By 9 a.m., Jack Motter had been planting peas for hours.

He pushed a two-wheeled contraption that deposited a seed every few inches along neat rows at Ellwood Canyon Farms, just outside Santa Barbara, Calif. As clouds gathered overhead, he picked up the pace to avoid losing days of work to the fall rain.

Timing can mean the difference between profit and loss for the 5-year-old farm.

Motter and his business partner, Jeff Kramer, are part of a growing crop of young farmers choosing to produce food without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. As consumers demand more fresh and local food, grown with minimal environmental effects, a new generation has taken up organic farming.

The two Brawley, Calif., natives, both 30, have learned that small-scale agriculture is neither easy nor lucrative. Their days on the 15-acre farm start at dawn and end with exhaustion.

“There’s nothing romantic about it,” Kramer said. “It’s hard work and long hours for little pay.”

In California, the average age of farmers continues to climb. It hit 58 in 2012, up by nearly two years from 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent census. In 2012, the number of California farmers 65 and older grew nearly 20 percent to 39,428 during the five-year period.

Agriculture trade groups have developed programs, including training and financial incentives, aimed at attracting young people. But many new farmers are motivated primarily by the desire to show that mainstream methods aren’t the only way to grow food.

Large conventional farms can churn out commodity crops quickly and economically. The average American farm, tilled by heavy machinery, is now 434 acres, up from 418 in 2007, the USDA reported recently.

But changing consumer preferences for locally grown and organic food have paved the way for young farmers to carve out a niche.

Chris Velez is among them. About 300 miles north of Ellwood Canyon Farms, Velez has spent nearly 10 years farming five acres in Auberry, Calif.

“The Earth is in a pretty dramatic state,” he said. “It’s truly calling for people to come tend to the land in a healthy way.”

The 38-year-old has taken on apprentices to learn the trade. Farm interns have spent a couple of months at Stella Luna Farm, named after Velez’s 13-year-old daughter, Stella.

Small farm; big challenge

Starting a small farm poses big challenges. Large amounts of capital are needed for land and equipment, but novice farmers have a tough time securing lines of credit.

Velez and others, however, have found creative ways to get their farms going.

Kramer and Motter, for instance, borrow equipment from farmer neighbors and look for deals on used tractors and attachments on Craigslist. Velez and his wife, Jamie Carr, live frugally and avoid going into debt.

We “might be poor on paper, but farming allows for spending time with kids,” said the father of two. “My richness is life.”

Only recently has Velez learned to pace himself. For years, he worked from sunup to sundown. In 2004, he ran a nursery and simultaneously farmed the five acres before buying the land in 2007.

Velez has structured his business around a CSA, or community-supported agriculture operation. His more than 60 customers pay up to $840 at the beginning of the growing season and receive a weekly box of produce for 42 weeks. That works out to $20 a box.

Though organic produce sales account for less than 1 percent of the total value of food grown in the U.S., the share is increasing. New data show that sales of organically farmed food jumped nearly 84 percent in 2012 from 2007, reaching $3.12 billion, according to the USDA.

Chris and Johanna Finley of Santa Ynez, Calif., got their start just as the organic food movement gained traction.

“We already had our foot in the door,” Johanna Finley said. “The trend played right into our favor.”

Chris Finley, 36, and Johanna Finley, 35, were students at the University of California-Santa Barbara working part time at a local farmers market. After a short stint selling homemade salsa, they decided to go into farming in 2002. They started small, leasing an acre of land on the Gaviota coast just north of Goleta, Calif. The land, however, lacked easy access to water and was on a hillside. The novice farmers found the hill treacherous to navigate with a tractor.

“We taught ourselves everything we know,” Johanna Finley said.

Eventually, the Finleys signed a lease for property in the Santa Ynez Valley, a famed wine-growing region northwest of Santa Barbara. Leasing is typically cheaper than buying farmland, the price of which has skyrocketed in recent years. Farmland prices in California topped an average of $7,300 an acre last year, according to the USDA.

As the couple have matured, so has the business. Finley Farms now has sales of about $700,000 annually. They operate two farms on 60 acres: the 10-acre home farm where they live, and 50 acres of leased land about five miles away.

The success has been validating. Starting out, they never anticipated farming that much land or employing 11 people.

Meanwhile, Motter and Kramer have yet to see a profitable year. But sales are steadily growing.

“A system has been designed around a certain way of agriculture and a reliance on cheap fossil fuels and availability of cheap fertilizers, and those things are changing,” Kramer said. “We’re the next generation. It’s on us.”