Farm auctions full of gems

link Audra Brown

Look, on the farm! It’s a loader, it’s a skidsteer, it’s an ATV! No! It’s. It’s! It’s...

I have no idea what it is, but it’s either genius or the silliest thing you’ve ever seen.

This story begins, as many of the great ones do, at a farm auction.

Every sale has a certain amount of the same things. There are usually some tractors in various states of repair and hue. Some trucks, trailers, and farming implements that may or may not still be of any use. Piles of wire, posts, and pipe of all sorts. Two or three mysterious stacks of tires that if they have a chance of holding air are worth spending a few bucks on. Might even put one on one of those pickups that you buy hoping it’ll run for a few months before you bring it right back to sell it on to some other hopeful soul.

The bread and butter is always there, but the fun really gets going when the more exotic items show up on the auction block.

Anything that is not standard farm equipment, yet can be described by the acronym, ATV, is always in great demand. Four-wheelers that look like they’ve spent more time upside down in the manure pile will never go cheap, even if the keys are lost and the gas smells older than should ever be allowed to sit in a tank.

A more recent addition to the hot-item slate is the four-wheeler’s big brother that comes equipped with actual, feet-in-the-floor seats, a steering wheel, and a built-in rear container that can — if you’re feeling generous — be called a dumping bed.

On the opposite end from the sporting vehicle is the ever-useful skidsteer. It’s small and maneuverable with more available attachments than a lego set and can go where no loader has probably gone before.

Every now and then, something equally cool, but amazingly strange also appears at the auction. Like a rig that seems to be an adorable hybrid between a skidsteer and a large ATV. No one knew what to call it, some called it unkind names, and one farmer looked at the bizarre vehicle and thought, “Now, that’s just the thing I need.”

Audra Brown likes to buy stuff that is so strange ... it just might go cheap. Contact her at: [email protected]