From oats, wheat, canola, corn and soybeans, Northern Ontario farmer Timo Brielmann describes his passion for farming, celebrating Canada’s Agriculture Day on February 22, 2022.
By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com
“Farming is all I can think about.”
That simple statement from Timo Brielmann, an oats, wheat, canola, corn and soybean farmer from the Township of Pinewood, near Rainy River in Northern Ontario, helped dissuade him from his once-held goal of becoming a police officer, to his current life as a farmer.
The 8,800-acre family farm is called Brielmann Agriculture Ltd., and he and his family farm a wide range of soil types where each crop performs differently, and where because of the terrain and shorter growing season, Brielmann said that economically the farm strives for a minimum yield of 120 bushels per acre of oats, 75 bu/ac of wheat, 40 bu/ac of canola, 150 bu/ac of corn, and 40 bu/ac of soybean.
The 31-year-old Brielmann moved to Canada with his family from northern Germany when he was just two months old.
“My parents farmed for someone in Germany,” Brielmann told Farms.com in a recent interview, “and when that fellow bought a farm in Canada, he asked them to go and manage it for him. They came over and ended up buying it from him—which is how I began my ag journey here in Canada.”
Despite his love of farming, Brielmann admits that being a farmer—especially in Northern Ontario—hasn’t always been easy for all involved.
“That farm my father bought, was initially a grain farm, but he quickly converted it to a beef farm after any opportunity to grow the business went out the window when grain transport costs became too high,” explained Brielmann.
“It worked out well for us, however, because we became a large organic beef farm,” he said. “But then the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) offered us a chance to enter the tile drainage program—so we did.”
They pulled out all the fencing, cleaned up field corners, sold the cows, and tiled the farm.
“We sold the beef farming equipment and started building a bin yard, purchased grain equipment and began farming cash crops conventionally,” explained Brielmann, noting that they cleared a pile of acres, picked rocks—lots of rocks in Northern Ontario—and made the fields bigger to increase efficiencies.
“We now buy and sell grain through our grain elevator, and have also started a crop input business called Pinewood Crop Services,” Brielmann exalts. “We have an agronomist on staff, and provide products to local farmers.”
Farms.com asked him what a typical day of farm work was like—"Depends on the time of year,” he replied.
Winter: Office work “managing Pinewood Crop Services and the farm”; Filling the wood stove; Shop work “consisting of maintenance and improvements”; Loading grain trucks and trucking the grain; Fixing trucks—"always something going on with the trucks”; Land clearing—"always something on the go”; and ice fishing, “because I try to do something fun every weekend… if I’m not fixing trucks.”
Summer: Tendering air seeders; Running the sprayer; Managing Pinewood Crop Services; Harvest time: “drying grain, moving grain, managing trucks, hauling grain to the bins, keeping combines moving, operating grain cart some days, keeping the tillage crew up and running, floating fertilizer, or tendering the floater. Did I mention the trucks?”
Apparently the term “Keep on Truckin’” (by artist Robert Crumb) has a different meaning for Brielmann.
But what happened to the career in law enforcement?
“Ha… policeman… I thought it would be the right fit for me,” explained Brielmann. “I really don’t know what happened, but one day in high school, I switched my mind and farming became all I can think about.”
He explained that growing up on a farm meant that he has always been helping out while learning the trade. However, an ag program in high school seemed interesting enough to enroll in, and he really liked it, plowing over the childhood dream of law enforcement. “Farming got more and more exciting as I got more and more involved.”
Graduating from university in 2011 with a BSc in Organic Agriculture, he bought land and part of the family business to officially make it his full-time career—which makes him happy.
“During a day of farming, anything can happen, which keeps things interesting.”
He said that one day he can be spraying, the next hauling corn to a feeding mill, and the next day he’s meeting with the farm’s accountant. “The variety of jobs and challenges keeps me on my toes.”
But what Brielmann really loves about being a Canadian farmer is… driving the big equipment.
“I can sit in a quad track pulling a chisel plow all day,” he said. “I get to watch the sun come up, and sun go down, and feel like I just had the best day.”
Quasi-romantic notions about the view atop a vehicle aside, Brielmann spoke eloquently about the biggest draw farming has for him.
“I get to leave something behind. I am building a farm that one day I get sell or pass down to the next generation, and hope that when it’s all said and done, I’ve made it better and easier for the next person farming it,” Brielmann explained.
“I am glad I picked a career that, at the end of my time, will provide me with something to show for all my work.”