Ann Marie Magnochi knows every quirk and idiosyncrasy of the 175 cows on her dairy farm.

“This one — Jewel — she’s my gate-checker,” she says pointing to a Brown Swiss cow contentedly chewing cornmeal. “Every time she walks past a gate — ‘wham!’ — she gives it a nudge to see if it’s open.”

Magnochi has wanted to be a dairy farmer in Snoqualmie Valley for as long as she can remember — except for a brief period when she wanted to be a clog dancer on the Grand Old Opry.

She practically has milk in her veins. She and her sister, Lena, are their family’s fourth generation of dairy farmers around Carnation. The sisters could also become the last dairy farmers in a valley which once boasted over fifty dairies.

Just north of Carnation, Two Sisters Dairy, which the sisters own with their parents, is one of four dairies left in Snoqualmie Valley, and has even survived Carnation Farms — the town‘s namesake — which closed in 2001.

The Valley’s dwindling number of dairies is a trend being repeated across the state, as smaller dairies are closing due to two years of high input costs and low product prices, said Shannon Neibergs, an agricultural economist at Washington State University. Unable to sustain themselves through unprofitable years, some have sold their land to developers.

Meanwhile, larger dairies have expanded to meet demand.

While the number of dairies has dropped, there is a stable number of college students studying dairy management, he said.

“When you watch your parents struggle the way many dairy farmers are now, I can understand why [children] don’t want to go into it,” said Lynne Schmoe, the Washington Dairy Products Commission spokeswoman.

Magnochi’s father, George, watched the Valley’s tight-knit dairy community evaporate.

“A lot of the guys retired and the kids didn’t want to farm, and that was that,” he said, perched on a bright green John Deere tractor.

“I never figured the farms would quit, but they have, and that’s the end of them.It’s a sad thing, but what’re you going to do?” he said, before dumping a load of corn feed in front of cows waiting to eat.

The dairy industry is labor intensive and needs a stable inflow of trained workers, Neiberg said.

Dairy is Washington’s second largest agricultural industry. In 2007, the state’s dairy farms brought in over $1 billion in revenue — 14 percent of all agriculture commodities. That same year dairy was King County’s top agricultural commodity, bringing in over $34 million, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The number of dairy cows in King County has declined from 11,100 in 2004 to 10,000 in 2008, according to the USDA.

Overall, the county has seen an increase in farms in recent years, from 1,548 in 2002 to 1,790 in 2007, but most of these farms are not primary sources of income.

The county has supported agriculture by trying to protect agriculture land from development and making permits easier and cheaper to attain, among other measures.

Many farms have focused on niche or specialty markets, according to a King County economic study.

Dairy farms have tapped into these markets as well, selling niche products, such as raw milk or non-homogenized milk, or marketing their milk cows. The second strategy — registered genetics — is what made Carnation Farms into one of the biggest dairies in the world in the early 20th century.

Two Sisters Dairy hasn’t entered these markets because of the startup costs, Magnochi said. With both sisters back from college, they might pursue those markets in the future.

“But the price of milk’s got to go up a little bit,” she said.

In recent years, dairy farms have been hit by record high prices for feed and low prices for milk.

“We get paid about $10 to $11 per hundred pounds of milk that we ship, yet you pay $3, $4 for a gallon of milk in the store, and that weighs 8.6 pounds, so somebody’s making money somewhere. We’re not,” Magnochi said.

That is half of what they received a couple years ago, when global factors pushed milk prices up.

The cost of feed has decreased, but dairies are still operating on a slim margin of profitability due to other costs and the falling price of milk.

“In this county, land is really, really expensive, and dairies find it really difficult to not only acquire more land but to pay the taxes on it,” she said.

Dairy farms need the land to safely dispose of cow manure. If manure is too concentrated, the nutrients in it can have a disastrous affect on wildlife, especially fish. To dispose of the manure, dairy farmers must follow strict nutrient management plans, which Magnochi writes for the King County Conservation District.

Magnochi’s works full-time as one of the district’s conservation planner. She works nights and weekends on her farm, which her sister and father work full-time.

She studied dairy farming at WSU with a group of friends with dairy backgrounds who’d known each other for years through 4-H and Future Farmers of America.

“Of all those people who went over there…who either grew up on a dairy or their parents currently had a dairy, there’s only one of us that’s still working on a farm — you’re talking to her. However, the encouraging part of that, though, is that all of us that went over there in that group together all are working in the industry one way or another,” Magnochi said.

Her friends work for feed companies, agriculture public relations companies and other businesses related to dairy farming.

Magnochi is optimistic about agriculture’s future in the Valley.

“Farmers need to be cognizant of what’s going on around them” and be nice neighbors, she said.

As suburban development expands, residents and farmers need to use common sense and treat each other with respect.

“Don’t spread manure when the wind’s blowing towards the housing development,” she said.