De, CIRCULAR 661, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
give their full time to farming, 20 percent find it necessary to supple- 
ment their farm income with some work off the farm, and the 
remaining 40 percent, though they live on the land, are chiefly occu- 
pied with some form of activity other than farming—in most cases 
woods work or trucking. Nearly a third of this last group receive 
no cash income whatsoever from farming. The typical part-time- 
farming family engaging in woods work receives about $100 per 
year from this source. 
A study of living standards in the Littlefork area indicated that 
for 37 percent of rural families income is at the distress level. Gross 
receipts of the average family in this group—including both cash 
income and the value of farm products used at home—amount to 
about $500 per year. For 57 percent of the rural families income 
appears to be fairly well above the distress level, gross receipts 
averaging nearly $800 annually. The remaining 6 percent of the 
families enjoy a comparatively high standard of living. 
The average Littlefork settler owns 120 acres of land, of which 
two-thirds is in woods and brush. The typical farm woods are in 
poor condition, although they provide nearly all the settler’s own 
timber needs and, in addition, furnish in an average year about $18 
worth of wood products for sale. Because of the extremely depleted 
condition of the farm woods, settlers cannot hope to get much cash 
income from their own timber; and those who require additional in- 
come must look elsewhere for most of their winter employment. 
Most of those who seek off-farm woods work are experienced and 
potentially productive woods laborers. Under usual conditions, 
however, the opportunities for additional woods work are few. 
Probably about 30 percent of those who want supplementary work in 
the woods find enough such work to meet their needs. Another 30 
percent find occasional work in the woods, but not enough. The rest 
in normal times must eke out an existence as best they can on their 
farms, or depend upon relief. 
Unemployment or underemployment of woods workers in the 
Littlefork vicinity appears to result not so much from insufficient 
markets for timber products as from lack of adequate plans of 
management for available forest resources. Potentially there is a 
good market for woods products. Pulp and wallboard mills at Inter- 
national Falls consume annually some 250,000 cords of pulpwood, 
and sawmills in this town and elsewhere in the region demand logs 
of various kinds. Cedar products may be sold through a yard at 
Littlefork, and mining timbers are in demand in the Iron Range 
towns. Railroad cross ties and fuel wood are other products for 
which there is a ready market. An inventory of State-owned timber- 
lands in the Littlefork area has shown that under management they 
are capable of yielding each year, perpetually, some 7,000 cords of 
pulpwood, 900,000 board feet of sawlogs and ties, 64,000 pieces of 
cedar products, and 3,000 cords of fuel wood. This is nearly three 
times the quantity of timber that is being cut from these lands at 
present. It is sufficient, in itself, to provide all the winter work 
which the residents of the Littlefork area who need such work can 
undertake. 
The opening of State timberlands for planned use by the people 
of the area, and sale of timber under a system which would encourage 
