A full count of all the earnings is still pending, but as of Sunday's tally, Lewis County agriculturalists between the ages of 8 and 18 earned $698,000 from the Southwest Washington Junior Livestock Sale on Friday night at the Southwest Washington Fair.
Marilynn and Dave Fenn, of Boistfort, recall raising their kids in this lifestyle.
“A lot of those kids were lucky to get a dollar (per pound),” Marilyn tells me. “It’s amazing what the community has stepped up to do.”
On Friday, Elias Moerke’s grand champion pig, at 261 pounds, sold for more than $30 a pound to his proud father, Luke Moerke. Elias will put his profit toward trade school.
“What are you going to do with your pig?” I ask the senior Moerke.
“Eat it?” he responds, in more of a question than an answer, as if to say, “What else would we do?”
The auction takes place annually on Friday night of the fair. The New Judging Pavilion, starting at 5:30 and lasting past 10 p.m., is packed with people yelling, waving, laughing, crying and embracing.
All night, the crowd barely budges. They bring up pigs last so people will stick around for the whole thing.
My parents and I are here on a mission. I’m covering the event for the paper, and they intend to bid on a lamb and a pig. By the end of our quest for a fully stocked freezer, the experience would become our crash course in this subsection of Lewis County youth agriculture.
“We’re going to know the lamb’s name,” I point out, imagining that eating “Pearl” will be more of a challenge for me than the nameless lamb chops we buy at Trader Joes.
That’s of little importance to my mom and dad. Few things in life are more lovely than coming home from church on Christmas Eve to the aroma of lamb roasting in the oven. Plus, this is more honest. Why ignore where your meat comes from? Better yet, why not try to buy it in a way that benefits your local students and economy?
There are about 150 animals, each raised by children ages 8 to 18 who are members of a Lewis County 4-H or Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter. The sale is organized by countless volunteer hours, most of which come from the 12-member Southwest Washington Junior Livestock Sale Committee, with one representative each from the fair, livestock industry and the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce, and three each from 4-H, FFA, and at-large positions.
Committee Chair Jason Humphrey says this year had about 19 steers, seven dairy cows, three pens of rabbits, 35 lambs, 25 goats and 85 pigs. The animals are auctioned in that order by two auctioneers, Mark Kuhn and Cody Miller, who alternate throughout the night.
The latter is a classmate of mine from W.F. West High School, which has already made this a funny and Lewis County-esque situation. The auctioneers, too, donate their time to the program.
My parents and I know a good chunk of the crowd, many of whom know we’re total newbies.
Just after 7 p.m., the lambs are up. A good lamb, my dad was told, weighs about 130 to 140 pounds. The first lambs, grand champions, sell for more than $20 a pound. Some of my initial plans for interviews went south when sellers started crying. I didn’t want to intrude.
The animals are often both friends and full-time jobs. FFA and 4-H students buy the livestock, present projects to the committee and track dollars spent against their profit.
“They put it away for school. They buy their first car,” Humphrey says, later adding, “The profit for the kids has increased over time. I think maybe, people see the value in kids doing that project, having something to take care of, marketing themselves, meeting with businesses, shaking hands. I take it as the community sees value in it. Most of these kids aren’t going to stay in agriculture but the skills they learn will be valuable throughout their life.”
Buying an animal at the Junior Livestock Sale isn’t inexpensive.
You’re not just paying for the meat. You’re paying for the kids’ time, the love they poured into each project, and, as my parents and I would come to discover, the convenience of someone else taking care of butchering logistics.
The sun is nearing the horizon when the lamb we want is coming up. My parents get cold feet. They were walked through the process over the phone by one sale committee member but missed the opening ceremonies, where Humphrey explains the system.
When a sale is made, the auctioneer asks, “What do you want to do with your (lamb, pig, etc.)?”
There are three options: Some people want to “turn” it. They don’t want the animal, but they’re donating to the program. The following day, at a livestock auction in Chehalis, the animal will be sold for much less than Friday night’s price, and whoever bid on it at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds pays the difference. If they bought it for $16 per pound, for example, and it sold on Saturday at $4, they’ll donate the $12 per pound. All the money will go to the kid, either way.
Others want to take the animal home as is, or “self-haul.”
“Is this the kind of lamb we can put in the freezer? What if we don’t want to turn it and we don’t want to self-haul?” my parents ask me, as if I would know.
I saw Dave and Marilyn Fenn earlier. They’re good friends to my parents and they know this world better than we ever will, so I go ask them. It turns out Humphrey is their son-in-law. Convenient.
I ask them my parents’ questions, warning them that this is our first-ever visit to the livestock sale. The Fenns and Humphrey roar with laughter at how little we know. Yes, you can eat the lamb, and you should. If you don’t want to turn it or self-haul, they tell me, you choose one of four butchers.
Most people pick Finn’s Meats in Onalaska.
Now, our lamb is up.
“SOLD! At $15 a pound to Vander Stoep.”
His name is (or, was), “Bo-Bo.”
The lamb’s owner is Kolton Moon, a 16-year-old Adna High School student and track athlete.
Asked what he’ll do with his about $2,000 from the sale, Moon says it will be divided between next year’s 4-H project and his college fund.
“I’m really shooting for the stars, but, I’d love to go to an Ivy League or something. But, also, I’d love to go run track somewhere. So, if I could go to a D1 school, that would be awesome,” Moon says.
Just a few weeks ago, he was in Eugene, Oregon. for the National Junior Olympics. Moon runs the 110 and 300m hurdles.
I race back to my parents with the good news: They’re supporting an incredibly nice kid with high aspirations.
“We’re renaming the lamb ‘Scholarship,’” my dad says.
After grabbing food, we re-enter the pavilion to bid on a pig. My parents are frugal, and the idea of spending $10-$20 per pound on a pig discourages them. Eventually, they leave, and my dad suggests we attend the auction on Saturday.
I stuck around for a few more pigs, long enough to hear the pig barn roar with cheers of Lewis County youth. I ask one gentleman where the livestock auction is, and he tells me “the big blue barn off the Labree Road exit.”
That is not enough information.
I find Humphrey, who says pigs and sheep sell at 11 a.m. in a barn at 328 Hamilton Road, Chehalis. Great.
The next morning, Dad and I, in his Toyota Corolla, arrive at a gravel parking lot full of trucks and livestock trailers outside the big blue barn. It is 11 a.m. and the auction is well underway. They’ve made it through more than half of the pigs and, by the time we have a bidder number, they’ve all sold for around $1.50 to $2 per pound.
We’re standing in the barn, defeated, when Humphrey approaches me. He kindly introduces himself and offers to help with my story. When this interaction is nearly complete, my dad says, “I was instructed to come home after buying a pig. Do you think there is anyone here who’d be willing to sell theirs? We’d pay a premium.”
Humphrey considers this for a second.
“Sure, we might be able to make something work. Do you have a kill date?”
Dad responds, “Oh, uh, whenever.”
At this time, Humphrey informs us that the Saturday morning auction does not work like Friday night’s. Nobody deals with the butcher for you. If we’d been there on time to buy a pig — and we would have — my dad and I would have had to find a way to bring it home in the backseat of the Corolla.
Ultimately, our lateness was a blessing.
“You bought a lamb yesterday,” Humphrey notes. “You do know that was a lamb, and not a pig, right?”
We call the Fenns on our way from the auction. From the sound of it, they are crying with laughter over our ignorance. Which is fair, because we are, too.
When we recited Humphrey’s question about the kill date, Marilyn Fenn bursted with howls, saying “You probably don’t even know what that is, do you?”
No, we did not. Humphrey tells us the pandemic saw a huge surge in popularity for the Junior Livestock Sale, as the process ensures a speedy butchering. Most beef and pork will be back to the buyer in a few weeks, whereas, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it may have been months before people could get their animals slaughtered.
“And you don’t want the pig sitting in your backyard for six months,” he says.
I think the moral of our story is to ask questions before you accidentally become responsible for a live, 250-pound hog. We also had fun, and learned the value of the sale program. People in the New Judging Pavilion on Friday didn’t care about the prices. They were there to support the next generation of Lewis County farmers, track athletes and students.
Asked if he’d advise his younger self to participate in 4-H, Moon has no hesitation.
“Absolutely, 100%,” he says. “I think this is probably one of the greatest decisions that I’ve made. I mean, this is my main source of income. Plus, it’s an awesome way to get involved with the community. So, I’m very pleased that I started doing this.”
