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Farms such as the Tarts' are dwindling. North Carolina has lost more than 11,000 farms and about half a million acres of farmland in the past 20 years, according to state agriculture officials. As farmers sell their land, the value of North Carolina farmland has jumped 58 percent in the past five years. In developing urban areas such as the Triangle, land is even more at a premium. Finding reasonably priced land can be a challenge for young organic farmers because many local farmers markets require chickens to be raised or carrots to be grown no more than 50 or 70 miles from the market.

"I think their single biggest hurdle is finding a piece of land to work on," says Alex Hitt, who along with his wife, Betsy, has been farming for 26 years at Peregrine Farms in Graham in Alamance County.

Consider O'Neal's situation. He calls himself a "commuting farmer." He cannot afford to buy land. So he rents a house on a bit of land, where he raises some of his 280 or so chickens and uses about an acre to cultivate vegetables. He leases about 14 acres in two other locations.

"It's almost impossible to own land unless you have an off-the-farm job, family loan or go way rural," O'Neal says.

That's what some of O'Neal's peers have had to do.

Family financing helped Elise Margoles, 32, owner of Elysian Fields Farm in Cedar Grove, and Joann and Brian Gallagher, 30 and 31 respectively, owners of Castlemaine Farms in Liberty, buy their farms. Until last week, Brian Gallagher held a full-time job at UNC to help support the farm. It's the same for Haarer, whose Wild Onion Farms is in northern Johnston County. Her husband, Andrew, works at Home Depot and is in the U.S. Air Force Reserves. The couple's long-term plan is for Andrew to work at the farm, but that hasn't been financially feasible yet.

Nor in the case of the Whites, who moved out a bit farther, 25 miles north of Durham to Hurdle Mills. They wrote a business plan to get a loan from the Farm Bureau to buy 30 acres. A neighbor is letting them live rent-free in a house down the road from their farm until they can build their own house.

No longer alone

Three decades ago, hippie farmers who were considered the agricultural fringe paved the way for this generation of young farmers.

"When we were starting out, there really were no models for us to look at," says Ken Dawson, who with his wife, Libby, runs Maple Spring Gardens. He has been farming for 27 years.

Adds Cathy Jones of Perry-winkle Farm in Chatham County, who has been farming for 18 years: "I started out with a subscription to Organic Farming Magazine. That was really my only resource."

Most of these young farmers have had internships, been mentored or loaned equipment by the Hitts, the Dawsons, Jones or John Soehner of Eco Farms in Chapel Hill. Unlike their predecessors who felt isolated and misunderstood by the agricultural establishment, they have one another and the older generation to ask for help.

"They are really fortunate. There are a lot of us now. ... A lot of them are able to hit the ground running much faster than we were," Alex Hitt says.

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