All in the family. (snapshots).(family haven of organic farming)

In the half-light of the Florida dawn, Lisa, Lib and Buck Lewis pick persimmons as yellow as the impending sun. Most of the fruit will be sold to various markets in nearby Orlando, but some will be held back to ripen for the family's own pleasure. Soon, the farm's guinea hens will stir and begin their chores, plucking pests from the snap peas, green beans, cucumbers and other crops the Lewises grow on their Groveland, Florida acreage.

Their 100 percent organic farm represents something of an idyll--a haven where Buck, 79, a former attorney, and wife, Lib, 77, remain vigorous in their retirement, and where daughter, Lisa, 50, has recovered her health thanks to the organic foods the family so carefully tends and eats.

In 1996, doctors told Lisa she faced extensive "do or die" surgery for health problems. She refused to accept their advice and searched for natural ways to heal her body. "I read different biographies of ailing people who began to eat organic foods, and I learned how their bodies changed within months," Lisa says. "The bottom line is that what you eat--and the quality of what you eat--definitely affects your health."

After she switched to an all-organic diet, Lisa says she began to feel better in no time. That prompted the family to convert the 45 acres they owned--which adjoined a swamp--into a pesticide-free organic ...