This weekend is my family's annual show lamb sale. As I am preparing to go home for the sale, I was thinking about the very first sale that we took lambs to. Looking back, it's safe to say that we've come a long way!
Mr. Franklin, cousin Whitney and I loaded up into his silver Ford truck, hooked onto his tan gooseneck trailer and away we went. The trip was pretty typical for a Franklin-style outing. The dashboard was full of snuff cans, hauling papers for the last 30 years, and a half-eaten bag of chicken gizzards. (Poor cousin Whitney may not have seen this as typical, but I didn't blink). We drove the endless road to Capitan.....aka the middle of nowhere. It was freezing, snowing and not pleasant. There were very few buyers there, our chains on the lamb rack kept breaking so we were continuously catching lambs as they were trying to run away (probably back home where it was not negative 57 degrees) and we were not having fun. We sold a few lambs....we may have actually sold all of them because I don't specifically remember bringing any home. I'm sure we averaged about 125 bucks a head.
To give you an idea of how enjoyable this trip was, on the way home Mr. Franklin said, "Girl, if we have to do that again, it's going to drive me to drink." As it was, it drove him to stop at a convenience store to get a Swisher Sweet cigar and puff on it the rest of the way home.
Now, thank goodness, we no longer trek to Capitan. And we no longer have to use that stupid lamb rack. And we no longer have to wash the lambs before the sale. Hallelujah! Our families rent out the fairgrounds and have the sale there. We usually have around 200 buyers on hand, we feed everyone lunch, give out door prizes and sell some lambs. Last year, we sold around 70 total between the two families. Not too bad.
Hopefully this year will go just as well. Sheep sale weekend is one of my favorites of the year--I love getting to catch up with our friends and customers. It's sort of like a showing family reunion.
Yep, we've come a long way since Capitan. As much as I enjoy and prefer our current sale format over that chaos, I would go back and re-do that first sale in a heartbeat now. The sale this year won't be the same without the little man in the golf cart running into everything and everyone in sight. So much of why we've been able to come a long way can be credited to him....in the sheep sale context and in life.
Maybe I'll buy some chicken gizzards to put on my dashboard for the drive home, for old time's sake.
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