It’s snowing pretty hard here on the Knolltop. They didn’t predict this much snow, but it seems to be piling up at a pretty good rate!
It’s been a slow week on the sports front. With JW’s team all done and baseball not started yet, we are in a lag for games. But tomorrow it will pick up with Jake and Sarah’s games and Sarah also has quiz bowl. And tonight our varsity team will play Pittsford in the district finals. It’s anybody’s guess who will win, it will be a great match up.
And yes, I’m in mourning from my Spartans losing last night to Wisconsin. I don’t even want to talk about it.
I think I’ll put one of my columns in today. It was one about auctions, in fact the president of the Michigan Auctioneers Association wanted it to reprint in their magazine. So, I’ll post it here for those of you who don’t get the Farmers’ Advance.
Truth from the Trenches
By Melissa Hart
It can be a useful tool, a fun event, a way to pass time or a huge spectacle. It can make money, lose money, give you an adrenaline rush or invoke sadness. You have high hopes when you begin, a sense of satisfaction when it’s done or an emptiness over dashed hopes. People flock to them, participate in them, enjoy them and spend lots of money at them.
What am I talking about? The auction of course. I’ve been to my share of all kinds of auctions and yet they are something you never get tired of attending. The auction is an amazing event. It’s a wonderful tool for the dispersing of so many things and yet, with the right offering it can turn an ordinary sale of livestock into a glamorized event of a lifetime that if you missed out you feel like you’ve missed Christmas.
I received a catalog in the mail for the Butlerview Parade of Perfection sale that will be happening the first of March. When I opened it up, I realized I was holding a keepsake. The graphics were well done, the concept of the layout was brilliant and the editorial content was priceless. It captures the whole essence of why anyone would drive across the country, cattle trailer in tow, to purchase an animal at this sale.
Here’s how it reads:
You see the gavel start to fall and you can hardly believe it. This is what it’s all about. There is nothing more exciting than the challenge; nothing more powerful than the generations of excellence stacked neatly in a row; nothing more uplifting than putting your fingerprint on the generations that will follow. You see the breeding of the future and the echo of the past. You see the power in the ring as they lead her out and the satisfaction of a life-long ambition. You sign the sale receipt and you own her past and control her future. You know what once was, still is.
When I read that I realized how powerful the breeding, raising and merchandising of livestock really is. It’s more than job or even a livelihood, it’s a profession that can lead you down a path you never thought possible. When you invest your life in animal agriculture you invest not only your sweat and hard work, but it challenges your brain power, your creativity and every ounce of determination in your being.
When you stand back and look at an offering of high quality livestock and the genetics, you are not only looking at animals, you’re seeing the years and years of a man’s work and tenacity. And then put it around the framework of an auction spectacle and you’ve got the culmination of many years of toil, trading hands and going back to work for someone else.
On the other hand, you may walk up to a farm yard with keepsakes lined up neatly in a row. Antiques of all kinds fill the yard of the century old farmstead and you’re there in hopes to take home a bargain or maybe a treasured item. Values are put on priceless tools, chairs, toys, crystal, wedding china and collections of antiques. Things that once provoked a fond memory for one small child are now headed for a different location to be the center of someone else’s world.
At that estate auction you may purchase a simple little bell that hung on a kitchen door to alert the farmwife of her farmer coming in for dinner. That small farmstead alarm may also be the one sound a grandchild remembers hearing when she awoke out of her sleepy state to remind her she’s laying in Grandma’s feather bed. That bell may exchange hands for a few dollars, but is priceless to that granddaughter.
Auctions can help launch one era while bringing an end to another. Auctions bring relief to some and delight to others. Auctions make money for some, provide entertainment to others all while serving as a means to and end and a beginning.
Is there anything better than a good auction?
Okay, now onto the cow that