Our Story
It all started back in 1986 when Paul Hotchkiss, a fan of BLT sandwiches, couldn’t find a decent tomato in Calgary. After a search resulting in finding perfect looking, yet absolutely tasteless tomatoes, Paul set out to grow his own. In a makeshift greenhouse in his backyard he began his journey into the world of produce and eventually, along with his wife Tracy, made his way to a piece of land south east of Calgary. For a while Paul’s adventures were limited by a previous career choice in the oil patch and so grew vegetables primarily for his own pleasure. However, after realizing that a 4,000 square foot greenhouse produced more veggies than he could eat he began selling the “extras” to specialty grocery stores. He did this with the help of a couple of full-time employees.
In 1998 Paul decided that a lifestyle change was in order and left the oil patch to turn his hobby into a business. With his focus being tomatoes, he concentrated his efforts on heirloom varieties and over time grew well over 100 types trying to determine which were best suited to grow in a greenhouse environment. Eventually Paul came up with a top 20 list and although he continually experiments with new varieties he maintains a core group.
Over time, with requests being made by his clients, Paul expanded the operation to include other produce and now can offer many items to consumers. With more produce to be grown, additional greenhouse space was needed and Paul’s operation grew from 4,000 square feet to just over one acre. With heating costs being what they are in Alberta, Paul chose to heat the greenhouses with coal rather than natural gas and this decision has helped enable the company to be competitive with other vegetable growers from warmer climes. To lessen heating costs further, Paul is now in the experimental stages of heating with pellets made from compost.
Paul’s wife Tracy left her city job in about 1999 to join the operation. While not having a green thumb on either of her hands, Tracy took over the administrative responsibilities and as such looks after the customers, staff, orders, helps out with picking and packing, and the abundance of paperwork that never seems to end.
The business’ main focus is upscale restaurants and niche-type grocery stores. It has grown into a year-round operation, employing as many as 14 full-time people during peak season.
In about 2002 a virus was introduced into the greenhouses which set back Hotchkiss' business plans. Through the tenacity of Paul and his Greenhouse staff, they ventured down a challenging path trying to come up with a solution on how to deal with the tomato-affecting virus. Many things had been attempted in order to eradicate the virus. All attempts failed; from bleaching tools; spraying skim milk on plants; to steam-cleaning greenhouses and equipment; to removing soil from greenhouses crop after crop; to changing clothes when staff moved between greenhouses. Nothing worked. It was then decided that rather than try and beat it, working in harmony with the virus seemed to make sense.
The first attempt at this new approach was to graft cuttings from heirloom plants and splice them onto hybrid root stock. The hybrid root stock was to pass along the virus resistance to the heirloom cuttings. This worked but only to a degree.
The next, very time consuming approach was to stabilize hybrid tomatoes that demonstrated resistance to the virus. Through generation after generation of plants, eventually Paul came up with some plants that were able to fend off the virus. The limiting factor was that success was found only in the red and pink varieties.
The next step was to crossbreed the stabalized hybrids to heirloom tomatoes. In fact, a breakthough in 2007 showed success in a few plants that would resemble Cherokee Purple and Green Zebra. We say "resemble" because these tomatoes would now be considered new discoveries in the tomato frontier. Hotchkiss Produce is, to our knowledge, the only business trying to combat the virus in an organic greenhouse environment. When seeds are harvested from the disease-free tomatoes, they would be considered Heirloom Tomatoes of the Hotchkiss Variety.
The business will continue its focus on providing its clients with excellent quality, organically grown and certified vegetables to its market of fine restaurants and grocery stores.
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