Estonia falls into the Nemoral and Boreal biogeographical zones – regions naturally dominated by coniferous forests, with extensive mires. Farmers in at least certain parts in Estonia, as in other countries in these zones, traditionally made use of all the possible forage resources available to them to tide their animals over the long winter, whether on the shore, in rocky areas, on floodplains or in forests. This holistic approach to using the landscape for agriculture had the added benefit of freeing up the limited area of good land for arable production, while at the same time enabling the transfer of nutrients from the saltus to replace those removed in the cropping of the ager.