Tranel visits with creamery owners on campaign trail

U.S. House candidate Democrat Monica Tranel visited with Kalispell Kreamery owners to ask about their needs as a small, local dairy farm while on the campaign trail Thursday.

Kalispell Kreamery, formerly Hedstrom Dairy, has been producing milk and other dairy products in the Flathead Valley since 1978. The Kreamery is now owned by Hedstrom’s daughter Mary Tuck and her husband Jared, who have shifted operations to sell their products locally.

During the tour, Tuck said by and large the biggest concern for the self-contained creamery operation is hiring and retaining employees. Like many other businesses in the valley, the creamery is having trouble paying employees a wage that will keep up with high housing costs. They do offer some employee housing, which is a help, but Tuck said hiring is getting more competitive and they often worry about retaining employees with other businesses offering large sign-on bonuses and higher pay.

“We've got a great crew, and we just lay in bed going, ‘oh my gosh, do we have to give people raises every day?’ … Our margins haven't changed, in fact, our costs have gone up — our plastic costs have gone way up, just all our costs have gone up. So we're looking at all of this going up and when we go to bed at night, we just think, ‘Oh, I hope everybody shows up in the morning, that they didn't get a job making more money,’” Tuck said.

Tranel said the issue of high housing costs is felt all throughout Montana’s western district and that it always comes up when talking about a business’ most pressing problems.

“The conversations I'm having, we always circle back to that issue of housing. If we could have housing, then employees would be able to have jobs and be more stable and be in the community … So how are we going to address that? It's just a cycle that is really damaging right now in our communities and I think we really do have to get a handle on it,” Tranel said.

Republican former Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke and Libertarian John Lamb also appear on the ballot in the November general election for Montana’s western district congressional seat.

If elected, Tranel says she wants to be an advocate for local farmers and is looking toward the next Farm Bill scheduled to be taken up by Congress in 2023. She said Thursday’s tour was another good opportunity for her to learn more about how to help small producers, especially during difficult economic times.

“I've talked to lots of egg operators, meat packers, who are doing it on a smaller scale — really having a good understanding of what the margins are for them, what they need to survive and what they need to do to smooth out the ups and downs of the commodities markets that they're in,” Tranel said.

Tranel’s plan to tackle high inflation called the Working Families Affordability Plan includes four points she says will help lower the high costs of living and bolster the middle class by challenging corporate monopolies, increasing wages, curbing federal aid to large corporations and developing a more self-sufficient energy sector.

Tranel said she believes smaller farms like Kalispell Kreamery are critically important for Montana.

“I think they're a really key driver for our local economy and our way of life. I mean, ultimately, we are about our communities here in Montana, we're about each other and these communities are sustained by local operators,” Tranel said.