TURNER, Ore. — The Christiansens of Meadowood Dairy trace their family history back to 19th century Denmark. Through those many decades, their immigrant ancestors all owned and worked on dairy farms, including Brian and Megan Christiansen’s 300-acre, 240-cow organic enterprise near Turner, Ore.

Besides Brian, 48, and his wife, Megan, 46, the dairy’s other owner-operators include Brian’s father, Marshall, and mother, Nancy.

The Christiansen story in America started with Brian’s great-great grandfather, Sonnic Christiansen, who was 60 when he immigrated from Denmark to start a dairy in the Ferndale, Calif., area. Sonnic’s grandson, Herman — Brian’s grandfather — continued dairying with the family in that area through the 1940s.

The currant patriarch of the Christiansen family, Marshall, 78, took up the story from there.

Marshall said his father, Herman, bought the cows at the northern California dairy from his grandfather, Anton, in 1976.

“We dairied there until 1986,” Marshall said. “Then we felt crowded out by humans and dogs, so my father sold the property and we moved to this Turner location.”

Back then it was 140 acres and only had water rights — no buildings or anything else, he said.

“We started out with a 200-cow freestyle barn, milking parlor and a mobile home and that was it,” he said. “We built the whole dairy, everything you see — two homes and six-to-eight buildings.”

Meadowood Dairy now encompasses 300 acres near Parrish Gap Road. The dairy milks mostly registered Holsteins along with about 30 Brown Swiss.

The family also owns 150 acres of hay land near Madras in central Oregon, with the organically certified crop used as supplemental and winter feed for their heifers and dry cows, Brian said.

Brian and Megan’s two children, Scott, 17, a senior at Cascade High School, and Anneka, 14, an eighth-grader at Cascade Middle School, help out on the dairy when their busy school schedules allow.

Brian and Megan joined Marshall and Nancy on the farm in 2000. Trying to find some stability in milk price and related financial factors persuaded the family to transition to organic farming practices in 2015.

Meadowood Dairy LLC was begun that same year. Brian connected with a well-known farmer-owned cooperative that supplies livestock breeders with genetics, All West/Select Sires, and tasked himself with growing the herd’s breeding program. He was elected the cooperative’s District 15 Delegate in 2021.

Cows have to be transitioned to organic feed products over one year prior to becoming certified, Brian explained. Despite rising prices, regulatory actions and other governmental involvement, any trade-offs from the conversion to organic are seeming to work in their favor, making dairying today “more stable,” Brian said.

“More stable,” he adds, “but not necessarily more profitable.”