The many turns of Lynn Pugh's life lead back here, to sunny fields where only the occasional sound of voices and the chirping of birds and insects interrupt the quiet.

At Cane Creek Farm, tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac in western Forsyth County, Pugh combines her love of teaching, learning and building community. A reserved woman given to doing, not talking, she operates a community-supported agriculture program (CSA) that provides a weekly abundance of tomatoes, squash, green beans and other fresh produce to subscribers.

Phil Skinner/Staff (ENLARGE)

Lynn Pugh toils in the field, this time cutting sunflowers. Her customers sign up for a weekly share of what's in season. It's work Pugh loves, but it's hard: 'Ten years is probably the limit on my body of being able to do this,' she says.

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The food Pugh grows nourishes the bodies of CSA members who buy into her vision. She hopes it feeds their souls, too, just as it sustains hers.

Like other farmers, she puts in long hours. She struggles to outwit hungry bugs and deer, to overcome drought and to predict what her customers would like to eat this year.

And like other growers trying to feed metro Atlantans' growing appetite for locally raised produce, she's watching development creep ever closer. For now, 17-acre Cane Creek Farm is a rural holdout in the suburban boom of Forsyth. But less than a mile away, bulldozers are clearing ground for what looks like yet another subdivision.

Pugh is standing her ground. The subscription program she operates may one day help pay the farm bills, if it can grow to about twice the size it is now. It's a natural extension of the farmers market booth she still occupies on summer Saturdays, a way to guarantee some income and free her to focus on growing, not selling.

Some benefits don't get entered onto a balance sheet. For Pugh, the subscriber program is also about community, one she's growing as she builds the CSA, in its third year.

In weekly newsletters, she's shared her sorrow over the death of faithful dog Silford, a constant companion for seven years, and chatted about the drought, crop-saving rains and the first tomatoes to come from the hoop house. She teaches classes on canning tomatoes to help subscribers tune in to the seasons. And there are organic growing courses twice a year, too.

"This is my niche," Pugh says one day, while taking a rare break on the porch swing at the market shed. "I really believe in it, because we need more farmers."

At the start of the season, Pugh and her husband, Chuck, opened their home to CSA subscribers and organic gardening students, cooking up a big pot of chicken and rice to supplement the potluck. Earlier that evening, Pugh led visitors through fields still soaking wet from a downpour, pointing out where the potatoes and as many as 30 other crops would sprout and explaining how she grows vegetables in a way that respects the land and preserves it.

"That's what nourishes people, that spirit of being connected to the land," Pugh says. "That's what we all need. People feel better about themselves and the world."

On pickup days, connection to the land is as close as the fields of ripe edibles that flank the driveway. Subscribers walk past a children's garden colorful with a bottle tree and a tepee covered with twining bean vines, skirt a field of purple coneflowers nearly head high and go to the market shed to gather their bounty. On most days, Emma, the aging beagle mix, lopes out to greet them and announces their arrival.

Since early May, the shares inside the shed have shifted from small bundles of lettuce, arugula and radishes to squash, green beans and potatoes sorted by the pound.

Like other years, this season has brought challenges. The Easter weekend freeze delayed early harvests, making for smaller shares at the start. One customer quit after the first week.

Beetles nibbled some greens so much that Pugh started referring to them as "lacy cabbage." Deer returned to the bean plants. Pugh prepared for battle.

"I was determined they weren't going to get all my beans this year," she says.

Up went a solar-powered electric fence and heavy white covers over the rows. The deer jumped over the fence and onto the covers, leaving hoof prints and small rips. Most of the beans survived, arriving in shareholders' bundles with the fresh, grassy taste of something plucked from the field in the last 24 hours, not shuttled from field to truck to warehouse to truck to supermarket over the course of a week or longer.

Such is life as a farmer. It's not the life Pugh planned.

The daughter and granddaughter of teachers and school administrators, she figured on a future of college, then teaching. She laughed off an eighth-grade vocational test that pegged her as a farmer.

Instead, she blazed through a biology major and chemistry minor at North Georgia College in three years, then married Chuck, her college sweetheart.

After working as a lab researcher, she got a master's degree in plant pathology and started teaching college classes. Stints as a military wife (Chuck recently retired from the Air Force Reserve) and high school chemistry teacher followed, along with two children and the purchase of Cane Creek Farm.

Pugh started taking flowers and a few vegetables from her garden to the Cumming farmers market several years ago. She found a home, though she didn't make much money.

"I loved the farmers market," Pugh says. "It was a nice, close-knit group of people who cared about each other."

Selling at the market was another matter. Chatting up strangers didn't come easily, even when talking about the plants she loved.

"I was just exhausted when it was over," she remembers.

Pugh decided to try a subscription program, and started with 12 members. She doubled the size in 2006.

This year, she doubled it again, counting on help from Chuck, who recently retired from his corporate job. Chuck arranges for sales of coffee and other farm products to supplement their offerings and greets subscribers on Saturdays at the farm. Lynn still takes produce to the market on Saturdays but mostly she handles the fields, enlisting help from Phillip Huwiler, a 19-year-old neighbor and University of Georgia finance major on summer break, as well as from some CSA members like aspiring farmer Matthew Zabarovskis, 17, and her organic gardening students.

Lynn has studied the subscription programs, and figures that with 100 members, she can make a living. It's a hard one, though.

At 54, she feels the strain in her back from harvesting broccoli, and the weariness of nonstop work at the start of the season. She's considering more creative ways to get help.

"I can't keep doing this," she says. "It's too much. Ten years is probably the limit on my body of being able to do this."

Still, she revels in the challenge of growing new things, like the beets she had so much trouble getting started this year.

She keeps careful records, making sure the harvest is weighed and noted and tracking which varieties do best. And there's the joy of training more farmers, the pleasure a teacher feels when she's leading a classroom of eager students.

"Every day is different, which is why I like it," Pugh says. "That's why I liked teaching."

She heads to the hoop house to check out a flat of squash seedlings ready for planting. They've wilted in the blistering heat. She sets the flat in the shade to perk up and directs the teens to other tasks.

Before long, the tender young seedlings stretch toward the sky again, refreshed. Wrap the stems in foil to keep out worms, she tells her helpers, and then plant the seedlings 2 feet apart. She's eager to return to the fields with them and get back to work.

"The more you do it," she says, "the more you realize there is to learn."