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Only natural
Labor and delivery nurse Pat Hutton’s ag inclinations result in a thriving ‘side’ career as a beef producer
| Story and photos by Mark E. Johnson |
8/31/2012 |
Jewelry? A turtleneck sweater? A day-spa gift certificate?
Not a chance.
Ask Morrison beef cattle producer Pat Hutton what her favorite Christmas gift from husband David has been lately, and you may be surprised by her answer: a calf-puller.
“I was so excited!” exclaims Pat without a trace of sarcasm. “Earlier in the year, we were watching our local vet — Dr. [Jerry] Hackett — use one to deliver a problem calf, and David said, ‘You need one of those gadgets!’ I figured it was too expensive, but David bought one, gift-wrapped it, and told me it was something for our son, Jonathan. I was suspicious, though, because I recognized the shape. I’d been studying them for quite a while.”
For those who know Pat well, it’s only natural that she would point to a calf-puller as a favorite gift. The longtime maternity ward nurse, mother of two, and first-ever female director of Warren Farmers Cooperative is a farming “junkie.” Since she was a little girl, Pat has had a passion for agriculture, especially anything involving animals, says her father, Bill Turner.
“I don’t know why the young’un had to have so many animals,” says Bill with a shake of his head. “The cat had to be having kittens, the dog had to be having puppies, and the cows had to be having calves. We only had six acres, and we started running out of room.”
Pat says she even learned about the enterprise of agriculture as a young girl.
“One of my aunt’s brothers was a dairyman, and one year he asked me if I would raise bottle calves for him,” she recalls. “He would give me one out of every four. At one time, I had 20 bottle calves I was feeding out of one little barn. He also paid me to go clean his milk barn in the summer before inspection. I wouldn’t do it now, but I also wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.”
By the time she graduated from high school, Pat was determined to follow her dream of working in animal agriculture. She just wasn’t sure how or where. Since her parents didn’t own a farm with enough land for cattle, Pat knew that she would have to make money elsewhere to buy property of her own, so she rechanneled her passion for baby animals into a talent for caring for baby humans.
“I went to Middle Tennessee State University [in Murfreesboro] and earned a degree in nursing,” say Pat. “I started working in labor and delivery and loved it — still do.”
During her college years, Pat met David, an accounting major, and the two married. Following a variety of job opportunities, the couple moved from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga then Clarksville over a 10-year period, always with the notion they’d someday settle back into the Morrison area of Warren County. The opportunity arose in 1989 when 40 acres of land owned by Pat’s great-grandmother became available.
“I was originally interested in just purchasing a lot to build a home on, but the family suggested that we buy the whole thing,” she says. “The farm required a lot of work to get it in shape, but we decided to go for it.”
The couple then began commuting to jobs in Nashville and Murfreesboro while preparing the property for a beef herd.
“I think people probably thought we were crazy,” laughs Pat. “I remember that our daughter, Amy, was in middle school in McMinnville and one of the teachers asked her, ‘Why do your parents live here and commute up there?’ Amy said, ‘Oh, it’s the farm.’”
Indeed, the farm became the couple’s focus for several years, says Pat.
“We started out by cutting timber and clearing with a bulldozer,” she says. “Uncle Ike [Turner] came out and helped us disk it, followed by Co-op sowing and fertilizing the pastures. By the next year, the grass was coming up and we’d cut 200 cedar posts off this farm and added some 95 steel posts. Neil Miller, who had been my seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher, advised me to buy Angus cattle because they’re easy-calving and would do fine with us being gone a lot of the time. He helped us purchase our first five heifers in 1992.”
During those earlier years, Pat was a “sponge,” soaking up farming information and skills from any and every knowledgeable source, reports Ike, who farmed nearby.
“She would come and help me haul hay,” he says. “Now, you have to have a mower, a rake, a baler, and a tractor, and she learned how to operate all of these things. Pat’s a fast learner. Then she acquired her own equipment a little at a time and would call me to come help her hook something up until she got the hang of it. Next thing you know, she’s got a new tractor with air conditioner, radio, and all, and she doesn’t need me for anything!”
Indeed, the Hutton farm grew and improved steadily over the next two decades as Pat and David became more skillful and confident. Within seven years, the couple had added 58 adjoining acres. Through exhaustive genetics study and carefully made purchases, Pat increased the herd to some 26 head while becoming a mainstay at area beef meetings and Tennessee Livestock Producer and Warren County Livestock Feeder Calf sales. Utilizing Natural Resources Conservation Service programs to install an extensive watering system for rotational grazing, the Huttons also built a hay barn and purchased a Powder River cattle-working system and a maternity pen from Warren Farmers Cooperative using cost-share funds from the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program.
And Pat still commutes to her job at Stone Crest Medical Center in Smyrna.
“After 22 years, [hospital administrators] have learned to ‘go with the flow’ with me,” she says with a smile. “They know, for instance, that if it’s hay time, I may need extra hours off. I also supplement their diets with freezer beef. I guess it all makes for good conversation. One doctor couldn’t remember my name when he first started there, so he referred to me as ‘The Cow Woman.’”
With each passing year, Pat and David have looked for new ways to increase efficiencies to make their operation more profitable. The farm took on a new look in January when they installed a system of 144 solar panels on the property to generate electricity.
“The electricity runs out of the photocells into a converter that turns it into alternating current,” David explains. “After that, I could run it directly into our house if I wanted, but instead I chose to participate in a [Tennessee Valley Authority] program in which the electricity goes directly into the TVA power grid. Every month, we get paid for all the electricity we produce except for the amount we use on our property. We’ve been very pleased. It should pay for itself in roughly five to six years.”
The solar farm is not the only thing that’s created sparks for the Huttons over the past year. Last fall, Pat’s name was put on a “short list” of possibilities to fill a vacancy on Warren Farmers Co-op’s board of directors. Manager Don Robbins says the decision to nominate the cattle producer was “fairly easy.”
“Nobody could see any reason why a lady shouldn’t be on the board,” he says. “Pat is at every cattle producers’ meeting you can think of, she does everything right on her farm, and she has a wonderful Angus herd. She uses rotational grazing, takes advantage of Ag Enhancement, and is entrenched in agriculture in this county. I think it was a ‘slam dunk’ for the nominating committee, and we’re thrilled to have her on the board.”
Pat says she’s learned “a great deal” in her first year as a Co-op director.
“It’s interesting to see things from this perspective,” she says. “I’ve learned that Co-op helps out a lot of people and is really there as a service to help farmers get the things they need at the lowest possible price. And I’ve really enjoyed listening to the other board members, who I refer to as ‘real’ farmers because that’s how they make a living. It’s eye-opening to see some of the challenges that other types of farmers have. I really admire these folks.
“Farming is tough,” she adds. “It takes careful management, insight, and a whole lot of God’s help.”
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