About the importance of the agriculture the village mayor
Christoph Böhlen wrote in 1817: „Apart from some craftsmen as blacksmiths,
tailors, shoemakers and bricklayers everyone consists of peasants and day
labourers...“ Almost every villager - even teachers and priests - lived
to a certain extent from agriculture.
In 1818 three quarters of the estates were privately , one quarter was community owned. The property of the community was divided into fen, paddock and fallow land. Summer grain, winter grain and fallow varied every year.
The community meadows were used by everyone for grazing the cattle. The community obtained a part of its income by joint cultivation of its communal property by the villagers and by selling of its crop. For this purpose in 1778 a communal barn was purchased from the neighbour village Eissen.
Time and again great poverty arose from cattle-plagues as brownness, rot and glandular desease and from crop failure because of heavy weather, mice damage and potato desease. In 1856 the heaviest hail thunderstorm ever appeared so far destroyed the whole crop within five minutes. Priest Lünz reports: „...so awfully that the next morning you could not [recognise] what had grown on the fields before.“
By an earlier consolidation of farmland, by the use of artificial fertilizer and by the construction of the sugar factory Warburg prosperity among the farmers considerably increased. By erection of field barns in the following years the processing of field crops became less and less affected by the weather.
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