Sitting on the lot were some of the things that made me proud to say I was a farmer’s daughter. He technically still IS a farmer — but you know what I mean. It was almost like a few of my childhood memories were sold when the auctioneer pounded his gavel and off the tractor went to a new owner.

In 40 years, I’m amazed at how agriculture has changed and how it continues to change. I guess I shouldn’t be sad because the equipment is going to other farm families, or to their children in hopes of carrying on the ag tradition, but it marked the end of an era for our family.

The sheds have been cleaned out, leaving room for another business to grow. And maybe it’s good to have a “cleaning day” here and there but for me, the sheer size of the sale was a bit overwhelming. Like doing spring and winter cleaning and tossing out your whole closet and starting new again. (Now that would be fun.)

I told dad he had to keep at least one tractor or my son would be forever disappointed. He did.

Until we walk again …

From The Best Farm News Blog at AgWired.com

Becca Gregg  Reading Eagle

An Iowa man was the highest bidder Monday on a Gruber hay wagon dating to the late 19th century.

The wagon, along with a 1929 Model A Ford truck, was on the auction block at Green Hills Auction Center in Breck-nock Township.

“It was a very good turnout,” Samual Ferraro, founder of the family-owned auction house, said of the crowd that came out to bid. “The people selling (the wagon) wanted at least $5,000 for it. We got it up to $3,600 and it sounds to me like the successful bidder is willing to pay the minimum $5,000. He was willing to go higher.”

The wagon, built at the Gruber Wagon Works in Mount Pleasant, had been authenticated by the Berks County Heritage Center, and its origin traced to a Sinking Spring-area farm.

Nearly a decade ago, Spring Township resident Sue Morey received the wagon as a Christmas gift from her husband, Jerry. Due to its size, storage became an increasing problem and Morey chose to give it up.

The wagon was considered to be in excellent condition, with much of the original paint and stenciling still intact.

Ferraro said it’s been 40 years since the auction has sold a Gruber wagon in comparable condition.

Ferraro did not have the name of the potential buyer later Monday.

As for the Ford truck up for auction, Ferraro said, “It ended up bringing in all but $15,000.”

Female linesmen have been in the news lately, but they’re not the only women in a traditional man’s world – the countryside also has professions comprising mostly men. Farmers Weekly talks to a female auctioneer.

Life can be tough at Britain’s livestock auction markets, especially when there are hundreds of farmers milling around, all anxious to get the best deal for their cattle or sheep. And often men will try and lord it over weaker auctioneers in their determined efforts to sell their animals or get a better price.

But 34-year-old farmer’s daughter Jenny Layton will have no truck with them after more than 10 years’ experience as one of the few female livestock auctioneers in the UK.

“It’s a grand job,” says Jenny, who became a partner at McCartneys at the Knighton Market, Powys, after five years with the company. She now sells cull, store and breeding sheep, as well as store cattle, on a regular basis. She is also a dab hand at farm dispersal sales.

Although she admits it was nerve-wracking at first, Jenny says: “I have always been a bit of a tomboy and can remember being taken to markets by my father when I was five years old. I loved the buzz and excitement of the place and the way adults accepted you and spoke to you as a friend – and even then I started thinking that I wanted to work in a place like that.”

After obtaining a national diploma in business and finance at Hereford and a 2:1 honours degree in rural enterprise and land management at Harper Adams University College, Jenny went straight to McCartneys in 1999 and she was soon out in front of the farmers selling their stock.

She also quickly found time to do the exams to qualify as a Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and fellow of the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, as well as become a Fellow of the Livestock Auctioneers Association (LAA), ending up with an impressive string of letters behind her name.

And today she says: “There has been no problem whatsoever going into what many people still consider to be a man’s world. Sure, you have to be strong and you have to be fair – and you can’t let anybody walk all over you. But I ignore any insults and get on with the job. I think a weak bloke could have as many difficulties becoming a livestock auctioneer as a weak woman might have.

“We have a good crowd here and as long as you do your best and people can see you are trying to do a good job, they will leave you alone. In addition, the LAA does a lot of work to help people like me stay on top of things and to help keep the markets running smoothly.

“It provides a great service, going through the information from the government and health authorities and then feeding the relevant bits through to us,” says Jenny, who is also recognised as an independent expert for the RICS and often gets called in as an expert witness to help settle land disputes.

In addition, she is McCartneys’ cross-border specialist for the Single Payment Scheme and is involved in a large range of other work, including valuations for borrowing, probate, farm business tenancies, divorce and tax in the office during the week.

But auctioneering remains her first love. “I enjoy the excitement of the trade. There is a good feeling if you have a successful day in the yard. It puts me on a high and keeps me going for the rest of the week.”

Jenny normally does two sales at Knighton market every week – lambs on Thursday and cows on Friday. But she is often called in for sales on Tuesdays as well, with the occasional farm sale on Saturdays.

But, usually at weekend, she can be found either helping her Dad out on the family farm, or playing a strenuous game of league-class hockey for the Kington Ladies.

“Luckily I live quite a way from the market, so I don’t always have to talk about work when I socialise in the evening,” adds Jenny, although she says she is often called on by friends to be the “star turn” at hen parties, where she is asked to auction off various naughty items amid what she describes as “great hilarity”.

Jenny’s top career tips:

• Get educated – consider a course at Harper Adams in Shropshire, where the LAA sponsors a degree course for auctioneers and market managers

• Be practical and have a hands-on approach

• Always be willing to take advice

• Keep a level head at all times

• Be determined to get to the top

• Enjoy your work and be nice to clients. Remember, a smile counts for a lot

In a two-week period in February, Cheffins’ machinery sales operation sold more than £6 million of farm and contractors’ equipment across the UK in Cambridgeshire, Shropshire and Devon.

Some exceptional prices for used agricultural machinery along with huge attendances have distinguished Cheffins on-site sales so far this year.  A weak pound and the soaring costs of new machinery have contributed to increased demand from the UK and throughout the Europe.

Cheffins’ sales year started on February 10 in Shropshire with what will probably be the country’s largest on-site auction sale of this year. On behalf of Wilson Farming – crowned Farmers Weekly’s ‘Contractor of the Year 2010’ – Cheffins was instructed to dispose of no less than nine forage harvesters, eight Fendt tractors, seven material handlers and an extensive range of machinery as part of their ongoing fleet renewal policy.

Wilson Farming operates the largest fleet of self-propelled forage harvesters in Europe totalling an impressive 30 plus machines all serviced in-house. These late registered machines – mainly 2005/2006 – were sold mainly to farmers and contractors at prices ranging from £62,500 for a 2005 Claas Jaguar 870 to £66,000 for a 2005 Claas Jaguar 850.

Also sold on the day was a 2008 Fendt 927 Vario tractor at £66,500 and a 2007 JCB 416S Agri Farm Master sold well at £59,500. With an imposing selling rate and worldwide interest the sale grossed a staggering £1.2 million – a new record for Cheffins on-site auction team.

This major sale was followed a week later with one of the largest sales in the West Country in recent years with a collective sale at Newton Abbot, Devon. The sale was by direction of local vendors, farmers and contractors. With more than 20 tractors and an excellent show of trailers, grassland and cultivation machinery it made for a busy day’s selling, despite very wet, muddy conditions.

Highlights went to a 2007 John Deere 6930 at £32,000, same again but with a Chilton MXT15 front loader at a resounding £36,000, a 2006 6420S topped £23,000, a super sharp 2007 7930 with new boots hit £45,800 and a late entry a 2007 John Deere 7530 sold well for £34,800.  A bright pair of 2008 McCormick’s sold for £33,400 for a TTX230 and £24,600 for an MC135.

With close to another £1million chalked up and, following a record Cambridge Machinery sale, the on-site sale team began their journey eastwards but not before conducting another sale at Bristol of vintage and classic tractors. All in all, a rather hectic period – and our sales calendar is building rapidly for the rest of the year.

Braden Janowski has never planted seeds or brought in a harvest. He doesn’t even own overalls.

Yet when 430 acres of Michigan cornfields was auctioned last summer, it was Janowski, a brash, 33-year-old software executive, who made the winning bid. It was so high — $4 million, 25 percent above the next-highest — that some farmers stood, shook their heads and walked out. And Janowski figures he got the land cheap.

“Corn back then was around $4,” he says from his office in Tulsa, Okla., stealing a glance at prices per bushel on his computer. Corn rose to almost $8 in June and trades now at about $7.

A new breed of gentleman farmer is shaking up the American heartland. Rich investors with no ties to farming, no dirt under their nails, are confident enough to wager big on a patch of earth — betting that it’s a smart investment because food will only get more expensive around the world.

They’re buying wheat fields in Kansas, rows of Iowa corn and acres of soybeans in Indiana. And though farmers still fill most of the seats at auctions, the newcomers are growing in number and variety — a Seattle computer executive, a Kansas City lawyer, a publishing executive from Chicago, a Boston money manager.

The value of Iowa farmland has almost doubled in six years. In Nebraska and Kansas, it’s up more than 50 percent. Prices have risen so fast that regulators have begun sounding alarms, and farmers are beginning to voice concerns.

“I never thought prices would get this high,” says Robert Huber, 73, who just sold his 500-acre corn and soybean farm in Carmel, Ind., for $3.8 million, or $7,600 an acre, triple what he paid for it a decade ago. “At the price we got, it’s going to take a long time for him to pay it off — and that’s if crop prices stay high.”

Buyers say soaring farm values simply reflect fundamentals. Crop prices have risen because demand for food is growing around the world while the supply of arable land is shrinking.

At the same time, farmers are shifting more of their land to the crops with the fastest-rising prices, which could cause those prices to fall — and take the value of farms with them. When the government reported June 30 that farmers had planted the second-largest corn crop in 70 years, corn prices dropped 8 percent in two days.

And even if crop prices hold up, land values could fall if another key prop disappears: low interest rates.

When the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate to a record low in December 2008, yields on CDs and money market funds and other conservative investments plunged, too. Investors were unhappy with earning less, but they were too scared about the economy to do much about it.

As they grew more confident — and more frustrated with their puny returns — they shifted money into riskier assets like stocks and corporate bonds. To many Wall Street experts, this hunt for alternatives also explains the rapid rise in gold, art, oil — and farms.

Those who favor farms like to point out that, unlike the first three choices, you can collect income while you own it. You can sell what you grow on the farm or hand the fields over to a farmer and collect rent.

In Iowa, investors pocket annual rent equivalent to 4 percent of the price of land. That’s a 60-year low but almost 2.5 percentage points more than average yield on five-year CDs at banks. That advantage could disappear quickly. If the Fed starts raising rates, farmland won’t look nearly as appealing.

For now, though, investors can’t seem to get enough of it.

At a recent auction of 156 acres in Iowa, the 50 or so farmers who showed up withheld their bids out of respect for a beloved local farmer who had rented the land for two decades and wanted to own it. But his final bid of $1.1 million was topped by a California insurance executive. In Iowa, 25 percent of buyers are investors, double the proportion 20 years ago.

“They were angry, but what are they going to do about it?” says Jeffrey Obrecht of Farmers National, the brokerage that ran the auction. He told the farmers they shouldn’t worry because some of the new investors will find a new way to make money in a few years and start selling their land.

Other dangers lurk for investors. In Iowa, corn prices are high partly because corn is used to make ethanol, a fuel additive subsidized by the federal government. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop this year will go to factories that make it. But with Washington running up record deficits, it’s anyone guess how long the subsidy will remain.

As with stocks, U.S. farms can swing wildly in value along with the economy. Despite the fragile recovery, though, farm prices are nearing records now, capping a decade of some of the fastest annual price jumps in 40 years. In Iowa, farm prices rose 160 percent in the decade through last year to an average $5,064 per acre, according to Iowa State University.

Concern that farm prices may be inflated is serious enough that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. held a conference for farm lenders in March titled “Don’t Bet the Farm.” Thomas Hoenig, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, oversaw dozens of bank failures when a farm boom turned bust 30 years ago. Today, he suggests prices may be in an “unsustainable bubble.”

Veteran bond trader Perry Vieth doesn’t think so. Vieth, the former head of fixed income investments for PanAgora Asset Management in Boston, started buying farms with his own money five years ago, when buyers with no farming experience were rare.

“Agriculture was sleepy,” he says. “People looked at me like, `What are you doing?’”

Now he’s buying for 71 wealthy investors. Ceres Partners, his 3 1/2-year-old private investment fund, owns 65 farms, almost half bought since November. He says he’s returned 15 percent annually to his investors overall.

Though Vieth says prices in some places have climbed too high — he won’t buy in Iowa, for instance — he says the price of farms elsewhere will rise as big money managers start seeing them as just another tradable asset like stocks or bonds and start buying.

“When Goldman Sachs shows up to an auction, then I’ll know it’s time to get out,” he says.

Janowski, the Tulsa software executive, is bullish for other reasons. A self-described serial entrepreneur, he has built four companies, including a software developer that he sold for $45 million three years ago.

Listen to him speak, though, and you’d think he was an economist. He’ll talk your ear off about how inflation could rage out of control, and how farmland is more likely to keep up with inflation than other assets. Janowski sold all his stock in April.

He plans to move most of his money into farms and has clearly done his homework. In the past five years, he has flown to more than a dozen farms up for sale, often with an agronomist in tow. Before bidding on that Michigan farm last summer, he visited five times to walk the property, which includes a house and land for commercial development as well as tillable fields.

The day of the auction, which drew more than 100 bidders to the Century Center in South Bend, Ind., he didn’t leave anything to chance. Janowski arrived two and a half hours early to get a seat near the entrance so he could size up rival bidders as they walked in.

Then he kept quiet as an auctioneer carved the farm up into lots numbered 1 through 40 and began taking bids for each. After 30 minutes, Janowski broke his silence with an offer to buy the whole thing: “One through 40 … $4 million.” For the tillable parts, he figures he paid about $6,000 an acre.

“I’m probably on the fringe of being a nut job,” he says. “But as each month goes by, I become less nutty.”

Atlas 1031′s Andy Gustafson attended a farmland auction held by Schrader Auction and shares his insights into the bidding process. He learned there are two types of bidders simultaneously accessing the value or price points. The individual bidder considers one or a combination of tracts while the whole bidder is analyzing price points for the whole or entire farm. Each has their value point they will not exceed. It is a fair and expedient process pitting the sum of the individual bids against bids for the whole.

In a large banquet facility located on the Boone and Hamilton County line, a couple hundred registered bidders and interested bystanders listened to veteran auctioneer Rex Schrader, CEO of Schrader Auction, cover auction procedures. For the next two hours, a 681-acre farm parceled into thirteen tracts representing high quality cropland, fenced pastures, woodland and streams, recreation areas and ½ mile rows with good frontage and updated drainage would be the focal point of competitive bids for the whole and individual tracts.

The room was laid out with a large screen showing a map of the farm in parcels numbered 1 – 13. Next to the map was a spreadsheet, continually updated with the parcel number, bid, bidder’s number, and price per acre. To the left and right of the screen, large whiteboards were used to show the bids by parcel number, combination of parcel bids, bids for the whole and current sum of parcel bids. The auction team began their orchestrated movements starting with updating the whiteboard when Mr. Schrader opened the auction for a bid on tract number one.

“$300,000 …, now $325,000,”rang the call of the auctioneer. “Now $350,000 for a 75 acre tract with 60 acres high quality cropland and 15 acres nice woodland.” The tract has county drainage tile and new drainage improvements. Indiana farmland has been sold for $7,000 and higher per acre. The current $4,666 per acre bid would later be replaced with a winning bid of $480,000 or $6,400 per acre.

Schrader Auction agents walked the bidders’ tables, talking specifics with bidders and notifying  Mr. Schrader that they had a new offer. The spreadsheet and whiteboards were updated with the bid and the bidder’s number. The process would repeat itself over and over with individual bids, updates, combination parcel bids and ultimately, bids for the whole. It was a well coordinated event run by professionals that clearly understand the auction process. Mr. Schrader was helpful highlighting those undervalued parcels encouraging additional bidder consideration. When the whole parcel bid exceeded the sum of the individual bids, Mr. Schrader would suggest to the individual bidders to consider increasing their bids by $10,000, not to meet but rather exceed the whole bid.

I sat next to one of the eventual winning individual bidders. He came to the auction with financing and down payment in place to bid and not exceed his value point. When his combination parcel bid was exceeded, he would counsel with a Schrader agent to confirm his new bid would be sufficient to exceed the current bid. In the end, his bid was increased beyond his value point and he quickly placed another bid for a combination of two tracks he had walked the day before as a contingency tract. His intent is to build a home and possibly sell a portion of the land for residential lots. His tracts represented 38 acres with 14 acres cropland for hay and 24 acres woodland on both sides of a creek. What he bought for $4,800 per acre contrasts with the $25,000 per acre zoned R1 or residential asking price within eye site in Boone County, a northern suburb of Indianapolis.

On hot summer days, the cries of auctioneers can be heard in almost any corner of Kansas.

In the midst of bawling cattle, clucking chickens, oinking pigs, estate and land sales, the chants and sing-songs go on.

To hear an auctioneer is to listen to another language. Microphone in hand, words sometimes come faster than human ears comprehend.

“Dollaring, dollaring, dollaring, make-it-two, two-ala-ring,” chants Charly Cummings, the 2011 World Livestock Auctioneer champion from Yates Center.

You don’t have to be licensed to be an auctioneer to sell personal property, but you do if real estate is on the auction block, says LaDonna Schoen-Gehring, director of the Kansas Auctioneers Association.

There are more than 600 auctioneers in Kansas.

Some auctioneers go to school.

Some learn on their own.

Some are celebrity auctioneers.

Kansas may hold the distinction of being the only state in the nation with an auctioneer as governor.

At April’s invitational Governor’s Turkey Hunt in El Dorado, Gov. Sam Brownback was presented a custom-made turkey call.

When informed that protocol dictated such a gift be sold to raise funds for a local scholarship, Brownback surprised the crowd when he broke into full auctioneer chatter.

His banter brought $1,300 for the call. When the call was donated back to the event Brownback auctioned it off for at least that much more money at a banquet the following evening. The money went for local college scholarships.

Brownback later said he’d gone to auctioneering school when he was younger and looking for a possible second income in case he went into farming.

Some auctioneers come into the profession through multiple generations of the family-owned business.

Whatever the case, they all say that becoming a good auctioneer is an art form.

But in times with more competition from the television and Internet, it may be becoming a lost art.

Auctions in the past

It is an old profession.

Since the beginning of Kansas, auctioneers have been rattling off high-speed pitches.

Sometimes the auctions have been controversial, such as in Kansas’ territorial days, when African-Americans were sold as slaves.

Although Kansas was considered a free state and against slavery at the time, some Kansans would go across the Missouri line to make purchases.

The Kansas State Historical Society has a receipt from 1856 for $800 from Thomas Johnson, the minister and founder of the Shawnee Methodist Mission in Johnson County, for the purchase of a 15-year-old “Negro girl named ‘Martha’ of black complexion … a slave for life.”

He purchased the girl in Westport.

The majority of early auctions in Kansas, however, were horse auctions, said Schoen-Gehring, director of the Kansas Auctioneers Association, with a legacy dating back to early forts.

“When they started, they would auction off the horses in the military,” she said. “That’s why auctioneers are sometimes called ‘colonel.’ It came about because the colonels in the Army auctioned off the horses.”

During the 1890s and 1930s, and again in the 1980s, farm auctions and sheriff’s sales became almost commonplace due to drought, commodity prices and high mortgage payments.

“Farm foreclosures and sales become fairly common up into the 20th century,” said Virgil Dean, historian at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka. “The auctions are approached with mixed feelings. It’s hard going to the sale of a neighbor who has fallen on hard times. But the auctions also become a way to get people together with their neighbors and get good deals.”

The auctioneer’s cry

Larry Carr of Carr Auction in Larned has been in the business for 45 years, doing typically about 140 auctions a year throughout the state.

He won the state auctioneers’ contest in 1972 and through the years has sold everything from livestock, farm equipment and land to banks, guns and ammunition.

He taught himself how to be an auctioneer, starting out working at the local cattle sale barn, unloading and sorting cattle and listening closely to how the auctioneer sang. Then, he’d go home at night and practice.

“You not only have to have a good chant but you need to be knowledgeable about your product. You have to make yourself understandable. If people don’t know what you are saying, they are scared to participate.”

Indeed, an auction can be intimidating. Crowds can be between 75 and 1,400 people at a Carr sale.

The auction chant is often a rhythmic repetition of numbers and filler words, punctuated by the “yip, yip” of the auctioneer’s crew as bidders give an indication they are participating in the sale.

Some of the bidders nod with their heads.

Some are more discreet.

“That’s just something you learn,” Carr said. “Sometimes you’ve got to ask if a person is bidding. Most people nod their head or wave a head. Some don’t want anybody to know they are bidding.”

One customer may pull an ear lobe, while another puts his thumbs through the loops of his overalls, Carr said. Yet another will scratch his nose or play with a cap.

Some sales can be action packed, like the ones during the 1980s involving bank sales and farms whose farmers had ties with the Posse Comitatus and Freemen movements.

“There was this one sale in Stafford County that was a sheriff’s sale, and we had choppers circling in the air when we picked up the machinery,” Carr said, “and KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) agents in the crowd.”

Entertainment factor

A good auction is good entertainment — even with competition from TV and the Internet.

And for some, it’s like comparing the difference between hearing a piece of music in a recording or being there, live in person.

Roger Emigh is the 1991 World Livestock Auctioneer champion. He is the auctioneer at Winter Livestock in Dodge City, America’s largest independent cattle auction company and one of the nation’s oldest.

The auction typically sells about 4,500 cattle a month.

Go to the Winter sale barn in Dodge on any given Wednesday, and it smells of cattle and peanuts. Hundreds of peanut shells line the floor — buyers eat the nuts while making bids.

The sale barn hasn’t changed much in the 75 years it has been in operation.

Emigh’s voice blares over the microphone as calves bawl:

“These calves came off the cow today…. The male cows weighed out early…. This one’s got a little rupture in the bag department.”

There are the sounds of slamming gates, a cellphone ringing and ringing, and people applauding when a chagrined cowboy finally does answer his phone.

Blue-jeaned cowboys in hats and worn boots caked with manure sprawl on wood seats throughout the show barn, watching intently as cattle are shoved through in groups and singles.

Dave Mendenhall, who lives near Gove, places a bid.

So do Ralph Frazee of Garden City and Doug Parham of Pierceville.

“It’s a good time to buy calves. Well, they are available, anyway,” Mendenhall said.

He brought his 7-year-old grandson, Gabriel, with him to the sale. Gabriel marks the seventh generation of Mendenhalls to buy cattle. Together, the two have a mound of peanut shells around them on the floor.

A drought in southwest Kansas is making it a good time to buy cattle if you are a producer elsewhere in the state.

“If they ain’t got nothing to eat, a guy has got to sell them,” Mendenhall said. “I’m up there at Gove where we got some rain, so I can feed them.”

Gabriel Mendenhall studies the calves.

What’s the best part of coming to an auction?

“Buying calves,” he says.

A good auctioneer will create not only a satisfied customer, but also drama and excitement for the rest of the crowd.

“Your chant is just the way you merchandise,” Emigh said. “It helps entice the buyer to bid. It helps create excitement.”

There have been plenty of auctions, Emigh said, where things don’t always go the way they were planned — like the time a cow jumped out of the ring, over him, and out the back door.

“I got up. Readjusted the microphone, and those crazy rascals brought her in again,” he said.

The cow jumped out of the ring again and into the crowd.

Cowboys roped her and were willing to bring her back into the ring, again.

“I said, “Everybody has seen her twice, let’s go ahead and make bids,” Emigh said.

They did. She sold.

Art of chanting

David Keim of Keim Auction Service in Yoder is another auctioneer who taught himself the art of chanting.

The Amish auctioneer started 2 1/2 years ago selling birds — chickens, geese, ducks and pigeons. Some auctions attracted only 10 to 15 people.

Now, several hundred people come to the monthly auctions, which have expanded to include ponies, sheep and goats.

He says the sale “has turned into anything that walks.”

Keim started the auction in part because some of the local Amish farm families didn’t like their children coming home late at night from an auction in South Hutchinson.

Now, he said, people of all faiths and walks of life come to buy and trade poultry.

And so, beginning at 4 p.m. on the final Friday of each month, he holds an auction in downtown Yoder.

“I have people coming from Oklahoma City, Wichita, Missouri, Scott City — all over,” Keim said. “I don’t advertise. I don’t need to, although that first winter I thought about it.

“We had about three cages of birds and two buyers, and between me and my wife, it took about two to three minutes for the sale and we were done.”

At the last sale, an emu was offered.

It sold quickly.

The future

Wichitan Bud Palmer has been in the business for more than half a century, selling shipyards, hotels, business liquidations, furniture and estates. His region includes an eight-state area around Kansas.

He says the Internet, combined with a long recession, has hurt his auction business.

“If people don’t have money, 25 percent of nothing is still nothing,” Palmer said. “It is all relative. If times are good, sales are good. When times are tough, sales are tough. Anybody who tells you different don’t know what they are doing.”

Cummings, the 2011 World Livestock Auctioneer champion from Yates Center, says auctioneering will always be around. Why?

“The only way to get true price discovery and true market value is through the auction method of selling,” Cummings said. “Sure, you might put something on the Internet and get someone to bid on it, but if you have two people standing at a live auction and if they want it, 90 percent of the time, they will buy it. And that’s how you will discover the true price of something.”

That’s why the future of auctioneering is bright, says Megan McCurdy of McCurdy Auction in Wichita.

At 28, she is the first woman to hold the Kansas state auctioneer title. She won the 2011 title this year and predicts more women will become auctioneers, particularly as they join family operations.

Ask her for a sample of her auctioneer’s chant, and she’ll tell you it is a slower rate than those at a livestock sale because she deals in estate and real estate sales.

She says the auctioneer’s chant is a small portion of what the business is all about.

“I’m in a family business where it is rewarding to work with your dad, brothers and mother. We help people. They come to us in times of need to help them dispose of things — maybe they are moving, going through a divorce, or someone’s died,” she said. “We step in and become part of their life.”

Contributing: Michael Pearce of The Eagle Reach Beccy Tanner at 316-268-6336
Read more: http://www.kansas.com/2011/07/10/1927789/buying-and-selling-kansas-one.html#ixzz1UOChWQUo

From Michigan Live.Com

ENSLEY – Arlene Culver beamed as she surveyed the farmyard lined with 72 antique tractors, old engines and other rusted farm equipment collected by her late father, Sherwood “Red” Casterline.

“My mother is the reason for this,” Culver said. “He always told her when he was gone, these tractors would take care of you.

“Well, it’s time for them to do their job.”

On Saturday, hundreds of antique farm equipment buffs from as far away as Texas will gather for an auction to sell off the rare tractors and engines Culver’s father dragged home one by one over 50 years of collecting.

Casterline died two years ago at age 92. The auction proceeds will provide care for Muriel Casterline, his ailing widow, Culver said.

For the parade of curiosity seekers and tractor buffs stopping by the farm at Algoma Avenue and 22 Mile Road, the collection offers a rare look into the world of farming whose time has passed.

There’s the rare 1934 Plymouth tractor, one of about 200 made before Chrysler Corp. sued and forced the company to change its name to Silver King. There are four Silver Kings on the yard, too.

Then there are Casterline’s beloved Hubers, rare giant iron and steel beasts dating back to the late 1920s.

There’s the giant blue Climax engine that once powered a snowblower in the Upper Peninsula. There are the small skid-mounted “hit and miss” engines used to power sawmills and threshers and antique outboard boat motors.

Don’t look for your run-of-the mill antique John Deeres, warned his 60-year-old son, Allan Casterline. “He liked the oddball stuff. He said everybody has a John Deere — the woods are full of them.”

An inveterate tinker, Casterline wasn’t much for painting or polishing his acquisitions. But he loved to get them running. “They’re all free, none of them are seized up,” Culver said.
Farm auction

Casterline loved finding the Graham Bradleys and Co Ops, tractors that were made in small Midwestern towns and offered through Sears & Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogs.

Also on the yard are the “Timber Tuggers” he built for his logging business out of old truck parts and frames. There’s also a 1947 Pontiac and 1950 Kaiser that found their way into his collection.

Allan Casterline said they can’t identify all of the engines and items they pulled out of the storage buildings his father built to house the collection.

“We don’t know what they are, but the auction guys said there are people that will know,” said Allan Casterline.

Auctioneer Don King said he’s been getting a lot of attention from collectors throughout the Midwest. Though he specializes in antique farm equipment, the Indiana auctioneer was not going to guess much the collection will fetch.

“I don’t know because I’ve never sold one before,” said King, pointing to an old Co Op orchard tractor with bug-eyed headlights. “I’ll know a lot more Saturday night.”

While most of the equipment will be sold, Arlene is keeping some treasures. Dearest to her are the tattered felt hat that her dad wore as he tinkered around the yard and the newspaper clippings and photos that featured his hobby.

And there’s the guestbook and pin map he asked visitors to fill out whenever they stopped by to look at his collection.

“He loved to talk to people,” said Culver, who is asking visitors to sign a new guestbook in honor of her father’s legacy.

Croton resident Bill Haan, one of dozens of curiosity seekers to stop by the homestead Thursday, said he was drawn to ingenuity and creativity found in the obsolete machines.

“It’s just amazing how archaic they are in design. But they functioned so well,” Haan said.