Charles Hatcher on Modern Farming in Tennessee
Charles Hatcher, a sixth-generation farmer at Hatcher Family Dairy, shares the remarkable legacy of his family's 200-year-old farm in Williamson County, Tennessee. In this episode, Charles delves into the challenges and joys of modern farming, from running a fully integrated dairy operation to the alarming loss of farmland across the state. Passionate about inspiring the next generation of farmers, Charles highlights how his family has embraced cutting-edge technology to remain viable in an industry where the average farmer is nearing 60 years old. He also discusses the impact of the Hatcher family's appearance on National Geographic's docuseries and their mission to maintain their land despite pressures from development. Get an inside look at the future of farming in Tennessee and the importance of agricultural sustainability in a changing world.
About Charles Hatcher
Charles Hatcher, co-manager and farmer at Hatcher Family Farm in Wiliamson County, Tennessee, has always been a dedicated figure in his community.
After years of hard work and planning, he introduced robotic milking technology to the farm, revolutionizing daily operations. With nearly 100 cows to care for, this innovation enabled efficient, around-the-clock milking, eliminating the long hours that once defined farm life. It also significantly reduced feed costs by half.
Founded in 1831, Hatcher Dairy Farm has long been a cornerstone of the community, evolving from a self-sufficient homestead into a thriving dairy business. It proudly produces Hatcher milk, which is available in local stores and through their farm shop.
The Hatcher family gained national recognition when they were featured in a documentary series on National Geographic. The show captured their unpredictable and often humorous lives, showcasing the chaos of running a dairy farm across 500 acres in Tennessee. Their world is a nonstop circus of animals, farming, and family, reflecting the unique challenges and joys of rural life.
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Spencer Patton 00:06
Charles Hatcher, welcome to signature required.
Charles Hatcher 00:09
Glad to be here.
Spencer Patton 00:10
You are a farmer at Hatcher family dairy, carrying on your family's 200 year legacy in Williamson County, Tennessee, as a passionate advocate for the future of agriculture. You work tirelessly to sustain your dairy farm, which is one of the last two in the county. With your background in agricultural business and hands on experience, you strive to maintain the Hatcher legacy while adapting to the changes of modern farming. I feel like you're a dying breed, in a way that you're fighting the fight, though, correct?
Charles Hatcher 00:42
You know, it's, I'm kind of an exception to the rule. You know, average age of farmers now in the US is in the mid 60s, and that's a problem. So I take that personally and see it as a challenge as well, and try to advocate as much as I can and educate.
Spencer Patton 01:05
We dug up five things on you, Charles on the internet, and we're going to read these five things. Hopefully none of these put you under because we would really feel bad if it was just one farm after this one rather than two. So here are five things that we feel like our audience should know about you. First, you are a 13th generation American farmer and a sixth generation Tennessee farmer. Two, Tennessee is losing 10 acres of farmland per hour. Three, the average farmer in Tennessee is 60 years old. Four, you've embraced cutting edge technology, such as robotic milking systems on your farm and five your family's journey was featured on National Geographic's Docuseries.
Charles Hatcher 01:50
That's correct. All those are correct. Okay, so now those are lies. Yeah, it's we've got quite the history and the story and, and we're very passionate about it, you know, so every farm and is basically family run, you know, their stories to every farm. And for ours, it's, it's unique and, and we want to carry that torch for future generations. But ours dates back. I'm a history nerd, and we've traced it back to 200 years. And this past summer, we actually went to Virginia, where my ancestors got off the boat in Jamestown, literally, and then came down to Tennessee, where we are today. So, you know, each generation leaves their mark and their legacy, and I feel like that. I'm at least trying to do that. You know, I've had some big shoes to fill. I think the most impressive out of my ancestors is probably, probably my great granddad, who served in both world wars and kept the farm going and survived the global pandemic in 1919, and then went through the Great Depression and two world wars, and I'm thinking, Man, I'm having a bad day. And I'm like, wait a minute. If he can do that, I'm just being a little, you know, little sensitive here. I need to tighten up a little bit so it's daily reminders. And, you know, being on the same land and in same property, walk in the same footsteps, and is, is my granddad, my great granddad, my dad and two great grandads go. So you know that that means the world to us. And now I've got a little one now, so it's pretty cool to be able to, you know, have him in that environment and raise him that way. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Carli Patton 03:41
I looked at your website and I saw you actually have a family museum on the Hatcher farm that people can go and visit. When did that open? Has that been a passion project of yours, or has that been around for a while?
Charles Hatcher 03:53
It's actually been a, it was a a vision of my wife's. So we've, we've done some agri tourism in the past, but we went through a major transformation with our operation the past two years, on embracing technology and cutting edge technology in the farming world. So as a result, we overhauled our entire setup and our topography of the of the farm there, the layout the buildings, and we wanted to be able to open up for the public to come see, and kind of self tour guide. So this past, I think three months ago, we opened up to the public and but we wanted to really highlight in this, in this tour, the self guided tour, the history and in our in our year long research of our family and the farm. And we, we got accepted in the Tennessee century farms program, which means there's over 100 years of continuous farming that goes on on the property. And you. Have to provide deeds and farm records. And so in that, in that pathway, we ended up having a passion about our local community and the local people there that were there for generations before us, kind of it was a little thriving farming community, you know, 100 years ago. So we kind of put out the word that we're doing this museum, kind of not not only highlighting Hatcher family, but kind of the the community as well. And we started getting donations, people bringing relics and artifacts into this museum to kind of highlight the local community. So it's it's taken on its own thing, which is awesome. We like highlighting that friends and family, just, hey, I've got this. And my granddad's that he used, you know, when he was milking cows or, or I've got, I found this in the garage. We use this when I was a kid, when we were harvesting tobacco, you know, stories like that that people want to bring to the forefront in our museum and, and, you know, there's a lot of hard work that happened before us too. So it's important to let those people know.
Carli Patton 06:07
I gotta know, what's your favorite piece in the museum, like, if we're gonna go on this self guided tour, what is not.
Charles Hatcher 06:13
I think my favorite piece in there is probably we've got an original milk license plate, our milk permit from 1926 that we found in the barn when my great granddad was was in their milk and those cows, so it's still in great condition, and it's 100 years old, literally. So it's, that's probably my favorite, because that's like, there's, there's some dents and a crack in it, and that's kind of like a testament of the time and farming that's challenging. It's gonna bend you, it's gonna maybe it's gonna try to break you, but you keep going forward.
Spencer Patton 06:47
So it's a project of your wives that, let me say it this way, your wife has a passion project, yes, of greatness. What's her name? What's a little story there? Because I think we got something to unearth on this.
Charles Hatcher 06:59
Yes, yes. So my wife, Mary Morgan, Gentry, as part of the gentry family across town that does pumpkins and and they, they've got it going on. Oh, we know field trips.
Carli Patton 07:12
Yeah, they're world famous Gentry farm many, many times. So it's pretty it's like a,
Charles Hatcher 07:17
Like a fairy tale, story on how we met and got married, and the two farming families, and I say, when I need some therapy, I just go out to their farm and get off of our farm and their her parents do the same thing, come to our place on their we just need a break from our farm for a couple hours, so they come out to our place. But she is the gentries have a very high standard out there, and she's helped with that over the years, and she's got us talent and an eye for for design work and interior design, and that's what she majored in in college. So she calls herself the self director of the Beautification Committee out at your family dairy. So she's made us look really good
Spencer Patton 08:00
You mentioned a couple minutes ago that there is a celebration of farms that have been in continuous operation for 100 years. So your father is the Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Tennessee, and you may probably know this, but he has a Twitter account that he goes to these farmers and recognizes them on video and awards them this certificate of 100 years of operation. And they are some of the most heartwarming videos I've ever seen. It is so neat he you know
Charles Hatcher 08:36
And that's really what he loves about his job, is going boots on the ground and going to these farms and meeting with these families, because they're passionate. They're multi generational. They've got a story. They work hard to keep their operation going, or family to survive, and and you know, he'll, he'll go to those those operations and those family farms, and come back to us and share the stories too, but he really wants to highlight that, because that's important to know where your food comes from and the stories behind him.
Spencer Patton 09:08
So maybe we'll take that help us understand what the crisis is. So we read early that there's 10 acres an hour of farmland that is being lost. Most people have heard some bit of this narrative that farming is in trouble. Farming feels like it's been in trouble for decades now. So help us understand, from someone that has been part of 13 generations of it, what's going on?
Charles Hatcher 09:35
Yeah, there's so you know, a lot of times in farming, we're we're kind of an exception of that, because we we produce and process and distribute our own product that we produce there on the farm. But if you're conventional, you have no control over the price of your commodity or your good that you're producing. You're growing corn.
Spencer Patton 09:55
Corn goes high, corn goes right, and there's you.
Charles Hatcher 09:59
It's, it's like a roller coaster the stock market. It could be record high one day, the next day, it's record low. But you're in your your costs are still the same, if not increasing, and so that's, that's a problem. And then you look at the value of farmland, if, if I'm the average farmer, which is about 60, and I've worked my whole life, not the most profitable gig in the world, but I'm sitting on millions of dollars worth of land. Why not just sell and and take the money and, you know, live happily ever after so and there's, there's encroachment on on the farmland around, you know, it might make it harder for you to operate, to drive the tractor, to harvest corn across the road, because the road has got a lot more traffic now, and there's obstacles with that too. So it's a multitude of things. A lot of it is out of the farmers control. Unfortunately, the the growth and development in the in the prices of your your product, you're producing. So, and it's hard for first generation farmers to get involved, because you've got to purchase land, and land is is really high, yeah, especially in this, this area of the US. So there's some challenges there. And you know, it's, it's important. And there are some programs that are initiatives, programs out there that are getting started and that they're really focusing on, on, on, you know, how do we keep that farmland? How does, how do we help that farmer that's thinking about maybe selling that farm? Or, you know, a lot of times I've had friends that that their their dad or their granddad's been farming, but they've, they've gone off to college, and they found their own, carve their own pathway besides farming, you know, so it's hard man, it's seven days a week, 365 days a year. And you could have your best crop, or your best livestock in the world, and then you've got a weather event that happens, like we've had recent events happen that can be catastrophic. So things that you don't have control of in farming, you know, tend to be your biggest obstacles, and Mother Nature is probably number one. You could have one year, you could have your best year ever. The next year you have your worst year, yeah, ever. So, you know, there's challenges, but farmers are very diligent, hard working. They care about the land. They have a passion. They their family. It's multi generational. So and I, and I try to advocate for that as much as possible, not necessarily for for our business and our farm, because our farm and business is no better than any other farmer that's doing this. It's just what works for us and how we've adapted and evolved over time for our little operation. So But anytime I can have opportunities to talk about farming and agriculture. I take advantage of those a lot. I never shy away from from, you know, cameras or interviews and anything like that. Because I feel like, if I can fly the flag for farming and be an advocate and show that there are some young farmers that are out there, you know, because I'm half the age of the average farmer, so pretty passionate about it. And I was also a high school agri teacher, agriculture teacher and instructor for four years too.
Carli Patton 13:28
I think part of what I read in your bio and as we were doing research is your passion for technology, yes, and farming technology, can you talk a little bit about because I think the average listener would have no idea about the technology innovations that are happening. What have you guys been doing at Hatcher?
Charles Hatcher 13:45
So we, you know, there's, there's this kind of, like, this persona that people envision of the farmer with a pitchfork and the overalls and the straw coming out of the mouth, you know, and not really, and plugged in with society and the technology. But, you know, I'm very lucky with my family that, that we're always trying to evolve and get better. You know, I've got friends and farming families that this is the way they've done it, and they're not going to change, and they're just going to keep rolling. But my family, we we come up with kind of crazy ideas, and we bounce off. We're a team, and we make those decisions, but we feel like embracing that technology is going to help better us. So when we made this major transformation two years ago, we've actually, we were actually thinking about it years before then about robotic milking. You know, there's a labor issue in the world, for that matter, especially in our industry, in agriculture, with it being seven days a week, holidays, weekends, evenings,
Carli Patton 14:51
Cows don't like it when they're not milked,
Charles Hatcher 14:55
So the ladies are always gotta be milked. And you can't say, hey, it's Saturday. Can you not just work? Day they get a little grumpy, yes, yeah. So, you know, with it being seven days a week, that's a challenge for labor So, and this technology kept coming out, getting getting better and better, and we, we came to the came to that, that crossroads on, I think we need to do this. It's a big investment, but we think, feel like it's going to pay for itself in the long run with especially the labor costs. We're going to get better efficiency with our with our feeding program, with our milk production, and just analyzing all that it was, it was a good move for us. So now we've got, I'm happily retired from milking cows and and we've got robots doing that so that cows, they do their own thing, 24 hours a day, they can go in there, and that robot does it.
Carli Patton 15:51
Okay. I need you to, like, stop, because I'm sure this just makes sense in your head. You've seen it. Yes, I have so many pictures of what it might mean that a robot is milking your cows, and it is self service for these ladies.
Charles Hatcher 16:04
It's not a humanoid kind of thing. So it's it's a machine that walks in. It's got a big arm on it, and it's got the teat cups on there, and there's infrared lasers on there, and those lasers do 3d imaging of the cow so she has her profile. Every cow has their own profile, and they wear a collar with a sensor on there, and it's kind of like an Apple watch, and it scans her when she goes in, and tells us everything we could possibly want to know about that cow, her activity, her footsteps, her milk production, how much she's eaten that day. Is she getting sick? It gives us health reports on detect sickness before we see symptoms. And my dad and my sister are both veterinarians, and to have that data in real time all the time with an app on her phone is pretty incredible. So it's made us better. Cow managers and herdsmen as well during this transformation, we're about six months into it. We still don't really know what we're doing, but we feel like we're getting into a groove here, and the ladies have gotten acclimated to it, and it was a challenge that first two weeks and they told us, hey, the cows are gonna they're gonna be freaked out. They're gonna think this thing's gonna eat them. It's gonna take time, so.
Multiple Speakers 17:28
But I'll give that if you are monitoring all of my food, and
Charles Hatcher 17:32
I give the manufacturer credit, this arm is like, bulletproof, because these cows kicked it, they put all their weight on it, and it just keeps coming back. So it's like the Terminator, you know, keeps going. So we've got two robot units, and each one is capable to manage about 60 to 70 cows. And so we're milking 107 cows right now. So those two robots, they they're act. They have access to them 24 hours a day. So they just come in on their own. And it's still fascinating to me to see it fully automated. These cows, they're under less stress because they're on their own schedule. They come and go when they want to, instead of our schedule as farmers. So it improved the cows quality of life and the farmers quality of life. I can tell you that you know, so, and my wife's a lot happier that I'm more available now and more flexible schedule. So, but it, but that, that data and technology, that it's just, it's amazing, it still blows my mind, and I'm in it every day. So, but, and, and just having that in our I mean, we can, I can literally be milking cows. I make fun of myself. I'm milking cows, and I'm on my couch right now, you know, and I can track it on my phone to make sure everything's is okay. And it alarms me if something goes if something's a glitch or whatnot. So it's pretty it's pretty awesome.
Spencer Patton 18:57
That's cool. And maybe talk some about your product in that it's unique, in that you all are managing it end to end and distributing it all throughout middle Tennessee. So maybe just talk about how it gets to the customer.
Charles Hatcher 19:10
Yeah, so we, you know, in 2004 20 years ago, we were at a crossroads, with my dad and my uncle being the partners on the operation. We were a smaller dairy, and it was getting harder and harder to make ends meet. And I was graduating high school at the time, and my dad said, Is this something you want to carry on and you want to be involved with? I said, Absolutely. He said, Well, we're going to have to do something different to keep this going, or we might have to sell the cows. And so he said, I think we should bottle and sell our own milk. And we looked at him like he had three heads, like, because this was unheard of at the time, having control over the product, the milk, from every step of the way, because prior, you would. Sell it off that conventionally, the the cooperatives would pick it up. From there, it would go to the grocery stores. Yeah. So he said, I think we're that's what we're going to have to do. So, you know, it kind of a leap of blind faith. It was unheard of at the time. We were kind of pioneers for Tennessee in that regard. And I was, happened to be enrolling at Middle Tennessee State University, and they had a little Creamery on campus in the ag building, and so they were gracious enough to to partner with us, and they had a little truck would come to our farm, get the milk, take it to campus, and they in turn, we purchased a bottling machine, donate it to university, and then they would bottle our milk. And so in between classes, I would go down there, bottle the milk. Sometimes I would drive the milk back to the farm after classes, wow. And then we would hand label it, hand date it. We called them labeling parties, and we would get anybody and everybody we could.
Carli Patton 21:06
That's how you got your wife, right?
Charles Hatcher 21:10
She wasn't in the picture then, and I'm glad she wasn't, because she probably would have run off after seeing that stuff. But we got, we called them in laws and outlaws from all down the road, basically, hey, well, and it was kind of like a potluck, you know, we would, we call them labeling parties. So as we started to do that, we're gracious enough to to talk to a man named Andy Marshall of pucketts. And he was kind of getting his feet under him with pockets there in Franklin, and took a chance on us, on the product. And it's been awesome how we form these, I call them lifelong friendships from local businesses and in the community in the in the greater Franklin national area that they didn't have to pay a little bit more for a local product, but they did. They believed in us. They they cared about the operation. So I mean, Fast forward 20 years from that point. We started at two or three places. It snowballed from there, this whole local movement, local food movement thing happened, farm to table. And so we were just, I mean, lucky enough to strike the fire right there when it was starting to get some steam. And we started the Franklin farmers market that was kind of a in the early, early stages. And then it just all kept going, momentum, momentum. So we kind of like grew with the whole movement in Nashville now had that that food. It's called, I call it a foodie city. It's kind of like the New LA with all these restaurants coming in and whatnot, but they're all pledging to locally source their food, which is awesome. So I can't emphasize how blessed and fortunate we are to have been in that kind of grow with these local businesses together and partner so in the community and and we, we haven't done any marketing or advertising. We just thought, you know, if we we do put out a good product and stand behind it and and we feel good about it, it'll sell itself. And word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, we believe. And so anything that we've ever done, TV, radio, whatnot, has all come to us organically. That's kind of been it's it's come to us so. And we outgrew MTS use capabilities there. So we knew it was time to build our own processing facility. So we cut the ribbon on that in early 2009 we call it Abe Hatcher Creamery, after my granddad. And so ever since then, we've been bottling there, and now we're in over 100 outlets in the mid state radius, between four counties, Williamson, Davidson, Murray and Rutherford. We got two delivery trucks that run five days a week. It takes a small army to make it go, but we're a producer, processor, wholesaler, distributor and retailer, all under the same roof there, which is pretty awesome, and I still get geeked out whenever I go to a coffee shop or a restaurant or a store that carries our milk CP, we use it still like have to pinch myself, even after almost 20 years. So yeah, so it's a lot of work, blood, sweat and tears, and we've made a lot of mistakes, and we still do, but that's just part of it, you know, and, and, and it's been a Gosh, it's been challenging. I mean, we've had some, some tough times, but family pulls together and we get it done.
Spencer Patton 24:56
I love that entrepreneurial story that. Is finding ways to do things different and sticking through it. And your your whole family legacy speaks to that, that you are taking what's been given to you, you're a steward of that, and saying, I'm gonna find a way to make it a little better, make sure that we're not just doing the same thing, because that's how we've always done it.
Charles Hatcher 25:23
Right. I, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm also a football coach. Just completed my 11th year of that, and when I was playing back in high school, my coach said, never be satisfied. And I always take that in the into life too. You know, it's, it's, don't be complacent. Let's, how can we get get better at what we're doing so, and we're and I'm always looking for that, and I'm not the one that's the only one that's making decisions. Again, I can't emphasize it's a team unit, and we value our employees input too. And and, you know, and it's a team atmosphere when, when we're there, even our employees are like family to us. So it takes all of us for sure, and you know it's, you have to just sit back sometimes, like, how cool is this? You know that we get to live on this, this six, now, seven generation farm with my son. And man, it was like, Monday. It was a we bottled as a 15 hour day. For me, I'm pretty exhausted. It's grueling. And then I get home in the day and the and I'm I get to see my niece and nephew, my son, and the sun setting is beautiful evening, the cows in the background. And so I was like, This is what it's about, right here, you know, for the next generation, and then just being able to be here on this property and the farm, so you're, you feel like you're connected with the dirt almost, you know, it's pretty, pretty cool.
Spencer Patton 26:57
I'd love to get your perspective on the crisis that's going on with farmland in general. Yeah, and I think you bring a really unique perspective, because with your father as the Commissioner for agriculture, but also such an active farmer, one thing that I have found to be so true is that people that come from a problem, usually know how best to fix it. Now, sometimes it's not in their capacity. They don't have the power or the money or the influence, but it's often they that have the idea to start changing the course. That's right. I'd love to hear what your thought is, from someone that has lived it, to say, what are some policies? Maybe they're state policies, maybe they're federal policies. Maybe it's not policies at all. But what are some things that you would educate our listeners, the overwhelming majority of which are not farmers, right, to how we might be able to turn the tide. You know,
Charles Hatcher 27:58
I think the general person, I think I've heard the other day is three generations removed from agriculture, yeah, production. So I think, you know, having these, having these state, local and federal programs, and I've been able to to get involved with some of those at the federal level, with United States Department of Agriculture, so they've got young farmers and ranchers programs and cost share programs. So that's important for my side, for the farmer side, the young farmer side, on these cost share initiatives and programs, and then on the on the general public side, you know? I think it's, it's, it's all about education. So no one, you know, I we do a lot of, I interact with a lot of people, and a lot of, some of the kids think that food literally just comes from the grocery store. Yeah, so that's a problem, yeah. So that's why we want to open up our doors to the public, educate them. So education and knowing, I mean, we all have to eat, no matter what, no matter what the circumstances is or what your background is, we're all we've all have to eat. Yeah, food is important. So you know, less than 2% of the population produces all the food. So I think educating the general public and then diversifying as a farmer, doing more value added things. Now, I talk to farmers a lot that ask me, Well, what's your secret? What our secret is our location? If we were in the middle of nowhere, we couldn't do our value added practices. I mean, we're 30 minutes away from a capital city. We're 15 minutes away from one of the best farmers markets in the state. This county is top 10 in the next. Education, income based, you know, so we're so fortunate to be in this situation, but these farmers, a lot of times, struggle with, if I can't control the price of my product, how do I do it myself? And so, you know, having programs, and my dad's taken, he's very passionate about that. You know, being in our coming from our situation. So he's really had an emphasis of that state wise, and hopes to introduce some more legislation to help save the farmland, I guess you could say, and then the federal level, I know there's initiatives about rural farm development. How do we introduce fiber optics, internet and technology to these areas that can embrace that technology for these farmers to be better off? For us again, we're so lucky to have fiber Internet in our area to help run these robots and this technology. So there are things that are going on, but I think we've got to be better as farmers too, to educating the people about about where their food comes from. And I think, honestly, I think COVID kind of recalibrated people on how quickly things can, can change supply chain.
Spencer Patton 31:21
Everybody that's all of a sudden, really mindful about where this stuff comes from.
Charles Hatcher 31:25
I think there is kind of a grassroots homestead movement happening now. Yeah, that's getting a lot of momentum. People. Well, you know, I went to the grocery store and they didn't have eggs, so I think I might get 10 chickens and do some eggs
Carli Patton 31:39
Like everyone has chickens, yes, right now,
Charles Hatcher 31:42
Yes. Or I might get, I think I'm gonna get some honey bees and try honey. And people have to realize, too, that farming is not just cows and tractors. Yeah, there is so much under the farming umbrella. There's, I mean, I holy, we could talk for three hours on what, what what agriculture is. And so any I mean, if you're if you've got 10 chickens, you can be a farmer. So I think this local, this not local, but this homestead movements kind of getting some momentum, and COVID kind of recalibrated that man, our our supply chain can be just impacted just like that. So how do I be less dependent on on that? How do I provide for me and my family and so I'll never forget when that happened in March of 20 people freaked out when the grocery stores were out. And where do you go? Let's google where the farms are. Did you
Carli Patton 32:46
have people showing up for milk? Absolutely, we did.
Charles Hatcher 32:49
Wow, yes. And so we lost 60% of our business overnight with the with the city and the lockdowns and gals have to be milked. We it's not like that. We can't tell the cows to stop producing milk. So we pivoted overnight, my wife's genius idea on let's do a drive through pickup, a contactless drive through pickup. And we, and we partnered with local farms. We some good friends. Ours were produce farmers that lost their business through the restaurants not being open. So we would, they would drop off their produce. We would have milk. Then we had another farming family, friends that had pork, and we kind of did like a drive through grocery store. So we, we not only helped sell our product, but other products from other farmers too. So and man, it was. It was crazy during that time looking back at it, but we had to pivot overnight with our business. And so again, we all have to eat and so, you know, we pivoted. We got through it. We teamed up with other local farms and got through that. So with the perishable product and all the farming you gotta, it's gotta keep moving. So it's, you know, having that team and that support as a family unit. But I think that that recalibrated everybody the COVID times. But as going back to your original question, I think educating, and then for the youth too. So I was involved in 4h there's great programs in 4h and FFA, which is Future Farmers of America. And I had kids in my classes that had no farm background whatsoever, lived in subdivisions, but really had a passion for it. So how do we get them involved? You know, how do we light that fire? So there's a, it's a long that's a long winded answer to your question, but, and it might not be an answer, but I think it might be some. Possibilities and ideas, but we we can all do better. I can do better as a consumer, educating myself, and I could do better as a producer, educating those people.
Spencer Patton 35:09
There's something I want to call out of the answer that you gave there that I think is really important, which is saying that the homestead movement, where people are seeing that they can grow or produce a little bit of something for their family. I think there's developed a stigma where, now that most people are 234, generations removed from farming, they feel self conscious to say, if I'm gonna do a little garden, I'm just like a city slicker that is a wannabe going up to Home Depot, getting stuff, and it's almost like, because I'm not doing it in a commercial capacity, that it is in some way not as meaningful or as valuable. And I think your message is really important to say, hey, if you've got a half acre that you want to do something agricultural, there's a spiritual component to it, like, I've grown tomatoes, cucumbers, you know, stuff my whole life, right? And there is a spiritual component to just having a worship with the Lord as you're digging in the dirt.
Charles Hatcher 36:19
I mean, you, your, your hands are in the dirt, you're, you're putting something in the ground, and you got to have faith that it's going to produce and it's going to sprout. And so there is something to that, you know, that's one of my favorite things ever, is we'll plant and I'll go out there a couple weeks later, and I start to see it peek through. I'm like, there it is. You know, it's, it's pretty cool. They'll do it, but you're right, that spiritual component and, but no matter what your setup is, you can be involved in agriculture, yeah, that's the main thing. If you live in a high rise apartment, you can do a little garden in your window. So that's, it's important. That's a very important.
Spencer Patton 37:03
Really important message, because I think that is how we can tap into the future of some first generation farmers. Because it's super intimidating. I mean, we think about trying to look at a lot of different ways to make a buck in a world, and I think I would have to go deep down the list before I would choose to try to compete in the farming space, because I don't know what in the world I'm doing.
Charles Hatcher 37:30
Yeah, it can be intimidating. You see, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and these guys have been doing it for 200 years. I can't, I'm not even their league. You know, I can see how,
Spencer Patton 37:40
Yeah, it's like, that dude on the corner is so old school he's gonna forget more than I'll ever know about farming.
Charles Hatcher 37:47
Yeah, yeah. And we have to break through that stigma, you know? And that's, again, we're actually very small scale and and, you know, I can go to some farming conferences, and I can be intimidated myself
Multiple Speaker 38:01
But that makes me feel better. Yeah, so
Carli Patton 38:03
our tiny garden, you
Charles Hatcher 38:07
can be intimidated. We've got our operation there. Our dairy is 200 acres, and then we have a sister farm that's about 200 acres, but I've got friends that farm 1000s of acres, you know? And I'm like, well, shoot, I'm just a little pee on, you know, your
Multiple Speakers 38:25
cows have Apple watches. We're up that far.
Charles Hatcher 38:29
Now, we jokingly say we're high tech rednecks, but, you know, but I can, I can fall in that stigma to myself. I was like, what heck, he's got 1000s of acres of heat farms, and I'm 200 acres. I'm just, I'm not even in that league, you know, but, but farmers are typically very welcoming and opening and want and get excited when they hear about somebody wanting to be interested in it.
Carli Patton 38:56
Well, I think that's true of all people, because you were talking about that, and it made me think we have neighbors that moved to our street a couple years ago, and our neighbor, she's super interested in gardening, so both of us planted our garden. I'm not gonna say whose side of the street has a better garden, because it's probably not our garden, but the connection we have running produce back and forth. Like no, I have way too many zucchini. Can you possibly use this, and our kids run back and forth sharing what we have, and all of a sudden we're excited to try each other's food and to share it. And so what I hear you saying has been true in our lives is there's just this community because I don't care your ethnicity, I don't care your faith story. I don't care where you come from, we all get excited when a little seed grows, yes, and when we can make something to share with someone else. And I kind of think that's the superpower, and
Charles Hatcher 39:50
food brings us all together.
Multiple Speakers 39:52
Well, now you're speaking my life, yeah, yeah.
Charles Hatcher 39:55
I mean, it really does, no matter what the situation is and we we still. Will get together every Sunday night at my grandmother, 87 year old grandmother's house for Sunday dinner, you know, because we, we want to, we want our kids and her great grandkids to be in that moment and feel that when food brings us together. You know. So not everybody can say they're fortunate enough to have that situation like we are, and we I take it for granted a lot of times, too, and I shouldn't on having four generations living on the farm currently, and I can just walk to any of them's house. I can drop my son at my sister's house. He can play with his cousins. I can drop them off my parents' grin. So it's, it's pretty, pretty awesome to be in that situation, but that's uniquely human.
Carli Patton 40:43
Anytime you're around something for a long time, you start to forget how blessed you are to be around which is why we need these stories in these moments to really bring out the nuances, and for you to realize like, oh, actually, this is super cool, yeah. And for the audience to hear, I may not have that, but I have this going, so I think that's uniquely
Charles Hatcher 41:04
Yeah. And like, the other morning, it was the sun was starting to rise, and we had a cow that had a new baby calf, and I'm out in the field checking on him. Like, man, it's how many people in the world are doing this right now. You know, at 6am on an awesome morning, the sun's rising, there's newborn baby calf, and the mom's licking it up, cleaning it off, doing her thing, and I'm just sitting here, just soaking it in, you know, sometimes I have to stop myself and and get in that moment, you know, because I'm around at 24/7
Carli Patton 41:34
So your family was featured. Had a whole Docuseries about the Hatcher family dairy on National Geographic. What was that like?
Charles Hatcher 41:43
Oh, man. So quite the experience, amazing experience. So, long story short, a friend of a friend. His dad worked with my dad many moons ago, and he lives out in LA but he's from here, and he came back in town for the holidays and stopped in our place. We weren't there and and he called and said, I think we could do something with you guys, TV wise. And we thought, Chris, you've lost your mind. What are you kidding me? He goes, No, man, it's it's amazing. Y'all got, y'all got the vet because my sister's got a veterinary clinic on the farm. He said, y'all got the vet stuff. You got the farm stuff, you got the family stuff. It's wholesome and and we said, Yeah, whatever. We don't have time for that. So he just kept, every couple weeks, kept on and on and on. And finally, we said, okay, What? What? He what's next? He said, Well, let me fly out there with a team of guys producers, and we want to spend a couple days with y'all. So they did and film some stuff, and it's and it's a sizzle, so it's a five minute highlight reel, and you send that off to networks and and hopefully somebody bites when National Geographic locked on it immediately. And so we were off and running and and we were ready. We were going to start filming in March of 2020, and we know what happened then. So we didn't think. We thought the project was going to be over. We weren't going to get it started. You know, nobody knew anything at that time. So we started hearing the go or not negotiate. But talks again, and they said, We think we can make this happen in August. So we thought, okay, but we if we do this, we want it to be family farm veterinary forward, and we wanted to have direct say so and all the content, they said, that sounds great. So we started in August. It was miserably hot. It was terrible August in Tennessee is that's why we want to do it in March, but we that's the cards that were dealt. So they around us, with us for 13 weeks. They followed me and my sister and my mom and my wife. They followed us for 13 weeks. And you know, it was pretty, pretty amazing during that time. Hell, we just say, y'all just hit record and follow us. I mean, we don't. We're not staging anything. We're not I mean, it's as real as it gets. So we did that, and they said, well, it's gonna be on National Geographic, and I'll never forget when I saw the first promo for it on cable TV, I was like, wow, that is amazing. Because dairy gets kind of, there's this negative stigma for dairy farming, you know, how, how negative it can be on that, you know, some, some, there's some theories that it's abusive and and there's kind of a negative. Of aura around it. So they took a chance on us and named the show Hatcher family dairy, with the word dairy in the show title, which is crazy in itself, in a good way. So when it when I saw that first promo, I was like, Wow. I stopped me, like, Man, this, this is really gonna happen. So it was eight episodes, and it and it aired in July of 21 and then during that time, Disney merged with National Geographic, so we were then put on the Disney plus platform, which gets you in front of millions and millions and millions of eyes.
Carli Patton 45:42
Well, now I want to go watch it with the kids
Charles Hatcher 45:44
So it's eight episodes, and I'll tell you, we connected with people across the world. Wow, in good ways. It was amazing. Our our demographic was like two to 92 I mean, we've get, we still get people from all over the United States that come to our store and hope to see us, and they'll see us and want to take pictures. It's like, we're like, these celebrities, and I'm like, No, I'm just, I'm just a farmer, you know? So I think one of the most powerful stories out of this was, there's this gentleman. He was on hospice care, but watched the show, and he wanted to meet us, so they brought him to the farm, and we got to spend about an hour with him. You talking about powerful he just he connected with us. I don't know why the feedback we've gotten from people is, my whole family can watch it, it's wholesome, it's it's positive. And so I think that, you know, even if we impacted one person, I see it as a success.
Multiple Speakers 46:57
So that gave me chill bumps. Yeah.
Charles Hatcher 47:01
So it was just powerful moments. And we get letters in the mail from five year old’s that want to be farmers when they grow up, or want to be a vet. Because my sister influenced the little girl to be a vet because she didn't think girls could be veterinarians, you know. So we, we feel like we had some impact there and and we've done some filming since then, but the world of entertainment is changing by the day, on streaming and merging, and so we, we didn't get renewed on that platform because of the mergers, and it's so much movement. So we're hoping to put out some of our own stuff out ourselves, because people, I mean, we can put on social media that we've cured cancer, but people want to know when's the show coming back? You know, it's like so but, but we had so much fun with it. Was an awesome experience, and and we hope to get to do that again, just because of the positive impact that we had on people, you know? And then you're sitting there and you're watching it the first time, you're like, do I really sound that Southern Look how fat I look or look, you know, you're like, looking the most embarrassing thing in the world is to hear yourself and see yourself.
Multiple Speakers 48:15
I can't even listen on the podcast, yeah, and that's way bigger on worldwide television
Charles Hatcher 48:19
So, but it's still amazing to go on Disney, plus, because we our three year old, he we watched the Disney kind of the classics, and just to see our show on there still amazing to me. So having having that available to hundreds of millions across the world,
Spencer Patton 48:38
It would really be cool. You said earlier, you all are producers, you're retailers, you're distributors. If you all also become a film studio, if you're really
Charles Hatcher 48:47
That’s like my dad's like, man, maybe we could start like the Hatcher channel network. I was like, Oh my gosh, you're killing me. But never say, Never
Spencer Patton 48:56
Charles, it has been a delight to have you here today. I think you do something so important in taking agriculture and giving a message behind it that makes it accessible to a lot of people. Because you could be here and talk negative today about what's happening to farming. You could talk negative about having to innovate into robotics, to say we shouldn't have to do these things, and instead, you give a message of positivity and of hope. And I can just tell from being around you really shortly, that if someone in your own community of farmers is eager to learn and figure out how you all have been able to innovate, you're serving in a way that just as special to be around you. So thank you for what you're doing for the state, what your family has done for the state, for the country, right for generations and generations. It's a real privilege to get to talk to you today.
Charles Hatcher 49:52
Well, I really appreciate it. It's awesome to be here and share it a little bit you.
Spencer Patton 49:59
We have Charles Hatcher of Hatcher family farms, the dairy farm, one of the last two dairy farms in Williamson County, and he just gave a message of hope, of excitement around what his family is doing, and the innovation that I think it just reminds me, at least, that agriculture is only a couple generations removed from all of our blood, sure, and that it's just amazing. It's fun, it's interesting, and it impacts us every single day, whether we realize it or not.
Carli Patton 50:38
We talked about a lot of stats with him, and he really gave them color. He made them come alive. That the average farmers over the age of 60 that were losing acres and acres of land every minute in the state of Tennessee, that honestly, I was shocked when I saw we're down to 150 farm dairy farms in the state of Tennessee, and that has been cut in half in the last handful of years, and so to see what they're doing at Hatcher, to innovate, to use technology, there was a lot of good takeaways. What I really left with was this feeling of community that he talks endlessly about how much he loves his wife and how she's brought her skill sets to the table. I love how he talks about his sister, who's a vet, and what she does, what his dad is doing for the state of Tennessee, for the hatchers, it's a family business, through and through, and I loved seeing how positive and bright he was about that.
Spencer Patton 51:33
I think it really speaks to the fabric of America that has really been stretched and strained over the last handful of decades. And I think there's a lot to say about the loss of farming as part of that in that community that you spoke about in kids going across the street coming together just in their own response to COVID and how they arranged a contactless drive through distribution network effectively overnight. And that comes from a place of community. And I just love that that is still a message that he's out waving the flag for, and that's ultimately what he said. I'm out waving the flag for farming and helping take away some of the stigma that non commercial farmers can still be just as passionate about agriculture. And I think that's a redeeming message to say you can grow a garden, and even if you live in an apartment in some high rise somewhere, since you can have a participation in agriculture. And I think that's a really great message that will open up people's hearts and minds to that spiritual experience of planting, harvesting, giving, sharing, all of which is rooted in something that has been with America since day one,
Carli Patton 53:02
and he left me with this feeling of scrappiness that we talk about a lot as the underpinning of entrepreneurship, grit being scrappy. So even if somebody listening doesn't give two hoots about farming, or has never thought about it, this is story that is purely Americana, purely Tennessee, that there is no victim mentality when everything gets upturned. He talks about a time when they almost lost the farm, where they had to innovate, innovate, innovate, and just the willingness to do the hard thing was really inspiring.
