Folk costumes were replaced by town fashions. Embroidery patterns were copied from German styles. More and more consumer goods from towns found their way into farms. China ware and cutlery were taken into use besides the old wooden utensils. Coffee and dishes such as meat jelly, soup with dumplings, and stewed fruit were rapidly accepted. The petroleum lamp replaced burning pine splinters, clocks were introduced, and, following the gentry's example, a tree was brought in at Christmas.

Dwelling houses were now generally built separate from the barn. The bare log outer walls were lined with boards and painted. Wooden floor-boards, carpets and curtains appeared. Factory made furniture could be found in some wealthier farms.

In the last decades of the 19th Century iron mouldboard ploughs, and reaping and threshing machines were taken into use. The latter were too expensive for one farm to buy alone so they were bought communally between several farms. Wooden carts were replaced by iron axled ones with iron rimmed wheels. Dairying expanded and butter making machines and cream separators appeared. A network of cooperative dairies was formed before the first world war.

Many innovations in the fields of domestic science and crafts were introduced to the peasants through agricultural society exhibitions. Railways, the most important of which were completed in the 1870s, were an essential component for improving communications. The reading of newspapers broadened the peasants' horizons and informed them of events in near-by communities and in the wider world. They could read, for example, about the Karksi village men who had gone along with progress and had bought a new threshing machine.