Our First Responders: Brent Tymrak

By theadmin

Brent Tymrak spent the spring making nighttime runs while rushing to plant his crop of grain, corn, and cotton. This was nothing unusual — it’s what his farm does every year. What was odd this year was the lack of traffic on the roads.

“It was real eerie coming home during curfews, driving 15 miles and not seeing a soul on the road,” Tymrak says. “It looked like we had gone back in time.”

The global pandemic has created supply-chain and health and safety issues for many farmers, but Tymrak’s farm has fortunately been spared that upheaval. “It’s pretty much been business as usual,” Tymrak says — “we just have to grab a mask before we get in the truck.”

When the pandemic hit, he was already planting, and all he had to do was get the work done.

Although he had initial concerns about the price of cotton, the farm has rebounded. “We thought the hill was a lot further down and a lot steeper than it was.”

Other than driving empty streets with his essential-worker license on the dashboard, Tymrak’s life on the bayside of Robstown, near Alice, didn’t look too different.

Tymrak, who grew up in Jourdanton in a family of farmers, co-owns the farm, which is “like a family farm,” with his cousin and his friend, employing a total of 12 guys.

“That was the big worry. At that time, everybody was doing something — planting, hauling fertilizer or seed, or ploughing. If somebody got sick, it was going to be real hard to fill their place,” Tymrak says. “So we were really cautious about somebody getting sick, because one guy out would make it a lot tougher.”

The dozen men were constantly together, “so we could have all got sick in a short time. That was always in the back of our minds. What would we do if someone got sick? They’re not just essential workers — they’re essential to the farm.”

Because the virus affects everyone differently, Tymrak notes, there was no way of telling who was more vulnerable. “It didn’t matter if they were 20 or 65.”

Over the course of the summer, one of the farm workers did get sick. Fortunately, he is now well — but Tymrak says he wasn’t one of the lucky ones who had a mild case.

“It wasn’t the easy road through it; it was on the tougher side. It was long and drawn out,” Tymrak says. “But he found out in time, and luckily, nobody else was exposed.”

Tymrak, who is engaged but currently lives alone, noted that for the men at the farm who have families, bringing illness home was another worry. Luckily, the virus hit their team at a slow time for the farm and ran its course without impacting them any further.

Bolstered by their ability to weather the storm so far, Tymrak feels hopeful for the future.

“We’ll get through it as a farm, as a country, as a family, as the world.”

“Humanity’s gotten through stuff before; we can get through it again,” he says. “I saw a picture of the Spanish flu pandemic from 100 years ago, and they were wearing masks. Maybe in another 100 years, this will be a distant memory. It may not be solved in a year, but in the end, it will work out. We’ll get through it as a farm, as a country, as a family, as the world.”

Brent Tymrak is a Texas Farm Bureau member. Kari Hendricks, a Texas Farm Bureau Insurance agency manager in Jim Wells County, nominated him for this series. Read about our other first responders, Samuel Askins, Kirk Burnett, Nicole Michels, Ryan Michels, Brigette Munoz, and Delaney Sweeney.