IN a Bermuda unblessed with wide open spaces, Thomas Wadson qualifies as something of a Green Giant, presiding over 35 acres planted in organic vegetables, a flock of free-range broilers, and at the gentle edge of Port Royal Bay, a prolific onion field, though perhaps "patch" would better describe it.

Once upon a time ? back before the golf courses and beach clubs and, recently, the crop of reinsurance offices ? farming wasn't quite so miniaturised on the island: Bermuda sent tons of early-season produce, including its fabled onions, to eager East Coast markets.

The flow reversed by the early 1900s, steep US tariffs providing the killing frost. But with a little help from his friends in ? I was delighted to discover ? Pennsylvania, Wadson has planted the flag of organic produce and poultry here, carving out a brave, new niche-farm near the abandoned railway that once served Bermuda's agricultural, well, heartland.

I first encountered him one Saturday morning in April ? sun-blotched and blue-jeaned ? selling his carrots, beets, spring onions, eggplant and eggs at the modest Bull's Head Farmers market in downtown Hamilton.

It was the stickers on his crates that caught my eye. They announced, "Pardon Me, I'm Making Food and Saving Farmland," and other tenets of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA).

It turns out that Wadson, a Bermuda native, is not only a card-carrying PASA member, but that ? when I visited his green acres off Luke's Pond Road (the largest produce farm of the 10 left on the 21-mile-long island) ? nearly every aspect of his operation was informed by the small-farm ethos of rural Lancaster and Bucks Counties.

As we tooled about, touring a property edged by hibiscus hedge and limestone walls, Wadson fielded cell phone calls from Gap. The Mule all-terrain vehicle we rode in was from Lititz.

He flies in about 400 chicks every three weeks from Leon Moyer, a supplier in Quakertown: They leave Bucks County at 5 a.m. and arrive at Wadson's after lunch. Eli Reiff in Mifflinburg ships him chicken-processing equipment.

From Atglen's Organic Unlimited, Ken Rice sends a special blend of organic feed. Dean Stoltzfus of Stoltzfus Feed & Supply in Gap ships implements.

Even the weed-flaming rig for the half-acre onion patch comes from Pennsylvania Dutch country: "That whole area up there," Wadson says, "is so in tune with what I do." Or depending on how you look at it, vice versa.

A Bermuda farmer, of course, has certain dispensations. The island, at the same latitude as North Carolina, harbours no foxes or snakes, and rarely sees the temperature dip below 55 degrees. But he also faces ocean-side challenges, salt spray among them, and stiff maritime winds that require tethering the mobile henhouses with rope slings tied to cinder blocks.

There's also the issue of the island's British culinary legacy, which is to say that despite local favourites ? a sherry-laced fish chowder reminiscent of Philadelphia's snapper soup and codfish-cake breakfasts, loquat jelly and rum cakes for the cruise-ship trade ? Bermuda suffers from gastronomic lag.

So Wadson, who has a hurried, almost-syncopated way of speaking, has become not only a convert to organic farming, but its missionary, too. He has a 10-minute weekend radio spot. He went to war to stop the import of offshore soil for a cricket pitch. He retails in Hamilton and at a farm stand in Southampton. And while he has made few inroads with the resort trade, he has picked up a few top clients, the elegant Waterloo House Hotel among them.

He employs savvy marketing. Instead of bulk-selling his sweet, spring onions ? so crisp and fruity locals eat them like apples ? he ties them in bunches of four for $5. (Older, broader, pre-vidalia Bermuda onions had their export heyday before the 1930s, losing out to red US onions that co-opted the name; they were grown at first in Bermuda, Texas.)

Wadson has a secret weapon, as well ? his sister Judith Wadson, an alumna of Alice Waters' seasonal Chez Panisse, who features a lovely, spelt-crusted Wadson's Farm chicken pie at Aggie's Cafe, her lunch spot on the harbour in Hamilton.

Wadson's chicken, of course, isn't without some tough competition ? far-cheaper, organic Eberly Poultry shipped in fresh from Lancaster County.

Pennsylvania giveth . . .