Virtual auction stands in for Sonoma County Fair livestock sales

County fairs have always been about celebrating agriculture and honoring those who put food on Americans’ dinner tables. But 2020 is no normal year, as hundreds of 4H and Future Farmers of America youth exhibitors were reminded of when this year’s Sonoma County Fair was canceled due to the pandemic.

But their months of toil and the money they poured into about 300 livestock animals won’t be in vain, despite the coronavirus.

On Saturday morning, the fair is hosting an online auction for the young ag students to sell their lambs, goats, hogs and steers at a virtual market instead of the Lyttle Cow Palace at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

In May, the Healdsburg Future Farmers Country Fair was forced to do the same and reported a successful, if unusual, auction.

Sonoma County Fair organizers used that and others’ experiences this summer to plan their own remote livestock auction for junior exhibitors.

“We have learned a lot along the way,” said Sonoma County Fair exhibits coordinator Heather Borck. “We’re all trying to do the best we can to support our kids. Industrywide, worldwide really, we’re all doing things we’ve never done before.

“It is difficult not seeing our fair community this summer, because we are in fact such a community. But it’s all about supporting our kids.”

FFA members Austin Maners, 18, and his sister, Emily, 16, won’t be able to show their steers and lambs, but are making the most of a difficult situation.

They are the third generation in the family to show livestock.

“It’s tough because the fair is the pinnacle of it all,” said their mom, Susan Maners of Santa Rosa. “This will be the first time in 10 years our family hasn’t had a fair. Before that it was nieces and nephews.”

Youths like the Maners typically buy their market animals as many as nine months ahead of fair time. They feed, nurture, groom and care for the animals all with an eye on showing at the fair, perhaps receiving awards but also trying to win top-dollar bids to help them recoup expenses and fund their projects.

The kids learn animal science, as well as responsibility, time management and problem solving, skills that last a lifetime, said fair CEO Becky Bartling.

“It’s a great learning process,” she said. “It teaches them budgeting, ethics, all of those things. When you take on a project like this where you’re raising an animal, there’s a lot of commitment. They’ve got to be there multiple times a day taking care of their animals.”

While that won’t be lost, the final reward of showing their animals in a public forum and enjoying the camaraderie of the larger farming community will be missed. The fair, called off in late April this year for the first time since World War II, was to begin this coming Friday and end Aug. 16.

“It’s very important to do something for the kids so they can get their animals processed and moved on,” Bartling said. “With the fair canceled, there’s lots of disappointment in many realms, but particularly with our kids. So this was something very important we wanted to do.”

The exhibitors had to market their animals a little differently this year, although they still made presentations to potential buyers, explaining their project, budget and their intentions for the money they raise.

“It didn’t stop them from getting a good, finished end product,” Susan Maners said of her kids’ projects. “Agriculture in general has lots of ups and downs. Any farmers or ranchers, they experience it all the time. These kids have experienced loss in other ways in their lives, but this is devastating. It’s a fun event and there is such great support from the community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 707-521-5470 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @loriacarter.