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>And we managed all of that with my grandfather, a hired hand, and myself in the summer, and just my grandfather and the hired hand during the winter.

well, i see one more time how USSR planned collective economy sucked compare to the US farming - a USSR collective farm of 10-20K acres would contain 200-300 households with most working age people of the households employed at the farm.

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Then you understand nothing of how URSS actually worked. They didn't "employed" 300 people because they were needed, they did so to keep everyone busy. The head of a "colhoz" (I think that would roughly translate to "farm"), sometimes had to make up stuff, just keep people busy, and write the hours on paper.

>Then you understand nothing of how URSS actually worked.

i was born in 72 in USSR. Roughly half my family, like grandmother & grandfather, 2 uncles and an aunt lived in a "kolhoz" and "sovhoz" near by. We visited frequently and i spent some summers there. I also worked at a "sovhoz" the summer after 6th grade. There wasn't making up of the stuff. There were a lot of inefficiencies, low productivity - manual labor instead of machines - and bad organization - typical slice of USSR economy.

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