Local farmers and other generous donors are busy gathering their best products and services for the annual Mennonite Central Committee heifer relief sale.
The event has raised more than $4.6 million for MCC programs around the globe since its 1981 inception.
MCC executive director Rick Cober Bauman says the success of the sale is largely due to the “generous visionary spirit of the organizers and the donors.”
“They’ve got their sights on making a significant six-figure contribution every year and they’ve come though some really hard times. The dairy industry was hit hard with mad cow disease and they pushed through that.”
He said they need that level of inspired commitment at the core of the event in order to have all the other things fall into place as well.
There will be a variety of products, services, and of course heifers, on sale.
“It often starts with some dairy-related equipment,” Cober Bauman said. “Somebody might have some dairy related antiques or the Holstein Journal, which is a magazine that many dairy farmers read, somebody might have their collection that they’re donating that isn’t missing any editions and is in mint condition.
There will also be a Holstein cow woodcarving from Harold Erb up for sale, along with other products like straw, semen, and feed. Cober Bauman noted the late Eli Martin used to donate hand-carved wooden sleds that fetched hundreds of dollars alone.
“It brings people from across the wide range,” Cober Bauman said. “There are many of those Mennonite and Amish groups represented, but also many other neighbours. It’s a broad community even that’s not limited to the Mennonite community.”
The event was inspired by the New Hamburg relief sale, which was largely food and handicrafts. He said this sale continues to be a remarkable gathering of all the talents the dairy community has to share.
“It’s a very unique and genius way of their gifts being applied to a fundraising effort that benefits MCC’s work,” Cober Bauman said.
The funds raised are used on a where-needed-most basis. These types of fundraisers are crucial for MCC because sometimes it can be hard to raise money for specific types of work, like peace building.
“This gives us the ability to work on difficult issues in forgotten places,” Cober Bauman said.
“That could be an emergency or a peace building response in Nigeria, a country that has experienced horrific violence in the past year and a half. We have some strong peace building work happening in Nigeria. We’re also responding in Ukraine, which is in the news but when people are hurting each other we’re less likely to give to that response than if a natural disaster hurt people.”
The Mennonite Savings and Credit Union will be donating a prestige heifer, which they’ve done for a number of years. More than 100 dairy heifers have already been registered to be sold at the relief sale.
The sale is February 20 at Carson Auction Facilities in Listowel at 11 a.m.
