Wanda Wroblewska is 23, the prime age for marriage in the flat countryside north of Warsaw. The young woman will bring a few unfinished barns, a stable with scratched window panes and a bunch of rusty farm equipment into the marriage. As the youngest of four daughters, she will take over her parents' farm in Chroscin, a tiny village with barely a hundred inhabitants in Masovia.

That is, if her father, Vladislav, gets his wish. Wanda's dowry will also include 300 pigs. Although there are no prospects in sight, Wanda is already saying: "I'm a farmer." And she says it with pride, because she believes that the Polish agricultural sector, once the epitome of backwardness, has a rosy future. "First of all, the stable needs new windows, there has to be ventilation, and we need a bigger tractor."

Business has been on the upswing ever since Poland joined the European Union on May 1. Instead of three zlotys ($0.88) per kilo of pork they used to get, the Wroblewskis have been making up to five zlotys this year. And they expect the long-awaited direct aid for farmers promised by Brussels to be paid into their account any day now. The Wroblewskis are likely to receive about €2,300 for their 23 hectares (about 57 acres). "We are in favor of the EU; you have to go for the future," says the family patriarch.

It's been hardly a year since Poland became a member of the European Union, a move that sparked a great deal of domestic political debate, but one thing is already clear: The most vocal opponents of EU membership, Poland's farmers, are the ones who will probably benefit the most. A completely unexpected economic recovery is beginning to take shape in the rural areas, where some farmers still use horses to plow their fields. "The Polish village is rising from its knees," Newsweek joyously proclaimed.

Agricultural experts predict that farmers' incomes will increase by up to 30 percent, mostly as a result of the subsidies from Brussels. About 1.4 million of Poland's 2 million farmers have already filled out the application documents, and they are now entitled to an annual payment of about €100 per hectare. Within the next three years, a total of €4.6 billion is expected to be paid to farmers in the form of direct payments, restructuring aid and premiums. The EU is able to afford these payments by limiting agricultural subsidies in the western European countries and slightly increasing the member states' dues.

Even before they officially joined the EU, under the Sapard program, Brussels already began disbursing millions to benefit its new eastern European members. Grzegorz Szpojankowski, a farmer in the central Polish town of Galominek, already has something to show for the new EU aid: a brand-new, 100 horse power tractor manufactured by New Holland. To buy the tractor, Szpojankowski paid 50,000 zlotys, which Brussels matched. Nevertheless, he's still complaining about a spanner in the works: "The application is almost 200 pages long," he says.

But many others have joined him in overcoming this bureaucratic hurdle. "By now, the word is out that this EU is really going to cough up the money. Many farmers had been skeptical in the past. The demand for our tractors has increased by 220 percent in the past six months," says Anna Makulec of Lublin-based agricultural equipment manufacturer Same Deutz-Fahr. Her biggest seller: Tractors made by Lamborghini, "in silver."

Elsewhere, farmers have used the Sapard funds to modernize milking equipment, stalls and buildings. Marek Kwiatkowski and his son Marcin refer to their orchard's new trailers for apple pallets as "little EU carts." Their next step is to enlarge their refrigeration building. Marcin downloaded the application forms from the Internet. The Kwiatkowskis also plan to expand their 20 hectare (about 50 acres) orchard in the coming years. "Only the big ones stand a chance in the EU; small farmers will not be able to compete in the long run," says Marcin Kwiatkowski.

Polish farmers agitated against the EU for more than a decade, warning against "selling off Poland at bargain-basement prices," against rich foreigners from the West buying up the country's relatively inexpensive land. But now the Poles themselves are scrambling to snatch up Polish real estate. This year, the state-run agency for agricultural real estate in Warsaw is reporting an unheard of run on fields and meadows between the Oder and the Bug rivers. More land means higher revenues and, more importantly, more money from Brussels.

For years, Polish farmers caused fear and panic in Warsaw's government offices, routinely shut down the country with their road blocks, and stormed train stations, shoveling imported grain out of freight cars onto the tracks. One of the horror stories to which farmers' activist Andrzej Lepper owes his success is the one about the EU wanting to flood the Polish market with highly subsidized products in an effort to wipe out Poland's courageous farm workers.

But now things have changed completely. The demand for Polish meat and dairy products has increased since the customs borders were eliminated. Poland's beef exports have doubled. Many dairy and meat processors are already producing according to EU standards. Products from the eastern European country are inexpensive and often of the highest quality. For example, a kilogram of beef costs €2 on Polish wholesale markets, but €3 in the EU. Chicken is at least 30 cents cheaper in the East. Poland's dairy farmers charge 20 cents for a liter of milk, while their western counterparts want 35. It comes as no surprise that more and more German, French and Italian supermarket chains and food conglomerates are doing their own shopping in the east. Polish Minister of Agriculture Wojciech Olejniczak is delighted: "It's a tremendous success for Polish agriculture. We will soon be the Union's biggest food exporter."

For now, Polish farmers aren't quite as given to such euphoric outbursts. The mistrust of Brussels many have cultivated for decades is too deeply entrenched, and poverty is still too much of a reality among rural Poles. Nevertheless, Jacek Malicki, who, as director of a regional agricultural center in the central Polish town of Plonsk, advises farmers on a daily basis, senses a clear improvement in the general mood: "People are relieved, and things are improving for many."

This is a trend that demographers in nearby Warsaw can confirm: For example, the Center for Public Opinion Research notes that 67 percent of farmers approve of the EU. This is almost as many as in the general population, and a drastic increase of almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the public's approval of farmers' activist Andrzej Lepper has plummeted since the spring: from 25 percent to barely 11 percent in September. Farmers' advisor Malicki is pleased to note the Union has apparently managed "to civilize Polish farmers."

Even National Catholic Party hard-liners, such as member of parliament Piotr Krutl -- a farmer by trade in the eastern Polish town of Suchowola -- sheepishly admit to having sent in their applications for money from Brussels long ago. This is all the more astonishing, since people of his political persuasion treat the European Union as a regime of freemasons and Jews who, as they claim, are plotting to form an alliance with newly strengthened Prussian Junkers to subjugate Poland's good Catholics. This sinister group of conspirators is paying farmer Krutl 7,000 zlotys, or about €1,600. The money will come in handy: He plans to use it to pay off part of the mortgage for his second apartment in Bialystok.