The global pandemic hasn’t slowed down the Brielmann Farm in Rainy River; in fact, they have been busier than ever.
The Brielmann Farm grows oats, wheat, canola, soy beans and they recently began growing corn. Timo Brielmann, 30, own and operates the 8,200-acre farm. He said the current harvest is going well and they are well ahead of last year.
Timo said he has seven employees who help him and his father with the farm, none of which were laid off during COVID-19. “Everyone put in more hours and there was nothing really fun to do this summer, so we all just worked a little bit more,” Timo chuckled.
“We are all impressed with the weather this fall,” he said. “It has been really helpful. It is so nice to not have to walk in the mud all year. We are busy everyday, which is great. We got it all in, in record time this year. It is a much better year than last year with it being so wet.”
The crew is already finished all of its cereals and canola, he said. “We are almost done soy beans. We might start off corn from the middle to the end of October. After that we are done, we will spread fall fertilizer, pick rocks and sticks and try to prepare the field for next year.”
Timo said they do not have any more animals on the farm because they wanted to grow and change the nature of their business.
“There was a good opportunity with the tile grant. We figured we had good land and I was always interested in big equipment, combines and tractors. It is more fun and exciting to be in big equipment. Dad was getting older and feeding cows was getting to be a little bit more of a challenge.”
The winter months is when Timo and his father, Amos, take care of paperwork.
“It is when we do all of our servicing and maintenance. Dad and I have a lot of office time,” Timo said. “We have a lot of planning to do, budgeting and the general paper work that we don’t have time for in the summer.”
Although COVID-19 either stopped or slowed down most business operations, this was not the case with the Brielmanns.
“The farm did not really stop. We had to keep going. We didn’t have an option. We told the employees to make sure they are safe,” Timo said. “Some of them had family in Manitoba and they wanted to go visit and we said they are allowed to go visit but they have to follow federal regulations and quarantine. If they wanted family to come visit, we told them if they visit, they had to quarantine again.”
While the border is shut down, Timo is still able to export his products because grains are commercial products. Timo said they have a deal with a trucking company that goes to the United States. The drivers of these trucks do not get out of the truck because they are unloaded by staff members in the United States.
“It is quite a process to get a truck into the United States,” Timo said. “We just do not want to do all the paperwork. We let someone else come do that for us.”
However, Timo said COVID-19 made it very difficult to get parts for some equipment from the United States.
“We used to do a lot of business in the states with the dealerships and purchasing equipment, getting our equipment back from the service was challenging so we avoided that,” Timo said. “We switched to getting parts from Manitoba.”
