The farmers are too poor even to fallow barley. Part of the problem is the decline in the linen trade. Even the linen market in the town of Maghera has been cancelled though a lot of that was due to a dispute in which acid was thrown on the clothes of some merchants. The worst hurt were the industrious Scots settlers. There is now little difference in economic terms between the Scots settlers and the native Irish though there is a residue of tolerably comfortable homes from the days of prosperity.
Rents are high and families large.
Children marry and leave home early for their own cabins which put additional pressure on the cost of land. Cabins have to be made of sod, mud or stone for the only timber that is left is that rescued from the bogs. Wage labourers can afford only small pieces of land and usually get an accompanying potato patch for a maximum of only eleven months for which they have to pay their rent in full before lifting their crop. With local work uncertain, many labourers also have to work across the Irish Sea for money to sustain them between planting and harvest. While Catholics have the worst of it, poverty is not restricted by religion.