Now that we know a little about Rykovsk settlement's climatic conditions, it's possible to talk about the local colony's agriculture. A fair amount of statistics, reports, and various opinions, official and unofficial, have been written on this issue over the past decade. I will limit myself only to sharing the unmediated impressions and voices of the region's true farmers. I say true, because whether those exiles forcibly settled in the taiga ever pushed a plow in Russia cannot be ascertained. From an early age, a Russian village peasant carries on an occupation established by his father and grandfather. He follows them in the running of the farm, house, cattle, plow, harrow, in preparing the fields, but most of all, in knowing how to turn the soil. But the island's “Robinsons,” as they’ve been christened, are expected, with government spades and hoes in hand, to do all this from nothing. It is understandable that eventually, in places of settlement like Palevo, for example, a strange group of folks emerges: not quite vagabonds, not quite beggars, not quite robbers. And, truly, they’re not to blame for this. The late M. S. Mitsul distinctly knew it was impossible to send seasoned farmers into the taiga empty-handed, and so was remarkably generous toward Rykovsk's first exile-settlers, supplying them all the items they needed for farming. From this came good peasants, who at Mitsul's death were attending to their farms beautifully. Some had ten or twenty cattle, many had vast meadows and were working several desiatiny. Not only did they consume their grain and feed it to their cattle year-round, they even sold it to the treasury. They sowed rye, barley, and wheat. At first, the new land gave very good harvests. Even I found surprising the caches of potatoes. That was Rykovsk's golden age of agriculture. Every year, the cornfields grew and the cattle quickly multiplied. It was comparatively easy at that time to root the soil because workhands were cheap. During the ‘eighties, Rykovsk's penal laborers had a lot of leisure time and gladly did private jobs.