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Cross Country: Amish auction features quilts
As seems customary, clear skies, a bright sun and balmy weather greeted the 2008 edition of the Clearview School Auction held at the school grounds on Highway 104 between Brodhead and Albany in Green County.
The three-ring auction featuring handmade quilts, Amish furniture and odds and ends from horse harnesses to a push lawn mower drew its traditionally huge crowd of bidders, buyers, eaters and lookers.
The annual auction is held to benefit the Clearview school serving the 20 or so Amish families in the area.
The quilt consignment auction draws the big crowd that includes quilt experts who come to buy, the beginners who may buy if they see a fancy quilt they like and the curious who know little of the value of quilts but are taking the time to learn.
This year's high selling quilt was a 104-by-116-inch "Wandering Bear Paw" design, burgundy and green in color that was bought for $800 by Joyce Udelhoven of Brodhead.
There were 152 quilts listed in the program with extra late entries. Bids in the $200 to $400 range seemed to be a popular selling price but in each case the buyers seemed very happy with their purchase.
What makes a quilt sell for a high price? An Amish women who said she was not an expert, although a couple of nearby friends disagreed, said it was all in the stitching and color combination. "People who are interested in buying quilts do it for different reasons," she says. "Maybe they want a certain pattern. Maybe they are matching the curtains and paint in a bedroom. Maybe they just like the color."
Whatever the reason, the chairs and benches in the quilt auction tent were full from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. and later. By the way, the quilts at this auction do not need to be made by Amish quilters but must be handmade.
The furniture auction tent always draws an enthusiastic crowd. It seems furniture buyers often come for a specific piece to use in a bedroom or living room. Bedsteads, chairs and tables are popular. The crowd was buzzing about a bedroom set that sold for $3,900.
The third auction site moves up and down rows of "stuff," some of it old and beat up, like the old push lawnmower -- it worked -- that brought $12.50. The five-hour auction again proves that "one person's junk is another's treasure."
A good many of the many hundreds of people who attend the annual Clearview School auction come for the food that is home cooked by school "mothers." Yes, there are hamburgers, brats, hot dogs, and cheeseburgers, but also full casserole dinners to be had.
Then there are the many varieties of pie that can be had a la mode if you get over to the tent where Rudy Detweiler is making ice cream with the assistance of a horse that powers the ice cream mixer.
This year Rudy and his horse made eight, 5-gallon batches of ice cream that was gobbled up by eager eaters.
Often, city folks unfamiliar with the workload of a farm horse are concerned that the horse is being overworked as it goes around and around hitched to a jerry-built contraption that Detweiler fashioned from an old horse drawn hay mower.
"Don't worry," Detweiler says. "This is a vacation for the horse who on a normal day might be hitched to a hay wagon and working hard."
Janice and Ray Schilz and their daughter Claire, 6, or Elkhorn, were intent watchers of the ice cream making. "We've come here for a number of years," Janice says. "I was raised on a farm and we love getting back to the simple life that the Amish show us at this event."
Lester and Fanny Detweiler had held horse auctions in the mid-1960s when the family lived at Waverly, Iowa. In 1977, they, along with a number of other Amish families, relocated to the Brodhead-Albany area where they bought a dairy farm.
In 1980, Lester held a horse auction at the Alliant Center in Madison. "I actually took it over from another man who held an auction the year before," Lester says. "We expanded into machinery and held two more auctions in Madison -- then it got too expensive, and we quit."
A couple of years later Detweiler resumed his horse auctions at his Brodhead farm, billing it as the "All-Wisconsin, Fall Draft Horse, Machinery & Quilt Consignment Auction. "Somehow we had sold a few quilts and then more quilts, and the event got bigger," Detweiler remembers.
Early on Fanny Detweiler got involved into running the quilt auction and did so for nine years. She admitted that it was a lot of work and she got tired out.
In 1995 the auction was transferred to the Clearview School, just across the highway from the Detweiler farmstead, where it has prospered -- with quilts as the main attraction -- since. The proceeds are used to operate the Amish school and the parents of students do much of the work,
The annual Clearview School Auction, always held on the last Saturday in July, is much more than a farm auction.
It's a reunion for the Amish folks who have left the community. If you think that Amish people, who don't drive cars, are stay-at-homes, you are dead wrong. It was good to Harley and Laura Kaufman and their four daughters at the festivities.
The Kaufmans had sold their furniture store just west of the Clearview School, and moved to southern Iowa a year ago. They have since built a new house, barn and outbuildings where Harley trains and shoes horses.
It's a grand picnic for people from Madison, Janesville, Beloit and the Chicago area. Where else can you buy food prepared by Amish cooks on a grill behind the one-room grade school, pick it up out of the schoolhouse window, eat at a picnic table and make new friends?
Then there are the tables of pies, breads and jams and jellies for sale. Kathy Dreikosen of Monroe is an annual "pie buyer" who buys one, maybe two, blueberry pies. "It's a fun time," she says. "And the pies are great."
The prices are right too. No admission or parking fee, and you might be able to park next to the buggy parking area and talk a bit with the horses who are patiently waiting for their owners.
And if you should be so inclined to buy a quilt, chair or set of dishes at one of the three auctions going on at once, you determine the price.
And, be sure to visit Fanny Detweiler's bulk food store on the farm across the road. That is an experience in itself.
As I summarized way back in 1995, the annual Clearview Auction is a "Back to the past, get ready for the future, picture taking, people watching, everyone talking, pie eating, ice cream dripping, diets don't count, back to the farm gathering. "
And it's still that way.
Mark the date: July 25, 2009. Treat your self and your family to a day in the country where there is no loud music, no alcohol, no T-shirt sales. Just a fun day!
John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 222-0624 or e-mail jfodairy@chorus.net
John Oncken
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The audience at the quilt auction is made up mainly of women. Some buy. Some look. Some talk.
