Sunny skies greet large crowd at Hazelhurst spring consignment auction

HAZELHURST — Sunny skies greeted the crowd at the Hazelhurst Spring Consignment Auction on Saturday.

A couple thousand potential buyers – and some onlookers – gathered at the 30-acre sale site between Polo and Milledgeville all day to bid on farm machinery and a lot of other “odds and ends”.

Mother Nature provided the sunshine and since recent rains had left farm fields too muddy to work in, hundreds of items for sale drew the crowd as area farmers came to sell and buy.

“There were approximately 2000-plus in attendance plus 400-plus online,” said Sheryl Hopkins, of Public Auction Service. “After a week of unsettled weather, Saturday was a beautiful day. The mud dried up and to the best of our knowledge no one got stuck.”

The annual event is held every spring and includes farm machinery, automobiles, lawn tractors and just about whatever else someone brings in the week before sale day.

“Each sale has a unique item. This sale had a three-hole outhouse, which sold for $650. People are amazing!” Hopkins said.

The event has become a generational “must do” for some area farmers.

Cayson Wolf, 5, of Dixon, was at the sale with his dad. Cayson checked out a vintage hay baler as his dad watched the bidding action on a White farm tractor.

The Polo Lions Club operated the main food booth in the center of the sale site. The covered building was a popular place for visitors to grab a hot dog, cheeseburger or pork chop sandwich and chat with friends and neighbors.

“There was a good crowd out at the sale with the weather being nice. The Lions Club sold out of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, pork loin sandwiches, hot dogs and brats by 2 p.m. It was a very good day for the Polo Lions Club,” said Lion Jeff Short.

The sale has been held west of Polo along Milledgeville Road – near the tiny hamlet of Hazelhurst – ever since Sheryl’s mother and father, Ruth and Ellery Shank, hosted the first sale on their 30-acre farm site in the 1940s. It started as a venue for local farmers to buy and sell farm machinery. Now it’s held twice a year – once in the spring and once in the fall.

The fall sale will be Saturday, Sept. 7. For more information, email slpaspolo@gmail.com

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Cayson Wolf, 5, of Dixon, checks out a hay baler at the Hazelhurst Annual Spring Consignment Auction Saturday, April 6, 2024. Cayson was at the sale with his dad. The annual event is held each year on a farm along Milledgeville Road, between Polo and Milledgeville. (Earleen Hinton)