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Brothers Stewart and Robert Kircher weren’t born into the dairy industry. Robert Kircher said he and Stewart began working summers with dairy cows as young teenagers at Forest Glen Oaks Farm in Yamhill County, about an hour southwest of Portland. Back then the farm had a few hundred cows.

There, the brothers worked their way up into management positions and grew the farm, which is now an organic milk operation with about 50 workers and more than 2,000 Jersey dairy cows between two facilities. The farm produces over 100,000 pounds of milk — nearly 12,000 gallons — a day, and supplies local processors and grocery retailers.