Hoch Orchard and Gardens is a small organic family farm run by Harry and Jackie Hoch. We are located west of La Crescent and south of Nodine, Minnesota. All of the fruit on our farm is now grown organically. Our MN orchard’s first trees were planted in the mid 1940’s. There are only a handful of these old trees left on the farm today. Our orchard operation consists of about an acre of the original plantings of large standard size trees. The majority of our orchards are new young trees planted in the past ten years. These new orchards are high-density plantings on dwarfing rootstock. We now have over 8000 trees planted on approximately twenty-five acres. We also rent a four-acre orchard with about 1000 trees on it. There are many new high quality varieties in these new orchards and we are excited about bringing these new apples to market.
We have over fifty apple varieties planted on our farm. Many of the newest ones are just coming into production. Our Honeycrisp, Zestar, Sweet 16, Fuji, Keepsake, Ginger gold, and Sansa have been in the stores for a few seasons now with production going up. Some of the new varieties that are just coming into production are Snow Sweet, SweeTango, and Crimson crisp.
Apples are not our only crop. We have about two acres of wine grapes and an acre of red raspberries, an acre of strawberries and a half-acre of miscellaneous berries such as black, purple, and yellow raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. We also grow other tree fruit including plums, apricots, cherries, and some peach trees.
Harry and Jackie Hoch and family moved back to their orchard south of Nodine in the summer of 1997 and have been aggressively replanting the old orchard. Hoch orchard has been in the Hoch family since the early 1950’s. Harry Hoch received an Associate degree in Horticulture in 1985 and managed Hoch orchard through 1989. In 1989 Jackie moved to the Twin Cities to complete an internship in Medical Technology. In 1990 Harry and the children joined Jackie in the Metro area. Harry then started working as a Research Plot Coordinator at the University of Minnesota’s Horticultural Research Center. While working for the University Harry received a Bachelor’s degree in Integrated Pest Management and a Master’s degree in Technical Communications and Sustainable Agriculture. Later in 1990 Jackie completed her internship and Bachelor’s degree in Medical Technology and continued to work at Hennepin County Medical Center until 1997 when they moved back to the farm. In 2004, Jackie completed a Masters Degree in Business.
Jackie has since given up a career in Medical Technology to co-manage Hoch Orchard and Gardens with Harry. Daughters, Angie and Missy, helped on the farm and with sales at the farmer’s markets while growing up. Both are on their own now, but they help when they come home.
Harry’s mother, Jackie Senior, invested a good portion of her life to Hoch Orchard. She spent many summer months on the farm helping coordinate the busy family and supervising the maintenance of her many flower gardens. Grandma doesn’t pick apples anymore but she sure would if she could. Grandma lives at the Hearten House Memory Care Center in LaCrosse now. Even though she doesn’t live on the farm anymore she is still a major part of it.
Jack and Mary Ann Redfern work with us to produce Grampa Jack’s Honey. While they claim to be retired, they are farmers at heart and work hard taking care of their bees and helping out on the farm. Mary Ann also helps with in-store demos and takes care of farmer’s market sales in LaCrosse. Jack helps out with local deliveries and picks up a lot of supplies for us. They are big part of our farm family.
We have to include Dan VonArx, who also claims to be retired after working many years on the railroad. Dan grew up on a farm outside Hokah Minnesota. He knows how to drive a tractor on our steep hillsides and he can fix just about anything. We wouldn’t get any work done around here if he didn’t come up two days a week to fix everything we break during the other five days. Dan is an important part of our farm.
The newest member of our farm family is Nick Mabe. Nick completed an internship on our farm in 2011 and became lead worker in the fall to help organize harvest. In 2012 he became a full time year-round employee. Nick will be managing the animal production on our farm and will help out where ever else he is needed.
