A thank-you gesture to a restaurant chef has turned into a business venture that brings in money all winter for Bill Warner and Judy Hageman of Snug Haven Farm in Belleville, Wisconsin.

Two years ago, Frontera, the famous Chicago restaurant, bought a large quantity of spinach from Bill and Judy when a heat wave threatened the longevity of their crop. In gratitude, they took chef Tracy Vowell 50 pounds of frozen tomatoes that they had put away for personal use. They told Tracy to give them to the staff.

But a few days later, Tracy called and said she could use frozen tomatoes all winter. Bill asked how much she would buy – 20 pounds a week? 50 pounds a week?

“How about 500 pounds a week?” the chef replied.

Bill and Judy don’t grow that many tomatoes themselves. All their production is in their two-thirds of an acre of hoophouses, and they only grow tomatoes to hit the early market when prices are highest. But they have friends who grow field tomatoes, and those friends always have a glut of tomatoes in summer. So Bill and Judy took all of their excess and froze them.

The tomatoes are washed, put in freezer bags and put into boxes, then frozen. They aren’t cut or processed, so there’s no need for a certified kitchen. Plus, as Bill says, “We froze 24,000 pounds last year – I’m not going to cut up that many Romas.” After growing a wide variety of tomato varieties the first year, the chefs have stated a preference for Roma tomatoes, which are the meatiest and have skins that pop off when they are thawed.

For Bill and Judy, the frozen tomatoes are a great complement to the hoophouse greens they deliver all winter. And they are a good deal for the two farmers who provide the tomatoes. “They pay us almost as much as we get from stores for fresh tomatoes, and we can do it all in one big picking,” said Steve Pincus of Tipi Produce, who sold 12,000 pounds to the tomato project this year.

The first year they froze the tomatoes, Bill and Judy used a freezer warehouse not far from their farm. The second year, the freezer warehouse didn’t have room for them because of contracts with cranberry growers, so they had to scramble to find freezer space. They ended up purchasing two box freezers from trucks, each about 8x16x7 feet. They still use the cold storage warehouse to quick-freeze the tomatoes, then they store them in the two freezers on the farm.

The chefs that purchase their frozen tomatoes use them for tomato sauce and say the flavor is better than anything they can get canned. Bill and Judy are charging $1.75 a pound for the frozen tomatoes. “It’s like the first couple of years of any project,” Bill said, “You can tell you’re going to make money at some point, but there are just a lot of costs in the beginning. We had to buy the freezers, and our electricity bill last month was through the roof.”

Frozen tomatoes could be a good fit for other growers who have the facilities (check for Cold Storage in the Yellow Pages) and chefs who are willing to try something new.