Vito wrote:

"Dave" wrote
Vito has a very peculiar definition of family farm. To qualify, his family
farm must not use machinery.

That's not true Dave. I suppose if one man owned 1000+ acres, the amount needed
to justify having modern planters and harvesters, and lived on and farmed it
himself, then I guess you could call it a "family farm".. I just don't know of
any hereabouts. Now the man who had the 160 acres next to my cattle operation
called it a family farm. After all his family lived on it and I "farmed" it (cut
alphalfa) for him so it must be a family farm. Of course the only reason he
could afford to do that was beause he owned a big construction company that
built tract houses. But he was a fermer, not a conrtactor - right?

My wife grew up on a working family farm, where we now live. 160 acres,
mostly dairy. In a lot of ways it was somewhat like what Vito describes,
my wife's mother bore 12 children, 11 survived. It was pretty much
subsistence at the end (1980 or so). They had one crappy old
Massey-Harris tractor, no hydraulics or PTO, just a draw bar. It's still
a farm, for tax purposes, we sell the hay to another farmer, that's
enough for the Gov'mint to give us the tax break. The other farmer
probably farms about 3000-5000 acres, has four tractors, a couple of
rakes, cutters, balers, etc., he runs a thousand or so beef cattle and a
150 or so Holsteins for his dairy side. Even he doesn't own a combine,
he rents one at harvest. Despite all his machinery and hired help he is
not making a great living, plus it's fricken hard work.

The upshot of all this, it'd be a bitch to make a living on 160 acres.

Cheers
Marty