Better Farming – September 2016

The district is not suited to organic

production. Take for one the area's

lack of proximity to large consumer

markets. Moreover, in a region aptly

named after the amount of rain it gets,

it becomes difficult to get in the field

in a timely fashion to do the weeding.

Today, Brielmann, in his late 50s,

and his wife, Heidi, grow cash crops

and background feeder cattle on their

farm. The Brielmanns share farm

operations with their son, Timo, who

has his own farm. Just because the

elder Brielmann returned to conven-

tional production doesn’t mean the

challenges have disappeared. They’ve

changed – increasingly complex, and

hence difficult-to-fix equipment, for

instance.

Although he speaks of the hurdles,

this farmer with the philosophical

streak does so with good humour and

a zest for life experience.

“I really enjoy the ability to look at

a challenge and say, how can we

overcome it, and how can we make it

so that it works? Challenge is not a

negative. If there are no challenges,

you’re just getting lazy then.”

Better Farming

September 2016

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Describe your role on your farm operation?

Manager. In the morning we discuss

what we do and then I’m telling the

employees what’s on for the day and

try to direct them. I’m also the person

who is in charge of marketing and

purchasing the inputs.

How many people does your farm employ?

Three employees, plus my son and

me.

Hours you work per week?

10 hours a day, six days a week.

How many emails do you receive per day?

Between 20 and 30.

Hours a day on a cell phone?

If you ask my wife, she will tell you

five hours at least. I would say, if you

combine everything, at least an hour

and a half.

What about your smartphone?

Our fields are very far apart. (There’s

What do you like best about farming?

I grew up on a farm and I always

liked the smell of the soil, the excite-

ment when you step on the field and

you see the first wee little green

blades of the newly seeded crop

coming up. These kinds of things are

so exciting emotionally for me. I

would never want to give it up.

What do you like least?

The weather. I know I can’t change it

but it just worries me always. And I

don’t like early spring when the snow

goes away and I stand there in the

mud and have to feed cattle.

What is the single most important piece of

advice you've received?

I had a friend in Germany, an older

farmer, kind of a mentor. He said to

me: “you should never, ever look back

and say, I did this wrong. You should

always go back and say, well, I did my

best. I will learn from my mistake and

a 40-kilometre distance between the

fields). So as I go from one place to

the next, I have an app to listen to the

market report. I do most of my

emails on the phone.

Email or text?

I do both. If it is something where I

want to keep that, or a conversation

which I want to be able to look back

at, then I want to have an email. But

the short things, it just goes over text.

Is it easier with text? I guess it’s easier.

Faster.

We bought some gypsum out of

Iowa, and we had it in the bin and the

product wasn’t delivered right. It

clumped up. And it’s interesting, all

the conversations I had with that

company, it all went over texting. All

the pictures, everything. There was

not one email. That’s kind of unusu-

al. Usually you have a document on

email, but that guy did everything

over text.

Any favourite apps?

I have my apps and they’re for my

market report, and I have my app to

look at my solar tracker, but I find

them very time consuming, these

apps, and addictive, so I try to stay

away.

Where did you last travel to?

Europe.

“I really enjoy the

ability to look at a

challenge and say,

how can we

overcome it, and

how can we make

it so that it works?

Challenge is not a

negative.”