“We do it all by hand,” said Wes Hatch, owner of Sunrise Farms in Taylor, as he shared the secret behind growing the best sweet corn. “We hand thin it, hand hoe it and hand harvest it early in the morning.”
In the late 1800s, Wes’s great-great-grandfather, Jay Roy Hatch, started the farm that has been in the family ever since. After World War II, in 1948, Lorenzo Hill Hatch, Wes’s dad, turned the farm into a dairy operation.
For 64 years Sunrise Dairy served the local community before it closed in 2012, becoming Sunrise Farms, where the Hatch family continues the farming tradition.
The 245-acre-farm, situated in the middle of Taylor’s growing suburbia, now grows crops of alfalfa and corn, as well as a herd of beef cattle.
Wes said he began raising sweet corn with his brother in the 1980s as a way to make extra money. Over the years, he and his family have created a legacy of heirloom sweet corn fields that are now worked by three generations of Hatch families, including his wife, Charlotte Hatch, who is the executive director of the Snowflake/Taylor Chamber of Commerce, their two sons, Logan and Wyatt, their wives and children.
Logan and his wife, Kandice, have three children, Konner, a fourth grader at Taylor Intermediate School, Peyton, a first grader at Taylor Elementary School and Waylon, who is two years old, and loves playing in the cornfield.
Wyatt is married to Cheyenne and they have Blakelee, who is three, and Asher, who is six months old.
Kandice said she loves the farming life. “Konner and Peyton get up every morning before school and go out in the fields to help pick corn,” shared Kandice. “This life gives our kids the chance to play in the dirt and get dirty. They learn a work ethic and they love it.”
Aside from the sweet corn, Wes said they grow field corn that they turn into silage, grain corn and alfalfa, all of which they use for their cattle and sell to the public.
While the sweet corn crop is profitable, Wes said that there is always that risk of being wiped out by hail. “In 1991 we got wiped out by hail and it was a tough recovery.” This year a hailstorm hit close by, but their fields were spared and the crop has been good.
“Each year we sell more and more sweet corn,” said Wes. When asked whether the corn was a genetically modified (GMO) strain, Wes smiled and said, “No, this is heirloom corn and it does occasionally have worms.” He went on to explain that a few years ago no one wanted worms in their corn and now people are using the presence of worms as proof that it is not a GMO strain.
The sweet corn sells for $7 for a dozen ears, $3.50 for half a dozen or 60 cents for one ear and can be bought from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday until the harvest is over at their farm on 700 East Love Lake Road. The sweet corn harvest starts in early August and is usually done by Sept. 10, but sometimes sooner.
