Successful rural farmsteads: heirs of traditions and innovators

The article deals with the problems of the life activity of a group of families, which are characterized by socio-structural features that differ from the main mass of members of rural communities. These are families that are oriented toward selfsufficiency of their well-being with resources at the expense of a larger personal subsidiary farm. Using traditionally peasant resources (domestic animals, the fertility of personal plots of land, crafts), they began to create a standard of living quite comparable to what provided labor in other ways. Although they are differentiated in terms of economic size, but in general, their standard of living is generally higher than that of fellow villagers employed only in agricultural organizations or living on funds obtained as a result of pendulous labor migration. The author, based on the method of sociology, included observation, considers this group, named “successful masters of rural farmsteads”, from the point of specifying the goals and meanings of activity, the results achieved, and comparing it with successful representatives of the farming system. Although there is a big difference between the way of life of families of successful rural farmsteads and the farmer, but there are also common features inherent in modern agrarians, connecting the innovations of agrarian science and the peasant nature management culture. They are united by their attitude to challenges and threats of a natural and social nature. The combination of the traditions of the peasant in the work activity, which include not only different methods of work, but also the diversity of options for taking into account the specific nature, with innovations introduced by agrarian science, is an essential characteristic of the style of life of successful farms of rural farmsteads. Some families are dominated by either peasant or new industrial methods of work. Families, among whose members there are machine operators of a wide profile and the necessary equipment, often specialize in servicing villagers (and even organizations based in another village) for the prosperity of various cargoes. The main difference between successful owners of farmsteads and families with small-sized private household plots is the target of autonomous existence based on the resources of the family - physical, professional, spiritual and moral. Maintaining the family of the family economy becomes an indispensable attribute of life-support, regardless of whether the family members have a work place in the agricultural organization or not.