It’s just another farm auction until it’s an equipment auction for tractors, trailers, and tools that have been in your family as long as you can remember. In the early months of 2001, a lengthy farm auction bill described those items. The hundred-plus head of dairy cattle had already been sold and shipped. Two of my brothers, who’d purchased the farm when Dad retired, decided to stop farming. Milk prices had dropped, payments on the two Harveststore sileage bins ate all their profits, and they wanted out of the daily grind of dairy farming. A complicated resolution, hammered out in numerous meetings with family members, lawyers, and accountants, deeded the land back to Mom except for 35 acres.

The 500-acre plot of land that is both farmland and forest, sandy soil and lakeshore property was bought by my paternal grandfather in 1927. With no one else in our family interested in farming, the land once again belonged to Mom. After talking to her about the pending equipment sale, I sat down and cried. The grief and loss had actually started three years earlier. Mom turned 86 the first year she didn’t plant a garden. Whenever I looked at that empty half-acre that once represented hours of sweaty toil as well as her bounteous meals of succulent lettuces, tomatoes, peas, and potatoes, I wept.

The auction itself took place on a rainy morning turned to blue skies and seventy seven degrees. A slight breeze and occasional puffs of clouds provided brief respite from the sun. Mom sat in a lawn chair, holding an umbrella as a sunscreen. Neighbors, primary school friends, and the brother of a guy I’d dated in high school stopped by her chair to visit with both of us. Dad’s second cousin, a man in his nineties, reminisced about the day the whole extended family had herded the cattle six miles from a rental property to Grandpa’s new farm. When the 600-pound bull, not known for his gentle demeanor refused to walk the plank bridge, Grandpa, his sons, and their cousins goaded the bull to swim across the Mississippi River.

Between such reminisces and assorted snatches of conversation, I turned my attention back to the auction. Fve truck beds filled with small equipment lined the bidding area. Gas and oil storage containers, nuts and bolts, wrenches and de-wormers, hoses, ladders, branding irons, compressors and tools I couldn’t have even named were sold off individually or in lots. The odor of engine oil mixed with the heady aroma of lilac bushes as well as the first whiffs of hot dogs being lifted out of the frying pan at the food stand. Three rows of tractors stood in the clover fields along with corn and haying equipment, choppers, manure spreaders, and an antique pick-up.

The auctioneer worked the crowd, starting high, then dropping low until the bidding started. “You got the buy of the day,” he stated to the man who bought the corn planter, worth way more than that day’s price of $2,000. He apologized to my brothers when one tractor sold for less than $3,000. But prices on other items went up and all in all, it was a successful sale.

After the auction, I walked on the road that runs alongside the farm. I felt as if I knew every tree and valley beside that road. I remembered the summer it was paved. I also remember Mom’s anger when the county sprayed the roadside with chemicals, killing not only the insects, but the foliage. A happier memory is also embedded in my bodily cells. One Sunday wintry morning we couldn’t get to church because the road hadn’t yet been plowed. Instead of the minister’s sermon, easily forgotten, my siblings and I were allowed to ride our sleds into the deep ravine filled with sparkling drifts of new snow. Perhaps the only Sunday of my childhood when we weren’t in church provided a memorable nature sermon.

A mile-long strand of orange baling twine has lain beside the road for several summers. It must have come undone from some farmer’s pick-up, maybe my brothers’. Baling twine is designed not to disintegrate. Neither are the juice cans, pop bottles, and sundry other forms of junk that litter the roadway. However, two baby painted turtles are decomposing. One, tipped onto it’s back, unable to right itself, died there. The other had a cracked shell and decapitated head; both turtles victims of our propensity for speed.

Years previously, after Dad’s funeral, I’d sat on a downed birch log by the side of this same road. Its bark and decomposing nature spoke to me – like the turtles – of the fragile lifespan of all things. I wanted to romanticize the stretch of roadway, to rhapsodize over the wild strawberry blossoms next to the birch log. However, when I bent over to inhale their faint fragrance, I saw the poison ivy plants intermingled with the heady blossoms. Nature encompasses all – life, death, and decay – as well as decomposing family farms via auction.

Although I couldn’t find any statistics on the number of family farm auctions, I did find statistics on the number of farms in Minnesota. Over the years these numbers have dwindled from a high of 189,000 farms in 1925, two years prior to when Grandpa purchased the land, to 81,000 when the auction took place. At the time of this article, there are only roughly 65,000. That decline is significant. Those statistics don’t speak the language of loss, the human emotions of grief, or the nature of change.

On the day of the farm equipment auction, I walked back to the farmhouse, back to the land that holds so many memories of my childhood. On that day, I couldn’t be certain how many more trips “up north” I’d have. Mom was 89 yet still lived in the five-bedroom farmhouse of my childhood. Every time I visited her, her strong Scandinavian capabilities had faded a little more. Her physical ability to accomplish so much, bear ten children, grow ninety per cent of our food, harvest and preserve it, and sew most of my sisters’ and my clothing, has gradually diminished. She was not the type to easily give in. She didn’t happily accept the fate of our family farm.

I accepted the reality of the sale, the inevitability of it, but as I returned to the farmhouse after my walk, I grieved our losses. I held my mother, kissed her head, her cheek, her lips and cried. I looked out the window at the few remaining farm implements, waiting to be driven or hauled away from yesterday’s auction and I cried. I cried because I did not know how many days I’d have to kiss my mother. I did not know how many days I’d have to walk that roadway. I couldn’t stop the inexorable march of time and all life’s changes. On that day, I didn’t know what the next step would be for our family farm. And so, I grieved.

Mom died at age 97 in 2009. Our family was fortunate in that we nine surviving siblings agreed to sell the farm. For nine siblings to all agree on something is a monumental testament to our parents and their ability to teach us how to get along. A farmer with deep pockets purchased the entire 500 acres. He welcomes our family members to walk the property whenever we want, which I often do when I’m up north. I can look back on my childhood memories, on the land my family used to own, on the auction day, and accept the outcome. I can acknowledge my rural roots, accept the changing face of today’s agriculture, grieve my losses, and move on. Nearly fifteen thousand other farm families in Minnesota have had to do the same.

The land my grandfather purchased had been owned, farmed, and developed by at least one previous settler. I want to acknowledge that the land originally belonged to the Ojibwe people, also known as the Chippewa.

The statistics were accessed on 8/20/2025 via a Google search. Documents linked to the search are noted.

In 1925, there were 189,00 farms in Minnesota.

In 1984, there were 103,000 farms in Minnesota * 1984 Legislative report by Jim Nichols, MN Commissioner of Agriculture.

In 2000, there were 81,000 farms in Minnesota data from the 2005 MN Agricultural Statistics report

In 2022, there were 65,531 farms in Minnesota data from the 5-year USDA Agriculture report

Mary Berg is a retired associate professor of clinical education, a resume writer, published author, and poet. Her first poetry collection, A Mystic in the Mystery: Poems of Spirit, Seasons, and Self was released in 2024. Her website is: marybergresumewriter.com.

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