Keeping up with the Joneses. (Industry Spotlight).

At one time Huron, Ohio, was a fertile farming community, home to over 300 growers. Today there are six. Having lived in the valley through at lea least four generations, the Jones family understands well the trials of working the land. They know that economies can be fickle, nature can be cruel, and luck visits with good and bad at hand. Their history is defined by perseverance and an appreciation for what the good earth gives. Across the seventy acres they call home, a Willy Wonka variety of orchard fruits and specialty vegetables defines The Chef's Garden. It is as important that the product go directly from garden to chef as it is that the chef go directly from garden to kitchen. Perhaps no more astounding than the farm itself, but equally impressive, is the hospitality with which visitors are welcomed. It is the Joneses' mission to guide chefs who search for new ideas on a moveable feast across the fields. As they pop Golden Nugget and Sweet 100 tomatoes into their mouths like gumballs, sinking their fac es into pastel wedges of Charantais melon and emerging with wet and sugary grins, menus emerge. All this occurs before they've had a chance to explore the experimental garden, where pleasures of the past are revived. Among the many heirloom varieties that are raised, six phases of maturation are observed: micro, cotyledon (newly sprouted and split), petite, ultra, baby, and young. In a small greenhouse, devoid of light, fair-headed corn shoots and pea shoots relevee in the dark. They search for light, though none can be found. Much like the farm itself, the growing process is methodical.

In the middle of these green acres, a modest cluster of white greenhouses make up the nucleus of daily activity. Here micro greens, herbs, lettuce blossom, and a kaleidoscope of produce are prepped and orders packed. At the heart of it all is an unassuming outpost, strictly prohibited to anyone but Bob Sr. himself. The desk and shelves (I'm told) are loaded with a collection of old cameras, seed catalogues, scraps of paper scribbled with ideas, and books--lots of books. Among his library are almanacs and registers dating back to the 1800s, including Peter Henderson's 1887, Gardening for Profit, a series of sage advice penned over 100 years ago. There is also a growing collection of modern management annals. The Chef's Garden is a unique combination of century old agricultural practices and modern day management ideals. The Joneses share more than just the land they work; they share a common goal, a single philosophy that resonates in restaurants across America.

Q: How did the concept of The Chef's Garden come to be?

A: Years ago when the boys were young, we'd harvest the crops in the early morning, pack everything onto the truck, and be on the road by 2 a.m. for the hour or so drive to the Cleveland market. One day, Iris Bailin, who was the Food Editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer at the time, was looking for squash blossoms. Lee came home and said, 'There's a customer who wants the squash flowers'. We couldn't figure out why she'd want them, but I told Lee if she wants to buy them, we'll bring them to market. Gradually, she and other customers began to ask for specialty peppers, eggplants, greens, and herbs.

Q: Did you have to build new facilities and greenhouses all at once or did you start small and grow bit by bit?

A: Well, we lost the farm in the early 1980s and had to start back over. Bobby put an ad in the paper for the hardtop on his CJ-7 Jeep and got 650 bucks for it. He took it to the lumber company and said, 'I want $650 worth of lumber.' Well, this [referring to a small greenhouse] is what $650 worth of lumber would get you in 1983. That was how the size of our first greenhouse was determined.

Q: How did you learn so much about the technical aspects of running a farm that caters to such an elite and discerning crew of chefs?

A: Bobby attended Ohio State University as an horticulture major while Lee attended marketing courses at the same school. They also made visits to restaurant hubs across America to learn more about the needs of our clientele.

Q: How did visiting restaurants help you in the field?

A: The ideal situation for the chefs, and the chefs have told us this, is to be able to walk out the backdoor of the kitchen and into the garden. A few chefs have that. Some places have a small show garden where they'll have small tomato plants and every customer thinks that the tomatoes in their salad came from that plant. The second best thing for everybody else who doesn't have a garden in or just outside of the kitchen is to have their own personal gardener. The Chef's Garden facilitates this. They tell us what they want grown and we grow it.

Q: How can you be sure their requests will be successful?

A: During weekly 'show and tell' sales meetings, a product from each department is evaluated and discussed. Mary and her crew from the herb house may present fresh ginger roots, ginger shoots, and ginger leaves. Wendy and her greenhouse team may present the season's micro red mustard or delicate asparagus ferns and roots. As seeds are tested each season in the experimental gardens, the best of each crop are used. Some varieties seem market or culinary worthy, while others, like Romanesco cauliflower, will be rejected.

Q: How do the chefs know what they want?

A: The chefs want what's new, but they don't know what that is. Part of the service we have to provide to our clients is coming up with items that they've not used before like white pickles or a different variety of melon. We've got a couple of varieties of old Italian squash that we found in the experimental garden. They have really good characteristics, just these huge open blooms. The zucchini are about four inches and the bloom is another six. They are the nicest squash blossoms I've ever seen. There was also an old variety of Sun Burst squash with a real pale yellow flesh and scalloped edge that looks great on the plate.

Q: It sounds like you're bringing foods back from the past. How do you find these varieties?

A: We have a close relationship with the Heritage Seed Savers Association. A lot of the varieties we're growing, they have to dust them off the shelves. We drive our seedsman crazy. We go back to them and say 'Find that stuff back in the back corner of your archives or seed storage that no one's ever had any interest in and let us grow it out and see if we can create something.' All in all, we've found 7,300 tomato varieties, including a variety from Russia, which has a 99 day growing season.

Q: You have over 600 plants on seventy acres; where do you plant it all?

A: We don't have big plantings of anything; it's just like these tomatoes. There's one row of Golden Nuggets or two rows of Ida Golds, compared to a commercial tomato farm that may have 100 acres planted with three varieties, and the only reason they're doing three varieties is so they have three different maturing dates. But most of the time, they want one variety and one maturing date so they can come in with their mechanical harvester and pick all the tomatoes in a matter of days. Here, we are the exact opposite of that, We don't want all of our tomatoes ready at one time. We have three or four different plantings that are staggered so we can get up to that peak production level and hold it as long as we possibly can. We do the same thing with lettuce; we grow about 25 different varieties and plant them once a week because the chefs are telling us they want lettuce that is no more than five inches tall. That all works great and according to schedule until you get a couple of 95 degree days or rain. We had that this summer.

Q: How do you maintain production under those circumstances?

A: We've done some things over the years to help insure ourselves a little bit. We've built nylon mesh tunnels to control the heat and light by 50%, allowing early growing or fragile crops to thrive outdoors in weather extremes. The tunnels are non-electric greenhouses, which thrive on solar panels. In the winter the tunnels are lined with plastic. As the temperature warms, a gas cylinder at the opening of each mesh tent opens one of two vents creating a natural ventilation, cooling the internal temperature. In the summer we take off the plastic and replace it with a shading material so that we can grow cool season crops in the heat of the summer. All seeded lettuces are transplanted by hand and about 70% of the natural rainfall can penetrate the mesh, though irrigation systems are in place when needed. The soil and air temperature inside and outside of each tunnel is carefully monitored and recorded, We can cool the soil by about fifteen degrees. That can make the difference between having a crop or not.

Q: How do you control your soil type and prevent insect damage?

A: We use biological organisms that add to the soil in the form of compost and compost teas. These naturally occurring organisms in the soil thrive and feed on, multiply and decay the organic material in the soil. This allows naturally occurring minerals to become available to the plant. We are enhancing the natural cycle. We also water more effectively by, for example, using plastic mulch in the tomatoes fields, which help retain heat and moisture during the growing season. We use 75% less water using drip tape than by watering overhead; when you water overhead with a sprinkler during the day, 50% of the water evaporates before it even gets a chance to hit the ground. We use city water because we don't want to risk using river water or lake water that has run off from other farms, which may contain chemicals, pesticides, or fertilizers, We have adopted a method of farming which considers the soil as the most important part of good growing practice. If we take care of the soil properly, we will produce the be st product. We don't use synthetics because we don't need them, not because we're trying to exclude them. If your soil is in good enough health and has good enough life in it, it's no different than you or I; if you are getting enough rest and are healthy, you don't get all the little bugs that come along. When you are run down and tired, you catch the bugs.

Q: You invest so much effort. How do you maintain the same level of excellence once the produce has been picked?

A: To ensure consistency in each season, we bring back the same pickers for each year's harvest, There is an unspoken hierarchy among the pickers who help to maintain the consistency of quality in what is picked and what is left on the vine. Our pickers must be skilled; we ask everyone to make judgement calls everyday. A great deal of our effort is poured into supplying a quality, conscientiously grown product and it is important that it be handled properly once it leaves the farm. Some restaurants get a product in and don't have any experience in using it and waste the product. We start out slow with new clients. Orders go out multiple times during the week so we can all get up to speed on what the needs of the chef are and what their clients want.

Q: Your products are definitely more expensive than a trip to the local farmer's market. Was it difficult to build your client base at first?

A: We must get calls at least once a week from a purveyor somewhere in the country who says, 'Are you that little farmer out in Ohio? Why don't you let me take care of all the customers in Chicago for you...?'

We try not to have customers, but long term relationships with our chef clientele. The Chef's Garden is not for everyone. If you're a hotel chain, like the Ritz-Carlton, for example, as good as they are, there are certain things they just can't do because they're plating as many as five hundred plates at a time and there is a certain level of uniformity that is desirable. If we can't make their life easier by doing business with us, then we've failed. It is an expensive product; there's no question.

Q: Why is that?

A: We've got eighty families we're supporting; there is a price to this. These are snap beans right here; we plant about an acre each week and there are eleven varieties, one of which is a baby haricot vert. It takes three men one-and-half hours to pick one pound. We are in different rows picking different varieties every day. We harvest per order and we don't inventory more than a day. We forecast what our needs are for the next day and we'll harvest that. Something that's extremely labor intensive we'll harvest a day ahead. Our goal is to have it on the plate in twenty-four hours.

Q: How did you build your client base?

A: Most of our clients are recommended by word of mouth. We never intended to be any restaurant's sole source of produce. We want them to have their own local purveyor that they can rely on for staple items. Our niche is helping them put the icing on the cake.

Q: Who is your ideal customer?

A: We have a model that we've come up with over the years; there are certain characteristics we look for: the size of the restaurant, menu, style of service. Some of the best restaurants in this country are less than one hundred seats. You understand; there are tiers of restaurants, levels of restaurants in this business. We are dealing with that upper tier. You can tell very early on the folks who don't have an appreciation for heirloom vegetables and won't be using them in a way that Chef Trotter and others are using them. We want everyone to have positive experiences. Some chefs, like Chef Trotter, are willing to have us send a 'mystery box' of produce. Essentially this is a box of the best of the day, no matter what it is. Chef Trotter, who estimates that two-thirds of his customers never look at a menu, knows his dinner guests will appreciate the experience. We want chefs to make money using our product.

Q: How do you instill in your employees a desire to meet the chefs' expectations?

A: We try to place employees according to interest and achievement. You know, most of our people are locals; our harvest guys are Artist Becky Colon Dickenson's rendering of The Culinary Vegetable Institute migrants. We do not frequent these dining establishments. So, the end result of what we do is really something that was hard for us to envision. I think Chef Trotter understood that; he really is about education and training his people. He offered his facilities as an extension to us to train our people-some of them had never eaten any place but fast-food restaurants. For them to sit down at Charlie Trotter's was a real experience. We watched the sous chefs prepare the meal while Chef Trotter explained what products were being used on each plate. As we ate each dish, Chef Trotter explained the flavors that each component contributed.

The Chef's Garden clientele is loyal. "No one in the country is doing anything like it, not even close," enthuses long time client Chef Christopher Hastings of the Hot and Hot Fish Club. "Every year when I come here, they've always reinvented some little wheel; they're upgrading, tweaking this, tweaking that." For this reason, Hastings is a tireless supporter of The Chef's Garden's most recent undertaking: The Culinary Vegetable Institute. This state-ofthe-art facility hopes to entice chefs away from their own kitchens for a visit to the working and breathing fields of Huron, Ohio. Equipped with an experimental kitchen, prep space, library, and communal dining room, and plenty of acres to browse, The Culinary Vegetable Institute will welcome its first visiting chefs in the Fall 2002.

There is a saying in the Jones family that has passed between father and son for decades, "May you be eternally dissatified." That is, may you never be satisfied with where you are right now, so that you will always strive to do what you do better. "The Chef's Garden is more than just a name," Bobby ventures, "It's a constant evolution."

RELATED ARTICLE: Names: Bobby Jones Jr., Bob Jones Sr., and Lee Jones

Home: Huron, Ohio

Occupation: Farmers

Mottoes by which we work: There is no part of our operation that cannot be improved upon. Our customers run our business. If we don't listen to our customers, someone else will.

What inspires us: Providing the chefs with what they need. Having the privilege to, in some small way, be a part of the chef's team. Even though we are in the field, we feel we are an extension of the chef's kitchen.

The one tool no chef should be without: At least a box or two weekly of WOW product from along the sandy shores of Lake Erie--The Chef's Garden.

If we weren't farmers we'd be: Unhappy and disappointed.