Sale Day: Leaving a Lifetime of Farming

 

We hustled around on sale day, Saturday, August 13, for some family photos before the festivities began. Tye, who has taken over the farm ground we continue to own and who cares for our cow-calf herd in a partnership, was elected as photographer for 15 to 20 minutes worth of shots before the craziness of the day.

Originally, I had wanted some photos in the wheat field of our final harvest as active farm operators. I   had a professional photographer lined up. But it was just too hard to coordinate schedules and predict the weather. (I only knew that everyone was going to make it home a few hours before they arrived.) My second idea was having photos among the farm equipment before it started driving away or was hauled down the road.  But since school had started for the girls and for Susan the week before, it wasn't possible for them to all get here by the time golden hour rolled around the night before the sale. I knew that Randy would be addressing any issues with machinery on the day of the sale or answering last-minute phone calls about it before the bidding began. Other people were juggling plenty of other balls that day, too. Tye did a great job, and we'll save the pro shots for a time down the line. 

Jill snapped a few of Randy and me by various farm equipment. I definitely wanted one by the feed truck. I spent a lot of time in it during winters the last few years. Randy was always glad to tell any callers that his wife drove the old Army truck. One of my favorite times of the year was riding the buddy seat of the combine during harvest time. I'll miss that.

Anyway, I'll treasure these last glimpses of farm life as we've known it. We used the backdrops you'd expect - the 4-wheel-drive tractor and the combine. 

But I also wanted some photos gathered around the old 8N Ford Tractor. 

Jill also requested a photo by the relic.

I snapped a few of Grandpa with the girls.

The last time Kinley had been on that tractor was when she was a baby in her mom's arms 10 years ago.

April 2012

Randy grew up operating the Ford tractor. Our kids also got the "privilege" of putt-putt-putting down a road on the way to help build fence. While I never drove it, I certainly was part of the team that helped build miles of electric fence to contain our cattle in the fall. (Click HERE for a blog post about one fence building session.) But it, too, went on the auction block at the farm sale. 

Randy's Dad and Grandpa had purchased the Ford tractor in the 1960s. (And, yes, it started on sale day!)

Clarence (Randy's Grandpa, seated), his Dad Melvin and Randy holding Brent in 1988.

Maybe the winning bidder will restore it for parades. Or maybe they'll use it like we did, who knows?

It's amazing to think how far farm equipment has come in the time since our ancestors began farming in the late 1800s. My mom did an amazing job of photographing new machinery they've used during their 69 years of farming together.

(My dad as a toddler and his Dad)

 

She compiled them into history books she gave to grandchildren. (I may still have one in my dining room curio cabinet for "safe keeping.")

The evolution of technology has exploded since 1972, when Randy began farming as a high school sophomore.

This was a page from Randy's FFA project - 1972 - when as a high school sophomore, he began putting up hay on his great-uncle's ground for a percentage of the hay crop.

In the late 1990s, I compiled this collage to give to Melvin after his final harvest as an active farmer. It shows several pieces of farm equipment we used at that time.

Farm technology has evolved significantly since our marriage in 1981.

Melvin's final wheat harvest

And we certainly didn't have the ultimate examples of modern machinery, but it served our needs at a price we could afford.

Photo by Brent

The girls had to give the big tractor some equal posing time after their modeling on the 8N Ford tractor.

Randy had some restless nights in the week before sale day. He wasn't sure he'd gotten enough phone calls expressing interest in all the machinery. Would in-person bidders come? Would the people who told him on the phone that they'd be bidding online actually follow-through and do it? Would we get a reasonable value for the equipment? Would this part of our retirement plan pay out? I was not immune from the nighttime thoughts that made for some restless nights. 

But Randy was all smiles the day of the auction.

   (These moments were captured on my camera by Kinley, the budding 4-H photographer.)

Photo by Brent

Ultimately, we were thrilled with the large crowd who arrived on sale day.

Some arrived early enough for the small "stuff" on trailers.

Photo by Brent

There was an even larger crowd for the big equipment - both in-person and online.

 

Photo by Andrew Webb (my brother-in-law)

The day was awfully hot, but the auctioneer with Carr Auction kept the bidding moving along well.

Photo by Andrew Webb

Some of the items began leaving the field before the auction was even over. By Wednesday, August 17, we had only a few things left to be picked up by the new owners. The combine and the drill left that day. The last pickup left last Friday (August 19). We are down to a couple of tractors still awaiting pickup.

Ultimately, this list of farm equipment left our farm to do the job at another farm on down the road. 

We also closed on Randy's folks house on the Monday following the sale, and the young couple who purchased it has already started moving in and making it their own. (Click HERE for the blog post I wrote before that sale.)

It's been a year full of emotion - highs and lows, doubts and dreams. But we feel at peace with the decision. And we're ready for the next chapter. Bring on some K-State football and some trips to National Parks this fall. (We'll add plenty of trips to see the family for good measure.)

The girls were hoping that they could convince their parents they "needed" the 4-wheelers. They had ridden them for a fishing trip during a stay at The County Line last year. Alas, they'll have to settle for Grandpa's new (to us) Gator. The girls approve of Grandpa's new ride. (Uncle Brent may have given Kinley some unauthorized driving lessons on the Gator.)

Next time: Photos from the retirement party

End of an Era: The Farm Sale

 

The link to Car Auction's website and close-up photos of the items for sale can be found by clicking HERE. 

Once Randy retires for good, I think he could have a job driving sale bills all over this part of Kansas. He spent a lot of time tacking sale bills for our August 13 farm auction to bulletin boards and windows in seed stores, co-ops, parts stores, restaurants and anywhere else he could think of.

Even after he got the initial sale bills up and displayed, he's watched the local bulletin boards, putting more in their place if someone took a sale bill off the board for a closer look. 

He's also spent a lot of time organizing equipment and getting it arranged for our sale. The auction will begin at 10 AM, Saturday, August 13, at his folks' place.

 It still seems a bit surreal.  

There's certainly a wide array of selections for any farm shoppers ...

... from an old horse-drawn corn sled he found in the shelterbelt ... 

 ... to our combine. (While it's certainly not the height of modern equipment, it's at least in this century.)

His most recent project was getting the varied and sundry paraphernalia that gets collected in farm outbuildings. There's quite an assortment of "stuff" on two trailers.

I must admit that one of those trailer items tugged at my heart strings.

I've written more than once about this old Tupperware bucket. It was part of our "inheritance" from his parents' house. We used it during calving season to sterilize the pulling chains. Sometimes, it held a mix of colostrum to feed to a baby who was struggling. So it was part of the equipment we used to welcome new babies to The County Line. I do miss having the babies in the corral just a few hundred yards from the house. But we found that Tye & Todd have liberal visitation policies with our mamas and babies, so it's all right. It's just an adjustment.

However, the dingy old Tupperware is more than the sum of its parts. It's kind of a passing-of-the-torch symbol - a hold-it-in-your-hands representation of Randy's and my places in the fifth-generation of our respective farm families. It used to be housed at Melvin & Marie's back entrance during calving season. Then, it "lived" on our back porch during calving season and in our basement during the rest of the year.

Melvin and a bull in an undated photo

I wish I had a photo of Melvin and Randy using the bucket together. I know it happened, but I wasn't recording every moment in blogland back then. For seven years of our marriage, I was driving back and forth to Hutchinson as a reporter and editor at The Hutchinson News.

So seeing that bucket made it all seem pretty real - kind of silly, I suppose, but you never know what is going to affect you.

I'm not the only one waxing nostalgic. As kids, Randy and Lyle would climb on the old corn sled that was in the farmstead trees and would move the levers, playing "farmer." He found old toys that he and Lyle used, but they were too rusty and worn out to bring any money, so he disposed of them. 

Getting the fencing materials organized made him reminisce about the "miles and miles and miles" of electric fence he built through the years - and then had to roll back up. (I helped some with that process, too.) He says he's not sorry to see the hand-held post hole diggers go or an old T-post driver that he almost lost his thumb using. (Fence building has often found us being nostalgic. Click HERE for another blog post about that.)

The old 8N Ford tractor was a workhorse in fence building, too. Five generations have sat on that old seat. We'll likely take a few more photos on that relic on sale day before we watch it leave the farmstead.

April 2012 - Baby Kinley, Jill & Randy

There's one relic that got transferred from the tool shed at his folks' house to our house. An old scoop shovel that belonged to his great-grandfather, Simon Fritzemeier. Randy says it's twice as heavy as the scoop shovels used today, but there's still some family history there that he wasn't willing to let go of. (More on that next time.)

This process has been a mix of emotions. But, Randy feels at peace about the decision and the timing, so how can I feel differently?

He's already planning a trip to several national parks this fall. He's only gotten to use his lifetime pass to National Parks once before now. I have a feeling it's going to get a workout in the coming years.

Living Dangerously - Country Style

Living dangerously - country style:  Your husband goes to a farm auction with the checkbook while you're at a meeting.

It just may lead to a farm fleet expansion. Randy bought a new-to-us combine at a Pratt County farm auction on Tuesday. He purchased a 2010 7120 Case combine, along with a 2011 35-foot flex head header and a trailer to pull the header.

And, just so you know, we DID talk about it before he went, so it wasn't a total surprise. He had a price in mind and doubted it would buy the equipment. However, with a depressed farm economy right now, the price for used machinery is down.

He says he got a good deal. My dad and brother concur, so it must be true. (Either that or the farmers are sticking together.)

The new combine is 16 years newer than the combine we'd been using for 14 years. (We bought that one at a farm auction is 2002.)  The combine has 1,500 engine hours, compared to 3,800 on our old combine.

It has many more bells and whistles. It's our first piece of equipment that has GPS, other than our portable Garmin in the car, which loves telling us "recalculating." I don't think that's a feature of this version: Randy hopes not!

At least he didn't get that message on the drive home. It took him 1 1/2 hours at 23 miles an hour on country back roads to get the combine home. Ironically, along the way, he pulled over to let a tractor pass. It turned out to be a neighbor who was taking a similar route, driving a tractor home after getting it repaired at a Pratt dealership. That's our version of a country traffic jam, I guess.

Randy has a lot of reading ahead trying to figure out all the features. One of the sellers was a high school classmate of mine. He generously spent some time showing Randy the ropes.

But still, Randy has a little "light reading" ahead with four new manuals. Randy already loves harvest. I have a feeling he'll be even more excited this year!

Aggie at the Auction

Since Aggie enjoyed himself so much at the cattle auction, we decided he should go along when a neighbor's family had a farm sale this week. Our neighbor died last year, and his girls have rented out the farm ground to another neighbor. So, they don't have a need for the equipment he used on their farm.

When we got to the auction, Aggie and Randy got an auction number, 52. That is the number Randy used to make his bids.

The auctioneers usually start with the "small stuff," which is typically put on trailers. Randy wasn't interested in any of those items. But a farm sale is also a good time to visit with your neighbors, so we did some of that while the auctioneers sold tools, fencing gear and other smaller items. Aggie checked it out, but he wasn't interested either.

The auctioneer rides in the bed of a pickup truck. The bidders gather around the trailers or the equipment that's being sold. 

The auctioneer uses a microphone and does his auctioneering chant to try and get people to pay the most money possible for each item.

While they were still selling the items on the trailers, Aggie and I went with Randy to check out two pieces of equipment.

Randy wanted to bid on this chisel. If Aggie looked closely, he could see the points, the part that goes into the soil. A farmer would hook it up to a tractor and pull the chisel to break up and loosen the soil. The points also disrupt the roots of weeds in the field and kill the weeds.

 

Randy also wanted to bid on a fallow master, which is used as a conservation tool. It doesn't dig as deeply as a chisel, and it leaves some residue on top of the soil which helps prevent wind erosion and conserves moisture in the field. Still, the sweeps will cut off the weeds. 

Below, Aggie checked out the pluckers, the round teeth-like wheels that pull up the weeds and also help level the ground.

Randy quit bidding on the chisel because it went for more money than he wanted to spend. However, he got the fallow master for $22,000. That sounded like a lot of money to Aggie. It did to me, too. But a new fallow master would cost around $50,000. We purchase a few things new here on our farm, but much of the equipment we use on our farm is used, mainly because it's so much less money.

After the sale, Randy went to the auctioneer's portable office in a trailer. He told the auction clerk that his sale number was No. 52. She knew how much he had bid for the fallow master based on his auction number. So, he wrote the check and we were free to take it home.

Aggie and I didn't bid on anything, but we enjoyed watching and visiting!

***

In case you've missed the introduction to Flat Aggie

Our buddy, Flat Aggie, is from Miss Holbrook's fourth grade classroom at Walden Academy in Willows, California. Flat Aggie is a project of my southeast Kansas blog friend, Nicole, and her Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom blog. Flat Aggie goes to farms all across the country to learn about agriculture. Aggie then reports back to the class with a letter (or blog posts) from the farm. Randy and I have been taking Aggie with us when we check cattle and do other things on the farm. We have enjoyed hosting him and helping him learn about life on a South Central Kansas farm.