tuohy$ who just stumbled upon the product by accident. >> i met him under the freeway. ha ha ha ha ha! down at the market. um, ha ha! i know. yeah, actually, i was at the market shopping, doing my sunday morning routine and i went by their booth, and i was looking for the right goat cheese to feature here at grange and basically to become our, you know, true local chee. >> soon after we arrived, chef tuohy came in as a customer and started to purchase our product, and he came for many weeks. probably 3 or 4 or 5 weeks. um, we didn't know who he was. he was just an individual, just another customer. and he was, uh, very complimentary, of course, on our product, and then he introduced himself, uh, who he was and that they were starting the new restaurant downtown. >> sourcing local ingredients has always been at the top of michael's list in terms of planning out his menus at grange, but getting to visit the farm, make his own cheese, and meet the goats behind all of it, well, that was way too much to ignore. and thus a farm friendship was born. >> and so these are the one

. >> as chef michael tuohy starts preparing meals with the greens, he admits his job would be so much more difficult if it were not for produce experts like jim mills. >> jim fills a need here that nobody else does, and that is he--his company and him, particularly, works with several small farms that i would want to work with directly. however, my time is really challenged most of the time, so he takes a load off my shoulder by--he's almost a one-stop shop, and so, i can place my order with him, and i know that i'm getting the best of what is local, fresh, and organic, if i specify. >> mills admits that following the produce directly from the farm to the fork is a great way to make a living, but he admits that this job, like any others, has its occasional frustrations. >> yes, we do still have some chefs asking us for heirloom tomatoes in march, and that's not going to happen. [laughs] >> but, he says, the vast majority are eager to try the varhety of vegetables grown in the golden state. so produce express, which has about 3-400 produce items in its warehouse daily, will probably ke