0 someone who lives and works on a croft (= a very small farm, especially in Scotland): --
The activities of farmers and crofters are vital to the wellbeing of the countryside.
Since the owner of the land almost always owned all buildings errected on it, tenant farmers, cottagers and crofters did not have any formal rights to dwellings when they retired.
There were in all 182 farmers and crofters on the estate.
The social situation of crofters was somewhere in-between tenants on noble land and cottagers\lodgers.
While landless workers, crofters and artisans in most cases lived in small nuclear neo-local families, landholding farmers adhered to other patterns.
This was particularly common among cottagers and crofters or their widows, and there might be no formal contract.
Therefore, their situation was similar to, for instance, that of the crofters.
In practice there were great differences between crofters who rented large land areas and crofters who had just small plots.
For three of the estates there was a considerable difference between farmers, on the one hand, and crofters, cottagers and smaller farmers on the other.
