In 1959, Sebastian Scirpo started a Connecticut livestock auction in a rented chicken coop and made $7 on his first commission; 67 years later, his daughters run the state’s last remaining sale barn

Since her father died in 2002, Lisa Scirpo has been working to persuade farmers and dealers that the Middlesex Livestock Auction will continue as the only sale barn in Connecticut. Without it, Scirpo said farmers who want to bring animals to auction would have to travel to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. But now, farmers in those states come to Middlefield.Scirpo had grown up on the farm watching the animals and the buyers go buy and her father helmed the process. After his death, she went farm to farm with notices, telling people that she could take over. While she initially faced scepticism from farmers, over the past few decades she has proved that she can keep Middlesex Livestock Auction going.Her father, Sebastian Scirpo built much of the place as it is today. The old bleachers, the sale ring where the animals are presented, the chute they go through after the sale and the scale on which they are weighed. “Every cement block you see here, my father built,” she said to CT Insider.

A father’s dream

Sebastian started the auction in 1959. He began in a rented chicken coop on Little Lane and made $7 on his first commission. He had grown up near his grandmother’s farm and loved animals, said his daughter. He also worked in auto body and could fix almost anything. But he wanted a sale barn, so he converted the chicken coop and kept going.In 1970, the family bought the Cherry Hill Road property. Scirpo said her father and relatives built the auction by hand, brick by brick. He did not teach his daughters that livestock were just products moving through a market. “He always taught us that the animals came first because they couldn’t help themselves,” she said. “They needed to be taken care of.”The family has maintained the auction through the ups and downs. When Scirpo was a child, her father lost his feet in a corn chopper. Doctors talked about amputating his legs but another doctor asked if he could try to sew them back together. Sebastian survived and went from moving around in a wheelchair to using a walker, crutches and a cane. He later wore special shoes and learned to walk again. Decades later, Scirpo ran into one of the men who had been there that day. He told her that her father, trapped and in agony, had asked him to shoot him. It was the first time she had heard that part of the story.Sebastian Scirpo lived more than 30 years after the accident, dying at age 66, after becoming ill at the auction. The family later faced another farm accident. Scirpo said her sister, Lana, slipped off a Super M tractor and got her arm caught in the power takeoff. It happened on Feb. 11, their father’s birthday.Lana survived, but lost her arm. She now runs the auction with her sister. Then there was cancer. Lisa Scirpo said she was diagnosed about six years ago. Even while getting radiation, she said, she still came to the auction on Mondays.Scirpo understands that when people hear “livestock auction”, they think of slaughterhouses, meat prices and animals being treated like commodities. While she does not pretend that animals sold at the auction are not part of that system, she stands firm with the idea that the people running the barn are careful with them. Years ago, she said, protesters came to the property. She did not throw them off. She brought them water.“I understand,” she said. “But we don’t allow brutality to animals.”

Keeping it all alive

When Sebastian died, his wife Kathleen and daughter Lisa took over the work. They built back the business and kept it alive. Until recently, the auction’s paperwork was done by hand. Kathleen printed checks by hand, wrote out envelopes and handled money. Lisa’s aunt Barbara also helped.But a few years ago, Lisa finally incorporated computers to make it easier for her mother and aunt. The day after they were installed, her mother was supposed to come in and learn how things would work. Instead, her aunt found she had peacefully died in her sleep.In 1970, the auction was one among many in Connecticut, but now, it’s the only one left. The state had 5,058 farms in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, down from the previous census, with 372,000 acres of farmland and $704 million in agricultural production. The number of Connecticut farms with cattle and calves fell from 1,158 in 2017 to 876 in 2022, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.State Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt said Connecticut has invested in animal health, biosecurity, food systems that prioritise buying from Connecticut farms and grants for livestock producers, as well as expanded local processing capacity. “These coordinated initiatives reflect our commitment to building a robust, adaptable agricultural landscape that enhances the state’s overall food security,” Hurlburt said.The state Department of Agriculture posts Middlesex Livestock Auction prices online, with categories for calves, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, poultry and other animals. Scirpo said that public market matters because it gives farmers another option.The farmers don’t have to use the auction and they can sell directly to a dealer. But then, they may be sacrificing the best price. An auction, Scirpo said is a gamble. Prices move, buyers change and markets rise and fall. Here, farmers can see what their animals are worth in public.

A family operation

Today, the auction is still run by the family. Scirpo is 62; her sister Lana is 67. Their aunt Barbara is 83, and all of them still work in the office. On sale days, cattle sales begin at 6 p.m., Lisa Scirpo said. Some Mondays, they do not leave until 1 a.m. Then she still has horses at home to care for. Her father had a saying: “There is plenty of sleep when you’re dead.” “That’s the way we were brought up,” she said.The work is part livestock, part paperwork, part crowd control, part market analysis and part endurance test. The auction has licenses for different parts of the business. The animals move through the chute and onto the scale. The auctioneer keeps the sale moving.