Around here, 200 acres would have been a pretty big farm until the early 1970s. Most of the farms around here were the 60-100 acres farms. Back then the entire family was involved, so they did a pretty good job being self supporting.
The 70s and 80s was hard on small farms in our area. with most of them, the father had to take on a job someplace, and then the farms fell farther away from being self supporting. Several small farms merged, and then the bigger farms started buying up all the small farms. I have no idea what would be considered a "normal" farm size would be these days, but in the last few years really small farms (5 - 10, or maybe 20 acres) seem to be making a come back. You have to go back 4 generations to find farming in either side of my (or my wife's) families, and those farm families had lots of kids (15 + kids each!)
