Getting Ready for an Auction!

We have been cleaning up and getting ready for an auction.  My Daddy farmed for more than fifty years in one spot.  That is a lot of time for tools and equipment to accumulate.

For most of those years on that farm, we operated a family dairy farm.  Daddy led us through milking, corn-growing, silage-harvesting, hay-harvesting, and lots more.  That farm grew from a run-down place with an old house with a fallen-in chimney and an old-time wooden barn to a real showplace due to his leading through those things and working daily.  

After he retired, he continued to do what some might call hobby farming there, raising some steers and cutting the pastures and cropland grasses for hay to sell.  He kept most of the equipment used when it was a producing dairy farm, however.  

Since his passing, we have simply tried to maintain the farm.  There has been a spring hay-harvesting overseen by Mike and Mama.  A couple of guys were hired to come in and cut the grasses.  Mike raked it.  Those guys baled it, and one of Daddy's hay customers bought it and hauled it away.  Mike and a young fellow also took down some drooping and unnessesary fences.

Maintaining all that equipment is quite an undertaking and when it isn't being used on a daily basis the maintenance becomes another chore.  So, Mama has decided to sell the equipment and tools.  She hired a couple of guys who have become life-long friends beginning with our interaction as children involved with dairy cow shows at the fair.  Their Tradition Auction Services business is handling the back-breaking work and guiding us through the process.  

They came a couple of weeks ago and we took photos of the equipment to be posted online and in print advertisements.  

Click HERE to activate the collage above.  You will simply hover over a photo to expand it.

Recently, we tackled Daddy's tool shed.  What an undertaking!

There were lawn tractors, wheel barrows, carts, and lots more in this section.

This one held buckets, tool boxes, hand tools, welders, grinders, and loads more.

There were nuts, bolts, rolls of wire, buckets of electric fence materials, hand-carts, and even more.  We sorted through every single piece of it.  Every.  Single.  Piece.

Then, we grouped some of it into buckets and boxes

 and wired together different kinds of blades and pieces before laying it all out onto wagons.

Daddy grew up poor and he believed in making do till you could do better.  Then, when you could do better, you get the best you can to do with.  He believed you should never throw something away that might be useful later and that tool shed was a testament to his beliefs.  At one point as I was sifting through a section of tools that he used frequently to work on tires and the commercial lawn mower, I found no less than seven used spark plugs.  I was so mad at Daddy for saving those and a lot of other broken or used up items and leaving them for me to sort through without him.  I marveled at the number of hammers and wrenches he had accumulated to repair and maintain all that equipment no matter what field he happened to be in when the need arose.  It was a hot, emotional, and hard day's work.

When we finished with one section, Bob (one of the owners of the auction service) would lead us on to the next spot and we would gather and sort and load some more.  We kept Mike moving with hauling the trash as he also completed a project of getting up some fallen limbs and hauling them off to fill in a sink-hole.

I love how this photo shows Mama contemplating where to begin with this collection of pitch-forks, halters, and such!

When we got the wagons loaded with all that, the wagons were pulled across the lot to a barn to keep them in the dry as Daddy would have insisted.

Lynn, one of the owners of the auction service, crept along with those loaded wagons to keep everything stable and in place.

Lynn carefully backed the wagons into the barn to keep everything organized, dry, and ready for viewing when we pull them out in a couple of weeks.

It was probably the hottest day of the year with temperatures hovering around triple-digits in the shade.  Yet, we sifted through the years of accumulation that represented Daddy's daily hand tools and prepared them for a sale where other folks can take a bit of his legacy and put it to use in their own lives.  We hope you will join us on August 6th, Sale Day and that you will find something of useful or sentimental value to take home with you so that Daddy's legacy of hard work will be a part of your days.