NORTH BEND, Ohio — A family farm, more than a century and a half old, is transforming the way it does business in order to adjust with the times.

The new way of business is having a big impact on the bottom line at Carriage House Farms.

Established in 1855, the farm has been single-family operated for five generations but has had some big changes this year.

In 2020, for the first time, the farm has gone from being the wholesaler to local restaurants to going mainly into the retail realm.

On a family farm that’s more than a century in the making — change isn’t always a concept that comes easy.

“There’s always the pressure of continuity,” said farm manager Richard Stewart. “The family has been able to keep the farm in the family for the past 165 years. When COVID came around, 85 percent of our business just vanished. Over a 10 week period we had three restaurant orders.”

Seemingly overnight, those deep rooted day-to-day operations were overturned by COVID-19.

With the livelihood of the family farm hanging in the balance, Stewart said changing up his family’s farm was the only choice he had left.

“We met with our whole crew and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to move to a full-retail model. It’s going to involve us working a little bit differently.’”

It was a different way of doing things to meet new demand sparked by COVID-19.

“What we didn’t have last year was this huge investment and this huge involvement in and by the community and now we’ve got that,” Stewart said.

The farm used to only sell produce it harvested. Now the farm market has gone retail, offering a bit of everything — everything local, that is. “Everything we have in our store, with the exception of three products, all came from within 90 miles of the farm,” he said.

The old farm’s new approach of adding retail and a restaurant on the grounds is reaching an unprecedented level of popular.

“Ninety-five percent of the people who come down here are all new customers,” he said.

The farm’s sales are up 3,000 percent from this time last year.

“We just didn’t have that many people swinging by to buy produce from us,” Stewart said. “We’d have 24-30 people on a weekend, now we’ll have 200-300.”

New customers, a new agri-tourism concept and a new plan for the farm’s future, seem to have sparked the best of both worlds at Carriage House Farms as it combines old world values and quality with a modern, convenience-driven twist.