When Annie Fink sells tomatoes at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, her friendly, classy nature draws buyers to her stand. In fact, she’s known by many simply as the “tomato lady” because of the cheerful tomato motifs on her earrings, table cover and sometimes her clothes.

When she works in her farm’s grading room, however, Annie is a tough taskmaster. Any tomato not passing muster with Annie’s strict standards doesn’t leave the grading room.

Annie and her husband, Dave, operate E.S. Enterprises at just north of Elkhorn in southeastern Wisconsin’s Walworth County. They’ve grown hydroponic tomatoes for 20 years.

In 1979, Dave was in the oil business and making gasohol. When he attended seminars, experts would talk about how distilleries were using carbon dioxide produced as a by-product in alcohol distilling to raise hydroponic tomatoes.

He thought hydroponics sounded like a good idea and surprised Annie by buying a 30-by-125-foot greenhouse and sitting it on a 40-acre parcel he had bought when he was in high school.

“I didn’t know what hydroponics was at the time,” Dave admits.
As Dave tells it, Annie wanted nothing to do with growing hydroponic tomatoes at first, but after six months, she could see he was “up to his neck” and rescued him by taking over the business.

“She does everything,” says Dave. “I’m just the go-fer.”

The Finks planted their first crop of hydroponic tomatoes in 1980 and, within a few years, were growing 5,000 plants in six plastic-covered metal-structure greenhouses with a total of 22,500 square feet. At their peak, they employed five or six part-time high-school workers.

“They used to say one person could take care of one and a half greenhouses,” notes Dave. “For a couple of years, Annie was taking care of three greenhouses all by herself.”

When they started, the Finks faced a sharp learning curve. The lack of information on hydroponics made getting into the business difficult 20 years ago.

“We didn’t know anything, and we had a hard time getting information because there weren’t too many people who knew about it,” Dave recalls.

In fact, they destroyed their first crop after tissue-sampling results indicated the farm pond they were using as a water source was contaminated. They took the crop out unnecessarily, as it turned out - and put in a new well, then figured out they’d simply been over-watering and plants weren’t getting enough oxygen in their nutrient-flow system.

After six months, the Finks switched to a bag system, injecting water and nutrients as needed from a tank into bags filled with growing medium. They plant seed for their Caruso tomatoes - a European variety designed to perform well in greenhouse settings- in December, then transplant seedings into bags filled with peat moss, vermiculite and pearlite in January. They harvest hand-pollinated tomatoes from the end of April until the beginning of November, getting as much as 40 pounds per plant. By November, vines can be as long as 30 feet.

Dave hand mixes the nutrients into a 1,000-gallon water tank, then uses an electroconductivity (EC) meter to check nutrient levels. They use timers to water plants, adjusting for sun, heat and other factors.

“We do a lot of our work by the old manual system, even the ventilation,” notes Dave. “The automatic stuff is OK, but I think people get into trusting it too much. They walk away and the ventilation or furnace goes out and they lose their crop.”

Not only did the Finks have a lot to learn about hydroponics, but their prospective buyers did, too.

When they had a crop to sell, they started visiting grocery stores. Dave took tomatoes, a cutting board and a knife and cut samples for stores’ produce managers. If a produce manager agreed to give their tomatoes a trial, Annie would go to the store and pass out samples to consumers - always with great success. On her very first day of demo-ing, the store sold between 400 and 500 pounds of their tomatoes.

The Finks currently sell to three grocery stores in nearby Elkhorn, Walworth and Lake Geneva.

“People thought every time we put up a new greenhouse, it meant we were getting new customers,” Dave says. “It didn’t. We’ve kept the same grocery stores we started out with 20 years ago. . . Sales have just grown that much.”

With supplying the three Sentry stores as their sales base, the Finks looked to other markets to handle excess produce. For 18 years, they have sold tomatoes on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. Annie currently handles that market and, for the last seven years, Dave has sold on the same days at the Hilldale Farmers’ Market on Madison’s west side.

About 10 years ago, the Finks were contacted by an exclusive, high-end grocery store on Chicago’s north side. A store customer had given the produce manager a tomato from E.S. Enterprises which she had bought at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. That initial contact quickly grew into the Finks supplying 3,000 pounds of tomatoes to the store weekly.

After five or six years, however, the Finks came to a crossroads. By selling to the store, they were getting premium wholesale prices but they had twice weekly trips to Chicago and extra packing and labor costs. Plus, they didn’t have enough tomatoes to meet demand at the Madison markets.

“We were selling out at the Farmers’ Market by 9:30 in the morning,” Annie recalls.

While they got premium prices at the farmers’ markets, they also factored in their variability. On a cold, rainy day, the Finks might sell 60 pounds of tomatoes. When the weather is great and garden tomatoes have yet to reach the market, they have sold as much as 1,500 pounds in two hours.

In the end, they decided to forego the relationship they’d built with the store in the Chicago area and concentrate on their local Sentry stores and the two Madison markets.

Even though they’ve had a farmers’ market presence for 18 years, the Finks continually are educating prospective customers about hydroponics and how their tomatoes are different from the ones found in most grocery stores.

Part of the problem in the acceptance of hydroponics is that many commercial growers are picking their tomatoes when they show a little pink on the bottom of the fruit, then call them “vine ripened.” So the consumer winds up with tomatoes that are hard and have little taste, notes Dave.

Annie’s standards for picking are much different. Because their tomatoes are in their customers’ hands within a day or two of picking, Annie can pick fully ripe tomatoes and be assured she is selling a quality product.

Annie also has her own grading system.

“We tell people that every tomato is hand picked, hand graded and hand packed,” Annie says.

“The ones that go to the store are perfect,” she explains. “The ones that are as close to perfect without being perfect go to market. . .We’re never the first ones at the (farmers’) markets with tomatoes because they have to meet my standards before I’ll take them.”

Annie’s grading of the tomatoes includes making sure all stems are clipped so the stem doesn’t bruise other tomatoes - and the calyx remains. A fresh-looking, green calyx is the sign of a fresh tomato, they say.

Annie also sorts out “seconds” - those that might be less-than-perfectly shaped, have a speckled skin or sunburn, for example - to sell at the market at a reduced rate. She markets her seconds with a sign that says, “Not so pretty but taste great.” Dave simply labels his seconds at the Hilldale Farmers’ Market as “scratch and dent” tomatoes.

This year has brought changes for the Finks. Dave successfully completed treatment for colon cancer in the spring, and he retired from his job as a mechanical maintenance engineer with Walworth County on Sept. 1. Looking to slow down a bit, they cut this year’s tomato production back to 3,000 plants and are looking ahead to the day they will retire and begin traveling around the country in their mobile home.