The development of a healthy marsh economy that would sustain its residents into the twentieth century, depended not simply on the technical capability to extend the area under agriculture, but also on building links between farmers and wider markets. Marsh agriculture expanded dramatically throughout the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy regions in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, creating a hay economy that fed horses and oxen along the eastern seaboard, primarily in cities, mines, and in lumbering operations of this broader region. By 1921, nearly three-quarters of the total available field-crop acreage in the two Parishes that encompass the Tantramar Marshes, Westmorland and Sackville, consisted of hay.

The nineteenth century agricultural landscape continued to be based on marshland but substantial improvements in drainage techniques and rising demand for marsh hay fostered expansion in this sector. Two areas of marshland in particular saw dramatic improvements in the nineteenth century. The first of these was the body of marsh between the Tantramar and Aulac rivers closest to the sea. While dyking on the edges of these rivers had occurred, it was not until two "aboiteaux" were constructed on the Aulac River that drainage could be properly controlled in the salt marsh between it and the Tantramar. The second area of new development was northwards on the marsh, into a region of deep bog and lakes. Because the marshland slopes northwards away from the coastal margin (a product of centuries of tidal sediment deposition), the northernmost portion of the marsh towards Midgic and Jolicure is poorly-drained. In 1815, Tolar Thompson, now a legendary marshland figure, began construction of a canal from the Tantramar River northward into the bog. Cutting through about 3 metres of peat moss, this canal progressively drained the marshland, expanding the available productive marshland, while nutrient-rich mud carried up the Tantramar River on the incoming tide was deposited in the smaller drainage ditches feeding the main canal.

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