4-H, FFA kids rely on private sales after fairs canceled this spring

When Stacy Hayes of Mt. Pleasant decided to put on a livestock show this summer, she knew it would be a small piece of normalcy in a year disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The August event hosted at Porchview Stables and Riding Arena in Mt. Pleasant allowed kids to show animals they worked all year to raise, an event that typically would take place at county fairs across the state, ending in an auction that children and young adults in 4-H and Future Farmers of America rely on to sell livestock.

But, for the first time in decades, the coronavirus pandemic upended fairs, including the Westmoreland Fair, Big Butler Fair and Fayette County Fair, forcing children to find private buyers for their animals in an economy ravaged by the pandemic and with area meat markets flooded with demand.

“With businesses being shut down, they might not have had the money to purchase (livestock) this year, but, hopefully, most of the kids reached out to their previous buyers and were able to move them that way,” said Rick Ebert, who owns a dairy farm in Derry Township and is president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Those relationships built between buyers and 4-H and FFA children at fair auctions were key to making private sales this spring, Ebert said.

The Penn State Extension 4-H club in Westmoreland County also helped connect kids with interested buyers, said Lyndsey Androstic, educator for 4-H youth development at Penn State Extension. Children would provide information on what animals they had to sell, which was passed on to buyers. From there, the sale was private.

While Androstic said most kids in the county who wanted to sell their animals were able to do so, the process was made more difficult when potential buyers, such as area meat markets, were unable to participate because of demand, which spiked this spring when fears of a meat shortage sent people to their local butchers.

“We work seven days a week, and we just do what we can do and if I don’t get it done today, we’ll do it tomorrow,” said Joe Espey, owner of Espey’s Meat Market in East Huntingdon. “We just keep going on and on and on, and, hopefully, one of these days, we’ll get caught up, but from now till the end of the year, it’s going to be solid cutting every day.”

Espey, who has orders booked through May, noted, “I think everybody’s just scared on account of this covid. They want to make sure, if it hits again, everybody’s supposed to stay home, that they’re going to have meat in their freezers.”

Typically, Espey purchases animals auctioned at Fayette, Westmoreland, Somerset and Washington fairs. This year, he left room to purchase animals from people he previously worked with, but was unable to accept new customers due to the backlog in orders.

Suzanne Boyce, co-owner of Kistaco Farm in Kiski Township, reported similar struggles. Products from four pigs raised on the farm last year are completely sold out. Six pigs were recently taken to a local butcher, products Boyce expects to move quickly. She noted they have not taken part in private purchases.

“Demand has gone down since the early part of the pandemic, but we still have a higher demand than we had previously, so I’m assuming it’s going to stay higher than what we knew pre-covid-19,” she said. “But it’s not going to be like what it was in the first two months of covid-19, which was overwhelming.”

Despite those challenges, events held over the summer did help connect kids to buyers, although, “It was different because there wasn’t a sale and I don’t think kids did get as much money for their animals as they would have in the traditional auction sense, but they were able to still sell them and market them,” Androstic said.

Emma Hayes, 16, was one local 4-H member who was able to sell animals in the midst of the pandemic.

“It was a little more challenging this year to sell your animals, but I think everybody kind of found a way and they did it,” Stacy Hayes said.

Now, 4-H and FFA leaders are looking toward next year, hopeful that auctions will be presented in a more traditional style.

“It was really heartbreaking when the fairs got canceled and then (other) things are getting canceled and then it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, this is going on way longer than we thought,’” Androstic said.