The main livestock auction is every Tuesday.

SELLING HOARDS STATION

New owners now operate three sale barns

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

CAMPBELLFORD — It’s steady as she goes and business as usual at Hoards Station Sale Barn, which recently sold from one sale-barn family to another.

The deal for the sale barn — one of only 15 left in Ontario — was completed last month. Husband-and-wife team Ab Carroll and Ashley Ferraro-Carroll, in partnership with her parents, Mark and Cindy Ferraro, bought the enterprise from former long-time owners Dave DeNure and his wife, Kim.

The business (also known as Community Livestock Exchange) has been in the DeNure family since 1959, with Dave and Kim DeNure taking over 35 years ago. They will continue to work there and son Brad will continue as the principal auctioneer.

The Ferraros, beef farmers from southwestern Ontario, also own and operate the Brussels Livestock sale barn in Huron County and the Ontario Stockyards sale barn in Cookstown, Simcoe County. With the new addition, their son-in-law, Ab Carroll, and daughter, Ashley Ferraro-Carroll, will for the first time have an ownership stake.

A bird’s eye-view of Hoards Sale barn, east of Campbellford.

“We’re excited to be here,” Ashley Ferraro-Carroll said. “The people have just been fantastic and the original owners have been just absolutely incredible. They’re still here and everything is business as usual, and they’ve been really great in helping us to get to know the people and get our feet on the ground.”

Acquiring Hoards Station “has been on our radar for years,” said Ferraro-Carroll, who grew up in her parents’ sale barn business and beef farm in Mount Forest.

Ab Carroll said he’s been enjoying meeting new people drawn to the three auction rings, home-cooked meals in the diner and popular flea market.

“Hopefully we can, at risk of sounding cliche, kind of keep that community atmosphere and community spirit going here,” said Carroll, a champion auctioneer who met his wife during an auctioneering competition in 2016. One year earlier he won the champion auctioneer title at the 2015 International Plowing Match held at Finch. He still works the auction ring in Cookstown — a little more than an hour’s drive from the home he shares with his wife in Lindsay.

Up to 50,000-head pass through the sale barn each year.

Ferraro-Carroll’s father, Mark Ferraro, described Hoards Station as a “great investment” and a “solid, smaller sale barn” with an estimated annual throughput of 40,000 to 50,000 head annually – about one-third the volume at Cookstown. The vast majority of that livestock at Hoards would be cattle, he said, although the operation also handles smaller quantities of sheep, goats and pigs.

With its flea market and community flavour, “Hoards Station is kind of like a sale barn I used to frequent as a young person,” he said.

He said that sale barns are challenged these days by record high beef prices, which tempts farmers to sell directly to buyers who pick up at their farms. That’s on top of the major beef processing industry’s long-standing move toward direct purchase of animals. It all adds up to relatively fewer animals going from farm to the sale barn on their way to market when, in the past, they were all destined for the local auction block.

Brad DeNure, in blue, will continue to work at the sale barn as an auctioneer.

Ferraro emphasized that sellers still get the best price when they go to auction. Even though it may be simpler to sell to a drover at the farmer’s door, “there’s no sense in taking less, you know, just because it’s just maybe a little more convenient,” he advised.

Ferraro estimated that Ontario once had about 85 local sale barns, and that he now owns three of the remaining 15 left in the province. “I think in the next number of years you’ll see a few more of the smaller ones close just because there’s not enough volume going through to carry the type of money you need to make it.

As for the changeover at Hoards Station, former owner Kim DeNure said the experience was still “all very new” to her. “We found somebody that’s going to continue this industry, so that’s a plus… A young family, and I hope it’s as good for them as it was for Dave and I,” she said.

DeNure said that she and her husband will help out at the sale barn “for the next while.” She and Dave DeNure also have an 800-head beef farm to keep them busy. “We’re going to expand that,” she said.