The Jones family is no stranger to turning adversity into opportunity.
Forty years ago, family patriarch Bob Jones Sr. and his sons, Lee and Bob Jones Jr., operated a farm that, like others in Ohio, provided traditional crops to markets across the region.
After a hailstorm decimated their harvest in the early 1980s, the Joneses switched gears, almost out of necessity. They started over on new land and began applying
their techniques for providing nutrient-dense products and higher yields to what at the time was a narrower market. Microgreens and specialty vegetables became their expertise, and
The Chef’s Garden was born.
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Kevin LeeFarmer Jones Farm Market at The Chef's Garden is located at 1517 Scheid Road, Huron.Today, The Chef’s Garden in Huron is a world-renowned supplier of restaurants and famous chefs around the world. Eventually, the internet boom helped provide a path for the delivery of the family farm’s unique offerings to the doorsteps of home cooks. “Farmer” Lee Jones became a celebrity of sorts in the culinary world, authoring books and appearing in the media.
The Jones family cultivated a successful niche business, and business was good for decades. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“In the past, we’ve been largely focused on chefs and restaurants, but during COVID, we lost like 90 percent of our business with chefs and restaurants overnight,” says Ellen Jones, Bob Jr.’s daughter-in-law and one of nine or 10 family members involved in the family business.
A solution was to open
Farmer Jones Farm Market at The Chef's Garden on the property at Scheid Road, a site familiar to the local community. It’s fair to say the idea took off, and now it’s being expanded.
At first, it was open only a couple of days a week. Currently, it’s open Tuesday through Saturday. Come fall, the market will welcome visitors to an already-planted corn maze, kids’ attractions, a livestock viewing barn, a pumpkin house and more. Perhaps not intentionally at the outset, it’s kind of become a destination, now open year-round.
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Kevin LeeThe Chef’s Garden is one of 20 Erie County entities to receive an award from the tourism-promotion group’ Destination Development Grant program.“We started a little farm market on the corner, and that has expanded quite a bit in the last three years,” says Ellen Jones, who serves as The Chef’s Garden agritourism manager. “It’s gone so well that, working with our local community, we wanted to offer some other opportunities for the community to come and be involved on the farm.”
But it’s gone beyond the local community. The Chef’s Garden has become accustomed to produce-seeking consumers from the Cleveland area who travel every other week to the farm. The market attracts visitors from Columbus, has a family from Colorado that stops by every year when they visit relatives in Ohio, and had a guy from Pittsburgh tell the Jones’ that it was on his bucket list to meet Farmer Lee.
“We definitely do get a good amount of out-of-towners,” Ellen Jones says.
This past spring,
Shores & Islands Ohio – the marketing organization for the area’s tourism industry – awarded The Chef’s Garden a grant to aid in the financing of its agritourism efforts.
The Chef’s Garden is one of 20 Erie County entities to receive an award from the tourism-promotion group’ Destination Development Grant program. Recipients are chosen for the award based on “a project’s ability to attract and engage visitors, serve and educate regional tourism partners, and generate economic growth for their communities through travel and tourism development,” according to a release from Shores & Islands Ohio.
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The Chef’s Garden has become accustomed to produce-seeking consumers from the Cleveland area who travel every other week to the farm.Tourism in the area has become less seasonal over the years, says Shores & Islands Ohio public relations manager Jill Bauer. Sports tourism, indoor water parks, breweries and distilleries have all contributed to making the area more of a year-round destination.
In the fall “shoulder” season – the time between peak and off-season – agriculture-related attractions help fill the void left by the amusement parks and water activities the area is perhaps best known for.
“Fall is an especially popular time for farm markets, especially when they offer “harvest” activities and products,” Bauer says. “Farms are increasingly becoming popular as wedding venues as well, and many are opening event space and creating amenities attractive to these types of events.”
Castalia Farms and the Erie County Agricultural Society also received Destination Development Grants this spring, and Bauer points out that Quarry Hill Orchards, Burnhams, Orchard Farm Stand, and more are also popular destinations.
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Kevin LeeFresh produce is available at Farmer Jones Farm Market at The Chef's Garden.“When people are coming to the Shores & Islands Ohio region during those “shoulder” seasons, they need things to do and places to visit,” she says. “Agritourism can certainly add to activities that are available to those guests, both in terms of places to visit but also places to dine and drink.”
The Chef’s Garden is about a 15-minute drive from Cedar Point and 5 minutes from Kalahari, Ellen Jones says, and the market certainly gets traffic from visitors to those places. Some kind of stumble upon the farm, while others make it a purpose to stop while they’re nearby.
But, both among tourists and local residents, Jones gets the sense that there’s more to it than just proximity to other destinations.
“I think there’s certainly a bigger interest now than there has been in the past for the public to kind of get back to the farm,” Jones says. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that the average person doesn’t know any farmers anymore. So instead of being able to go visit grandpa’s cows, you’ve got to find places like us that are going to satisfy the hunger to know where your food is coming from.
“Being able to put faces and names to those folks, I think, is very helpful for consumers to have confidence in what they’re consuming.”