What color is a carrot?

Forget what you've seen in stores: It's not always orange. Carrots can be deep maroon, flame, lemon yellow or even white. True baby carrots are tapered like a delicate index finger, sweet and tender. Many baby carrots sold in the supermarket are stubby cylinders carved by machines weeks before arriving in the store.

The point is, many people don't know vegetables as well as they think they do, either how they look or taste. Many people think vegetables are better when fried. In fact, a quarter of all the vegetables children eat comes in the form of French fries, according to a U. S. Department of Agriculture study.

Bob Jones believes that if people knew how much flavor fresh vegetables have, no one would have to force another bite into another reluctant mouth. So at his farm, The Chef's Garden in Huron, Ohio, Bob and his family are on a mission. They grow heirloom and unusual varieties of produce for more than 400 chefs nationwide, ensuring the vegetables are at their destinations within 18 hours of picking. And they're teaching kids about how succulent fresh-picked, chemical-free veggies can be.

The key is flavor. If it doesn't taste good, people won't eat it, or they'll cover it with butter or hot oil. Most supermarket veggies don't pack big flavor because they are mass-produced, treated with pesticides and trucked thousands of miles.

The 210-acre farm west of Cleveland on Lake Erie grows vegetables that look like toys but pack intense, full-size flavor: onions the size of peas, radishes the length of a manicured fingernail (the green tops are good, too), popcorn sprouts that look like backyard grass, eight sizes of bok choy.

Even the herb garden has unusual offerings, including Cuban oregano and culinary lavender. Mixed in is a deep-purple eggplant, an experimental growing identified only by a number. There are red-veined sorrel and sweet rutabagas. The farm also grows 75 varieties of tomatoes.

But the family doesn't stop at producing vegetables. The farm's Culinary Vegetable Institute offers chefs, schools and visitors information about better nutrition and details about sustainable agriculture. In many ways, they're working for the future health of the country. A National Cancer Institute study shows only one in five kids eats the recommended five fruits and veggies a day.

But Bob Jones is an expert at starting over, and he sees absolutely no reason why everyone in America can't change their opinions about vegetables.

Bob started farming in the 1950s, and by the late 1970s, he was struggling to compete with huge farms in California and Florida. In 1982, a hailstorm wiped out his crops, the bank foreclosed and Bob and his wife, Barb, lost everything. They moved in with son Lee, who was farming six acres across the road, and started working farmers markets.

One day, a Cleveland chef asked the Joneses if they could get her zucchini blossoms to stuff and cook. The guys thought she was crazy but brought them the next week. The chef loved them, and brought other chefs to the family's booth. Word of mouth soon meant requests for 3-inch-tall lettuce and chemical-free vegetables.

The late Chef Jean-Louis Palladin of the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., wanted artisan vegetables like those in his native France. He became one of The Chef's Garden's first customers. Today, clients include Chicago's Charlie Trotter and Sara Moulton of television's Food Network.

"The Chef's Garden is an enchanted place," Trotter says. "If something can be grown, Farmer Jones and his team nurture and grow it with an integrity and respect for the product and the environment from which it comes. Their commitment to excellence from seed to the moment the shipment arrives at the restaurant is apparent in every perfectly beautiful leaf, root and stem."

Customers drive the mix of vegetables the farm grows. Whatever chefs want, the Joneses try to provide. Popular now are signature micro-green salad blends, heirloom tomatoes and micro herbs.

The secret to the Joneses' success lies partly in their appreciation for history. "We decided to get back to the way people were farming 100 years ago," Lee says. The farm uses no herbicides, fungicides or other chemicals and fertilizes with green compost, which is free of manure.

Their passion for veggies is spreading and should influence a new generation of chefs and eaters. Their institute's Veggie U, which began as an elementary-school pilot program in Ohio, is expected to go nationwide, with more than 150 classrooms signed up this year. In the program, children learn how to grow a plant from seeds, how the soil affects flavor and how to cook with fresh veggies.

A field trip to the farm includes a tractor ride; afterward, the kids break free with baskets to pick from the fields, running through soil as soft as powdered sugar. The day finishes up in the Culinary Vegetable Institute kitchen, with kids topping their own pizzas with cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, roasted zucchini and sauteed eggplant.

Bob believes that teaching children the importance of caring for the land-and how that makes food taste better-is vital.

"They need to understand. Without it, agriculture in this country is vulnerable," he says. "We want to train the next generation to have this knowledge."

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