By Holly Hartigan
As her 1,411-pound steer lumbered out of the auction ring, Jolene Mesch, 13, studied the crowd of bidders, looking for the man who had just bought her animal. She marched straight over to shake his hand.
“I know the effort and time these kids put in,” said the buyer, David Knoll, of Hamburg, New York. “You’re not going to get better quality elsewhere.”
Mesch was one of 78 kids in the 4-H Livestock Program run by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Erie County. The program culminated with auctions on Aug. 9 and 16 at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, where kids in either 4-H or Future Farmers of America (FFA) sold the chickens, rabbits, turkeys, hogs, lamb, meat goats and steers they raised this year.