It's a time-consuming task but soaring oil prices mean a new generation is rediscovering the tradition.

Irish-born Martius reckons 150 euros ($176) buys enough peat to run his central heating and provide hot water for a year -- a fraction of Ireland's average annual domestic gas bill which, after a recent 25 percent price hike, is set to hit 946 euros.

A short, bumpy ride from his home in County Roscommon is the source of his energy: a blustery bog where the only respite for chilled bones comes from a black, 8-foot wall of earth dividing the original field from years of peat digging below.

Here, despite using mechanical cutters, owner Jimmy McLoughlin is struggling to meet demand.

"Up to about five years ago it was down to nearly nil but the oil price changed all that," said McLoughlin. "I didn't have enough turf this year for people."

"SQUELCH AND SLAP"

The 52-year-old farmer charges 12 euros for cutting a row which contains about 1,000 peat bricks. For an extra fee he'll turn, dry and deliver but Martius prefers to do that himself.

"It adds a kind of quality to your life," says the hotel worker. "It's the outdoors and you're working for your fuel."

Those with memories of a less affluent island have a different, but no less romantic, view of what Irish poet Seamus Heaney called "the squelch and slap of soggy peat".

The Nobel Laureate often exploits the discovery of human remains in "the display-case peat" to delve into Ireland's troubled past and history's cruel, cyclical nature.

John P. Flanagan, 80, is one of thousands of workers who spent World War Two, or "The Emergency" as it is known in Ireland, digging peat by hand to keep trains running and bakers' ovens alight after coal imports dried up.

"There'd be 40 men working on this bank here and another 30 ... over there," he says, pointing across the deserted field, near McLoughlin's plot, with a turf spade known as a "slean".

Peat has been used for fuel since prehistoric times but it wasn't until the 18th century that deforestation, spurred by British shipbuilding, made it Ireland's major source of fuel. By the 1840s, when the Great Famine killed an estimated 1 million people, peat was often the only source of heat.

OIL CRISIS

Small wonder that Heaney's "kind, black butter" plays such an important part in the national consciousness.

"I was quite impressed with the way people talk about it," said Martius. "It's part of their lives."

In the nearby midland town of Lanesborough sits a more modern manifestation of peat's significance and of a postwar policy to reduce Ireland's dependence on imported energy.

Opened in 2004, the 100-megawatt Lough Ree power station is one of two new peat-fired plants belonging to the state-owned Electricity Supply Board (ESB), which has been generating power from peat since the 1950s.

"Strategically, of course, they worked out very well and the 1970s proved that with the oil crisis when peat power stations came into their own," said station manager Pat Treanor.

A 15-year contract with state peat producer Bord Na Mona that caps price rises gives ESB customers some protection from oil prices that have roughly doubled since 2003.