By ROBERT WHITE

ALMOST five years ago, the Cavallaro family decided enough was enough.
Strangled by the effects of the drought, they decided to give dairy farming away. The increased running costs, the lower returns and the subsequent pressures meant it was time to try something else.
It was a tough decision to make. Cos and his wife Rose and their son, Alex, enjoyed their lives as dairy farmers at Katunga in north central Victoria. They wanted to stay on the land.
So they compromised. They decided to stop milking but they also decided to sell all their cows and keep all the heifers.
“We had no feed on the ground, no hay. The choice was to go into even greater debt or sell the cows,” Cos said.
The plan was that they would rear the heifers to sell, or, perhaps, one day it might rain again and they could return to dairying.
In the meantime, they turned a large part of their farm over to growing vegetables and tomatoes.
It wasn’t something new to them. Before moving to Katunga in 2000,they grew vegetables on a property at Kialla,south of Shepparton. It neighboured Cos’s parents who ran a dairy farm.
Rose’s parents were orchardists at Shepparton East so the background in horticulture was strong on both sides.
“We had grown veggies such as capsicum, egg plant and tomatoes for 15-20 years,” said Cos. “We thought we could better use our limited irrigation allocation to grow veggies.”
All went well to start with but only weeks before their second harvest, a massive hail storm ripped through the region and the crop was lost.
All the hard work in growing their crops had been for nothing.
It was time for another re-assessment. Dairying had been tough but no matter what you were able to produce with a dairy herd, there was a cheque each month. Sometimes it may not have been enough but nonetheless, it was there.
In one short storm attack they had lost a year’s work. It was time to go back to dairying.
“We were out of dairying for about 18 months,” said Cos. “We had the land, we had a reasonably new 32-unit double-up shed and we had the heifers so we thought we’d give it another go.”
Luck was not on the Cavallaro’s side. Soon after their re-start the price of milk crashed.
But the setbacks haven’t deterred the family who are now looking at the best conditions they have seen since they moved to Katunga.
There has been rain, there is water in the dams and the milk price looks settled for the long term.
While things look better than they have for a long time, the Cavallaros do have concerns about the security of their water.
They worry about what the government plans to do with both allocations and price and hope answers will be provided soon.
In the meantime they intend to take advantage of the good season they have ahead.
TheCavallaros are milking 170 cows on 140ha with a further 160ha leased nearby to grow crops for hay and silage.
Like his father, Alex, 22, came home from school to work on the land.
“I wasn’t too keen on school. I always wanted to be a farmer,” Alex said. “I like the outdoors and I like the lifestyle.”
Rose has also welcomed the return to milking and spends her time looking after the calves.
The decision to retain heifers has also paid dividends. The oldest animal in the Cavallaro herd is three-years-old so there are plenty of productive years ahead.
Apart from Alex, the Cavallaros have twin daughters, Vicki and Leanne aged 26.
They are not involved with the farm now but Cos was quick to add that the two girls did their fair share around the farm as they were growing up.
It’s all part of family farming.