SNOWFLAKE, Man. – Grant Didkowski drives around a bend in a dusty country road, through a bluff of trees and brakes his blue Chevy truck.
“Why do we like this area?” he asks a visitor.
He lets the vista of “Suicide Hill” answer. Known to generations of Snowflake children as a hair-raising place to toboggan, the road cuts a breath-taking path through the wide, winding Pembina River Valley.
This place is part of the reason he returned to Snowflake.
“You grow up in an area, and it’s home,” he explained.
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But in the next five years, Didkowski, 39, faces some tough decisions about his home and the successful dairy operation he runs there.
Since he first worked with the dairy cows his parents kept for shipping cream, a sideline to their grain and cattle farm, Didkowski wanted to be a dairy farmer.
After high school, he spent a few years in Winnipeg, long enough to realize how much he loved life in the country.
He came back to Snowflake, in south-central Manitoba, and worked at several dairy farms in the area. He renovated an old barn at his folks’ place, and bought 15 heifers of his own.
But after two years, Didkowski sold the cows and quota. He wanted to put down some roots, and considered moving back to Winnipeg.
Then, one of the farmers he worked for decided to get out of the dairy business. He gave Didkowski first dibs on buying his farm.
“The timing was so perfect because I didn’t really want to go back to the city,” he recalled. “I always wanted to own a dairy farm, something I could call my own.”
So in 1987, with $20,000 he had saved, and with help from the Farm Credit Corporation, he bought the complete operation: 10 acres, a dairy barn, some shacks, a house and a milking herd of 20 cows.
He remembers the optimism of the first heady days of owning the farm. “I thought I was going to be rich and famous after a few years,” he laughed.
Reality soon set in. Didkowski said an important part of his business strategy has been to grow within his means. He has made gradual changes to his farm, working toward getting the most milk out of his 45- cow milking herd.
He put in an underground manure transfer system, added a barn for dry cows and heifers and built a shed to hold more than a year’s supply of hay.
But the most dramatic change Didkowski made was changing his herd from Holsteins to Jerseys.
In 1993, he was doing his annual cleanup of stockpiled magazines and papers in his basement office when he came across an article about Steven and Marie Smith’s Jersey operation at Clanwilliam, Man.
Impressive production statistics compelled Didkowski to visit.
“I thought, what am I doing here? These cows are so short.” He doubted his judgment, but left with his first four Jerseys.
“I tell ya, I had a sick feeling in my stomach.”
But a few months later, the size of the animals ceased to matter, as their milk production won him over. Over the next four years, he gradually sold his Holsteins and replaced them with Jerseys.
“It was a way of improving my bottom line,” Didkowski said. He said they calve easily, and quickly return to reproductive ability. They eat less hay, but produce milk with more protein and solids. That pays off with the multiple component pricing system for milk, he said.
But the breed has challenges. Calves are the size of dogs, weighing only 40 to 50 pounds. “There’s not much there,” he said.
And it’s hard to break with the dominant dairy tradition. There are only 15 dairy producers in the province who use Jerseys. “I think you really stick your neck out when you do something different,” he said.
But the gamble seems to be paying off.
Didkowski has achieved Manitoba’s gold milk quality standards every year but one. In 1990 and 1994, he made the top 10.
It takes dedication to be a good dairy farmer, said Didkowski. Milking twice a day means sticking close to home.
“I can go for weeks without seeing anyone,” he said.
For the past year, he’s come to count on the company of hired man Garry Funk, who helps with milking and fills in so Didkowski can get away. Once in a while, he spends time with his sisters and their children in Winnipeg. “A break, a change is as good as a holiday.”
But Didkowski is considering a permanent break from the farm in five years, when his mortgage is paid off. Too young to retire, he is mulling over trying something new.
World trade negotiations start again next year, and Canada’s protected supply-managed dairy industry will come under attack. “That’s something I want to watch closely,” he said.
As well, the dairy subsidy is on its way out, and with changes to the way milk is pooled, returns now fluctuate more than before.
Some farmers, wanting to get their investment out of their quota, have already sold their dairies. Others are getting bigger, with 100 to 200-cow herds becoming more common.
“I’m not sure I want that stress,” said Didkowski.
Unpleasant thought
But a decision to leave dairy farming won’t be easy. Dispersal sales can bring tears to the eyes of the most stoic dairy farmer.
“I guess you never want to think of these unpleasant things until you have to,” he said.
Just down the road, in the village of Snowflake, an old school bell sits on a cairn in a yard overgrown with weeds. A skating rink and curling rink sit empty for lack of interest. Sidewalks that no one walks down lead to empty homes and businesses.
Faded 4-H signs on either end of Railway Avenue welcome people to the “friendly border town.” The railway was torn up long ago.
Unless someone buys Didkowski’s farm as a whole, the white farmhouse and the park-like yard he has spent so much time tending will also sit empty.
This makes his decisions in the next five years all the more difficult.
“I think it’s going to be tough, but I also have to be realistic, too.”
