Westerlo

As a cardiorespiratory therapist in an intensive care unit and later as a nutritionist, Pamela Schreiber saw many people with grave ailments. Working in rehabilitation, she helped long-term smokers, asthmatics, people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and postoperative cardiac surgery patients.

"I worked with people who hadn't taken care of themselves their whole lives through smoking or poor diet," she said.

After doing a lot of research, and with no previous experience, she exited the conventional working world to start a farm. She left health care, she said, because she saw so little being done to prevent health problems before they started.

"Healthy food will keep us healthy," she said.

Now, she owns Eight Mile Creek Farm in Westerlo, running it with her daughter and an intern. She raises cows, chickens, pigs and horses, and grows more than 30 kinds of vegetables.

When looking around at the rolling hills, squealing pigs and wide-open space, the attraction of organic farming is easy to see. But being an organic farmer isn't as simple as enjoying a romanticized landscape. The process is cumbersome, the upkeep expensive and the profits minimal, she said.

Despite the challenges of going organic -— the transition time, the added costs, the longer maturing time — more farmers are making the switch.

According to the USDA, certified organic farmland totaled 935,450 acres in 1992. By 2011, that number jumped up 82.6 percent to 5,383,119 acres.

In New York state, a clear comparison is harder to find. USDA's 2012 Census of Agriculture said that New York had 824 certified organic farms, 157 organic farms exempt from certification, and 158 farms making the switch to organic. In 2007, however, the Census did not list a separate number for farms exempt from certification. The number of farms used for "organic production" that year was 1,137. In the census year before that, 2002, there is no specific section for organic agriculture.

Many farmers are choosing to go the organic route for the same reason their customers are choosing to eat that way: They believe in its health and environmental benefits.

Reports on the dangers of synthetic pesticides, which can't be used on organic products, are reinforcing this idea. Recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer reported on glyphosate, one of the most used herbicides in conventional American farming. The agency, part of the World Health Organization, assessed how carcinogenic the herbicide and four pesticides are to people, writing that glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic to humans."

For Schreiber, her favorite part of farming is seeing the wide variety of things she can display when she lays out her products at a farmers market and her customers' reaction to the food and farm.

"It's just taking a moment to look around you," she said.

Schreiber's daughter, 22-year-old Melissa, stood by her side during a recent tour of the farm. A cowboy hat covering her blue-streaked hair, she said she could see herself eventually taking over the farm.

Love of the job is a reason many small farmers keep farming, said Mark Kastel, the co-director and co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, which researches and advocates for family-scale farming.

"Farming is not a job; it's a lifestyle," said Michael Kilpatrick, owner of Kilpatrick Family Farm in Middle Granville. "We're stewarding the Earth for the next generation."

A lot of labor goes with that love. Schreiber weeds her vegetables by hand, puts down row covers and plans ahead to prevent pest infestations. Organic farmers don't use chemical fertilizers, so they rotate cropland with animals to enrich the soil instead.

Organic farmers have to wait longer for their animals to grow, as well. A conventional chicken is raised in 41 days; an organic one takes three to four months, Schreiber said.

The rules make the job harder from there. The USDA has hundreds of pages of regulations and standards specific to organic farmers. Before the land is certified organic, it must have been farmed organically or unused for three straight prior years. Organic farmers must have a 50-foot buffer between their farms and conventional farms to prevent contamination by pesticides, which means they have to lease or buy more land or reduce the number of acres farmed. Records, inspections and paperwork must be completed annually.

The costs of organic farming are higher than those of conventional farming, too. Schreiber said the organic grain she buys for her cows is about three times as expensive as regular grain.

The price for organic food has risen, but Kastel says that doesn't help many farmers.

Kilpatrick said that his gross profit margin is 13 percent — but after he takes out his "livable" salary and the cost for capital improvements for the farm, the profit drops close to zero.

Taylor Tribble's profits at Red Oak Farm in Stuyvesant vary from year to year, but they usually range between $15,000 and $30,000, before he pays himself.

Farmers work upward of 60 hours a week, often 85 hours in the harvest months. Schreiber said she often works 19-hour days.

Whether organic or not, it's not easy to make a living through farming. In 2009, the more than 600,000 family farms in the United States earned between $10,000 and $249,000 in gross sales, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released in 2012. However, the farms averaged $2,615 in net earnings from farming activities. The total household income mostly came from "off-farm income," suggesting that in order for farmers to survive, someone has to work outside the home.

Some farmers, like Cheryl Frantzen from Frantzen's Scenic Acres Farm, choose not to become certified, even though they follow all of the rules. In an email, Franzten explained that the cost of certification was one issue. Another is that organic farmers are still allowed to use certain pesticides, and the Franztens chose not to use any.

Organic farmers can face problems from other farmers. Schreiber said she's seen a support system for farmers in Westerlo. But Kilpatrick has had some "close encounters" with conventional farmers spraying pesticides too close to his land, he said.

The Cornucopia Institute has "scorecards" on its website that rate organic farms by criteria such as whether they are family-owned, how much space animals have and how long animals live, so consumers can be sure what they're buying comes from the idyllic farm they're picturing.

While the USDA says that everything labeled as organic must be certified, farms that make less than $5,000 per year are exempt from this rule. They are still expected to follow certain standards, though, and consumers can report them if it seems otherwise.

Schreiber believes that it is important for small farms to become certified so they can have a say in "upholding the strength of the standards."

Still, while farming is a struggle, Tribble said that he "can't really imagine myself doing anything else either."

All those rolling hills and dairy cows also help the state a great deal. In total, the agriculture industry directly contributed $5.4 billion to New York's economy in 2012, according to a report from Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

"It's a really backwards thing in society when it's so hard for farmers to make a living when they produce the most important thing," Schreiber said.