Rural and Small Town Manitoba - People, Work, Home & Enterprise

The best farmland and the most productive homesteads were in the Shoal Lake and Dauphin settlements. Grain and wheat farming were important and high agricultural prices during the First World War brought prosperity to many local Ukrainians. Most of the grain elevators constructed by the Ruthenian Farmers' Elevator Company (1917-30), a grain-marketing cooperative established by Ukrainians, were located in the Shoal Lake and Dauphin districts. In the Stuartburn, Brokenhead-Whitemouth and Interlake districts the soil was of inferior quality. Stuartburn also experienced frequent spring floods; large areas of Brokenhead-Whitemouth were swampy and covered with brush and stumps; and the Interlake was heavily forested, poorly drained, stone covered and marshy. Here many Ukrainian settlers practiced subsistence agriculture well into the 1920s. They supplemented their income by working on railroad and urban construction projects, selling cordwood, and sending teenagers to work in city restaurants and hotels. During the 1920s fluctuating wheat prices encouraged Ukrainian farmers in all five settlements to switch to mixed farming and concentrate more on forage crops, livestock and dairying. Although important strides were made during the interwar years, in 1941 almost one half of Manitoba's Ukrainian farm families still consumed more farm produce than they sold. Most Ukrainian farms, especially in the central and southeastern districts, were smaller and less profitable than the typical Manitoba farm.