ROME TOWNSHIP – Fair animals shared the show ring Saturday with dollar signs as more than 170 buyers registered for this year’s livestock sale.

Saturday, July 15, 2000

ROME TOWNSHIP – Fair animals shared the show ring Saturday with dollar signs as more than 170 buyers registered for this year’s livestock sale.

The best steers, hogs and lambs fetched the top price, from $2,000 to $3,000 – well below the market price.

"It’s a show of support for the fair itself," said Dick Adcock of National City Bank.

Adcock stood outside the sale ring, tracking bids and waiting for the right moment.

"I came up through 4-H and FFA myself and try to support them now, too," he said.

If young adults have something to become involved with, it makes their entire lives better. And 4-H is that kind of program, he added.

County commissioner George Patterson said the livestock sale is what 4-Hers work toward all year long.

"If kids work themselves to death and raise a quality animal, they deserve to make a little money," Patterson said.

Patterson and each Democratic Party candidate, as well as the party itself, put some money on the Reserve Champion hog, then had to go a little more, but it was worth it, he said.

Michael Williams received their $2,196 bid.

Although the markets or the buyers end up with the meat, the extra cash from the fair sales often ends up in college savings or car funds, where it will be put to good use, Patterson said.

"4-H is hard to beat," he said. "It teaches kids respect and integrity."

Pedro Lads and Lassies club member Jennifer Howard, who waited hours Saturday to sell her project steer, handed a picture of it to the lucky buyer after the auction.

"It was a lot of hard work but it was awesome," Miss Howard said.

Now, it’s time to start over again.

"We’ve already got him picked out and in the barn," she said.

Prices came in a little higher Saturday than in last year’s sale, 4-H office assistant Becky Cremeens said.

"Almost all the hogs sold for more than $2 a pound," she said, adding that last year averaged between $1 and $1.50 a pound.

That extra money is what makes the buyers at the fair so special – it all goes to the 4-Hers and they know it, she said.

Champion animal winners drew top dollar at the fair sale.

Auctioneers set prices higher – and supporters paid them – for Michael Williams’s grand and reserve champion hogs, Nathan Davenport’s grand champion and Deanna Ross’s reserve champion rabbits, K.D. Payne’s grand champion and Holly Wilson’s reserve champion tobacco, Kristin Thacker’s grand champion and Jeremy Thompson’s reserve champion chickens, Travis Wilson’s grand champion and Nathan Lambert’s reserve champion steers, and Carrie Collier’s grand champion and Elizabeth Diamond’s reserve champion lambs.