Murray Cohen grew up a city kid on Chicago's south side, where farmers were characters in songs and storybooks. But the forces of change moving through his generation got him thinking about where food comes from.

"In all honesty, I was a back-to-the-land hippy in the '60s," he says.

After 38 years of farming a couple of hundred acres in Chatham County, Cohen still believes in what drew him to a career in agriculture as a young man: People need clean food.

Cohen earned a bachelor's degree in plant science from Southern Illinois University and was helping run a health food store called Mr. Natural in Carbondale, Ill., after graduation. A man happened to come in one day, talking about farmland for sale in North Carolina at $300 per acre. Cohen's father had promised his son that if he graduated from college, he would help him get set up on a farm. When Cohen visited North Carolina, he fell in love with the countryside.

Today, he owns 220 acres in Silk Hope, where he grows organic hay and grain for his beef cows and other farmers' dairy cows. His beef cows spend most of their lives in pastures, not pens. They receive no antibiotics, hormones or vaccines.

Cohen and his wife, Esta Cohen, sell their beef as well as pork and eggs at the Midtown Farmers' Market at North Hills.

He says they have between 80 and 90 cows on the farm, and they slaughter two at a time. About four weeks before slaughter, the cows are taken out of the pasture to a pen where they bulk up on his hay and grain.

"I believe that animals that are raised humanely and raised with kindness will give you a much better yield," Cohen says.

Esta is a relative newcomer to farm life, having left her nursing career last year to work on the farm full-time. She and Murray married in 2000, but even before they got together, Esta says, she was passionate about knowing where her food came from. She always tended a big kitchen garden because she wanted vegetables that had a vibrant taste, something she didn't find in grocery store produce sections.

Murray Cohen has seen a lot of changes to the local farm scene since he got here in the '70s, and he has benefited from the area's strong networking between farmers. He says it has been a life's work, helping his farmland to recover from years of depletion by the tobacco and cotton cultivation that preceded him.

His back-to-the-earth philosophy remains a guiding force.

"If you treat the land well," he says, "the land will treat you well."