HARBORSIDE, Maine - Eliot Coleman, 73, began farming here on Cape Rosier, a rocky peninsula in Penobscot Bay, in 1968, on 24 hectares of forested land.

Mr. Coleman cleared his first plot with an ax and bow-saw, built a one-room cabin for his first wife, Sue, and two daughters, and started to improve the soil with seaweed pulled from the rocks by the bay along with loads of horse manure and soiled hay. His compost piles, which are now huge rectangles walled in by bales of straw, also fed the soil.

Mr. Coleman's Four Season Farm grossed $120,000 last year from crops grown on about one-half a hectare of land.

"So anybody who tells you organic farming can't feed the world hasn't been paying attention," Mr. Coleman said.

He and his current wife, Barbara Damrosch, 69, met in 1990 in a neighbor's greenhouse, where he was tying up tomatoes. Mr. Coleman had already published his first book, "The New Organic Grower," and taken delegations of scientists to Europe to observe the success of intensive organic farming. Ms. Damrosch had appeared on "The Victory Garden," a popular public TV series that promoted composting and gardening, and she had published her first book, "Theme Gardens."

"We're growing 35 to 40 different crops, in greenhouses and in the field, with no pesticides, because we don't need pesticides," Mr. Coleman said. "Basically, we have no pests."

That's because pests attack sick plants, he said. "They're like the wolves eating the sick caribou," he said. "They can't catch the healthy ones. When you grow plants correctly, insects can't maintain a population on them."

The movable greenhouses here - or hoop houses, as they are called for their high metal hoops, covered with plastic - either have wheels that run along rails or are small enough to be picked up and moved by two people. Most are unheated and keep winter crops like onions, leeks, carrots, spinach and cold-loving greens thriving with row covers laid over sturdy hoops, which adds a second layer of protection.

Low covered hoops are a good solution for home gardeners who want to grow food in winter, at a fraction of the cost of a larger hoop house.

Living off the land is a near-revolutionary act in a world of industrial chemical farming, genetically modified crops and pharmaceuticals.

"What we do here is the most subversive activity we could possibly engage in," Mr. Coleman said. "We are feeding ourselves, number one."

He added: "Mother Nature is supplying my inputs" - like sunlight, compost, water - "for free, because I've taken the time to study how it works."

The New York Times

(China Daily 05/13/2012 page10)