Mac grad aims to continue and grow the family farm

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

For Connor Velthuis, growing up on the family farm in small-town Ontario was all about tractor rides and tagging along with dad.

“My very first memory on the farm is sitting in the tractor with dad, pulling the forage harvester,” the 21-year-old recalled. “I held my hands over my ears the entire time because I was afraid of the very loud metal-detector alarm coming on at any time. That would be the highlight of my week!”

The Velthuis farm in Osgoode, now part of the rural south end of the city of Ottawa, started long before Connor came on the scene. His grandparents founded it in 1959, shortly after their emigration from The Netherlands. They started a dairy and crop operation and raised nine children of which two remained on the farm – Connor’s father, Paul, and his uncle, Steven.

Connor joined his local 4-H Club at age 9 and never looked back. Over the years, he has been active in the crop club and dairy clubs and become a senior member.

“I’ve evolved from being the youngest to the oldest member in the club,” he said. “Having been on both sides over the years has led me to have a greater understanding of the teaching and learning processes — and that can be applied to anything in life.”

Diversified operation

Velthuis Farms Limited operates on an expanse of 2,000 acres these days, cropping corn, wheat, soybeans and alfalfa for feed and sale, and milking a herd of 230. But it was a recent venture into speciality beef that has brought Steven and Paul Velthuis’s farm more attention and profit: Wagyu beef, known for its marbling, fine texture and high price.

“The first time I heard of ‘Wagyu’ was when I came home from school one day and saw this big black cow in a pen, and I had no idea what it was,” Connor said. “From there we built our herd and started selling to customers. And it’s only grown ever since.”

Connor’s uncle Steven purchased a cow-calf pair of Wagyu animals in Vermont before the COVID-19 pandemic, when Connor was just enrolled in Macdonald Campus’s Farm Management and Technology program. The family did some flush work with their Wagyu heifer and put embryos into recipients to get their herd on the ground quickly. Now, they have a 50-head Wagyu herd that are DNA-registered with Wagyu associations in Australia and the U.S. to prove their authenticity.

“It was something different to try,” Connor explained. “With the popularity of beef-on-dairy breeding in the industry, we figured we might as well try this with purebred Wagyu and see the process to the end.”

Direct to consumers

Now, Velthuis Farms sells Wagyu beef directly to the consumer and to high-end restaurants and sports bars.

“The first years were essentially word of mouth,” Connor said. “We started going to the Ottawa Farmers’ Market in the spring to get our name out there directly to consumers and that bolstered sales greatly. Now, we have several repeat customers from as far away as Toronto.”

It’s a niche market that has done well for the Velthuis family. Paul, Steven, Connor and Connor’s cousin, Brendan, tend to the herd and are in touch with other Wagyu producers in the province. They estimate that the number of Wagyu beef operations in Ontario is in the low double digits.

And it’s likely to remain a niche product. In 1997, Japan declared Wagyu cattle a national treasure and no longer permits live cattle or their DNA to be exported, making Velthuis Farms a sizeable player in a somewhat protected market.

For Connor, knowing that there’s a stable and diverse farm operation at home means his future is secure. Since graduating from Mac in the spring of 2024, he has returned to Osgoode full time, taking on tasks related to dairy, the family’s cash cropping – and Wagyu beef.

“Having a say in what’s next is a great feeling to have,” he said. “And knowing that I have a great relationship with the prior generations and with my own third generation — that’s a truly great feeling.”

Cutline:

Connor Velthuis showed a heifer from the family farm in the Spring Yearling class at the Royal Winter Fair in 2023.