The 1861 agricultural census records the major agricultural products of the Tantramar Marshes. The greatest acreage was in hay, nearly six times the acreage of the next ranked product, oats. Other cultivated products in descending order of importance included potatoes, buckwheat, barley, wheat, turnips and rye. Significantly, many of these crops supported considerable livestock production with beef cattle, sheep, oxen, horses and dairy cows also part of the landscape. Sixty years later, the hay economy of the Tantramar region was at its height. The 1921 census shows a similar pattern of hay dominance with hay production making up 72 per cent of the total available field crop acreage, with oats a distant second, followed by potatoes and turnips.

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