In the late 1940s, Ethel and Clark Johnson grew vegetables on a Hobart farm, and Ethel's garden helped feed her family and friends. If she had extra vegetables, she sold them to a neighbor who had a farm stand.

But one day, the neighbor told Ethel that the tomato market had fallen, and he was not able to pay her the usual price. She took her tomatoes home, nailed a sign on the old oak tree and set up her own stand in front of the family's farmhouse.

That was the start of Johnson's Farm Produce Company. Now 60 years later, the second and third generations of the Johnson family continue to farm and sell produce and flowers at two locations, in Hobart at the intersection of U.S. 6 and County Line Road and in Valparaiso on U.S. 30.

The Hobart location also has featured Marilyn's Bakery since 1986. The bakery focuses on using seasonal items made with locally-grown, farm fresh produce. The bakery offers a large vegetarian selection and a wide variety of healthy alternatives.

Only fair-trade coffee is served, and environmentally-conscious packaging has been introduced.

"If we get long on some produce, we sell to local wholesalers and into the Chicago market, mainly independents," said Steve Johnson, grandson of Ethel and Clark Johnson.

In the business, he partners with his wife, Jennifer, and his brother and sister-in-law, Rodney Jr. and Jennifer. Their parents, Rod Sr. and Virginia Johnson, also remain active in the business. And a fourth generation is waiting in the wings to take over the business in the future, Steve Johnson said.

The two retail produce markets are just 11 miles apart, but they tend to have customers from different locales.

It was the strawberry that put Johnson Farm Produce on the map in the 1980s.

However, the need for more families to have two incomes cut back on family trips to pick strawberries, Steve Johnson said.

"People just don't have time to stand in the strawberry fields," he said. "We have one of the few strawberry farms left in the Northwest. We grow over 50 acres of strawberries that we pick fresh daily and sell all over Northwest Indiana. We also have a U-Pick Strawberry patch that is open every day when in season."