For Kim Zuber's family, farming has been a way of life for three generations.

It's not an easy living. A farmer can invest lots of time and money in a crop, only to see it suffer at the hands of nature or the marketplace. As an example, Zuber brings up the Wayne County fruit farmers whose crops suffered extensive damage during a June hailstorm.

"It costs millions of dollars to plant your crop and you're at God's will," says Zuber, an Ogden farmer who is also president of the Monroe County Farm Bureau.

But it's the economic pressures - the continual investment in crops, livestock, or equipment without a guaranteed return, or even whether they can get the labor they need to harvest seasonal crops - that often cause farmers to get out of the business. And when they do, developers are frequently standing by - ready to swoop in and gobble up the land.

Zuber says he's been approached by developers, but has declined their offers.

"We're a pretty independent lot and I hate to give up the farm at this point," he says.

What often keeps farmers going is tradition and a sense of duty, Zuber says, along with a stubborn love of agriculture.

Ogden, like many other towns, is trying to find ways to preserve its open space. The best way to do that, officials say, is to keep people like Zuber in business.

Communities across Monroe County have tried to make sure that farmland stays viable and undeveloped. In Pittsford, Penfield, and Webster, residents approved multimillion-dollar plans to protect farmland and open space. Ogden town officials approved an open space plan in 2006. Last week they presented, for the first time, a list of 185 town properties they want to preserve.

Ogden officials say they want to be proactive. The town is not facing the development pressures that the three eastside towns did when they passed their plans, says Supervisor Gay Lenhard. When Ogden's open space plan was passed, 57 percent of the town's 21,405 acres were undeveloped. But only 3 percent of that land - 565 acres - was permanently preserved, either as parkland or easements. Town officials want to see that number increase, though they haven't set any specific target.

Ogden has been experiencing some growth. Between 1990 and 2006, the town's population grew by about 3,000 people to 19,095. It experienced an up tick in residential building in the late 1990's and early 2000's, but that activity has since leveled off. For that reason, town officials want to first take a regulatory approach toward open space preservation - rather than shelling out big bucks to buy land. Some of the ideas under consideration include tax breaks for conservation easements and incentive zoning practices that would let developers build at higher densities if they preserve land as open space. Town officials also want to focus development on the east side of town, which is already more built up than the west side.

Purchasing land or development rights through borrowing would be a burden on taxpayers, say town officials. For now, at least, they want to avoid it.

"As long as the economy stays like it is right now, I just don't see the pressure to do bonding," says Ogden Town Board member Dave Feeney. Feeney is also chairman of the town's Open Space Committee.

Whether the plan helps farmers depends on how it's put in place. Zuber, whose several hundred acres in Ogden were ranked as part of the open space plan, likes the idea of tax incentives for farmland preservation. It gives farmers some sort of a break that helps them compete and stay in farming, he says.

"The best way to preserve open space is to keep the business of farming profitable," says John Steinmetz, a planner hired by the town to help implement the open space plan.

Bob Davies has watched some of the town's open space get swallowed up, including the 200 acres - his estimate - behind his Maple Grove Drive home. The property used to be farmland but in recent years it's been targeted for housing developments. When digging and grading for one of the developments began, basements in Davies's neighborhood began to flood, he says. He and his neighbors never had the problem when the rear property was farmland, he says.

A hydrogeologist hired by the Southwest Ogden Neighborhood Association, of which Davies is president, said the work shifted underground water patterns in the area.

The town needs to protect its open spaces, Davies says. He says he believes that if the area behind his house stayed farmland, there wouldn't have been the flooding problems.

He worries that the town's open space plan is taking too long to implement. The town first starting talking about open space preservation in 1991, he says. It was brought up again in a 2003 plan and the current open space plan grew out of the latter.

"Officials of the town of Ogden have been talking and talking and talking," Davies says. "As of this date, they've done nothing."

In May, the Ogden Planning Board continued deliberations on two development projects that would, combined, cover about 100 acres of land. At the same time, town officials are negotiating an easement agreement with a property owner that would preserve over 14 acres of open space in a different part of town. The property owner requested the easement and town officials hope to see that kind of thing more often.

Once the public is aware that the town is open to such possibilities, "I think things like that will start to happen," Feeney says.