Farming for competitive income versus subsistence-farming-with-truck-garden (or selling surplus) are entirely different propositions.
I get the impression that the farm, originally set up in the 1870s, was for competitive income, under my great-grandfather, a veteran of the Civil War.
But he died in 1901, when this last great-uncle was an infant less than a year old, and the older sons, then in their late teenaged years, took off to see the world (and to make non-agricultural careers). This left the farm under the management of his wife, my great-grandmother, and the daughters, plus the infant son.
Women have proven throughout history that they can run a farm; unfortunately, not quite as well as better-muscled males. The daughters ultimately all went off to their own careers and marriages. Apparently my great-grandmother ran the place with the help of hired hands, but as time went on, it eroded down to a truck-garden/subsistence operation.
Getting old and decrepit, she gave up the farm in 1931, moving to the town of Clarion. None of her older sons wanted it, and only one daughter was naturally inclined towards the agricultural life, and was married to another farmer. Her husband, with his own acreage, decided adding this farm would be too much for him to handle.
Then out of the blue, this youngest great-uncle, a professional engineer in Philadelphia at the time, offered to take the farm, and so it was given to him. At first, until the beginning of the 1960s, he did the whole thing all by himself. But as he got older, he rented out some of the land to other farmers.
By the time he died in 1967, he had rented out all but 55 acres of it, still using mules.
This great-uncle had made some good investments while in Philadelphia, and prospered even during the Great Depression, so he wasn't dependent upon the farm for income. But as he was alleged to have said, "Well,
somebody has to farm this land."
From photographs, it appears he grew mostly corn, but from reminescences of elderly relatives who spent their childhoods there, it was essentially just an enormous garden, all sorts of "crops."
In the beginning (say, through the late 1940s), his "manpower" consisted of his stepson and stepdaughter, and lots and lots of nieces and nephews who spent springs and summers there, until they too were old enough to go out into the world on their own.
It appears to have worked out well, but of course with his increasing age, its scope gradually lessened. But the day he died, he still had nine mules in the barn.
The farm was then sold to someone from Pittsburgh, who later turned it into a hippie commune.
The last I heard of its fate, circa the late 1990s, no one lives out there any more, and it's now reverted back to its wild state.
