Auction is a time-machine to a horse-driven world

If your heart yearns for the days when the world was powered by the horse, the Annual Small Farmers Journal Horsedrawn Equipment Auction and Swap Meet is your ticket back to a simpler time.

You’ll find every kind of equine-related relic, ready to serve your needs in the modern world. Whether it’s yard art, a team of draft horses to plow a field or a carriage that once carried the Ladies in Waiting to the Queen of England, you’re likely to find it here.

Held at the Sisters Rodeo Grounds, four miles east of Sisters on Highway 20, the auction runs from Friday, April 21 through Sunday, April 23.

The auction is the main event of the year for the Small Farmers Journal (SFJ), and pulls the magazine’s family together for an occasion that many come to year after year.

“For 28 years we have strived to make this event a piece of living theater, a showcase for relic technologies, a learning and sharing pot-luck-supper of a market festival,” said SFJ publisher Lynn Miller. “The formula seems to work because folks keep coming back by the thousands and from all over North America.”

The SFJ is a quarterly, published in Sisters. It celebrates farming done the old way, using horses or mules, and the rural lifestyle. Miller injects a bit of philosophy, a bit of humor and a lot of information into each issue.

At the auction site, two large selling tents seat bidders and lookers waiting for their treasure to come under the auctioneer’s hammer. With nearly 3,000 items consigned for the auction, the wait often is long, if entertaining.

Paul Hunter, a Washington State poet and winner of the 2005 Washington State Book Award sums it up by saying, “The auction itself is a rolling thunder of drama that builds up and dissipates, over and over. The thing there is that not all participants are equal; there are players and watchers, winners and losers, experts and neophytes.”

This year, Miller says there are several special carriages and horses consigned. Among the carriages are the Brougham formerly owned by the Queen of England; a Victorian coach used by Warner Bros. in Gone with the Wind and The Virginian; a Yellowstone Coach; a horse drawn hearse; and an eight-up of “superb draft horse show harness.”

Exceptional horse consignments include a six-up of prize-winning Belgian show horses and a Gypsy Caravan horse.

Nearly 100 vendors set up for the swap meet where buyers and browsers can peruse stalls displaying hats, antiques, crafts, clothing, windmills, handmade boots, baskets, wool/fleece products, cowboy collectibles, horse gear, wrought iron goods, chicken coops and carvings.

Demonstrations of blacksmithing, Western hat making and bio-diesel production take place at various times over the event. Sunday’s activities start with a horse soundness clinic, before the horse auction. Of special note is a free driving demonstration on Friday and Saturday mornings, conducted by Clay Maier of Sisters, trainer of the Knapp Friesians.

He will use the Friesians in his demonstration.

Sneak previews of goods are allowed on Thursday, April 21, and bidders’ numbers can be acquired then too.

The is free, but there is a parking fee of $3 per day or $5 for three days.