Lake County Ag Online -- Watch Stip Auction Video from Machinery Pete

Farm fans, auction fans, thank goodness for YouTube. Greg Peterson—a.k.a. Machinery Pete—covers farm auctions all over the continent. He came to Lake County Tuesday to watch used equipment sell for six figures. Machinery Pete shot this video of some of the big bidders at the Stip Brothers estate auction. See one big tractor go for $290K, the day's biggest single sale.



Then head to 6:30 in this video, see the 2003 Kobelco excavator go for $120K. That's just part of the day's take of over $5 million.

Stip Estate Auction: Photos!

I've uploaded my photos from the Stip Brothers' estate auction to Flickr. I had to head in to work before the bidding started at Stip HQ, but I'll bet the auctioneers will still be chanting away through the rows of tires and tanks and trucks and tractors after lunch. I'll also bet the local diners are going to see a surge in business today—grease up those spatulas!

click here to see more pix on Flickr!

I also noticed one enterprising neighbor put up a sign in his driveway reading "Tool Sale". There's that good Prairie Village thinking folks get around here when they do their rummage sales at Jamboree time: put up a sign, set out some old stuff, and out of a thousand people driving by, at least a couple are bound to stop and look and maybe hand over money for something cluttering your shed. Kind of like spam... but less intrusive, more voluntary.

Stip Auction Draws Huge Attendance

The Stip estate auction is off and running. I'm working on some photos of the huge lines of machinery, not to mention the hundreds of trucks and occasional cars filling the fields and roads around the farm headquarters. Stay tuned for a photo update later today.

But for now, a quick count: on my drive north back to Madison, along six miles of 454th Street, in seven minutes I encountered 11 cars with Lake County plates, 23 cars with South Dakota plates from outside Lake County, and 18 cars sporting out-of-state plates. (There was also one car with SD plates reading "JESUS". That's what he'll be saying when he gets to Stips' and tries finding a parking spot.) That's 52 cars, mostly from elsewhere along a road where I might usually meet just a handful of local drivers.

Stip Auction Tuesday -- Chance to Boost Small Farms?

Advertising hype usually sets off my B.S. meter. When someone tells me a sale will be the "Absolute Auction of the Decade," I'm naturally skeptical.

Wieman Auction of Marion is making this claim straight-faced about the Stip Brothers estate auction Tuesday right here in Lake County. They may not be exaggerating. This auction is a "complete dispersal" of the accumulated farm wealth of Milo, Art, and Don Stip. The auction bill takes up nearly a full page of the Madison Daily Leader (and remember, MDL pages are still the good full size pages, not those wimpy skinny pages you get from that Sioux Falls paper). The Stip brothers had no wives or kids to spend their money on, so they bought equipment. Lots and lots of equipment, more than they could use themselves. Tractors, skidloaders, payloaders, excavators, semis, trucks, a Hummer (2006 H2, 12K+ miles, current bid $8750)... almost all with low hours or low miles. On auction day, the farm headquarters six miles south of town, 23989 454th Avenue, will look more like an implement dealership.

There's already all sorts of out-of-state interest and online buzz about the auction. I won't even begin to calculate how much all that equipment would sell for. But look ahead two weeks to the land sale, December at the Davison County Fairgrounds just west of Mitchell. 3356.37 acres of "mostly all tillable land" across six counties with some of the highest land values in South Dakota. At the rate for cropland calculated by SDSU in June 2009, the land could sell for over $10 million.

No word on the auction bill as to whether the land for sale includes the ditches Stips illegally filled. Buyer beware... and check with the courthouse!

Now just a wild thought: Imagine how many small farms we could equip with this enormous stock of machinery accumulated by just three old codgers. Imagine if we could take the 21 quarters of the Stip estate and turn it into 21 farms, where 21 families could make a living off the land. Sure, big land barons contribute to the local economy, but 21 new independent farm families would contribute even more, each building good homes, each sending kids to school, each buying groceries and gas in town, each bringing their own human capital to community activities and volunteer organizations.

Imagine if there were a visionary developer who could scoop up just the quarters here in Lake County and a portion of the equipment, divide the tracts, and market the land to folks eager to make a living in intensive human-scale farming. All those new families... all those kids bringing state money to the school district....

I don't need a tractor, but I'll probably drop by the Stip auction Tuesday to wonder at three men's riches. But I'll also wonder how much richer Lake County would be with men and women for each of those machines... or even every dozen of those machines.

Stips Break Law, Township Won't Prosecute

I really need to get rich. Apparently I could then do whatever I want in Lake County.

This week's case in point: the Stip brothers. Lake County land barons Donald and Arthur Stip, evidently not able to make a living on the vasts swaths of Lake County they already own, have been filling ditches and planting crops right out to road's edge.

Reminder: ditches are necessary. They keep roads from flooding. That's why filling or otherwise blocking them is against the law (SDCL 31-21-12 and 31-21-13).

According to Elisa Sand's report in Tuesday's MDL, Craig Johannsen, member of both the Clarno Township Board and Lake County Commission, described for the county commission Tuesday the road repairs the township has had to perform due to the Stips' illegal ditch filling. Johannsen asked that the county join the township in asking for $20,219.24 from Stips to cover the road repairs. The county agreed.

But wait a minute: what's this "asking" business? Stips are breaking the law. If I do damage to public property—drop library books in the lake, knock a bridge down, whatever—Sheriff Hartman and States Attorney Meyer won't come to my door asking anything. They'll break out a can of cuff-'n'-stuff and have Judge Tucker liberate more than a few dollars from my wallet.

So why, as Commission Ron Jorgenson asked at Tuesday's meeting, does the county not order the Stips to clean out those ditches? Wouldn't that solve the problem of having to repair the road all the time?

Johannsen said that issue would have to be pursued at the township level, and he doesn't think it would have the backing of the full board. In addition to the Stip family, he said, three or four other farmers also farm the ditches in Clarno Township [Elisa Sand, "County Seeks Injunction Against Stip Brothers," Madison Daily Leader, 2008.12.02, p. 1].

Ah. So I don't have to be rich to do whatever I want. I just need to get three or four other people to break the law with me, and no one will prosecute. Brilliant.

Bottom line: Stips, pay for the mess you've made, and clean your ditches. And Clarno Township (and everyone else), enforce the law.