  We develop a fermionic formulation of the triangular lattice Ising
antiferromagnet (TIAFM) which is both calculationally convenient and
intuitively appealing to imaginations steeped in conventional condensed matter
physics. It is used to elucidate a variety of aspects of zero-temperature
models. Cylindrical systems possess multiple "phases" distinguished by the
number of circumferential satisfied bonds and by entropy density. On the plane,
phases are labelled by densities of satisfied bonds of two different
orientations. A local particle (semi)conservation law in the fermionic picture
lies behind both these features as well as the classic power-law falloff of the
spin-spin correlation function, which is also derived from the fermionic
perspective.
