A Place for the Heathlands

The Jutland heath is well known to the Danes – both as a wilderness, and for the later cultivation of the land. We are familiar with poems, stories, even paintings of the “Jutland desert” and its people, and we know how the barren land at the end of the nineteenth century was radically transformed: “the victory over heather, barrenness and westerly wind,” as the Danish Heath Society expressed it.^{1 ( 1 )}
Knudsen 1975, “Grindsted”. This transformation can be described in several different ways – as a formal history of the achievements of the Danish Heath Society, as a commemoration of the settlers on the heath, and in the form of personal memories.^{2 ( 2 )}
Skrubbeltrang 1964, Det invundne Danmark; Pedersen 1971, Hedesagen under forvandling; Skodshøj 1953, Hedens opdyrkning i Danmark; Sørensen 2003, Det begyndte på Kongenshus. A vast number of personal memories are published in local and regional historic annals.

This contribution examines a key example of the last of these – an early nineteenth-century diary written by a farmer living on one of the most meagre glacial heath plains of Jutland, the Karup plain. Drawing on this personal diary, written by the heath farmer Peder Knudsen, I describe the living conditions and the economy on a typical heathland farm in western Jutland.^{3 ( 3 )}
Gormsen 1982, Hedebonden. The present article is based on the same material and analysis of the diary as presented in the following Danish articles: Gormsen 1991a, “Hedebrugsforsøg på Hjerl Hede;” Gormsen 1991 b, “Traditional heathland farming;” and Gormsen 1998, “Hedelandskab og hedebrug”. Moreover, the information given by the diary is so rich and detailed that it is possible to reconstruct the way of farming on the farm rather precisely. The heathland regions were sparsely populated, and neighbours and relatives lived far away from each other. Roads were few, and were often just sandy wheel tracks through the heather in which one might run into the sand. The heathland people, then, lived in and had to move in an impassable terrain where the distance to market towns was long. Despite these circumstances, the diary shows that these heathland people were familiar with a large geographical area and had a very wide field of activity.

“No woods, not even trees, but only heather.” This was a ten-year-old boy’s first impression of the landscape of western Jutland in 1861.^{4 ( 4 )}
Vig 1969, Hyrdedreng på heden, 4. Some years later, Enrico Mylius Dalgas, the eager spokesman for cultivation of the heaths in Jutland, looked at one of the huge heath plains and said: “Everything is flat as a floor and almost black and waste – you see the most distressing part of Denmark and the terrible emptiness of such a plain.”^{5 ( 5 )}
E. Dalgas 1928, Geografiske billeder fra Heden: 1870, 37. When the historian Hugo Matthiessen named his history of the heathland regions of Jutland “The black Jutlander,” he named it for the landscape, the people, and their everyday lives.^{6 ( 6 )}
Matthiessen 1939, Den sorte Jyde . The heathland regions were considered remote, a wilderness of waste, sparsely populated, obsolete. This land without trees was open and windswept. A settler wrote: “If you got outside, you would feel you were standing out like a church tower in the landscape. It was as if the wind was blowing at you from every side.”^{7 ( 7 )}
Torbøl 1940, Hedens opdyrkning, 277. According to Matthiessen, the huge expansion of the Jutland heath in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was brought about by the farmer economy. The farmers used the heath, he argued; they had kept up a complex profile of production based on subsidiary occupations to farming, and were more interested in keeping the heath than cultivating it. They stuck to a traditional way of life. Matthiesen presented their way of farming as a “fossil” way of life; for instance, they used heather burning in connection with their farming.^{8 ( 8 )}
Matthiessen 1939. H. P. Hansen, who devoted his life to the study of the heathland people of western Jutland and their way of life, also emphasized their old-fashioned, primitive way of life.^{9 ( 9 )}
H. P. Hansen 1930, Kultur- og Sprogminder fra Midtjylland; H. P. Hansen 1932, Trange kår; H. P. Hansen 1959, Hedebønder i tre slægtled; H. P. Hansen 1960, Bondehjem og bondeliv.

This view of the Jutland heath as something wild which required cultivation – something “exotic,” “poor,” and “old-fashioned” – has changed in recent years. The ethnologist Ole Højrup has illustrated the symbiosis between humankind and the heath, focusing on the role of the heath as pasture and as a resource for fodder and fuel, as well as the role of heather in many other functions in the farm and household economies.^{10 ( 10 )}
Højrup 1970, “Landbrug i Vestjylland”. The historian Birte Friis has examined cultivation methods that improved the condition of the sandy soil, as well as the extent to which the cultivation of the heath was due to expansion from existing farms or to new settlements.^{11 ( 11 )}
Friis 1970, “Hedens opdyrkning og beplantning”. Finally, the geographer Viggo Hansen has used the results of pollen analysis, together with case studies of maps and land use, to sketch out a more differentiated picture of the expansion of the Jutland heath.^{12 ( 12 )}
V. Hansen 1970a, “Hedens opståen og omfang;” V. Hansen 1970b, “Hedens bebyggelse;” V. Hansen 1970c, “Studier over 1600-tallets landbrug.”

The growing interest in environmental history has also resulted in studies of the heathland’s history, its vegetation, its settlements, and the use of its land and cultivation systems. Using pollen analysis, the botanist Bent Odgaard has found that grassland or heath replaced the forest in western Jutland, and that there is a clear connection between the frequency of heather pollen and the presence of coal dust.; thus he concludes that the extension and maintenance of the heath were promoted by burning.^{13 ( 13 )}
Odgaard 1994, “The Holocene vegetation history.” It had previously been supposed from studies of eighteenth-century maps that the Jutland heaths experienced their greatest expansion around 1800,^{14 ( 14 )}
Matthiessen 1939, Den sorte jyde, 15; V. Hansen 1970a, ”Hedens opståen”, 12. but evidence now indicates that this may have happened as early as the sixteenth or seventeenth century.^{15 ( 15 )}
Fritzbøger 2007, “Det åbne lands kulturhistorie,” 57.

Early settlement was closely connected to the water courses on the heath. The way of cultivation practised in the heathland regions has been characterized as heath-meadow farming,^{16 ( 16 )}
Fritzbøger 2007, 33. or defined as “the river valley system.”^{17 ( 17 )}
Jensen and Jensen 1979, “Kulturlandskabet i Borris og Sdr. Felding,” 66 ff. As early as the nineteenth century, agronomists were emphasizing the role of both meadow and heath in farming on the heathland districts of Jutland; they described the technique of manuring, whereby dung was mixed with heather, sods, and earth from the heath.^{18 ( 18 )}
Hald 1833, Bidrag til kundskab, 113–115; C. Dalgas 1830, Bidrag til kundskab, 100–102; Blicher 1973, Viborg Amt, 65–66. The ethnologist Bjarne Stoklund has analysed this traditional use of turf manure and its terminology.^{19 ( 19 )}
Stoklund 1990, “Tørvegødning.” The geographer Sofus Christiansen has also investigated how the infield–outfield system functioned in the heath districts, analysing the flow of matter whereby nutrients from the meadow (hay) and the heath (heather as fodder and as stable litter, sods, and earth as litter and filling material in the dunghill) passed through the stable and the dunghill and ended up on the field. Over time, this process resulted in the build-up of a concentration of nutrients in the field.^{20 ( 20 )}
Christiansen 1995, “Hedelandskab og hedebrug i Stavlund.” Hence, this way of farming has also been called “concentration agriculture.”^{21 ( 21 )}
Stoklund 1990, 49 ff. Christiansen has shown that the method of using sods to absorb liquids and to mix manure secured the loss of nutrients, perhaps even the gasification of nitrogen, to a minimum. As it gained the character of compost, the dung may also have improved the capacity of the sandy soil to hold more water.^{22 ( 22 )}
Christiansen 1995, 134 ff; Christiansen 2002, “Flows of matter.”

In his study of the living conditions of the population in the heath districts of southwest Jutland from 1750 until 1900, the historian and ethnologist Peter Henningsen has challenged the perception of the traditional heathland peasant as a poor farmer. He defines three types of people living in the heathland region in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. First, there were the meadow farmers, who ran farms with access to much rich meadowland, usually along a broad river valley. These farmers were well-to-do and could breed cattle and bullocks for sale. Second, there were the combined meadow and heath farmers, who had less meadowland, which may have resulted in poorer hay. These farmers were unable to keep livestock on a large scale, according to Henningsen. Third and last, there were the “pure” heathland smallholders, who had no or almost no access to meadow land and had to rely on the meagre field and the heath, perhaps complementing their agriculture with supplementary occupations. This type of farmers became more common during the nineteenth century.^{23 ( 23 )}
Henningsen 1995, Hedens hemmeligheder, 141. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, most farmers in western Jutland were copyhold tenants of one of the few estates in the region, but at the end of the eighteenth century many became freeholders and were given the opportunity to parcel out land – mostly heath. However, these smallholders cultivating heathland had a hard life and often ended up receiving poor relief.^{24 ( 24 )}
Hald 1833, 70; Blicher 1973, 48.

This study of a heathland farmer’s diary confirms Henningsen’s picture of the meadow-heath farmer, but it also offers a much more detailed insight into the farmers’ way of life. It shows that even in the most sparsely populated, meagre, and remote part of Jutland, it was possible for the heath farmers to maintain a substantial existence, keep up a good farm, achieve a better standard of living, and create a surplus.^{25 ( 25 )}
Former studies of the diary have been presented in Danish, see Gormsen 1982, Gormsen 1991a, Gormsen 1991b, Gormsen 1998.

The diary was kept by the farmer Peder Knudsen from 1829 until his death in 1857. Knudsen lived in the small settlement Staulund in the parish of Haderup. He was born in 1798; as the eldest son of the family, he took over the farm after his father’s death in 1827. Almost every day, he carefully listed in his diary the different types of work that had taken place on the farm that day. The diary gives very detailed insights into life, and especially work, on the farm. Because it was kept over a long period, it is possible to deduce regularities, outline patterns, and make some quantifications from the given information. In what follows I shall describe the farming practices and the farm as a unit of production and consumption, showing how the farm was integrated into the local and regional exchange of goods. Regarding the farm itself and its possessions and real estate, the farming, production, and consumption presented in the diary is consistent with what we find in the archives and in the literature of farming and the heathland regional way of life. Thus, the diary is not only representative of the period, but much richer in the information that it gives.

Geographically, the parish of Haderup was one of the largest parishes of Denmark, but it was also one of the most sparsely populated. The Danish folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen went walking here in the 1870s and wrote, “It is so wild because here are no proper roads, and the land is so uninhabited. It is a terrible waste. There is a severe loss of marl, and the cattle cannot find food in the fields as there is no grass.”^{26 ( 26 )}
Kristensen 1924, Minder og oplevelser, 161. As in many other Jutland heathland parishes, most of the parish land was covered by heather; only along the streams were green meadow and field to be found.

Settlement in the parish was typical of the heathland districts of western Jutland. Along the Karup river, in the eastern part of the parish, there were clusters of farms (or small villages) consisting of five to seven farms. The village of Haderup consisted of the church and the vicarage, some farms and some houses; along the small streams in the western part of the parish, the farms were situated as single farms or two farms together. This is where the two Staulund farms were located. Originally, they were placed very close to each other and were copyhold farms to an estate far away, but in 1787 they were sold for freehold.^{27 ( 27 )}
Rigsarkivet, Viborg. Skøde- og panteprotokoller, Ginding Herred. No. 1. 1779–1790.

Knudsen’s farm consisted of just under 362 acres of land (in Danish 494 tdr. ld.). It was composed of 40 acres of field (in Danish 55 tdr. ld.), just under nine acres of meadow (in Danish 12 tdr. ld.), and about 313 acres of heath (in Danish 427 tdr. ld.). Thus 86% of the land was heath, 11% field, and 2% meadow. Knudsen had two horses, 2–4 bullocks, 2–4 cows, 3–6 heads of young cattle, 40–60 sheep, and one pig. Compared to other farms in the parish, the farm was of average size as regards the amount of land, its division into field, meadow, and heath, the livestock, its buildings, and its tools.^{28 ( 28 )}
Matrikelsarkivet: Sogneprotokol, Haderup Sogn. Ginding Herred, 1829. Rigsarkivet: Det statistiske Bureau. Lister vedr. Kreaturhold. 1861, Ringkøbing Amt; Rigsarkivet, Viborg: Skifteprotokoller, Ginding Herred, 1825–1830; Zangenberg 1927, “Gamle gaarde og huse;” Trøstrup 1914, “Gamle minder fra Hammerum Herred;” H. P. Hansen 1960”; Højrup 1960; Steensberg 1966, “Kulturbilleder fra en vestjysk hedegaard.”

The farm was situated at the edge between lower- and higher-lying land. In his diary, Knudsen differentiates between four categories of land – “the meadow,” “the field,” “heathfields,” and “my heath” – names which correspond to the area classes in river valley farming. Within these categories there were smaller areas, some of them mentioned by name, but it is not possible to define these different areas more exactly or to define the pattern of rotation in the utilization of the land.^{29 ( 29 )}
The surveyor’s journal made in 1817 in connection with the preparation of the land register of 1844 concerning the parish of Haderup says that the usual rotation of crops is barley/buckwheat, three crops of rye, and eventually a crop of oats. Then the land is laid fallow for five, six, or eight years, but no regular division of the land is made by the farmers.

The meadow was situated in a narrow valley along the stream that ran west from the farm. Several of the small pieces of meadow and the small fields situated above the meadow had special names. Knudsen mentioned these names when work was going on, but when he drove cattle or horses to graze, he just referred to “the meadow” as a general term: “The bullocks out to grass in the meadow. The cattle the first time at Stangsdal not in the meadow any longer” (14 May 1833). Stangsdal was a narrow valley with swampy areas; the bullocks and young cattle usually grazed there in the summer, watched by a shepherd boy. After the meadow, the cows were usually tethered at the fallow fields:

The meadow was used as pasture for only a short period of the year; above all, it produced hay. The yield fluctuated from year to year, from about twenty up to about thirty loads.

On the low-lying land above the meadow, Knudsen grew almost all the oats he used. In the rotation, he also grew some barley. These fields were cropped for four to six years, then lay fallow a little longer. Normally he used horse dung and ashes as manure from the ash dunghill, or sods from the heath that were carted to the field and burned before ploughing.

Next to the farm was an area stretching from the higher land to the lower, enclosed with a dyke made by sods. In this enclosure, Knudsen grew cabbages. In June 1833 the women of the farm planted one thousand cabbage plants. He also grew some potatoes and buckwheat here, and in 1844 he noted that he sowed oats, to be used as green fodder. The enclosure might have had the character of a cabbage garden, perhaps even a paddock.

The field lay around the farm and was situated on the highest-lying land. Here Knudsen grew barley and rye. Rye was the main crop, while it was barley that got almost all the manure at his disposal. The field was subdivided into smaller rotation units, mostly consisting of six fields. Every year, Knudsen took in a new unit. The first crop was barley, then he took two or three, perhaps even four crops of rye. The land that was to be tilled was ploughed in the autumn, then manured with some farmyard manure, which was covered with earth. The following spring, the land was ploughed again and manured with a little farmyard manure and a lot of mixed manure. About eight barrels of barley seed were sown. After the harvest, the stubble was ploughed and sown with rye. Knudsen called this crop “manure rye,” but no manure was added after the barley was cropped. After another two or three rye crops, none of which got manure either, the fields were laid fallow. About eight barrels of rye seed were usually sown. Knudsen might also grow a little buckwheat and a few potatoes at the field.

The heath fields were situated next to heathland. In several years, Knudsen notes that he took some heather for litter home “east from heath field” (11 June 1847). These fields had lain fallow for a long time and had become overgrown with heather.^{30 ( 30 )}
Christian V´s land register 1683 mentions fields in the heath which lie fallow for 24–30 years. Rigsarkivet, Chr. V´s matrikel. Markbogen. Lundenæs Amt. Ginding herred. Haderup sogn. 1683. The heather was cut to be used at home before ploughing, or the heather was burned “because of the ploughing” (4 November 1853).

One year, he notes that he ploughed grønjord in the heath fields, using four bullocks. Grønjord is land which is to be taken as the first unit in rotation, and it may indicate that cultivation of the heath fields was part of a fixed rotation system. Next, Knudsen’s record that he ploughed with four bullocks indicates that this land was filled with heather roots, perhaps even growing heather. Bullocks were strong and steady walking and were used for working the heathland. The land register of 1688 mentions fields situated in the heath that were cultivated for some years with buckwheat and rye, but subsequently left to lie fallow for between 24 and 30 years. During this period the land was often overgrown with heather. The fields mentioned in the diary were small, and were only cultivated for a few years with rye and potatoes, perhaps a little buckwheat, and in the 1850s also spurrey. Mostly, the first crop was potatoes, which were manured with sheep’s dung, one lump for each potato; sometimes the dung was supplemented by burning sods from the heath, just as the ashes from burning the heather before ploughing also functioned as manure. After the potatoes, Knudsen took three to four rye crops without manuring.

When a smallholder was allowed to cut sods for fuel as payment for the labour he had done, Knudsen always notes that these were cut “in my heathland.” He used the heathland as pasture for the sheep, noting “the sheep in the heath” without further specification. He fetched heather, cut sods, and took earth from the heathland without noting where the activity took place, but sometimes he mentions the northern, eastern, northeast, or south-east heath or that at Graamose, a boggy area in the south of the heath. It is not possible to define a fixed pattern of exploiting the heathland, but it seems that the sheep grazed in the heathland next to and north of the farm. The sheep were watched by a shepherd girl or boy; they went on the heath for most of the year, and in the winter could also graze on the field around the farm.

Knudsen invested much time and work in what he called “mixing manure.” He had several manure heaps – the manure heap in the farmyard, manure heaps at the fields, and the ashes heap, which contained ashes from the house and pig dung – and in addition, sheep dung was cleared from the sheep shed once a year and taken directly to the field. Once ploughing and sowing was finished, they started to mix manure in the farmyard. The heap was built up of layers of sods or earth and layers of dung. Usually about 650 loads of dung and mixing stuff (earth ploughed and sods cut in the heath, or decomposed sods from the yard and dykes at the field) were carted together. One layer of dung consisted of 20–25 loads, while a layer of mixing stuff was about 60–70 loads. There might be four layers of dung and five layers of mixing stuff, with for instance three to four times as much mixing stuff as dung in the heap. In the heathland areas, they would cover the farmyard with a layer of sods or træk, cut from the heath. Around seventy loads of this sod were used on the farm and mixed into the dunghill the following year. Knudsen often made another couple of smaller manure heaps at the field that was to be ploughed the next spring after its fallow period. Every summer he made one or two big manure heaps of 300–400 loads at the field; later in the same year, he often carted material for another couple of smaller manure heaps of 100–200 loads. Besides sods (træk) and earth, ash from burning the sods with a good layer of turf could also be used as a layer in the heap; one year he used mud, which he got from repairing ditches in the meadow (27 November 1844).

The ploughing of earth for mixing manure and the cutting of sods removed the layer of raw humus from the heath. Knudsen’s farm used 60–80 loads of sods for fuel every year. For covering the yard, they used about seventy loads, and in some years more sods (træk) were cut to be used directly in the mixing of manure. Yearly, they also cut about ten loads of so-called “flat sods” to be used in the prevention of sand drift. In years when sods were cut to be burned to ash for the fields, about ten loads were cut; every year, at least a hundred loads of earth were ploughed and put into the dunghills. Thus the heath was exploited intensively. From the information we have about the size of the sods, we may estimate that about 1–1.5 acres of heath were used every year.^{31 ( 31 )}
Information about the size of a sod cut in the heath varies a little. Begtrup says it is 18 inches long, 11 inches broad and 3 inches thick (Begtrup 1808, Beskrivelse over Agerdyrkningens Tilstand, 21). Højrup says 13 inches long, 10 inches broad and 3 inches thick (Højrup 1970, “Hedens udnyttelse,” 84). Dalgas says one and a half foot square and 3 inches thick (C. Dalgas 1830, 9–10). If the time required for the heath to regenerate was thirty years, this would correspond to 30–45 acres, that is, just under 10–15% of the area of heathland belonging to the farm. Moreover, the sheep demanded pasture in the heath, around one hectare per head, meaning that fifty sheep demanded an area of about 125 acres of heath. It seems that the same area was used for pasture for the sheep during these years, but we do not know what the area looked like or how it was affected by grazing. In 1751 a commission came on an inspection tour of the large Alheden, and the report gives an impression of how areas of the exploited heath appeared:

Agronomists later described how the farmers had exhausted the heath;^{33 ( 33 )}
C. Dalgas 1830, 9 f.; Matthiessen 1939, 69. today, agrarian historians similarly talk of a “zero solution” from an ecological perspective. This refers to how the propagating of manure by mixing dung with sods and earth obtained fertility at a small infield by impoverishing a much larger outfield.^{34 ( 34 )}
Kjærgaard 1991, Den danske revolution, 63.

On the sandy soil, rye was the main crop; oats were grown for fodder for the horses, and took up almost the same area as barley grown for consumption in the household. The seed was fairly constant, even if the yield fluctuated. The treatment of the land probably was the optimal. Only once, in 1830, did Knudsen note that he was short of stable manure and that half of a field “was unmanured” (2 November 1830); otherwise “it lasted well” (20 November 1833). He manured well, too. According to agronomists, 80–100 loads of mixed manure were typically used to manure one acre of land (in Danish one td. ld.),^{35 ( 35 )}
Begtrup 1808, 171; Hald 1833, 117. but Knudsen used 110 loads per “td. ld” and so a little more per acre. The manuring was adjusted to the soil: “We carted manure to the stubble of oats which was ploughed last year, horse’s dung on the humid land and mixed manure on the sandy land” (18 May 1850). In 1833, the agronomist J. C. Hald (1798–1868) pointed out that the mixed manure that the heathland farmers spent so much time producing had an excellent effect on crops in the first few years, and that without this it would hardly be possible to grow barley.^{36 ( 36 )}
Hald 1833, 115 f. In the sandy heathland fields which did not get much manure, growth was more unsteady: “As the ears of rye were few we cut the rye together with spurrey without sheafing it” (13 August 1853) and “We cut a little rye mainly grass at heath field.” (19 August 1855)

In the fallow parts of the field, grass could also be scarce: “Mowed some meadow because of lack of grass for the cattle” (8 July 1833). Even if the livestock numbers were balanced, they had to be careful. One year, a bullock was replaced with another, “as I was afraid for keeping him for the summer, both because he is too big for my pasture, and for the main reason, he is hardly as healthy as one could wish” (5 March 1832). Knudsen was very careful not only about pasture, but also about fodder. Nothing must be wasted, “as the fodder is scarce in proportion to the heads of cattle, and because of veneration of the Holy Being who let it grow” (3 March 1830). In the late winter, they had to resort to heather for several years as a supplement to the normal fodder. The summer of 1844 was very wet and the harvest poor, and already shortly after New Year Knudsen had to give the cattle two feeds of heather daily. Later in the spring it was necessary to drive the six bullocks to the field “as the fodder is considerably decreased” (6 April 1845).

Margins in the economy were tight. A wet or dry summer and a bad harvest could have a serious effect at the farm. Knudsen sometimes had to buy a small amount of rye or barley for seed or bread. After a rainy summer in 1853 he wrote:

Already in September he had bought rye, he bought the rye he was to deliver as tithe, and he had to buy even more rye. In 1844, the summer was wet and the harvest low. In 1836, by the beginning of July he had no more rye for bread and had difficulty in getting any. One of the portions of rye he bought was bad, and they all got ill from the bread made from it. Thus, he bought a barrel of rye from the vicar and borrowed a bread from him, too, to save “me and my home from ruin or illness” (23 July 1836).

The rye Knudsen grew was the traditional Old Danish Rye. A new sort of rye was introduced at that time, but the heathland farms used the older variety, because they used the soft straw it provided for fodder. Sometimes rye from the heath districts was sold as seed, because the slash-and-burn method practised in these areas prevented weed seeds from being included. From 1829 until 1834, Knudsen exchanged rye seed with oat seed, until he noted that he could sow from his own oats “as it has grown well this year” (22 August 1834).

Knudsen used traditional technology: the wooden harrow and a wheeled plough, which in western Jutland had been improved so that it could be drawn by only two horses. Tools for deeper treatment of the soil were introduced in the first half of the nineteenth century, but on sandy soil they increased the risk of sand drift, a persistent phenomenon at the farm. Sand sometimes bothered the work at the “heath fields,” as sand drift could rise from areas where sods had been cut or earth been ploughed in the heath.

Thus, new technology was not used to improve outcomes from the field. Instead, Knudsen worked on improving the basis of his farming. Between 1834 and 1837, he established irrigation in the meadow. He built a dam across the stream and dug a system of canals and ditches. Establishing the system was very labour-intensive. In 1834, he, the farmhand, and sometimes a day-labourer worked 51 days in the meadow; in the next few years they were occupied for about a month, and thereafter they spent about ten days a year keeping up the system. The water was led into the ditches in May and June, but during the summer, in the autumn, and in December and January Knudsen might supplement with irrigation. In the spring and summer, the land was made moist. Generally, there was a shortage of rainfall in western Jutland from May to July, so crops like grass demanded water during the growing season. Outside this season – in the autumn and early spring – you could use vegetable nutrients in the water as fertilization and allow water to cover the land to protect it against night frost: in other words, to keep the ground warmer and lengthen the growing season.^{37 ( 37 )}
Rasmussen 1964, “Studier over engvandingen,” 159ff. Perhaps this was the purpose when Knudsen in December 1835 noted that he had modified the water at a field in or next to the meadow (16 December 1835).

Agronomists in the 1930s argued that by irrigation one might multiply the amount of hay by four and through this keep more cattle.^{38 ( 38 )}
K. Hansen, 1934–45, “Planteavlen,” 43f. Knudsen, however, did not get the same increase from irrigating his meadow. The amount of hay harvested was larger than before, but less than double. In 1840, however, ten years after parcelling out 45 acres (in Danish 61 td. ld.) of heath and two parcels of meadow to his brother as part of their inheritance settlement, Knudsen harvested more hay in that year and the following years than he had done before he had divided the land in 1830. There were also effects in the meadow, and probably the pasture and the quality of grass and hay became better. It seems that he was able to harvest more hay for horses and cows than before. But the irrigation did not allow him to keep more cattle. On the other hand, he was able to irrigate some fields – “the new fields” – above the meadow.

Otherwise, there is no sure information about new fields or cultivation of heath in the diary. On the other hand, Knudsen increased the growing of potatoes. In the early 1830s, he planted a few bushels of potatoes and had to borrow or buy seed potatoes. One of the first bushels of potatoes he used for planting was German: the German colonies were established on the Jutland heath in the eighteenth century, and the areas where they grew potatoes were situated not far from the parish of Haderup. Knudsen planted the first crops of potatoes in the infield, but soon started to use the outfield, the “heath fields,” for growing potatoes. At the end of the 1830s, the growing had stabilized. Thereafter, he planted approximately thirty bushels of potatoes of his own seed every year and harvested 25–30 barrels. Most of the potatoes were consumed in the household, but small potatoes were used as fodder for the pig, especially for fattening. In the autumn of 1850, they slaughtered a cow, which was fed potatoes “and fattened well” (25 October 1850). But even using potatoes, it could be difficult to get enough fodder. In the spring of 1851 they slaughtered the pig, but it had not been fattened “since we either have grain or potatoes and no cash to buy fodder” (10 April 1851). Thus, Knudsen grew potatoes with success on the very sandy soil, manured only with sheep dung. He still had much heath at his disposal, but did not increase the growing of potatoes further. Perhaps this was because growing potatoes is very labour-intensive, especially the harvest, which took place at a time when ploughing and sowing were going on, too. Additionally, potatoes were not in demand as a product for sale.

The most important product for sale in western Jutland was cattle, especially bullocks. Between two and four calves were born yearly at the farm. The bull calves were castrated, grew up, and were sold at three years old as young bullocks. Almost every year Knudsen sold a couple of bullocks. The bullocks were not a burden on the farm; they grazed in swampy areas in the heathland and could stand hay of poor quality and heather as fodder. On the contrary, they were a considerable source of income.

The economy of the farm was based on vegetable and animal production. This had to secure reinvestment in next year’s production (fodder, seed, upkeep of buildings and tools), and besides provide the household with food. Food preparation of the products from the field and the stables took place in the farmhouse – in the scullery and the kitchen – and was performed by the women on the farm. For that reason, not much information on this matter is mentioned in the diary, but there are sometimes remarks like “the women baked today” (20 August 1853), “they slaughtered the last five sheep,” or “the women cut sheep” (23 May 1832). One year, before Christmas, it is also mentioned that “they made candles out of 17½ pounds of tallow” (22 November 1841) and “the women brewed” (18 December 1841). Thus, it is difficult to get a full impression of the amount of food produced on the farm based solely on the diary. Production also had to secure the expenses of taxes and wages for servants. Tax was paid in cash, while tithe was paid in kind – in rye. The vicar and the parish clerk also received some food, butter, cheese, and eggs according to an old tradition. Servants got a sum of cash, wooden shoes, and a loaf of bread, and were allowed to graze a couple of sheep of their own with those of the farm. Finally, it was necessary to keep up some consumption to confirm social relations, at weddings and funerals, for instance. So part of the production of the farm had to be transformed into cash by products which could be sold.

Around 1900, an old heathland farmer noted: “The land provides me my food, the sheep my clothes, and my only other expenses are salt, tobacco and wooden shoes.”^{39 ( 39 )}
H. P. Hansen 1960, 136. The degree of self-sufficiency was high on most of the heathland farms. Even so, they had to buy a good amount of articles from elsewhere.

As for reinvestment in the farm and its production, Knudsen usually managed to secure sufficient seed (with one exception in 1853). If the supply of hay and straw was less than normal, he relied on the heath and the heather; in such years, only the horses did not get heather. Knudsen used straw and heather to roof the farm buildings; he also had access to a clay pit on his land and could keep up the walls of the houses without expense, even though he had to buy timber for repairing the construction, as well as whitewash. He also had to buy wood and iron for tools, and had to pay a carpenter or the smith for their work. Usually they were paid in cash, sometimes supplied with some or a little food. Knudsen was also self-sufficient in coal. All the peat he cut in the bogs on his land was burned in a stack and taken to the smith. He bought hemp, from which he made rope for tethers, and he was even supplied with cotton grass from sumps in the heath and hair from the animals. One year he noted that he cut his wife’s hair and then made rope from her hair, mixed with hair from cows and horses, the following day (20 March 1844).

Growing food for one’s living was desirable, so the remark “they baked, the last from the harvest from last year” (20 August 1853) indicates a good situation. However, in some years Knudsen had to buy rye for bread in June, July, or August. On the other hand, in years when the harvest had been good, he could sell some rye (usually about six barrels) and barley (usually three barrels). About once a month, he carted rye and barley to the mill; over the year, this ran to 16 barrels of rye. By far the most of this was used for bread, but a small amount was also ground for grits. Almost every month Knudsen took malt, which was produced at home “in the vat,” to the mill, but to brew beer, they had to buy hops. He did not grow much buckwheat, but sometimes the diary mentions buckwheat being made into grits.

Every year, in October, a good many sheep were slaughtered. It is difficult to determine the exact number as the slaughtering of the sheep was done by the women, but it seems to have been at least ten sheep a year. Sheep from the heathland region were small and skinny. Knudsen himself always took part in the slaughtering of the pig, bought in the autumn and slaughtered in the spring. Most years, between two and four calves were born at the farm, and almost every year they slaughtered one of them. From the milk from the cows, butter and cheese were produced, but the exact amount is not mentioned. From the hens they had eggs, and from the bees, honey.

We get an impression of the range of products produced at the farm from the natural gifts that Knudsen gave to the midwife in connection with the births of two of his children. Besides cash, she was gifted a cheese and a cake in September 1838, and a few days before Christmas in 1848 she received some bread and biscuit, a leg of sheep, and a sausage. The daily diet on the farm, however, probably consisted mostly of bread, porridge, cabbage, and potatoes, plus meat from the brine tub. The seed potatoes were grown, but many barrels of potatoes were consumed in the household. This does not seem to have affected the consumption of bread; almost the same amount of rye and barley was taken to the mill every year.

When Knudsen inherited the farm, his stepmother stayed there until she married, a few years later. In those years, they made spirits from malt and rye. In 1830, he sold 49½ quarts; before Christmas two years later, they made 14 quarts. For his wedding in 1833, Knudsen sold thirty quarts to his father-in-law. Spirits can be regarded as part of the ceremonial consumption which took place on occasions like weddings and funerals, but also at festivals such as Christmas, when family and neighbours visited each other, and at the end of harvest, which was celebrated on the farm with neighbours and harvesters. On these occasions coffee and tea were also served; for the great celebrations, fresh beef, wheat flour, mead, and a little wine was bought, too.

It seems that about half the wool from the sheep was used at the farm, and the rest sold. The sheep were sheared at the beginning of June and again in the early autumn. The best wool, the summer wool, was kept for use on the farm; the winter wool was sold in the spring. Sheepskins and calfskins were likewise sold. Cloth for waistcoats and skirts was woven at a weaver’s; roughly every other year, Knudsen bought flax and perhaps cotton waste to be used for textiles. A tailor visited the farm at intervals. They wore out a lot of wooden shoes, which they had to buy. The diary has no evidence that knitting was produced for sale, as was done in many heathland regions of Jutland.

In the process of selling, buying, and even exchanging articles, cash was important. When selling and buying, cash functioned as the standard of value, but – and this is important – it was also the means of payment. The supply of natural products from the farm to the housekeeping was discontinuous and resulted in an uneven supply of cash; yet cash was required to get commodities and articles that the household could not produce itself. Loans of cash and frequent credits were therefore a usual and necessary part of this kind of economy. At a time when no bank or credit system existed, it was very difficult for Knudsen to raise the cash to pay out his father’s inheritance to his siblings. Another example is when Knudsen borrowed ten rigsdaler from his neighbour on the morning of the day he became engaged, cash which he gave as a gift to his fiancé in the afternoon. Very often, like many of his fellow parishioners, he also had to lend or borrow cash when taxes had to be paid.

The exchange of articles and cash integrated the farm into the parish, but also into a larger region which extended from the market towns Viborg in the east, to Skive in the north, and Holstebro in the west. The territory south of the parish of Haderup was mostly heath and densely populated. Within the parish, most transactions involved selling small portions of such products as rye, butter, bread, potatoes, and pork, mostly to smallholders who needed these articles. If they had worked for Knudsen at his farm, they could be paid in cash or food, sometimes both. Acute needs for iron or wood, for instance, on the farms were also covered within the parish.

The parish of Haderup is located between three old towns of central and western Jutland: Holstebro to the west, Skive to the north, and Viborg to the east. Three to four times every year, Knudsen drove to Skive with his horsedrawn carriage, and he often took with him about three barrels of barley or rye to one of the Skive grocers. There he bought commodities like iron, boards, hemp, and flax, and articles like wooden shoes, dyes for cloth, salt, brown sugar, spices, coffee, tea, tobacco, and spirits for his own household. He went to Holstebro once or twice a year to pay his taxes and to do errands, including visiting the watchmaker. In the years covered in the diary, he only visited Viborg six times. In Viborg he sold a little rye and some wool, together with butter, eggs, and linen – it seems likely he attended a market day. Grain from the farm was always sold to one of the grocers in Skive. Wool, sheepskins and calfskins, and butter, commodities which the farm produced and from which there was a surplus for sale, were sold to a local trader who lived in the parish. From him, Knudsen bought iron, nails, boards, and wooden shoes, plus coffee, tea, and spirits: that is, almost the same articles as he could get in the town. In the first half of the nineteenth century such local tradesmen, who were also often farmers, lived in the countryside and functioned as middlemen.^{40 ( 40 )}
Blicher 1973, 135. For instance, Knudsen bought two scythes from a trader who had acquired them in Holstebro. Often, these tradesmen’s main interest was buying up wool, distributing it to knitters, and then buying up socks and other knitting to resell. Lastly, Knudsen sold butter, honey, and sheepskins north of the heath region on the way to Skive at three different villages, in some years. He also sold and bought some bullocks from these men.

From the diary it is not possible to determine the exact income from the sale of wool, butter, and bullocks, but we can register what was sold and bought and make an uncertain estimate. This shows that the income from the sale of wool was as large as that from the sale of grain, while income from the sale of butter was about half as much as that from the sale of wool. However, it is very difficult to estimate how much butter was sold yearly, as the amounts mentioned vary considerably, from 5 pounds one year to between 20 and 60 pounds another. The lack of information on this matter could be due to the fact that it was the wife on the farm who was responsible for producing the butter, and selling it as well. Almost every year Knudsen was able to sell one or a couple of bullocks; over half of the income to the farm derived from these sales. Over the years covered by the diary, he sold 33 bullocks. Nine of these were sold to men who lived in the parish, 12 to men living in villages on the way to Skive (two of whom might have been salesmen), and 12 were sold at markets.

The markets had a special position in the exchange of commodities. Knudsen, his servants, and his family members attended all the markets that took place in the region. Knudsen himself attended the different markets held at Skive several times. Here he sold a cow, two heifers, and a bullock, plus some rye. Six times, he walked the forty kilometres to Viborg to sell bullocks; once, to buy a horse. The cattle and horse markets of Holstebro were famous, but only once did Knudsen walk the thirty kilometres to Holstebro to sell a cow. Three times he attended the market at Knudstrup, to the south-east in the region, and once he sold a bullock. Almost every year he visited the nearest market, which was held in the countryside at Sjørup between Haderup and Skive. Here he sold bullocks, cows, and a heifer. At the markets he bought rope and pottery, fish, hops and fruit, and a tobacco tin, a pipe, and a coffee grinder.

Western Jutland was very poor in woods, so the need for wooden articles was great. Farmers in the wooded region in central Jutland had specialized in producing all kind of articles made of wood – wooden shoes, wheels, flails, blades, and handles – and sold these products at the markets in Skive and Holstebro. On the way to these markets, they stopped at the inn at Sjørup, and every year Knudsen went there to buy articles from them. At the eastern edge of the heath region there were two limestone quarries, and every year Knudsen got two bushels of whitewash from there, a purchase which his brother-in-law arranged. He bought fish at the markets, and on one occasion he also bought 12 pounds of smoked eel from a man who came from the Limfjorden district, where the farmers had specialized in fishing and smoking eel, which they sold at markets and on their way all over Jutland. Equally, pottery was produced in special areas of Jutland and sold at the markets; fruit and hops were often sold by sellers who came the long way to western Jutland from the isle of Funen. So the markets were centres in the exchange of goods produced by people in the countryside – a centre bringing about contact between different localities with different demand for articles and different kinds of production profiles concerning supplementary occupations to farming. A market was also a regional event, and had the character of an amusement. Thus, some of the servants on Knudsen’s farm made it a condition that they could go to the Lund market, the largest and most renowned market of western Jutland.

Knudsen’s farm represents a variant of an infield–outfield agricultural system in which meadowland, field, and heathland were the basis of the farming. The farming method was extensive, and the outfield—comprising the meadow and heathland—was used intensively. The meadow defined the animal and vegetable production, but the heath also had a part to play in delivering pasture, fodder, and a lot of the material (mostly earth and sods from the heath) that was mixed with dung from the stables. With this technique of manuring, nutrients became concentrated at the infield over time. A lot of work and time was invested in this special farming system, which was practised on sandy soils all over western and northern Jutland.^{41 ( 41 )}
Stoklund 1990. We have some information that farmers along the streams in western Jutland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tried to improve their farming yields by irrigating their meadowland.^{42 ( 42 )}
K. Hansen, 1934–45, 43; Blicher 1973, 26f; C. Dalgas 1830, 14; Rasmussen 1964, 147 ff. In the 1830s, Knudsen too put a lot of work into establishing an irrigation system on his meadow. Before doing so, he had consulted an uncle who lived in a neighbouring parish and the planter from the Feldborg Plantation in his neighbourhood. So local knowledge and experience of irrigation was present. In the 1830s Knudsen additionally introduced the growing of potatoes with great success.

Margins on the farm were tight, and the amount of fodder and grain for bread was often a source of worry. In the heath regions of Jutland, growing grain was secondary to animal production. Knudsen’s diary clearly shows that raising cattle was the chief source of income on the farm, and that sales each of wool and butter were as large as the income from the sale of grain. Young cattle and sheep grazed on the heath, and got some heather as fodder in the winter. So, the heath was also supporting this part of the economy. Even if margins were tight and the degree of self-sufficiency was high on the heathland farms, there was a small surplus to be sold –most years, a couple of bullocks, some barrels of rye and perhaps even barley, plus wool, sheepskins, and butter. Grain was sold in market towns, wool, sheepskins, and butter to a local salesman, and bullocks very often at markets, or to men in the countryside. At the markets Knudsen also bought many articles produced as supplementary occupations to farming by people in other parts of Jutland where the basis of natural resources was different. All of these markets, except for the famous Lund market, were located on the outskirts of the heath districts. The heath districts were sparsely populated and communication troublesome, and the markets became centres in a network of economic transactions within the countryside, and they met different kinds of local demand and supply. The degree of urbanization in the Jutland heath districts was low in the nineteenth century, and the market towns, too, were situated at the edge of or outside the heathland. Thus, local salesmen functioned as middlemen between countryside and market towns, forming a distinct network of their own.

The basis of Knudsen’s life was his farm and the parish where he lived. Despite the isolated location of his farm, it was economically integrated into a much larger network, which geographically spanned a large area in central and western Jutland. Knudsen’s diary adds to Henningsen’s description of the heath-meadow peasant farmer. It nuances the widespread perception of everyday life in the heath areas in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as poor and isolated. Throughout the years covered by Knudsen’s diary, we gain insight into how goods and knowledge circulated – not only locally. but also regionally and, in some cases, nationally. The heath farmers did not cling to traditional farming methods, but experimented with various techniques to improve their livestock and their agriculture, using the resources available on the heathland. Thus, even in the most sparsely populated, meagre, and remote part of Jutland, the heath farmers were able to sustain a substantial livelihood, manage a successful farm, improve their living conditions, and generate a surplus.