South Florida's most celebrated organic farmer started out here 24 years ago as a fertilizer and chemical sales rep.

It wasn't so much a change of philosophy as the gear-shifting experience of motherhood that set Gabriele Marewski on a new path.

''I've been a vegetarian for 40 years, and had an organic garden at the house,'' she says. ``When Max was born, I had to slow down with a baby, and so I had time to do the garden.''

That was in 1990. Marewski began learning then what she does commercially now on her five-acre South Miami-Dade spread, Paradise Farms: using composted turkey manure, fish emulsion and mulch to raise chemical-free vegetables, edible flowers and fruits.

It's strictly a wholesale operation. The only way most people can eat Marewski's microgreens and calabaza blossoms is on a plate at Azul, Escopazzo, Michael's Genuine Food & Drink or one of 17 other upscale restaurants. (You may be able to snag a taste on Saturday when she gives a talk and free cooking demonstration at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.)

Marewski, 53, who has gone back to brunette after several years as a blond, walks with a brisk step, her cotton skirt swinging, even late on a summer's day. Tagging behind is Happy Dog, a neighbor's mixed breed who spends so much time at Paradise that she had him fixed. A chichuahua mix named Baby sits in her lap as she talks. She laughs readily, taking little sojourns from one topic into others the way some people seek one word in a dictionary and continue to investigate others.

This summer, she is planning a college-hunting road trip with son Max and looking ahead to the busiest winter yet at Paradise Farms. The Dinner in Paradise series, which raises money for environmental causes by bringing food lovers and top local chefs to the farm for meals under the stars, will launch its fourth season in December.

Outstanding in the Field, a California group that organizes dinners around the country with organic farmers and food artisans, will be there Oct. 1. And in February, Food & Wine magazine will host a Paradise Farms event in conjunction with the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

Behind the glamorous events are the long hours and hard work of farming. It's all on Marewski's shoulders, from building the packing house and growing beds to doing payroll for her 2 ½-member staff. (Volunteers swell the winter crew to about 14.) She also cares for her 89-year-old father and shares responsibility for Max with her former husband, Reed Olzack.

Over the relatively slow summer, she's finishing an organic mushroom production facility and working on a book about Dinner in Paradise that a local publisher asked her to write. She lives without air conditioning and television. Up at 6, she works until 11 or 12 at night.

``I'm busy the whole time.''

That's nothing new for Marewski, a Maryland native who arrived here in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in agronomy from the University of Maryland for a job as sales manager for Atlantic FEC Fertilizer in Homestead.

She dove into community activities, running the Tropical Ag Fiesta, leading the Redland Citizens Association, helping to found Women in Agriculture and serving on a state property-insurance study commission.

''She was instrumental in getting me to run in '94,'' says Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson.

``She was thinking about running. She had mapped out everything. She had done a whole analysis, so when I decided to run she handed the whole thing over to me.

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