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By this time the small farmer was nearly as hard-hit as the labourer. Rents were soaring, and the harvest was little but a huge gamble, crops being held back for a probable rise in prices. The big landlord and yeoman profited, but the small man withered with his fields. Mus' Cruttenden at Pickdick had never been prosperous, and for the last two years had been definitely failing. Now suddenly he failed. The blame was all his own, for in common with other farmers he had held back his wheat and barley, which being badly harvested and damply stacked, had sprouted and now could not be sold.

Instead it was Mus' Cruttenden who had to be sold. Bills were posted up on barn walls, telling those who could read that on the fifteenth of March, at the Dorset Arms, East Grinstead, the farm known as Pickdick would be put up for auction, with ten head of cattle, four cart-horses, two waggons, one quoiler, two braces and other implements of husbandry.

There was consternation in the parish, and especially at the Boot, for who could tell for certain that the new owner would take on all his predecessor's folk? If he did not, then the future was indeed threatening, for on all the highways labouring men could be found as thick as blackberries in September, tramping from farm to farm in search of work.