John KempfRegenerative Agriculture Entrepreneur

Episode 98: Growing For Nutrition Through Color and Flavor with Bob Jones

21 Dec 2023 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:41

Bob Jones of Chef's Garden, a six-generation farming family, talks about growing vegetables for flavor and nutrition instead of just yield. His father once ran 1200 acres wholesale; Bob and his brother Lee now focus on smaller-scale, quality production at their 60-year-old operation.

Questions this video answers

Bob Jones (Chef's Garden).

Six generations.

About 60 years.

Bob Jones and his brother Lee (with a team).

About 1,200 acres of fresh-market vegetables.

Chapters

Hi, friends. This is John and this is the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Welcome back. This is where we talk about agronomic science and cultural management practices, and it's also where we talk about just having fun and all the fun pieces that contribute to regenerating our relationships with the soil, with plants, and with each other. I'm really excited to have here on this episode a longtime friend and someone who have come to really respect their operation and the innovative work they have done. Bob Jones from Chef's Garden. Bob, welcome. Thank you for being here. Tell us a little bit about your kind of your story, the background, the operation that you're working with today and how that all came to be.
John, I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today. I'm a big fan of the podcast. Our family has been farming for over six generations. We have been growing vegetables on our farm here for about 60 years in this location. My brother Lee and I operate the farm together with an amazing team of folks that we have gathered and we have like many of your listeners, we are on a transition or a continuum, if you will, of learning. And we certainly don't have this all figured out by any stretch of the imagination, but we're learning enough to excite us to try and learn more faster. We came out of a wholesale operation that my father ran back in the 70s and 80s. At his peak, he was about 1200 acres of fresh market vegetables. He was selling wholesale to grocery chains anywhere east of the Rocky Mountain.