It was a sunny, beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest, and I decided to take the kids to Retired Farmer Disneyland. It’s a place that sells the best burgers in the area. It has all the best stories, and today the parking lot was filled with antique farm equipment and animals of every sort. 

That’s right; it was the local auction barn. My kids are convinced that it’s the place where I bring cows and trade them for donuts. 

There was a cacophony of sights and smells, as it was also the small-animal sales day, and thankfully, Mrs. Faber wasn’t there; otherwise, we would have had to come home with cute goats and more chickens for the world's least profitable chicken enterprise, even with eggs being $10 a dozen. 

Sitting down in the cafe area is a fascinating experience. It’s typically filled with retired dairy farmers talking about all the latest gossip and what everyone is doing wrong. It’s also filled with small-animal warriors who are looking for the latest deal on chickens or goats. It’s also the place where I had a conversation with my kids about how our 4-year-old chickens probably need a career change, and this is probably the place they need to come to. 

Overhearing others talking about turning chickens into chicken soup and tamales provided a backdrop that nearly caused tears and a public outburst. This discussion was short-lived and abated with maple bars with sprinkles. It quickly became apparent that the unprofitable egg-laying enterprise was destined to continue for quite some time.

The next group at the auction barn after the retired dairy farmers and small-animal people are the backyard cattle guys. After years of running cattle on their 20 acres, they are feeling particularly smug with record-high cattle prices. The parking lot has had a marketable improvement in pickup trucks. The '90s trucks being held together with baling twine and filled with red dye diesel have been traded in for trucks that hail from this decade and a few more tanks with green diesel.

This particular day was also the equipment auction day, and the lot was filled with farm machinery that was self-sufficient to machinery that requires a single horsepower to operate. It was a complete history of the progression of farm equipment throughout the years, from old milk cans that were thrown onto the back of trucks to be taken to town to a singular milking robot. There was also stuff that clearly signaled a farm wife told her husband that he finally needs to clean out the equipment shed and sell the items he saved for a rainy day. There were tires from a 1960s hay rake, rubber belts that never got used and gates and pipes that finally saw the light of day after 50 years.

The auction yard is a fascinating place, as it is part museum, part social event and place of business. It’s also a place for donuts and, fortunately, we were able to get out of there without any additions to the goat, mule or chicken herd on the Faber Family Funny Farm.