A friend told me about Mud Sales.  My first thought was – no thanks, we have plenty of our own.  But these auctions, held rain or shine, are sometimes muddy and are prevalent throughout the Lancaster County area in the spring and fall.

We’ve been talking about going for months now, but with the rainy weather – the Mud Sales have been especially muddy – and we’ve been busy with our own muddy mess.  But we finally made it to one.  The Honeybrook Mud Sale was just a holler’ up the road.

Despite getting there early, we had to park a distance away and shuttle in on a school bus.  The place was teeming with activity and it took a while to get our bearings.  We wandered from buildings to tents to fields checking out the auctions – plants & shrubs, old tools & new; antiques, sheds & picnic benches, crafts and box lots of household items.  But the best building had food!  And lots of it – doughnuts and soft pretzels and soups and sandwiches and pizza and barbecue and ice cream and milkshakes and…more than I could eat in a day, though I gave it a good try.

We registered for our auction number “just in case” and settled in to watch.  I had to get reacquainted with the process – it’s been years since I’ve been to a farm auction, and the lingo takes some getting used to.  I’m partial to quilts – it’s where I wanted to spend my time.  Chris was more into the tools, farm implements and sheds.  The food building was conveniently located between the two.  We’d watch his auction for a while, stop for a snack and then go to the quilt auction, then stop for a snack and go back to the farm implements for a while – and so went the day.

The sales provide an interesting blend of stuff to buy and an out-of-the ordinary blend of people.  The Amish arrive by buggy and tether their horses on one side of the parking lot; pick-up trucks, motorcycles and minivans fill the other side.  Two very different worlds; one big Mud Sale.

Somehow, we managed not to buy anything (except for everything in the food building), but now we’re full of buyers’ remorse – the kind where we sorry we didn’t buy anything.  So, next week, we’ll be back at another Mud Sale!