Redland Rambles

On a muggy summer day, as bruised clouds gather overhead, Margie Pikarsky wends her way through her five-acre farm pointing proudly at strips of cultivated land and a growing compost pile. A blue jay swoops across the field, then another. In the distance a cardinal trills.

“I feel very connected to nature,” Pikarsky, 57, says, and then adds with a wry laugh. “I have this Mother Earth thing going.”

Indeed. Pikarsky has been running Bee Heaven, an organic farm in South Dade’s Redland area, since 1995, when pesticide-free farming was more a boutique niche than thriving business. She harvests honey, collects organic eggs and grows familiar fruits and vegetables as well as exotics — mostly Asian greens — that do well in South Florida soil.

She sells them at farmer’s markets and through Redland Organics, a community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiative that allows people to buy “shares” upfront in return for weekly selections of organic produce during the growing season.