By Connie Mabin
The Associated Press

MILAN, Ohio - Victoria Carmellini unfolds her hand to reveal three miniature string beans, each an inch long and a strange shade of purplish green.

"These are Carmellini beans, named after my son," she says proudly.

The Cleveland woman is the mother of Andrew Carmellini, executive chef at the Cafe Boulud in New York City.

In the northern Ohio towns of Milan and Huron, about 450 miles away, Bob Jones Sr. and his two sons grow the Carmellini beans, the Chris Hastings melon and other rare, specially requested crops, turning 160 acres into personal gardens to some of the world's top chefs.

Victoria Carmellini recently was visiting the farm about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland to celebrate the opening of the Jones' Culinary Vegetable Institute, a three-story, 11,000-square-foot haven for chefs that is built of limestone, pine and cedar.

Jones and his sons make their living by selling exclusively to executive chefs, personal chefs and premier caterers. Their farm has 73 employees and 390 regular accounts. Son Lee Jones, 42, won't divulge sales figures, saying only that it's a seasonal farm.

The business sprouted from hardship.

Two decades ago, the Joneses' vegetable crops were destroyed by a hailstorm, and they went out of business. The family bought another 6 acres and began selling produce at a farmers' market on weekends.

Soon, word spread that the Joneses were a chef's best friend.

And they grow it all chemical-free.

"We get the ground back to the way God intended," says Bob Jones Sr., 62.

Steve Maurer, executive director of the Ohio Farmers Union, said the Joneses' business is an example of how Ohio farmers can succeed if they diversify.

"They've found a niche, and they've filled it," he says.