Until the end of the 19th century, peat was the most important fuel source for German residences and industries. Later, peat was still cut industrially with excavators, but eventually replaced by coal. Cutting peat was hard physical work. Cutters worked in teams, called “Ploog”, of four to five people. Usually, the entire family helped – the children, too, of course! First they removed the top layer of soil, the “Bunkerde”, then the man standing at the edge of the moor cut the peat vertically into regular, brick-sized pieces or sods, using a “Sticker”. Another man standing in the ditch (“Pütt”) separated the pieces, two at a time, with a “Tweekrieger” (literally “the one that gets two”), which was a special kind of spade. Usually it was a woman who then retrieved the peat sods from the edge of the ditch with a “Setfork”, loading them onto a peat cart. The “Kröder” (a position that was often filled by the family’s children) pulled the cart to a drying-green, where the peat sods were spread out to dry. Once the surface of the sods was sufficiently dry, the pieces were stacked into piles, the so-called “Stuken”, to allow them to dry thoroughly. In late fall, the cut peat was brought to peat shacks, the “Torfbülten”, where it dried out completely. The finished peat sods were usually transported by boat through the ditches and canals created when the moors were explored and made accessible.