Nature knows her business and left to her own devices, usually provides her own solutions. Nature is quite capable of solving those pesky problems like how to keep biting horseflies off of cattle, or the best way to fend off red tail hawks eyeing a flock of laying hens for dinner.

In Chowan County, there's a little 20-acre farm lovingly called Peace and Plenty where a family of five intrepid souls are striving for something more than a chemical-laden lifestyle most people endure today. This family has essentially let nature take its course for the sake of the environment and personal health.

Justin Falls/Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Justin Falls/Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Peter Chelsea looks over Belle, a Guernsey cow, out in the pasture on his property last Monday.

Like a growing number of people today, the Chelsea family is concerned that industrial farming practices that utilize toxic chemicals is depleting the natural resources of the earth, leaving it increasingly more difficult to raise food crops and livestock, and contributing to the ill-health of the general population.

According to a number of organizations including the USDA and the Organic Trade Association, the number of organic operations as well as consumers is growing each year. And that only accounts for USDA certified growers and producers.

Many organic growers and producers are not certified because of the intensive process. Rather, they produce using organic methods. They are farmers like the Chelseas.

Peter and his wife Tessa and their three daughters Hannah, 12, Emma, 9, and Freya, 8, left the refined world of London over three years ago in hopes of doing something different and more wholesome for the family.

"What I'm trying to do is raise three small children," Peter Chelsea says when asked why he has become an organic farmer raising grass-fed, organic beef, goats and free range chickens.

Standing in the middle of a muddy field amidst Belted Galloway, Guernsey and Dexter cows, Chelsea is a determined presence who surveys his land while he talks of native grasses and healthy lifestyles.

Raised in Connecticut, Chelsea was in his 30s when he was traveling and working through Europe. In Milan, Italy, he attended the artist reception of a friend, whose sister happened to be working the gallery. That sister, he says, captivated him and he knew that Tessa, a native to the Cambridge, England region, would be his wife and mother of his children one day. Smiling, he admitted that he was hooked.

Chelsea says once they married, the coupled settled in London and eventually outside the large city. They both held good jobs making substantial money, but life in the city wasn't what Peter nor Tessa Chelsea had envisioned for their children.

Peter's parents had retired from the corporate world and were sailing up and down the coast when they happened upon Edenton. Peter says his parents arrived in Edenton on a Friday and were purchasing a house the following Monday.

The family eventually determined they would settle in Chowan County as well, Peter taking a job teaching in a middle school in nearby Bertie County. Teaching, however, wasn't what he'd hoped it would be and the family agreed to make a go at farming.

"I quit a really good job and I'm here doing this and probably put about $700,000 into this," says Chelsea, who adds that if he needs to, he is ironically willing to take a job at a fast food restaurant flipping burgers to keep this sustainable, organic-farm life afloat.

The family lives in a nine-year-old, classic farmhouse style home that sits on the front of the property. Five dogs, all of which were rescued from the local shelter, greet visitors.

The family grows their own vegetables out back, but the meat, including goats, poultry and eggs are what make money. However, money is not exactly flowing into the Chelsea household.

Farming organically is not cheap. It is labor intensive and naturally produces fewer yields. However, the Chelsea family believes it is the right thing to do because it is sustainable, meaning the various methods employed ensure future use of the land and resources, and it is healthy for both animal and consumer.

Using industrial methods, on the other hand, is toxic by the Chelseas' standards, although it does allow farm families quick and easy solutions to some of nature's problems. They are solutions that, Peter Chelsea says, agricultural extension agents readily push on farmers like himself, trying time and time again to convince him that the industrial methods are the way to go.

But Peter and Tessa Chelsea want to provide consumers with healthy, naturally raised products, as well as raise their daughters to understand the necessity of caring for the natural world.

The three girls are involved in the work. However, they do attend public schools and they have their own lives, as any young girl these days might. Just the same, they do appear to be perfectly happy with farm life and their parents' efforts to care for the family as they see fit.

On any given Saturday, Tessa and her daughters can be seen at the Elizabeth City Waterfront Farmers Market selling eggs and honey the family raises. Last week, Tessa sold out of the family's egg inventory for the day.

In the chicken yard, they have an estimated 150 hens, including guineas that are not only good for eating insects, but for eggs as well. And because the hens are free to roam, they tend to have a broader diet that would include insects of a varied nature, but they are targets themselves.

This is one of those places where nature steps in and takes charge. Since starting Peace and Plenty Farm, the Chelsea's have found that many of nature's secrets have availed themselves to the benefit of the family and the farm.

Take the chickens, for example. Red tail hawks would love nothing more than to eat a hen for dinner so, Peter says, he's been encouraged on more than one occasion to shoot and bury the offending birds of prey. It is, however, not only illegal to kill a hawk, but also not in Chelsea's nature. Instead, Peter Chelsea found that a large group of martins living in the birdhouses situated over the hen yard act as guardians of the roost.

"Two red tails came swooping down but all the martins came out and swarmed them and ran them off," Chelsea says with a smile.

Then there's the question of all those beehives inside the hen yard. The family makes money off the honey and they have no desire to see their bees disappear due to predators such as wax beetles. They're also attempting to raise everything organically so using sprays is out of the question.

Again, nature steps up to the plate and provides a solution. Remember, the beehives are kept with the hens. Hens are voracious eaters of insects and as a result, the Chelseas' bees are pest free.

The arrangement has worked so well, Peter Chelsea says experts from North Carolina State University are doing a study that will further investigate the benefits of bees and chickens cohabitating.

Nature is working in the field as well. First, Chelsea says the pastures where the cattle graze is native grass. Native grass, he emphasizes, is drought resistant.

Then there are the horseflies. Horseflies are vicious, biting insects and can make a cow's life miserable. Chelsea says he could spray the cows to keep the pests away, but nature had her way there as well.

Wasps started showing up, buzzing the cows. Chelsea says he called in an entomologist who said he'd only seen this variety of wasp in textbooks. They're known as guardian wasps and they feed on horseflies and buzz the cows constantly in an effort to not only feed, but also fend off the offending bugs.

Chelsea flashes a pleased smile when he talks about his livestock and the connectedness everything in nature seems to possess. He says the best part of his family's operation is the goats and the hens, those things they typically don't work too hard to maintain.

The cows, however, have been more work but they're about to pay off. The Chelseas' cows are older, smaller breeds. Chelsea says the meat from these bovine is quality beef, they just don't yield as much as a large, grain fed Black Angus.

And that's OK, because that's not the intent here. The size of the cows, and the breeds are part of the Chelsea's plan to create a sustainable, organic operation that treads lightly on the earth, but provides sustenance to its people.

It's an important endeavor, not just because the couple desire to give their girls a good life in the country, but also because Peter Chelsea does see a time in the not too distant future, when good, quality food might become scarce.

In the meantime, although it's hard work and Peter Chelsea does worry it's not paying off as rapidly as he'd like, the 48-year-old farmer has more in store. He envisions a dairy barn, organic milk, a cheese-making operation, as well as ice cream. He'll call it "Chowan County Creamery."

Essentially, Peter Chelsea is satisfied that he's on the right track, doing the right thing, for the right reasons. Moreover, he simply loves what he's doing.

"People say, 'Why don't you go on a vacation?'" says Chelsea, the smile on his face again. "And I say my whole life is a vacation."