View allAll Photos Tagged auctionday
When I was rummaging through various closets today I happened to stumble over an amazing find! The glasses of Mahatma Shaun Gandhi!
What a coincidence after having just told his story yesterday.
I quickly realized that I was sitting on a possible fortune and immediately organized an auction.
The turn-up was quite impressive and after I sold some minor pieces from my prop department the crowd was ready for the main event.
And they bid and bid and bid… it was quite a sight to see but in the end there could only be one lucky bidder who got to take the glasses home with him and it was greek multi-billionaire Mr Pipo Pipolopolus.
I’m sure that you’ll be glad to hear that the proceeds from the auction all went to the Shaun Sheep Cookie Foundation.
One, two, three… Sold! :-)
Athens, GA (Clarke County). Copyright 2007 D. Nelson
It's busy this Wednesday because there was no auction last week due to the holiday.
This year's drought forces a lot of Georgia's cattle farmers to sell their stock as feeding the animals becomes a problem. I talked to a few farmers this day; they say the prices were fair. A woman from Texas, decked out in jewelry and on the road since April, was buying cattle to ship back to Texas to replenish stock lost during their drought last year. Due to this year's record rainfall, there is plenty of good grass in Texas waiting for the cows.
I was most impressed with the farmers that attended this auction...polite, very friendly and genuine; one look at them and you can tell they worked hard all their life. For the first time I realized how much sweat goes into that hamburger patty on our grill; it's a long and mostly nasty way from the farm to the local grocery store.
A lot of the animals auctioned off on this day are for immediate slaughter and eventually, all will meet that fate. Most of them were docile and shy, some were stubborn and defiant, none of them seemed very bright and all of them were somewhat frightened. Not a sight for the faint-at-heart. However, meat does not conveniently grow on a petri dish in the backroom of your local grocery store (not yet anyway). Meat comes from these living creatures that are raised by the millions (a total of 97.1 million head in the U.S., 2006) and live for the sole purpose of providing us with meat, leather as well as a myriad of products such as supplements, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, glue, cosmetics, buttons, pencils, and pretty much any processed food you eat unless you're a vegan. The list is long and frankly, I don't think cattle by-products can be entirely avoided even if one tried.
Controversial as the beef industry may be, I am not trying to stir things up, just posting these photos as cattle farms and cattle auctions are very much a part of rural Georgia, and America in general.
some of the chooks at the local auction. taken with wide angle lens so as to photograph the whole cage.
At the end of the Rally you have the choice to buy your car back for a flat rate of $250 which goes to the Cancer Council (great option if you think you'll do the rally again) or it goes up for auction. We chose the first option but went along to check out the action at Manheim and watch some of the other cars go under the hammer. Through the auction the Rally raised around $48,000 for the Cancer Council- part of the total funds raised from this year's event which currently stands at $1,537,885!