Meet Mark Oeltjenbruns
Mark is a Minnesota farm native, born and raised in rural Claremont. He enjoyed farming with his family until his parents had to retire from farming due to medical reasons. After graduating, he became an ASE certified auto technician for about 12 years. He then served as a head mechanic, farm laborer, and safety manager at a large hog/crop farm where he learned the ins and outs of electric, hydraulic, hydro, and food energy. During this time, he and his wife, Jessica, re-started the home farm operation from scratch in 2010. Starting with 58 acres of corn and soybeans turned to operating 92 acres 3 years later.
He had a dream of someday buying some land and putting up solar to "farm" the electricity as a full-time job along with crop farming. Their wonderful daughter and son then came along in the mix. The balance of work, family, and farming needed a change. June of 2018 wrapped their family into an emotional roller coaster after a car accident where God persevered and miracles happened.
Mark then started with the Local 49 union as a heavy equipment operator and later became a certified crane operator for a bridge crew to get away from the labor-time intensive commercial farm industry. In 2021, 92 acres and a one tractor operation turned to 240 acres of crops with a full planting through harvest fleet. All this, whilst a full-time job off the farm? He looked to better their land and make a living by farming organically which requires a lot of time in the field. With this in mind and his vast knowledge and experience, him and his wife thought to start up a home-based repair shop. So the plans to build a shop began with geo-thermal as well as solar energy to power the shop.
Long story short, the former dream became a reality, and he became certified as a Mechatron solar tracker installer. He is excited to introduce this new design of solar trackers to our region due to its unique design of being the smallest footprint of solar available on Earth as well as being able to literally farm underneath them.