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Part-time Small Farms: Preservation of viable small farms, even they are worked only part-time, is increav ingly seen as important to tourism and to the wider enjoyment of the countryside. The traditional picture that many people have of farming and their knowledge of the countryside often come from small mixed farms on which they have stayed as summer guests. In the more difficult, if picturesque, environment of the mountains and uplands the disappearance of small farms could leave a depopulated wilderness. Year-round life is hard on such farms, however attractive they may seem in summer. Some countries have therefore introduced special schemes of financial assistance.
Part-time small farms have been an important element in rural life over the centuries. They are still a common, though diminishing feature of parts of Europe and the United States. Depending on geographic location, farming may be combined with fishing (in Scottish crofting), with forestry (in Scandinavia), with small-scale mining or country crafts (in south Germany) or with part-time and seasonal work in nearby factories. Production from this form of agriculture may not be vital to the national economy, but for many people part-time farming satisfies a social need for an outdoor way of life and a certain independence [5].
The economic changes that the colonization movement had the ef-of doing away with the need for coloniza-commerce and industry absorbed surplus don, and small farms were made profitable W intensive production of specJaJjzed crops. new commercial and industrial economy the decentralized organization charac-of the early Iron Age. Industry was in ids of small, independent owners, mostly in working in small shops and assisted by four or five slaves. Similarly, trade was in the hands of a large number of small, independent merchants and shipowners.
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